Man, get your ass in gear, Judge C!
6 Likes
Not a judge, but I did end up playing all the Celica submissions, they were a ton of fun, and I ended up ranking them with the tier list maker Electric_Serge made. Overall, I was blown away by the quality of these hacks/fangames, I genuinely enjoyed every one, and I would recommend a lot of these to people outside this contest. Good luck with the rest of the judging, and may the best game dev win!
Double spoilered to weed out the judges.
12 Likes
herovp beat me to the punch but i played all the entries too and tier listed them too
0 bias towards my own entry but yk yk
SPOILERS POILSER SPOILERS POSIEL
There is no Honors Students in CELICA. There is no Honors Students in CELICA.
i had a blast playing every single last one of these. i streamed it to the feu discord, shoutouts to all the idiots who joined me for my crusade. definitely more fun than playing them alone in silence crying at my 3% crit.
i have a lot more to say about these other than a simple tier list. unironically, if judge c hasnāt cleared out all the entries and written all the reviews, i will gladly take up the mantle. just say the word lol
other than that, i look forward graciously to the results :).
8 Likes
As a heads-up for non-judges playing through these chapters, Captainās Log has been updated drastically after the competition, overhauling the map/enemy placement and fixing a ton of bugs.
You can check it out here: [Lex Talionis] [Complete] Captain's Log v1.6.1
11 Likes
Have to check Avalon and Emblem. Thanks for the Tier Lis seeing how most of my favorite made it to S Tier made me happy
3 Likes
Well, itās the end of the month. Man, get your ass in gear, contest organizer!
1 Like
Letās just say Judge C is almost done (17/21) and Iām giving him a chance to finish up over the weekend. If the results arenāt up by the end of Sunday, then I will be thoroughly annoyed with myself.
10 Likes
Okay, I must retract my previous statement. Man, get your ass in gear, Judge C!
2 Likes
As incentive(???) for Judge C to speed up, Iām planning to YouTube stream either the winning entry or RandomWizardās Spellthieves on Tuesday at 6PM UK time: https://www.youtube.com/live/Sg45vCwdKHk. Regardless of what I end up playing, Iām sure itāll be interesting, so it would be cool to see people there!
9 Likes
Thank you for your patience, everyone. Over the past few weeks, the judges have played and reviewed twenty one individual submissions.
And without further adoā¦
The results!
1st Calculation Manipulation 70/80
2nd The Ruins of Lost Ambition 69/80
=3rd Untitled Costco Project 65/80
=3rd Avalon X Emblem 65/80
5th Myriad Fortunes 63/80
6th Rust 61/80
7th The Spellthieves 59/80
8th One Last Venture 58/80
9th After the End 57/80
10th Crowns, Thrones, and Rebellion 56/80
11th Captain`s Log 55/80
12th Caged 53/80
13th Infiltration 45/80
14th Diversions 42/80
15th Knowledge is Power 41/80
=16th Net Arena 38/80
=16th Baseless Experience 38/80
=16th This Bird has Flown 38/80
19th Dark Cells 37/80
20th Honour Students 31/80
21st Hotdog Quest 25/80
Congratulations to Calculation Manipulation, by Aura Wolf! You have made an interesting, creative, and amazing level, and you are the winner of CELICA!
The Ruins of Lost Ambition by KrashBoomBang comes in second place, while Untitled Costco Project by BigMood and Avalon X Emblem by Frog share third.
In addition, no entries had to be disqualified.
Like with MARTH, the reviews for CELICA will be hosted on an external website. All reviews, scores, downloads, and links back to FEU posts are present.
And now, for my closing statement.
The success of MARTH left big shoes to fill. With 28 entries, it is the largest ever chapter creation contest in Fire Emblem fangame history.
But MARTH wasnāt perfect. The most notable criticism was of some of the reviews, going on long, meandering tangents and being overly harsh to low-scoring entries.
I knew this had to be addressed in a successor, so I wrote up a proper style guide to curb profanity-laden tangents and encourage professional reviews.
With a few minor tweaks to the actual contest rules relating to save points and emulator tools, thus began CELICA.
While the amount of CELICA entries is down on the amount of MARTH entries, the standard of quality is also much higher.
Closing Act was far and away the MARTH winner, but Calculation Manipulation only won by a single point.
In fact, I would say almost every entry has some idea of value and has potential for further development. This makes me happy.
The limits of Sacred Stones were pushed, and the Lex Talionis entries pushed things further again. Every chapter had something unique about it.
Thank you to everyone who took time to create a submission. Thank you to everyone who played chapters, who tested them, and gave feedback.
The tier list template is another welcome contribution.
Overall, I think CELICA went very well. Thereās always room for improvement, though, and Iād like to hear opinions on reviews, the chapters, the rules, and anything else that comes to mind.
Thatās all for now, but CELICA might appear in this yearās FEE3. I hope to see you there.
Before I go, hereās something else you might want to knowā¦
Who the judges are
Judge A = Darrman
Judge B = Loog
Judge C = Levin
Judge D = Rivian
26 Likes
it amuses me to learn that all of the judges fell back on rigging the crit on the sniper (you do not have to, and in fact I didnāt even realize that worked until talking to someone afterwards) after my playtesters told me that the fast clear was maybe too easy
i have, in fact, gotten my ass in gear
sobbing at the corner
12 Likes
Fantastic showing from competitors this year.
Each entry came in with something completely unique, which I greatly appreciate. It made getting through entries quickly a lot easier when thereās a massive variety. I can honestly say I was surprised by even playing a single normal FE chapter.
Congrats to Aura! I said Trader Raiders shouldāve won last year, Iām glad you got it this year.
10 Likes
I will say, itās bizarre to me that entries can lose points for using LT engine, especially since thereās nothing in the ruleset to suggest that engine choice will be judged. Costco almost lost 3rd place because of engine choice, and while I know Big mood finds this amusing at worst, this does have the potential to cause issues in the future.
Honestly if LT loses 2 presentation points for being LT, then why even have SRPG studio as a option? Just an immediate 20 point handicap lol
17 Likes
Well done to everyone who submitted, and big congratulations to Aura!
Captainās Log was so much fun to make, and Iām excited to do more with this cast in the future. I think the version I submitted to the contest is a pretty decent rough draft, and refining it over the last month has been very satisfying. I first saw this competition as an opportunity to learn how to make a complete chapter. What I didnāt think about as much until it happened was getting to connect with people in this community more. I want to shout out @BandanaSplitzzz especially for his playtesting help and for just generally being a cool person.
10 Likes
Congrats to the winners, and to everyone who participated, there were so many excellent hacks here that honestly any of them couldāve won.
Similar to Spensir though, I do have some thoughts on the rules/judging of future competitions like this. The 10/5/5 point split for judging is a nice shorthand, and it gives the judges some universal guidance on how the projects were scored, but I canāt help but think it produced some unfair scoring results here (not in reference to places, just absolute scores). Several projects were docked severely for having a small or comedic story; making their scores much lower despite being overwhelming favored in terms of gameplay. Similarly, some projects were docked for having typos, using LT, or using base game music, despite being both fun to play and having a good story, which feels weird to say the least. To complete the trifecta, story hacks get especially screwed here by gameplay getting ranked twice as highly as other aspects. Not to say that a game shouldnāt have gameplay, but it feels weird to see that Celica had a clear meta in terms of what to proritize, and I think that hurt a lot of cohesive projects.
Honestly, this might just be me reading too much into the scores, but it just feels weird that a game with a perfect story and no gameplay would receive half the points of a game with no story and perfect gameplay, and would recieve the same score as a typoless, music filled game with good portraits but neither good gameplay nor story.
This might sound very critical, but I assure you, I donāt doubt that the judges spent a lot of time and effort grading these projects, and they generally left excellent feedback, I just canāt help but think that the rubric that they used couldāve been better. Dropping story and making it a 50/50 split between presentation (which would then include story) and gameplay would be my proposed fix, but Iād like to hear what others think on the matter as well
8 Likes
@SirSpensir I agree. I understand there is more you can do with Lex Talonis, but maybe nerfing it a bit to be less harsh with the engine? Some users here only operate with the LT engine. Having solid and memorable gameplay should be key compared to having bells and whistles that wonāt enhance the game in any meaningful way.
But anyway, thank you Darrman for hosting this event! This is some of the most fun Iāve had with the romhacking scene, and itās been fun also playing everyone elseās projects. Iāve for sure improved from last year, and I canāt wait to improve further for the next event!
Also side note, you werenāt supposed to enter the room where Volzhin is, and you were supposed to snipe him from two range, hence the three archers you start with.
6 Likes
This was a really fun contest! I had a blast creating my entry, and super happy with my placement! The other submissions Iāve tried were also really fun & super high quality. The judge feedback was very nice and helpful too!
While I can relate to some judges reducing the presentation score for LT games, as they feel janky and āoffā to me too, it does seem a bit unfair. LT actually has some pretty big advantages compared to GBA games ā the ability to use uncompressed music is a huge one imo, and it also has no palette limitations plus some neat visual effects. Perhaps highlighting these more & taking them into account could help āmitigateā the inherent jankiness?
On a more positive note, I actually really like the scoring system here (although Iām probably biased). It incentivises you to step out of your comfort zone & work on everything, not just your strengths. Personally, Iām not really a story person and generally dislike writing, but decided to focus on it anyway since itās 1/4th of an entryās score. And now Iām really glad I did that! Still, I can also understand people who would rather not work too much on certain aspects, and it does hurt their score a lot. Maybe a way to see gameplay/presentation/writing scores separately in the final list in addition to overall ā like in the game page itself ā would help?
Anyway, thank you Darrman for hosting this competition again, all the judges for their feedback, and the other participants for making awesome entries! Looking forward to next year!
8 Likes
I see where youāre coming from, but I believe there is a practical reason for gameplay being weighed more heavily. My understanding of project development is that it is far more rare to be skilled at presentation and writing as compared to just making a well-made FE chapter.
This makes an assumption, but I feel like as the competition is to ultimately produce playable experience, a game even, it is fair to have gameplay have a higher weighting. A value judgement of whether a short story or a art slideshow would be worth more seems unnecessary, but a game with neither of the above I believe should be worth more.
I think presentation and story and far, far too different to be considered under a single score.
Letās say a project has a beautifully written story but no effort in visuals, would it score perfectly in presentation? Or would it score only 5 in presentation, essentially making it the same as 5/5 story presentation split?
9 Likes
Next time, just hand your ass to me, I can drive stick shift better than you can.
5 Likes