Final interviews: 10. nick-o-matic
nick-o-matic finished 10th in the final standings with 524 points.
1. What was the most fun level to play, and the most memorable?
Well, in a way my own level was of course the most memorable in many ways (making it, watching the results etc) but if we leave that one out as a special case, the most memorable and/or fun ones were 601 (all the stokedness and sickness in results), 603 (when only the top 2 was yet to be announced I had quite insane heart rate due to waiting for possible win for adi) and 608 (was sick fun lev and played it clearly most out of all events and was cool to reach so high position).
2. what did you think was the best replay in the World Cup?
Hard to say. There were so many great recs. Most people seem to choose Kazan's 606 or Bjรถrn's 610 but I think there were much more possibly best recs - 601, 602, 609, 613 and 615 for starters.
3. What results and/or styles were the most surprising or interesting?
Many surprising styles were either in levels that I didn't play much (606 spectrum of routes, 607 top 3 styles, Bjenn's 610 and dat's 615) or in levels where I knew the styles already before the results (adi's 603 tricks, 606 Callisto route (I'm still baffled how K+a were able to hoyl that) and of course those 613 tricks that I knew already beforehands). So in a way those weren't that surprising and Kaz's 602 (mainly the brutal and the time with the route), SPEED's 603 moves, Zweq's 608 and dat's 613 head first start surprised me the most I believe. All in all there were maybe surprisingly little really mindblowing and innovative styles in the levels.
Also the overall quality of the results surprised me in 601 (few with u15 time were left out of top50 even though some didn't send in), 613 (really nice top20 or even top 30) and 615 (I thought everyone had quit playing the cup already).
4. What was your overall opinion of the levels, how did they compare to older World Cups if you played those?
The level quality was mostly ok. But let's say there are quite often levels balled in EOL that I would choose to a WCup over about 50% of the WC6 levels.
Huge extra bonus for Ramone for getting Csaba to make a level to the cup even though it unfortunately sucked. It still was one of the most memorable things in the cup.
5. Who was the player that surprised you the most?
Maybe Munkki. He had quite cool results in some levels.
6. How tough did you feel the competition was?
In the beginning (particularly in the first two levels) it was immense. However, it quickly began to weaken. The winning recs were of high quality throughout the cup, but below them the competition got all the time worse.
What I could say about competition from my own point of view is that in the beginning I no way was thinking of finishing 10th. But so many players did quit that it became possible. It was quite fun to battle against some players in the total standings and the ending where I lost with 0.5 points to Tm in the final level and barely kept Munkki behind was quite memorable. I would have hoped to be able to play more so that I could maybe (a big maybe) have scored a podium and fought against J-sim in total standings. xd
7. If you played older World Cups, how was it different this time?
Hadn't played WCups before. My WCup knowledge was mostly based on the WC4 and WC5 videos.
8. How did playing this World Cup affect your life outside elma?
Actually the WC6 was really intense and stressful time in my life as besides playing I had to keep constructing 613 and making my graduation thesis and other school stuff as well. Also during WCup I moved together with my girlfriend and even had a surgery. But at all times I tried my best in trying to keep up with others in total standings and finish making of 613 as satisfyingly as possible in time. Anyway all in all without WC6 and 613 I think would have graduated now. Now I still have things to do. I must thank my extraordinary girlfriend for understanding me with my priorities. :P
9. How happy are you with your own result? What were your expectations for results and did you meet them?
In pretty much every single level I wasn't really satisfied on my final run. Very often I felt I missed a good opportunity to get into the top 10 or even higher. Maybe only in 601 I felt that I couldn't have improved easily (got a lucky run and never really was even close to getting any better).
10. Did you cooperate with other players and how important was that for your results?
We had pretty major cooperation going on in our team and I think it was the main reason for us having in general good results by many players (not only by adi and Kazan but in some levels also by roope, Koopa and me). We had and have our own team IRC channel and we gathered recs and trainlevs and such to a Google Docs document. Kazan joined our team for this teamwork and I think he didn't have to regret his choise. We of course got much help from him as well.
This all was rather important especially for my results since, as I have told, I had pretty limited time to play so being able to leech from teamstyles helped a lot. Luckily also I managed to contribute in some levels.
Final interviews: 13. Memphis
Memphis finished 13th in the final standings with 464 points.
1. What was the most fun level to play, and the most memorable?
Wcup6
2. what did you think was the best replay in the World Cup?
Kazan's Wcup602
3. What results and/or styles were the most surprising or interesting?
Bjenn's 610 replay. crazy style and that no one else had a time close to it.
4. What was your overall opinion of the levels, how did they compare to older World Cups if you played those?
Wcup was very well. It's the only one I have played the whole way throught and I enjoyed it very much. The scene was a lot different in regards to active players but still had a good nostalgic feeling.
5. Who was the player that surprised you the most?
Adi, thought he was good at piping but turns out he is good all around.
6. How tough did you feel the competition was?
Competition was quite tough. Felt like several times I just couldn't make the run I was looking for and made me miss out on a lot of points. Thought I should have had 10th spot if I could have played well on a few more levels.
7. If you played older World Cups, how was it different this time?
Players were different, seemed more so like having a good team was key to placing well. No offence to NOM but thought I was a better player than him and probably would have beat him if I was on Kaz/Adi team. And obviously being played on EOL as past wcups didn't have EOL was a lot different. Occassionally players forgot to go hidden but mostly more beginner players so didn't get too good of styles from it.
8. How did playing this World Cup affect your life outside elma?
It was pretty gruling. My wrist was starting to hurt at work. Probably got carpel tunnel from pressing too hard on the keys. Mostly just played lots friday, saturday and sunday before results but still was time consuming. The last 4 events Dynamo and teamates pretty much carried me along to the finish line. I couldn't play well at all and couldn't even come up with the most basic styles.
9. How happy are you with your own result? What were your expectations for results and did you meet them?
Ya even though at times I thought I could have had 10th spot, was quite happy with my results for being out of the scene so long before hand. Guess it's like riding a bike, you don't forget how to play elma.
10. Did you cooperate with other players and how important was that for your results?
Yes, got along very well with teamates and it helped immensly with my results. The two events, teamates weren't playing and no replays to see and I was finishing 30th+. Once they came I was close to top 10 many times.
Final interviews: 7. J-sim
J-sim finished 7th in the final standings with 623 points.
1. What was the most fun level to play, and the most memorable?
I definitely had the most fun playing nick-o-matic’s Book of the Dead, it just had fun parts all over the place, where most other levels had something that in the end irritated me (mostly because a lack of skills). BarTek’s High Detail had similar qualities - another long level with a nice flow. The endbounce just made that one a bit more of a pain.
It’s hard to pick the most memorable, the two aforementioned were quite memorable. I will have to mention two events though, where one is for the level and the other is more for the event.
The first being Zebra’s Moons of Jupiter level. I really hate pipes, but ended up having a good time playing this level. And it really had some of the qualities you would expect from a world cup level, by being so well thought out and grand in scale. It had a cool theme that informed the design and an interesting use of difficulty making players take strategic playing decisions based on their skill. The last part bugged me at first, but when watching the top replays made a lot of sense and was really fair for making the really good players shine.
The second being Race by Csaba Rozsa. It clearly wasn’t Csaba’s best level, but it unmistakingly had his style. I was so surprised by this so big props to Ramone for making this happen.
2. what did you think was the best replay in the World Cup?
In this cup all the winning replays were really good. If you look back on winning replays from World Cup 5 you can really see how the overall skill level has evolved a ton. And I even suspect the players back then hoyled a lot more.
These were some of the most memorable ones:
Kazan’s 602
Zweq’s 607
Zweq’s 608
Bjenn’s 610
But the best one’s got to be Kazans replay on 606 Zebra’s Moons of Jupiter
3. What results and/or styles were the most surprising or interesting?
My reply to the last question kind of ties in with this. Zweq’s styles on 607 and 608 were really surprising to me. On 607 I was sure going right first could not be close to being fast enough. While on 608 I was pretty confident on having the right style and also did get a, for me, very nice 5th place behind MiE and Zweq. It was really impressive that Zweq got so close to Kazan’s wintime.
Bjenn’s style on 8-Ball’s harvest lev was also incredibly surprising to me. I felt like I had tried most possible routes, but I hadn’t thought of anything close to resembling his route.
FinMan’s pushing for the second place was a real shocker, even though I knew his time and was more or less sure he would win the event, I didn’t think adi would slip up enough for making it possible.
Dannyelmer’s win was obviously also surprising.
4. What was your overall opinion of the levels, how did they compare to older World Cups if you played those?
In general I liked most of the levels. When playing levels as much as this it can be hard to judge them though. I find I almost always get to a point where I love and hate a level that I play to the extent I did for most of these levels. There’s always some part that gives me a headache but at the same time keeps me wanting to get it right.
Compared to other World Cups it was clear that a new man was in charge of choosing the levels. Ramone really put his mark on the cup, which I didn’t have a problem with at all really. I guess a bit more of a variety could have been nice, going a bit more to the fringes of types of levels. But as we’ve been speculating before, it’s hard to know what was possible without knowing the pool of levels selected from.
I think overall it was nice that the cup adhered so much to the traditions of the World Cup with one week events, a pipe event, a rollercoaster(ish) event and so on.
5. Who was the player that surprised you the most?
I really didn’t know that hehe was as good as he is. Especially in the beginning of the cup he was really strong. Too bad about all those 4th places.
I was also pleasantly surprised that Kazan played through all events, and made quite an effort on most of them. I wasn’t sure if he would have the stamina.
6. How tough did you feel the competition was?
After the first three events I had performed very poorly and the overall competition looked so tough that even finishing in the top 20 seemed to be a real challenge for me. As always players starting dropping out and playing less, but the level of the very top contenders was really tough all the way through. It was too bad that Madness, Spef and Zweq didn’t keep going, then the level of competition would have totally shattered previous cups. I ended up playing just as hard as in World Cup 5 and got a 7th place compared to a 6th the last time, so it still was stronger I would say.
7. If you played older World Cups, how was it different this time?
As with many things in life in general things often don’t feel as special anymore the second or third time around or just when comparing to an experience you had in a younger age.
World Cup 4 and 5 came at a time when I was in high school and just out of high school. At a time when much more of my life and thoughts were centered around elma and #across. It just had more of an impact and a much more special feeling to me.
So having said that this cup couldn’t really compete with those others in any possible way. But it was still a really fun cup that did keep that World Cup vibe alive. It brought the community together in a way nothing else really can. I reconnected with some old elma friends and made some new ones.
8. How did playing this World Cup affect your life outside elma?
I was writing my thesis during the whole cup. At first I thought that it would be a major problem. But I just more or less didn’t do much else than play when I was writing my thesis, which turned out being a nice way to get away from that. For some events I was really irritated by not being able to play more.
There were a couple of times I chose not to do life things and prioritized elma, which I really hated myself for back in the day when I wa totally addicted to the game. This time around it didn’t really bother me because I knew it was for a limited time.
9. How happy are you with your own result? What were your expectations for results and did you meet them?
Before the cup I was set on going for a top 10 to match my result from World Cup 5. As I said I was kind of shocked by how bad it was going in the beginning so I was beginning to disregard that notion. But as always with cups perseverance and dedication is what in the end matters the most. Especially for players in my skill level, which is some ways below the best.
In the end I got as high a placement as was possible by any means for my skills, so I really just should be happy. Along the way though I felt very bad with my end results on at least half the events. I had so many bad sundays of hoyling without results, so many near misses of quite big improvements and often was disappointed of individual events results. I especially really wanted a third place on that last event after finding the right style and moves with FinMan and Zero, it was just too hoyla of a level to suit me.
10. Did you cooperate with other players and how important was that for your results?
Before the cup Kopaka suggested that all of us danish players should cooperate. I thought it was a great idea and was really stoked to play with some good old IRL elma friends. It ended up being me and my old teammates Sick_Mambo and Vandmand and then Kopaka that played together. It’s always a lot more fun playing with others. There were especially a couple of events where we really made good use of each other.
Towards the end Sick_Mambo who had been my main stylefinding partner stopped playing. So for the last event I talked with FinMan and Zero and they agreed to play with me. They had a very cool plan of trying to get second place in the overall standings to FinMan which was very fun being a part of.
The last event was quite simple, so we did most of the co-oping on one night. It was interesting to see how other top players worked together. It was a lot more focused than what us danes had done. FinMan and Zero used skype to talk while playing and swapping a lot of replays with small details. With Kopaka, Sick_Mambo and Vandmand we mostly traded replays on a facebook group. It was a big surprise to me however that the dat guys didn’t use saveload. That tool was so useful to me during the cup and I would have missed a lot of styles and moves without it - or at least have spent a lot more time before going into a hoyling phase.
During the whole cup I also stayed in contact with Ismo and traded a lot of styles and moves with him. It’s always nice to test your ideas with others and Ismo is such a nice dude.
I also want to mention my friend and mental coach (lol) Christian here. For one and two halves of events I was on a vacation for a festival in Krakow. For those events and from then on out he really motivated me a lot, and I would have dropped loads of points if I hadn’t played those events (605-607). They actually ended up being a turning point for me, and the first top 10 finishes I got. Playing on a pretty crappy laptop too, might I add.
It was really interesting co-oping with a more or less non-elma player. He had a lot of very strange and unexpected ideas for routes and moves that I wouldn’t have thought of myself.
Thanks to Kopaka, Sick_Mambo, Vandmand, Ismo, FinMan, Zero and Christian! You guys all rule. Also thanks to everyone who made the cup posible: Kopaka (again), Ramone, Ville J, 8-Ball, Px, all the levelmakers and anyone I might’ve forgotten.
And a round of applause to all the players. Everyone who ended above me were all so sick, and I’m actually kind of proud of the placement I got. Congratulations to all event winners and especially to Kazan, you totally owned!
Final interviews: 9. Tm
Tm finished 9th in the final standings with 525.5 points.
1. What was the most fun level to play, and the most memorable?
To sum it up roughly, I think WCup615 "maed in 15 min" lev by Zweq was the most fun to play. The explanation is twofold: 1) level happened to appear towards the very end of WCup - at the time where every point was important for me fighting for top10 places on final standings against Munkki and nick-o-matic. Therefore, my motivation got up quite high, making it my playing/hoyling more responsible. These kind of situations more or less depicts all my wrs making attempts when I managed to fully immerse myself into a lev subtleties; 2)... it was one of few (to be exact - three) levels where I managed to find style, which was at least almost right. 70-80% of levs punished me with instant 2s-3s disadvantage, because of my shallow attitude towards searching for an optimal moves.
All in all, my mid-range hoyla nature somehow got in touch with this mid-range hoyla lev and it was fun. :)
The most memorable - WCup608 "Nuclear Zone" lev by Ramone and WCup610 "Limitless" lev by 8-ball. Both for pleasant, yet not so easy to discover, style spectrum.
2. what did you think was the best replay in the World Cup?
I really enjoyed watching Zweqs unwin rec on Wc608 - mainly for sketchy volt in the very middle of the lev. On the other hand, most professional looking and therefore the best replay in the WCup for me was Bjenns only winning rec on Wc610. Kazans recs were also quite memorable and smooth, nonetheless they didn't impress me that much. Exception being Wc606 winrec, which would get strong second place in this best rec category.
3. What results and/or styles were the most surprising or interesting?
Results: I was a bit surprised by steady overall performance by hehe and J-sim. // Sorry dannyelmer you is unsurprise. :(
Styles: I was somehow surprised by all u42 styles (don't really know why) at Wc608 - felt horribly stupid afterwards. Same goes for Wc613 roller coaster one wheel hangs in the second part of the lev.
4. What was your overall opinion of the levels, how did they compare to older World Cups if you played those?
Too bad I have virtually no real experience in previous World Cups, even though I cruised some of the fifth World Cup levs. Talking about sixth World Cup, well - for me there were too many over 1min levs, there could've been more of 40-50s long ones. I do understand it's just lone opinion among many more lone opinions so I won't elaborate on this more.
5. Who was the player that surprised you the most?
Must be hehe for his steady overall performance.
6. How tough did you feel the competition was?
Competition could've been tougher if Zweq, Spef and Madness were playing all events full strength. I believe there were more people, who could've reached top10 with a bigger effort - just to throw in some names - NightMar, AKB, talli and maybe Mielz, can't really tell.
On the other hand, taking life, and motivation swings in account, I believe this World Cup was pretty competitive. After all, it can be really hard to find time for a long lasting cup like this.
7. If you played older World Cups, how was it different this time?
I wish I had "time-traveller" as my second speciality.
8. How did playing this World Cup affect your life outside elma?
During the first half of the cup I had my last semester in university trying to complete my major in clinical psychology. Therefore, it wasn't easy to find time for quality playing time. Nonetheless, I managed to squeeze in 2 to 3 hours daily playing time into my schedule.
Playing World Cup also got on my girlfriends nerves, so many times I just had to cut my hoyl sessions just like that... Surprisingly enough, on the second half of the World Cup she gladly accepted watching over my replays and pointing out places where my bike was driving too slow. This enabled me to think more about possible moves and even improve my final times. Moreover, few times she watched Renaults with me... these were fun times :D
So, all in all, I believe World Cup didn't really negatively affected my life outside elma. I might even say, it helped me to organise my time better and somehow strengthen our bond with gf.
9. How happy are you with your own result? What were your expectations for results and did you meet them?
I'm pretty happy with my 9th place, as it's the highest place I ever had during whole World Cup. I had no expectations to tell the truth - only tried to do my best on every lev given current life circumstances. Those mostly encompassed intense studies and practise for my university matters.
When I compare my times in first and second half of the World Cup I even think I could've gone for top5, as my results in the first half are pretty crappy. On the other hand, it might as well be just an illusion, because some of the top players didn't participate in this cup with full strength. On the third hand, I am running my elma on MacOS, which is horrible aspiring for decent results.
I'd like to get to top6 next cup ;)
10. Did you cooperate with other players and how important was that for your results?
I cooperated with my team mates - kestas and totem. Even though this cooperation was half dead, it was very important for me to know there are people who I can turn to if something in the lev didin't seem clear to me.
Extra credit goes to kestas which actually was kind enough to create and edit quite a bunch of EOL files just to get elma running in online mode on my MacOS. Long story short, without help, received from kestas, I wouldn't be writing this interview.
Final interviews: 11. Munkki
Munkki finished 11th in the final standings with 518 points.
1. What was the most fun level to play, and the most memorable?
Most fun lev was the first one because of the excitement about the World Cup! Most memorable lev was the last one, where I unfortunately managed to lose so many places to Tm that I dropped out from top10 :wink2:
2. what did you think was the best replay in the World Cup?
Best replay must be the one that I've watched the most. Kazan's unbelievable Callisto-piping in 606! Other sick replay was Kazan's 602 including the incredibly hard brutal!
3. What results and/or styles were the most surprising or interesting?
Most interesting results were in the last event, because I had a big fight about top 10 place against Nick-O-Matic and Tm. Most surprising results were in event 608, where I missed the style completely. I played the cup alone, and it just didn't come to my mind to try get bottom-right apple first. I ended up getting an ok-run with a superslow style and losing some 5,5 sec to winner...
4. What was your overall opinion of the levels, how did they compare to older World Cups if you played those?
Levs were very good. A lot of variation in the difficulty and length of levs.
5. Who was the player that surprised you the most?
It was very nice to see BoneLESS appear to results at some point. He was very active and nice guy back in the days.
6. How tough did you feel the competition was?
The skills of elma scene players have risen a lot since the time I was really active. In the beginning of the cup I thought I probably won't have chance to get in top20, but unfortunately, for some reason, a lot of good players didn't take this cup that seriously :o
7. If you played older World Cups, how was it different this time?
It was very different, because it was on EOL. I think it was a mistake to not make WCup levs hidden. At least in first levels, all major tricks (for example 602 hang apple) and styles were public, because people forgot to hide themselves. Also style sharing was easier in EOL and SL probably improved style-finding so it was harder to find unique styles and win with that (Grats to Bjenn for a nice 610 style!)
8. How did playing this World Cup affect your life outside elma?
Most of the levs i played like 4-10 hours in a week, so it didn't affect that much to life outside elma. Although some disagreements with gf may have occurred 8)
9. How happy are you with your own result? What were your expectations for results and did you meet them?
Overall 11th place is better than i expected in the beginning, but the 10th place was so close...
10. Did you cooperate with other players and how important was that for your results?
Had some discussions with O and Z, but didn't really get any help from there. In the first events I got styles from public as people had forgotten to hide themselves.
Final interviews: 12. Kejebra-
Kejebra- finished 18th in the final standings with 479.5 points.
1. What was the most fun level to play, and the most memorable?
I think that WC602 was both the most memorable and fun to play. Just in those early stages of the cup the hype and expectations made it more interesting all across the board. Had the level been at the culmination of the cup it probably wouldn't have had the same effect. I didn't play the first event all that much due to time constraits in my real life, so 602 was the first full week höyla for me and thus I remember it more warmly than any other event.
2. what did you think was the best replay in the World Cup?
I think Zweqs 608 rec/style was a jawdropper, even if it wasn't a win. Also Bjenns 610 rec was very nice watching, especially since it was such a gap to the second place when the results came. I know technically Kazans 606 is really amazing too, from an objective standpoint I'd say it was probably the best rec. But the level had no emotional impact on me whatsoever as I think it was by far the worst in the cup, so I didn't really care about it nor did I even watch the winrec until much later.
3. What results and/or styles were the most surprising or interesting?
WC613 directly comes to mind here. We simply had nooo idea about several styles in that lev even with a lot of testing and trying in saveload and the works. It was the biggest "oh lol wtf we feel so stupid" in the entire cup.
4. What was your overall opinion of the levels, how did they compare to older World Cups if you played those?
I think they were good. They had a good variation of different types of levels with some personal preferences aside. Overall it felt like different skills were tested in different ways, not that I think too much about it though. But I didn't feel that anything was strictly "missing" from the cup so much so that it was any kind of problem. In some of the previous wcups I think you can clearly see that many levels were chosen simply because they were good/fun and it often resulted in several levels feeling similar to many previous events.
5. Who was the player that surprised you the most?
Hehe was the underdog in this competition. I think no one suspected, believed or even considered that he might
be this good as he haven't made much noise in EOL chat or on forums perhaps ever(?) I didn't recognize him at all at least (aside from knowing he had some 37.1x internal total time). So when I saw his results and we in EF started to cooperate with WLA I finally realized that he was on a whole other level than I had expected.
6. How tough did you feel the competition was?
Hard to say. I mean the top players are definately in a league of their own in most cases (with one or two surprices here and there) but I never felt there was an overwhelming amount of pros playing that it felt useless to play myself. Some good players never played the cup seriously and some dropped out quite early making it easier to get a decent result.
7. If you played older World Cups, how was it different this time?
Can't really say that I played any of the other wcups in the same manner I did now. I was around during all the previous wcups, and I played barely very casually (I'm not a big fan of playing cups in general) so I don't think I have a fair frame of reference here.
8. How did playing this World Cup affect your life outside elma?
Not at all. Every other week I was busy with my daugther, meaning I had very limited time to play during half the cup. Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it did not (result-wise).
9. How happy are you with your own result? What were your expectations for results and did you meet them?
I had no expectations entering the cup, I didn't even plan to play it until the very last minute. Some levels I focused a bit harder on, others not so much at all due to time constraints mentioned above. Also disliking some levels so I didn't play those so much either. Ending up 12th in the final standings was more than satisfying considering all the circumstances.
10. Did you cooperate with other players and how important was that for your results?
At the beginning of 610 we in EF started to cooperate with team WLA, and that made playing the last part of the cup more interesting as well as boosting the competative feeling (I wanted to beat Bamilan in every event^^)
Final interviews: 25. AKB
AKB finished 25th in the final standings with 324 points.
1. What was the most fun level to play, and the most memorable?
The first level was the most fun to play for me, as it was the only one I could spend a reasonable amount of time on.
2. what did you think was the best replay in the World Cup?
Moons of Jupiter winrec was by far my favourite. Lovely piping and level, shame I couldn't get into it more...
3. What results and/or styles were the most surprising or interesting?
I was actually surprised that I didn't get top5 in first lev, but very happy nonetheless. Styles for Limitless and Picture This (especially Zweq) were very interesting.
4. What was your overall opinion of the levels, how did they compare to older World Cups if you played those?
I was a bit disappointed with the general quality of levels, they all incorporated too much luck, including the first. Objectively they seemed to fall short of what I expected in terms of quality.
5. Who was the player that surprised you the most?
I was really surprised by FinMan, whom I thought was a bit more casual. Turns out he is a nice cup player! :D
6. How tough did you feel the competition was?
Competition was extremely tough. Even if I had all the time I wanted, I would definitely be struggling to stay in top 8 or so.
7. If you played older World Cups, how was it different this time?
n/a unfortunately...
8. How did playing this World Cup affect your life outside elma?
I was finishing my honours degree, so elma had to take a backfoot in WC time. Unfortunately, this meant cutting my elma time to less than 2 hours per week, which was catastrophic for results.
9. How happy are you with your own result? What were your expectations for results and did you meet them?
I was happy with my first result, but after that I knew that I had to let it go. Uni took priority, which turned out to be a good thing because I am eligible for my PhD now. :)
10. Did you cooperate with other players and how important was that for your results?
Team EA cooperated for the first 6-7 events okay, but we sort of fell apart after that and didn't take it seriously. It was important for the first event, but afterwards only a few times did it particularly affect my results.
Final interviews: 18. Dynamo
Dynamo finished 18th in the final standings with 412.5 points.
1. What was the most fun level to play, and the most memorable?
Most fun level was Event 7: Black by Bludek because I'm a sucker for hoyla levs with bounce tricks in them. Most memorable level was Event 6: Moons of Jupiter by zebra due to being a really difficult level with a variety of routes. Also, it had the infamous "Callisto" pipe which made for amazing recs.
2. what did you think was the best replay in the World Cup?
So many insane recs but I found Kazan's rec on Moons of Jupiter the best. Very difficult tricks with quite good execution throughout the rec.
3. What results and/or styles were the most surprising or interesting?
Most surprising result was "dannyelmer's" win on Event 7; quite aggressive style and looked hoyled to near perfection. Most interesting style was Zweq's styles on Event 8: Nuclear Zone by Ramone. Looked quite complicated and interesting to me.
4. What was your overall opinion of the levels, how did they compare to older World Cups if you played those?
I found the levels to be quite balanced in this World Cup in terms of length; structure was quite similar with older World Cups too. I was quite impressed with these levs and how they tested style-finding above all else. It's unfortunate that there seemed to be less interest from top players towards the end because the levels were all high quality right until the end.
5. Who was the player that surprised you the most?
This might seem strange to others, but I found finman placing 2nd overall was quite surprising. Maybe I have been gone from this game too long but finman seems to have improved his skills a LOT compared to 2-3 years ago.
6. How tough did you feel the competition was?
I feel that the competition for top 25 times was quite difficult in the beginning events. I'm not sure if it was due to there being a lot of effort from more players early on or if I was rusty from not playing for a couple years, but it was tough to get points for me at the start but got easier as the cup progressed. I feel that the competition could have been even more insane if more of the top battlers went all out but some of the really good players seemed to lose interest in the cup sadly.
7. If you played older World Cups, how was it different this time?
The submitting process was great and it was nice to be able to submit multiple improvements. I found the meta-game of the cup much better too since it took place in EOL where there is the chat functions and such. Before EOL, playing cups in elma was a very isolating thing at least for me.
8. How did playing this World Cup affect your life outside elma?
At the time of the cup, I wasn't working and I'm done school now so I had a lot of free time to play the levels. This allowed me to play whenever I wanted so my life outside elma wasn't really affected much.
9. How happy are you with your own result? What were your expectations for results and did you meet them?
I never would have expected to place top 25, and truthfully I think if other players were active the whole cup, I would not have made top 25. Even so I'm very satisfied with my results, even made top 10 a few times and had a 3rd place in one event; couldn't be happier about that. :D
15th event interviews
1st place: FinMan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Seemed like a really good level at first, which fit my goal to finally win an event in the cup.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
There was a lot of different move possibilities in all parts of the level which was something unique for this cup. As I came home Monday night we instantly started finding styles and ended up having all the styles done before the night. We got a great help and company from J-sim on Monday night, he was the main motivation for me to play seriously during the first day and to check out many possible styles.
The result after Monday's höyl was 35,61 I think. On Tuesday I had no school so when I woke up I started to play again and in a short while I got 35,30 which I improved to 34,96 in an hour or two which made me stop playing the level until Zero beat me again on Thursday. We knew I had the chance to beat adi in the final standings so we decided Zero would not play any more to not get lucky sicktimes.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Yeah, another decent win for team dat with such a gap was a pretty big surprise even though I knew many of the opponents' times.
2nd place: Zero
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
I think I speak for everyone when I say I got really surprised for Ramone picking a level named: maed in 15 min :D Well, the level was very awesome I think and it was probably the first level where höyling was really fun for the whole week. For me it was The Hoyla of WCup6 :)
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Me and FM did co-op with J-sim and it was very great since we all found moves to the lev. FM wasn't home Sunday when the event started so I decided to take "a day off" too, so we started höyling Monday evening when he arrived. Also we started the höylingprocess with J-sim then and the same evening we three skyped and did test different moves. Monday before we started using the endstyle that we have in our winrec I had already höyled a top10 and my best time was 36.04. Later that night me and FM both got 35,6x. Next day I did 35.48 and it felt pretty nice since the style was pretty new to me. I had to go some place for a couple hours and when I got back FM had done 34,96. I was almost shocked and I knew I had to höyl the lev quite much to learn to do it so fast. After höyling and getting times off again and again i did 35.12 with a very bad end and I wanted to do one better ride since my 604 ride was so sloppy. An hour after that I got 34.93 and I felt pretty bad since we had decided that FM will beat me but I just couldn't leave that 35.12 for my final ride xd I stopped playing and FM kept playing for one more day and he stopped too when he beat me.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I knew our style wasn't That obvious but I'm pretty surprised we were the only ones who did use it. Also it was lame to see J-sim getting 7th place (tied with Kazan) cause he found styles to our style and he would have deserved 3rd place. The weren't any totally unexpected styles since we had tested many styles including the ones people used in the top.
3rd place: Dynamo
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
When I first saw the level it looked almost like a normal battle lev to me and the "maed in 15 mins" title made me feel that way even more. The lev gradually got more fun as I played it more but eventually got frustrating towards the end because I couldn't seem to improve my time even though I knew it was possible.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
First test-played on Monday after looking at a few styles that Juish drove. The most obvious route seemed to also be the fastest which had me suspicious early on because I was pretty certain there was an insane style hidden in the lev somewhere. We tested brutalling up to the top apple from the left but it seemed very slow. Tuesday I drove 36,53 with a bad end and randomly improved 15 mins later to 35,89 which I thought would be hard to improve at the time. Didn't touch the lev again until Thursday when I improved to 35,77 after some hoyling and then 35,41 on Friday. My rec was really sloppy so I knew 34,xx would be possible, but after 3 hours hoyling on Saturday night I only managed to drive 35,41 again.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I was shocked when I saw the results because I might've won the event if I hoyled more throughout the week. I was disappointed on one level because my rec looked like a luck-ride (even though it wasn't), but on the other hand, I never expected to make top 3 in a World Cup event! (even though it was last event and some mans probably didn't try very hard). Team dat's end style was one of those "omg how did we not try that?!" moves because it is fast and also quite consistent. The fact that only 0.06 seconds separated 3rd and 8th place was really surprising to me too. Overall the cup was very fun but sometimes stressful, so in a way I'm relieved it's over. Big thanks to all who organized the cup and congratulations to Kazan and other top drivers!! I'll be looking forward to next WCup some 5 years from now ;)
14th event interviews
1st place: Zero
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
The lev looked simply great. This was basically the oldschool lev I had been waiting for.. We noticed in the very start that the lev is quite much simpler than it looks like and that means we used pretty similar styles for the whole week. It never got boring nor too hard but still hard enough that in the end I didn't get the ride I wanted but still close enough :)
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
The moves to the start we found almost right away and the styles after the pipe maybe a day later. Like most of us, I wanted to test bouncing from that stick but it didn't feel hoylable at all so I ended up playing with the other one and also noticed that can get much more speed with our style. My FF was something like 1.08 and i did it about 15-20mins after the release and kept improving it pretty quickly to 1.02.65 which i got Wednesday. Later that day FM did 1.02.10 and he didn't play more because he had to go away for the rest of the week. From my 1.02.65 i started the real hoyling and got new times every now and then. When I did 1.01.mid it felt like a good run but then I suddenly got 1.01.10 with a sloppy mid and that gave me the motivation to hoyl the level some more. With 4 more personal records i finally got under 1.01 and didn't really feel like playing more tho the end of my ride was pretty sloppy. I was also happy with my time because I got the best appletimes ever.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I had no idea what times people would get, but it seemed like people didn't play that much. Like usually, I just took a personal target and spent the week trying to make it. There were some cool styles by people but it still felt like many were pretty lazy with this one; probably because of Kazan's dominating :f
2nd place: FinMan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
The level seemed really cool and ended up being a decent level that I could have played way more than I did.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Zero had found the basic style, tested other routes too, including "the Canadian style" and found out all of them slower or impossible to do faster. We basically had everything by Monday evening, höyled quite a lot on Tuesday and some time on Wednesday till got the time. I "had to" go to home for the weekend so could not play more, knew could not drastically improve on Wednesday night any more so gave up which seems to be the correct decision as there was no way I could win Zero if I am not here during the weekend. :P
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Yeah, thought people would do better.
3rd place: adi
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
The level seemed standard high quality cup level and it was. But unfortunately still didn't really enjoy playing for various reasons.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
My team members didn't have time or interest for this event, so I played alone. I didn't have much motivation either but I couldn't afford losing many points to FinMan.
I saveloaded three mainroutes. The HHIT route seemed slower so I eliminated it first. I used quite much time trying to make that route with the right pipe (direct drop to hill) though. Actually I managed in the drop with head first pipe in a trainlev but didn't have enough speed for the big jump.
The second route I rejected was going right down after the 2nd apple even though it seemed to have lots and lots of potential. All the fast tricks just were really annoying.
After all I picked the most obvious route. For the start part I did some quick merging. Bouncing from the right wall felt really good. I didn't use much time testing hang at 2nd apple, because it seemed very annoying and also slow if not done perfectly. The final route seemed a bit too obvious, so I was little afraid of missing faster routes.
I used Monday for stylefinding and on Tuesday did my first finish 1:05,low. I wasn't really able to hoyl for 4 days because of going to Tampere (my childhood home). However I came back home just for Sunday and megahoyled many hours before deadline. I did several small improvements and in total improved my time by over 2 seconds. Still I was very unsatisfied with my time but anyway it felt good enough to avoid a disaster.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I didn't expect good results at all but still 3rd placement was a big surprise. Top 2 was just as I expected. Tm being 4th was a cool surprise.
Designer: MP
What was the idea of this level?
The basis of this level is five to ten years old. It's one of the last levels what I made when I was still more active in the scene and I planned back then that it could be used in the second MopoCorner cup competition, the first being King Cup which was held with Ville_J. Those were the days :) Actually I think it was the first cup which also had these interviews, crazy innovation.
When wc6 started ramone asked if I could send a level to the cup. Few months after when I was at my old home (=mom's place) where the old computer is still alive I searched the elma folders and found this and few others. I think ramone chose this one because the visuals were the most traditional "MP style".
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
I had testplayed this level quite much and there were four different routes which I knew and I tried to make then all quite even. This winner route was supposed to be one of the slowest ones because it's quite easily spottable but the problem is that I'm so bad player nowdays so it's not that easy to testplay anymore. A day after the level was published I realised that the right pipe will be the fastest and I was quite dissapointed because I made a lot effort with all the other stuff. Of course many of the style details were new to me and I have to say that the winner rec my Zero was a LOT faster than I ever though could be possible and I couldn't even make close to that even with saveload :D. These modern day players are just insanely skilled! I had thought that style which adi used in the beginning would be faster but these small spins that team dat had before the second apple were quite cool. Congrats to the top3!
Even though majority used the right pipe it's still nice that the other styles were also used by Bjenn, Ville_J and team HHIT among others. Even though there were now less variety that I had originally planned it was still nice to check through all these recs.
Tell us about the designing process.
I don't remember anything from the designing process what was done back in the days but after ramone chose this as his fav or my levels I started re-designing it a "bit". Before the whole level was pretty much based on the team HHIT style and I thought it was quite fun style to drive because it had some speed and tricks. ramone found this style like one minute after playing and I also realised it's way too obvious so I started making the other styles faster and this left pipe style slower. The plan was to make everything as even as possible so I don't even know myself which was the fastest. The funny (or not that funny) thing was that actually that I thought the right pipe would be the slowest and for some reason I didn't even test it that much, I just left it like it is and made changes to all the other parts.
One major difference to the original level was that it wasn't possible to jump directly up from the far left point of the level. Also ramone gave some good feedback of the different versions of the level, but too bad we both missed few critical things! In the end it was still fun to play around with the designer after a longlong time and of course always nice to have a level in the world cup!
Kazan wins World Cup 6!
With a fifth place in the 14th event Kazan has secured the win in the sixth Elasto Mania World Cup! With adi's third place Kazan maintains a lead of more than a 100 points when you take out the worst result, which makes it impossible for adi to catch up no matter what happens in the last event. Congratulations Kazan!! With seven event wins Kazan has dominated the World Cup with the most secure win since World Cup 3 and the currently shares most event wins in a World Cup with Dr.Luni from World Cup 3 with 5 events less and still one left. This win puts Kazan in the very exclusive club of previous World Cup winners, which previously only counted three people: BoBBo, Dr.Luni and MP.
The rest still has a lot to play for though. The fight for second and third place and a trophy is still open, so is top 10 and top 20 positions. The last event has started, download from the top of the page and remember the deadline on sunday at 18 EET.
13th event interviews
1st place: Kazan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Graphic was sick but lev looked nothing special. Surprisingly hoyling this lev was super fun after we found styles.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Spent much time on hoyling because was fun, and 1:13 looked good time so i stopped. Could still improve maybe.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
No, was almost sure about win. Some players used nice moves.
2nd place: adi
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
I had no idea that nom had made a world cup level, so I was really excited already before the event started. The level seemed instantly very epic. The first thing I noticed was cool old school design. However the most important thing was sick nice playability. I loved every part of the level - nothing really annoyed me. Actually this was the first level in the cup that I could honestly hoyl over 10 hours in a row and just play for joy of playing, not for breaking some time limit.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
On first days roope was the most active and found some important styles/moves, which where also used at the end of the event. On Monday nick-o-matic showed his styles. There was a lot of room for improvement though. Almost every part was later improved and optimized, mostly by Kazan. Also I found some moves that were easier and slightly faster. I tried different fps values but after all decided to play with max fps. We noticed that the start was easier with low fps but there wasn't big difference for me at least.
On first days I only checked the level through and learnt all the parts. Then on Wednesday I started proper hoyling and got 1:16,02 quite quickly. I had very busy week at school, so I wasn't able to play as much as I wanted. Anyway I woke up on Friday evening, played a couple of hours minigolf and then hoyled wcuplev until midday. Before going to sleep my time was 1:15,21, which was about 0.4 sec from my goal. I woke up on Saturday evening and saw Kazan making easily many 1:14 times. I analyzed his rec and learned many new details. I didn't plan to play much more because Kazan's 1:14,22 seemed very impsy. However I suddenly managed to do all the parts well improving my fastest 3rd apple time by 0.5 sec, and tied with Kazan until the very end. I got very excited, opened energy drink and did all my 1:14 times in 2 hours. I also found new spinning moves for the end part, which helped me to get really fast ends. I kept missing 1.14,0x - 1.14,2x times. Unfortunately it was soon already morning and I started to feel tired. I had lost the momentum. I didn't really have time to sleep if I wanted to improve my time but nom told me to sleep since according to him I had slept way too little. I think sleeping was very wise, since I had elma meet in the evening. Anyway I had no reason to hoyl more because my time felt good enough for the top 2. I was just very hooked in this level and wanted to make an impressive run.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I knew that FinMan would be very strong at this level, so I'm just happy to beat him. I'm very happy for roope. I knew he could do really well at this level but still 4th position was a small surprise. Team dat had cool start style, which I weren't able to find. I was surprised to see many to skip the hang part after the 2nd apple. It didn't seem bad style at all. I'm also glad to see that many players found end tricks. Also Bjenn missing all styles made me smile a bit. ;D
3rd place: FinMan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
The level seemed like a quite fun cruise level which it turned out to be. Too bad team MiE got the full advantage from the styles nom planned in the level, kinda gave a shitty feeling about the whole level after the event.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Found styles I used in a short time, tried to find better ones but for no reason skipped finding those two moves team MiE won with. Höyled the same thing all the time. Could not get better than 1:14,8x no matter how long I would use in this style so pretty satisfied with the ride, had some cool move before 3rd apple that no one else seemed to use and Zero was not able to copy. What I was hoping was that other MiE members trust too much on nom's styles and therefore miss something we found.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Yes, roope made a cool surprise, didn't really get surprised of nom's styles.
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
I try to stay 3rd in the cup, won't have much time to go for it though.
Designer: nick-o-matic
What was the idea of this level?
The idea of the level changed as the project progressed. At first my goal was just to make something that provides nice unseen tricks and is fun to play. But the graphical aspect became more and more important towards the end.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
Still in Saturday I totally wasn’t expecting a 1:13 from Kazan. He had 1:16,10 (a Tuesday time) and had told that he isn’t going to play anymore. But I guess due to some 1:15,low times adi drove he started playing again on Saturday night and adapted a lot of things from adi’s recs and instantly began to get a lot of 1:14 times. 1:13 (which I thought to be practically impossible before that) began to seem realistic! And so he hoyled until he got it, for which I’m very happy.
From my team also adi and roope got very good times. Adi hoyled like a real man - he only played this lev and made compulsory school stuff and barely slept during the whole week. It was interesting to follow his time development and I think he would have had potential even for 1:13. And roope’s time was way better I could have hoped for before the event. It also was a lot better I thought it was after the event. Namely, I thought he had 1:16 but he kept his final time secret and when in our results meeting I saw my name to come as sixth several thoughts crossed my mind in a short period of time because I was expecting roope, FinMan or Zero to be 6th. Firstly I thought roope screwed up sending in his time (wouldn’t have been the first time in this cup xd) and felt bad for him. But secondly I was happy that team dat had found the main styles and had better times than me and that there was some mysterious 3rd non-MiE guy in the top 5. But then roope’s smile made me understand what was going on. Quite awesome surprise from roope! :D
I take my hat off also for team dat’s performance. They weren’t aided by my styles, yet they still managed to find excellent styles (especially the start was awesome) and drive good runs. I actually would have preferred FinMan or Zero to win (sorry adi and Kazan!). Unfortunately they had some mistakes preventing them from doing that (mainly they took 2-wheel hang before 2nd apple and did a head-first style to the hang before 3rd apple and also FinMan didn’t spin at the end after the 1-wheel hang). Also they didn’t find the spin tricks at 25sec. I guess I made them too difficult to find since unfortunately nobody else found them either, for which I’m very sad. Namely, firstly I’m really proud of that part (see the next section) and now nobody was able to experience the joy of finding those moves, which I was really hoping for. Secondly, this led to unfair advantage for our team.
Anyway, the overall quality of top 10 and top 20 really surprised me positively. Especially the Danish and Canadian mafias did excellent work. I was surprised to see so many people going over the hang after the 2nd apple with so good success (I knew that possibility but thought it to be clearly slower). I had really good time watching all the recs. Also I’m suprised and happy for the eagerness people (especially jonharkulsykkel and Koopa) hoyled the passage to the Pharao’s tomb and other challenge stuff.
Tell us about the designing process.
The process started when I just had finished making the playability for my wcuppipe-entry somewhere in the end of August and it turned out Ramone probably wants some other pipe (turned out to be Zero’s). So I asked if I could start making a rollercoaster instead and showed him MiEPC105.lev (my previous mammoth project with some fancy history-related graphics). Ramone got stoked about it and pretty much promised that if I remake something similar (just without pipes ofc) it will probably be in the cup. It turned out that he was all the time expecting a coaster from px but at some point he informed him that my lev is starting to look good so he does not necessarily have to make it. And so I got my lev to the cup.
So I left making the graphics for my pipe and started making the coaster. At the beginning I had no idea of the graphic theme and just tried to construct some playability. I really wanted to include some cool and rare tricks. I have for long time been having some ideas for some major coaster and one of the ideas was to go one-wheel in some hangs and/or completely skip them in an elegant way to gain some advantage. I made some random hangs and accidentally a neat hangskip worked instantly. Then I added an U-loop after them and after some testing and changes I noticed for my amazement that you were able to get some really cool spinning motion of it if you take one-wheel hang. Then I constructed another U-loop after it and noticed that you were able to drive under it and also take advantage from the spinning for it (even more elegant twists!). And so the end was born.
However, all this felt a bit too massive and planned. I wanted to include some more minor stuff, smaller and more elegant. I really love tricks where you can drive some part in completely different and megafast way comparing to the normal way that is already fast. My search for something like that (or actually anything playable) had for a long time very little success, but finally I (don’t anymore remember how) noticed that you can spin before one hang to gain more speed. I slightly modified the next hang after it so that you could take it better (elegantly one-wheel instead of two-wheel) and added another hang after it and I had the 25sec part in the final level. I was really stoked about this trick and actually still am. Too bad I made it too hard to find. I didn’t want to place it to very start since then it would have been trivial, but as far as at 25sec of playing apparently was too long. :$
Anyway, now that I had these few pieces of “special playability” and had made sure that there’s something special in the recs it was the time to make the rest of the level just fun to play. Also it was the time to decide the theme, and finally I chose the ancient Egyptian theme. First I made the sphinx and the boat. Totem’s NEW! editor was irreplaceable in converting the pics to a level - the quality was enormously better comparing to rad’s levelmaker. The pics also helped in deciding the general structure of the level. I somehow got an idea of normal Egyptian world above ground and spooky underground afterlife world. It seemed good idea to drive above ground first and then go underground from secret passage under the river and the volt tricks fitted for that (in that way I got them relatively close to the start). Then I had to design the middle of the level, but I had a lot of side roads during it. After lot of struggling I finally deleted nearly everything and made it quite simple and straightforward. That was a good decision since it kept the length of the level in reasonable limits.
Slowly but surely both playability and art started to unfold. But the progress was still too slow for a long time and the last 2-3 weeks before the lev was published were quite intense for me (especially the Thursday-Saturday period of the last week). Luckily I got it all pretty much together in time even though there was a lot of hassle in the end, especially with the masking things (I had never really masked a level before!!!). Luckily Ramone helped me with those (especially he masked the boat) and made grass as well. But unfortunately Ramone had to leave for the weekend and he didn’t see the very final version of the level and some very embarrassing masking errors were left to the level. This was because I was using a non-default LGR with slightly differing textures and I wasn’t able to see the errors. Also I managed to move the outer polygon of the level slightly in the very late design phase so that it caused a v-sync hang to the end. Luckily it didn’t affect the playability in a negative way (actually the minor v-sync boost from the hang was in my opinion quite fun small playability detail and it was ok even for 999fps). All in all, I’m anyway very disappointed for leaving these mistakes to the final version after all the time and energy I used for the level.
Fun facts of the level:
-the obelisk is copied from a souvenier to me from my father
-the hieroglyphs in the middle of the level are copied from Papyrys of Ani, which is book of the dead written for a scribe named Ani - check page 414 =)
-the Egyptian theme was chosen because I wanted to make it no grass to get more vertexes for art, but due to time limitations I didn’t manage to use them all for art and so it got grass (Ramone’s idea)
-Ramone didn’t change the level at all, only helped with mask + grass
-the level was supposed to have water all the way down but it made me dizzy so I changed it
-my girlfriend helped a bit too, she invented the sunrays for the flower (Egyptians drew it like that), also the 2nd apple symbolizes sun, held by a holy scarab
12th event interviews
1st place: Kazan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Lev looked normal multistyle. But there was only 1 fast end style so not many possible routes.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
We did test some routes and roope's route looked fastest, I just added few moves. Also adi found very good moves. Hoyling process was easy because all tricks are ez, did my time fast. I was surprised by bjenn's time with his route)
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Scary results. Top5 all had bad recs and tight times, any of them could do better time. But I got lucky win)
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
Obviously my goal is to not let to anyone get ahead of me) would not be hard i believe)
2nd place: adi
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
The level seemed instantly interesting. It looked like a level where much style finding is needed. We got all the styles quite quickly though. Anyway the level was enjoyable to play for the whole time.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
After some cruising roope drew the team dat route. I immediately went to saveload it but went under the first small polygon instead of over. The sl time was 48 with nab end style. Kazan and nom agreed that it probably is easily the best route. The bottom apple and the left apple were so restricting that they pretty much eliminated all the other possibilities. Actually there was another route too (team EF/WLA) but it had many slow parts... I just wasn't able to see any potential there. We might rely a bit too much on our intuition but it has worked well so far.
Moves were later improved by me and Kazan. We had also some better moves (like suckslide right after 4th apple) but they didn't have good enough quickness-hardness ratio so we ignored them. I did 49.0x on Monday and 47 on Tuesday. During next few days I didn't play much. But on Saturday night I improved my time from 47:14 to 46:84. I hoyled the last hours before deadline and made small improvements that were after all worth two positions. Kazan had done his 46:46 quite early and didn't try to improve his time, so actually I think I should have won the event.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I was positively surprised about being 2nd. I was suprised that only top 4 used good styles. I was also surprised that someone actually got such good time as 47 with the other route.
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
My original goal was to get to the top 3. It still is, and I actually will be disappointed if I won't get to 2nd even though there's still nice competition about positions 2-4. And obviously Kazan will win.
3rd place: Zero
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
The level looked very complex and manystyled but it turned out to be the exact opposite after playing it for while. I ended up loving the lev really much and in my opinion it was one of the best levs in the cup so far.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
We found the route monday and my FF with it was only like 53. We found some better moves and styles and kept getting 50s, 49s and finally 48s. Friday FinMan got 48.51 (or so) and a while after that i got 48.33.. Those were quite ok times with the moves we were using. Sunday when i hoyled and tried to get 47, i found an alternative style that ended up being much faster and i got 47.80 with it and 46.65 right after that. For me it felt like a very decent time and i stopped playing. When FM hoyled turned out that we could've get better times than K pretty easily but we found the style really late and it went this way now.. :)
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Not really. I knew I had a chance to win with my time but since FM kept missing better times i started to doubt it. But i wasn't totally wrong since wintime was only 0,2 better. The style team MiE used in the start of the lev made me feel pretty stupid but i enjoyed our style and it was fun to get some difference to the styles in the top5 :D Though the route Bjenn used was slower, I was quite surprised that he still got quite decent time :)
Designer: Kejebra-
What was the idea of this level?
The level is largely inspired by Internal 38 in design. The initial idea was just to make a level that I myself would enjoy, which is generally how and why I make levels at all. I didn't make this level specifically for World Cup either. It was only after Ramone did a call out for more levels I decided to finalize it and send it in together with some other levels.
Similar to Internal 38, with a lot of half-loops and platforms, I wanted to feel that I could get around most of the level in any random direction and it would still work out. The bottom area/endstyle (as seen in winreplays) was however unintentional as it made the other path down to the bottom obsolete (as it was obviously much slower). In retrospect I might have designed the bottom right path down a bit differently to accomodate for that. In general I think its one of the best levels I have ever made.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
Both yes and no. I participated in the event myself and was part of the stylefinding process together with my team and our co-operators in team WLA. We tried both routes and came to the conclusion that our route had more potential overall with more hefty tricks. Bjenn and Hehe got 46-mid in saveload with it. The other route we only got 47.xx or so. Sometime later Bjenn discovered styles that saved 0,6-0,7 or so in total as well and at that point we were more or less sure we had the fastest route. Sadly no one managed to get 46.xx live though before deadline.
So when the results came we were a bit "Oh no" after seing 46.xx times from the top players, realizing that the other route was just as fast. That was a bit surprising. If anything at all I'm very glad that there was more than one route possible for making a sub 50s time and that they were so equal, as neither of them was intentional when designing the level.
Tell us about the designing process.
I made this level over a long period of time. Adding stuff to it in no particular order here and there with no organization whatsoever in the most chaotic manner imaginable. Mostly dragging around polygons here and there until I found something fun. Only after the level was more or less done I started to make adjustments to polygons to make the level playable as a whole.
Then I added random pictures to it, which is something I hadn't done to a level in at least 10 years. When discussing the level with Ramone however we realized it would best to cut down heavily on the pictures so we ended up removing most of them. Also spent a fair amount of time on the grass to make it look as natural as I could. Think it turned out pretty okay at the end.
11th event interviews
1st place: adi
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
I was glad to see pipe event. Even though I had been hoping for an old school pipe or insane challenge pipe, the level seemed perfect for my piping skills so I had no reason to complain. Afterwards I think the level was enjoyable with an expection for the bottom part. Also it could have had more interesting pipes (all the pipes were very short). Anyway there was one cool brake trick (around 38s), which made playing much more fun. I don't usually care about design but lack of apple numbers was weird.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I tested all the parts on Sunday evening and found all the important moves already. Only some moves were improved later, most notably the usage of alo instead of bounce before the zig-zag pipe.
My goal was to make 1:35, which seemed very realistic time at first. Unfortunately there were 3 death spots at the bottom part: exit of 3rd last pipe and mongo braking with high speed plus somewhat tricky corner in two last pipes. It took me a couple of days to make the first finish 1:39,66, which was very unsatisfying run. The next finish on Saturday night was 1:38,42 and I made the final time 1:37,29 about 2 hours before deadline. I hoyled last hours insanely but kept missing 1:36 times.
No co-operation was really needed in the level. Anyway I got some feedback by Kazan and played a lot with Koopa. We invented the start bounce together. I also pressurized him every day to hoyl more. Unfortunately he kept dying at 49th apple and failed to improve his time.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Most of the top pipers did not play actively. For example my team mate Kazan played only little and another team mate Pab not at all so I was expecting to win. Zero did good job, but expected more from FinMan. There were some cool surprises in the top 10 but behind them the level of results was quite bad.
2nd place: Zero
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Since I made i knew all the time that the level is harder than it looks.. Also it got even harder the more you played it, just like I expected.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I can already say that I didn't find the moves to the shortcut style adi used.. We tried some similar ones there but they didn't work so we just decided to bounce it. Rest of the moves were pretty obvious from the start and I could even say that stylefinding was the smallest part of the event.
I got my first finish Monday night with the time of 1,41. I was pretty satisfied with it because it was pretty excellent base for the real playing. Wednesday or we had all the styles we used or tried without making them.. Friday i got my 1.38 and it definitely wasn't supposed to be my final time. I just did one finish without using the more risky moves we had because I didn't want to end having 1.41 as the final time. Me and FM both missed many rides around 1.35 and 1.36, but then again so did adi and K.. :)
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Before the results adi told me that he and K both got bad times and said grats for me from winning the event.. Needless to say that i wasn't expecting any sick times after that but i didn't think I would win either since my time sucked as well :D Too bad K hardly played at all.. He was the one who could have got 1.34 easily.
3rd place: FinMan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
The level looked cool, not too tight etc. But then it somehow became worse and worse the more I played, didn't end up enjoying it almost at all. And it is a real pity, kind of made me overlook some obvious stuff as struggled to even get that one finish. The level made the hard jopis feel so easy when tried them in the end of the event even though it barely had any tight spots.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Not much to do stylefinding wise here, just a few moves that made the cruising easier, a few moves that made it suck. Didn't actually höyl the level, just tried to pull out the styles in one ride somehow. Missed some 2,5-3 sec faster ride in end corner 10-15 mins before got the finish but didn't feel like playing more as could not enjoy the level.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
adis alovolt at the ziggyish part was awesome, somehow didn't try that one out, tried with a ton of other moves including many different head first styles which turned out to be really hard. The winride was suprisingly bad, expected some really cool replay(s).
Designer: Zero
What was the idea of this level?
The very first thing me and Ramone agreed on was that the lev would be different than the old WCup pipes. They sure are good but we wanted it to be more like the pipes are now. It was surprisingly hard to come up with the whole picture because me and Ramone wanted pretty different elements to the lev. But basically my target was to make a lev that isn't too tight or complex but that is still hard to hoyl and has unique spots. That is a quick explanation to the weird shit in some parts :p The most challenging thing to make was an easy start and things getting harder after that. Ramone also told that the final spot must be the hardest.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
Only thing that was surprising was how well the SC worked since it wasn't intended at all. Most of the moves people used were pretty basic and familiar but is that even worth mentioning? It was very obvious since it was a pipe.
Tell us about the designing process.
Woah. How hard it can be to make a pipe? I used so much time making it and trying alternative stuff. I think the last version was about 90% different than the first one I sent to Ramone. The whole time I worked with Ram and gave him all the stuff I made but he didn't take part to the designing itself.
I think it all began with the start i made; piping through that WC text and and the thing after that.
One thing seemed to be a must for Ramone: 50 apples in the level. I didn't want to put like 10 apples to one pipe so that's how the lev got so long. But then again i didn't want any "unnecessary" spots so I spent alot time to making some kind of idea to all parts of the lev.
The visuals were basically the same for the whole designing time, except I made most of the round shapes only when I was totally satisfied with the parts I had made. I could also mention that Da Flame was just a random idea by me like a month before World Cup started and I decided to put it to the lev since it somehow matched with the style of the lev and the WC text in the start.
If I could change something now, it would be the amount of the spots that matters in the final time. There were so many spots where you could easily improve or lose 1s. But I have to say that I'm happy that the level ended up the way I tried it to be and not too many complained about it and I didn't get a huge shitstorm like I expected.
10th event interviews
1st place: Bjenn
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Something like this: Man, the big routepack level.. looks troublesome. Probably best level in cup so far, liked very much. Love to hoyl these longer tricky kind of levels.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Me, bene and keje started brainstorming lots and lots of routes. We each chose a route now and then to try out and see what time could be possible etc with it.
We had all drewn down on .png with all kinds of names.
In the beginning we only had routes for high 1.2x times. Bene kept braining and pulling out those routes/styles/hairs/horses to left and right. I hadn't really started to hoyl any route since we didn't know for sure that any of the current was fast enough. It was mega timeconsuming to find the best route.
Also I chatted some with bamilian and in the middle of the week we decided to co-op with our teams. "Project crush team MiE" was born.
The day was Wednesday when bene sent me the first route with potential, sl with this route gave me 1.21, we traded this with team wla for their 1.22 route.
On Thursday bene found an impsy sick route with hard tricks and styles. Which was essentially the 1.21 route with modified start and using 1.22 route end. I tried it out in SL and it looked very promising, got 1.18,74 with it.
The 1.22 route from wla didn't seem to have as much potential.
One problem with benes route was the 5th f*cking apple, it was impsy hard. Took so long to figure out, the trick was already invented by bene but it was so hard to actually hoyl.
Here you can see some of our ideas: WC610_routes_project_crush_team_MiE.png
I made trainlevels to practice in on Friday/Saturday, and to figure out the fastest moves. I started to get the hang of 5th apple, it was maybe 1/10 or so now instead of 1/100 000. Played all Saturday, made a 1.27.xx crappy run in the afternoon, and in night I made 1.21.15 and maybe 1h later 1.18.22 which was faster than my SL run even, and I was very very happy with my time! So nervous, like having a WR run in an internal. Didn't play at all on Sunday, was with family and stuff.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I really felt I was gonna win this event, since we all together put down so much energy into it. Not surprised by the other players times, except Kazans, duno really what he was doing.
2nd place: adi
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
The level seemed perfect. This was one of the levels where any of the top players could either hit the jackpot or fail miserably. This was also the first apple harvest I've ever played/seen in any cup. I enjoyed the level from the beginning to the end.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I immediately began braining after the level was published, and accidently ended up playing some 7 hours in a row. For a long time I was very lost with the level. Apples at the right side of the level were the most problematic - getting them all at once felt way too slow. Going right first seemed natural because of the top right apple. I already had many ideas in my mind but the key to my final route was noticing the usefulness of the floor. It allowed picking a problematic apple and then going directly to the flower. After that building the final route was a straightforward process. I felt very happy and lucky of finding a good-looking route so "fast". I didn't have time nor motivation to look up for other routes. This time I worked pretty much alone since Kazan and nick-o-matic were busy and they hardly played at all. Though I chatted much with Mawane!
The route was tricky but very enjoyable to play. I did 1:28 on Monday and then 1:25 on Tuesday. Next time I played more on Saturday and got 1:23. It still was very unsatisfying time so I forced myself to megahoyl last hours before deadline. During that I learnt some new details and missed many 1:20 times. But about 50 minutes before deadline I finally made a decent time improving from 1:22,29 to 1:21,33.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I can't be surprised about being 2nd anymore. Bjenn surprised a lot with a weird and cool route and it was also driven very quickly, impressive. Also many other guys had quite quick routes as well, which maybe wasn't that surprising.
3rd place: hehe
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
I was unhappy when I saw the level for the first time.I was sure we would get the style wrong in our team and it was rather difficult to finish a good run with any 1:2x style. Anyway, the more I played, the more enjoyable the level was apart from that hang in the right part.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Since sunday we were discussing a lot about possible styles with the team. After two days we found a route which gave us 1:22 (sl playing). We were sure this isn't the fastest style and decided to contact ef team with an offer to exchange our styles. They agreed and we decided for further cooperation. They had a 1:21 run with completely different style which Bjenn later improved to 1:18 (new start). I started to play on friday with ef style since it seemed a bit faster and got kinda clean run after few hours (my final time). I felt I wouldn't be able to improve much so started to play with 1:18 style. Sadly, I failed to finish a run, had one 1:19 miss.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I was afraid we played the wrong style, still thought Bjenn may win, which he did after all. I was surprised how bad times others had, expected some 1:15 from kazan :).
Designer: 8-ball
What was the idea of this level?
To make a level with a lot of platforms, many possible directions to go about and unorthodox ways to do so - something I would most enjoy playing myself (if I were to participate). I did not plan or even test any routes to avoid making it an obvious-route level. Also really wanted to have a level of mine in the second World Cup I've been around for, happy that got to happen.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
I was, since I did not have any idea what routes are viable. In fact, I was surprised by the variety of styles in all top replays. Watched all of top 20 replays and was happy to see all sorts of crazy different moves people come up with. Bjenn definitely earned my respect this time.
Tell us about the designing process.
Can't recall much of it anymore. The initial draft took maybe 1-2 hours to make, showed it to ramone, he gave some feedback. I changed stuff, showed it to him again. Repeated the process like 10 times with ramone sometimes changing something himself. His input was very valuable, the level wouldn't be nearly as smooth without it and it would have been much harder in some places. Eventually the end result looked almost nothing like the initial draft. The flower used to be at the bottom of the level which also used to be bumpy, among other differences. I didn't test routes much, all I did was cruise around, trying to make sure there's smooth ways to move in different directions in most parts of the level. Left most of the visuals for ramone to add since he wanted a stone texture level and I didn't mind. In hind-sight I would have made the right part of the lev a bit more smooth and with more directional possibilities and made the hang to the right of big halfpipe a good deal longer, resembling the hang to the right of the halfpipe.
Of course I had to add my signature fall-through platform in the start. I like how it allows one to move in at least 7 different directions right off the start. I wouldn't call my best level ever but it's probably one of the most fun to play (for me at least). I made 2 other levels that I considered definitely worth including in the cup but this easily turned out to be the best one.
9th event interviews
1st place: Kazan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
I thought would be nice to hoyl this unnormal lev because never played such lev in cups. But lev was hardest of all events imo. long and many hard tricks.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
We in our team made few sl runs) i used many adi moves because they were not hard and fast. Hoyling process was nervous) did 2:26 run with mistakes everywhere then got lucky 2:23 win run.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Maybe expected better time by bjenn at least.
2nd place: adi
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
The level seemed cool. I was glad to see another special event. I'm not a fan of speedloops but there was actually a lot styles in the level and I liked the fact that the level was very long. The more I played the more I enjoyed the level. Only the end bounce was horrible...getting fast end felt too random.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I had elma meeting with roope and nick-o-matic when the level was published. We discussed about main styles and so on. I didn't play much on first days. After a couple of days I merged styles with Kazan, and was happy to see many better moves.
I did 2:27 on thursday, and then on friday night improved to 2:25,87, which felt like a nice time. Anyway I kept improving many parts and realized that I should still improve a lot. So I did my final time 2:24,83 on saturday evening. I was surprised about the time because the run felt quite sloppy. I hoyled a couple of hours on sunday but failed to improve because of end bounce.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I was confident about our styles/moves and got a decent run, so I believed I'd be in top 3. The top 5 was very unsurprising but there were some cool alternative styles/moves.
3rd place: Bjenn
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Long and nice level. Was fun to play and finding good moves all the week.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I played the event alone, friday was last day I changed my moves. Unfortunately I couldn't play much on the weekend because I was busy with life things, so never got a decent run. 2.23.low or so would be good time with my moves.
I made two trainlevels during my hoyling.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I'm glad I made it into top 3 with half crappy run, not surprised that Kazan won.
Other people had bad times. This level needed much time though, which probably people don't have.
8th event interviews
1st place: Kazan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Nice lev :P was fun to hoyl)
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Didnt play this lev in 1st half of week, so adi already found style. I only helped with moves in end) my 1st goal was 39,xx but i realised that 38,xx poss and got 38.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Not really) only zweq rec was sick. our team didnt know about that style)
2nd place: adi
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
The level seemed very cool. I was pretty sure to see a real gravity level in wcup and wasn't very surprised that it was made by Ramone. The level reminded me from the Mastercup3 3rd event a lot, which was a really great level. The isolated apple felt a little weird but I think it only gave this level more unique feeling. I enjoyed the level from the beginning to the end.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I did a lot of style finding on Sunday night and found the final route quite fast. For me it was the most logical route. Though going direct to the isolated apple from left seemed promising style but it felt too slow, so I didn't test it properly. I didn't play much during the first few days...only made random 41 and 40 high. I got more motivation to hoyl when saw some better moves by Kazan. Also nick-o-matic had nice ideas.
I started serious hoyling on Saturday and constantly improved my time. On the Saturday evening I made a decent 39:20 and the final time on next day few hours before deadline. I was actually all the time a little behind Kazan's time, so that maybe boosted me to get to the top 2. Also nick-o-matic hoyled much on last 2 days, so it was interesting to follow his time development.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I was confident about our route and moves and about my run, so I thought I would have good chances to be in top 3. I wasn't able to find any other fast styles, but zweq was and his style was impressive. I was surprised that quite few other players had our style. If I had been told at the beginning of the event that nick-o-matic is going to end up 4th I would have been extremely surprised but even after knowing his time his placement was a positive surprise.
3rd place: Zweq
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
First impression was that I fucking love the level and it didn't change until I found the somewhat inconsistent swing move in the middle. But still veeery love-able level.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I downloaded the lev and cruised with sheivlöyd for 45 mins and then found the route and sticked with it. I kept adding harder stuff into the route and finally found the swing in the middle because Ismo kept saying in eolchat WINTIEM 39, so thanks Ismo. On tuesday I made some 39.75 and missed several 39.2 or less. Since then I was playing path of exile release and. On 2nd sunday I gave the lev another try and got 39.20 which made me quite happy.
Here are some best rides I did with older moves. Maybe they also describe the process
http://kopasite.net/up/1/wcup608z4142.rec
http://kopasite.net/up/1/wcup608z4067.rec
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I was very surprised by MiE styles and it made me very happy about this event! Even more happy than I already was :D)
Designer: Ramone
What was the idea of this level?
To make a fun and multistyled gravity level. It was first made for TBC (the battle cup - that me and Zero was/is planning) The visuals came later, imo, make playablility first, add visuals later. Adapt visuals to level, never decide visuals before and built level around that, limits way of making great lev (for me anyway)
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
Very! I had tested the level alot and made 42-43 with 5 dif routes. Still I knew it was a tricky level and that for sure ppl would find new tricks. Its that type of level (which I also wanted). Was thinking wintime 41 or maybe 40 if ppl do sick rides/styles. Ofc I dreamed for u 40 wintime, but 38!?!?!?! just raw sickness! Go Kaz! Also loved zweqs rec. Hehe had great ride with his style too. Watched Kazans winride over 20 times before went to check other recs. And I have never enjoyed watching any recs as much as I did in this lev.
Tell us about the designing process.
Tbh I never spent even close to as much time on any level before as I had on this. I have edited and edited and edited it over and over. Normally I dont like overworked stuff and I think it kills levs/stuff often (so this designing process differed alot from my normal process) But I just wanted level to be as good as it could. I mirrored lev. Scaled it up. Scaled down. etc etc. played around with apples. That lower bumpy part changed time over time. played around with visuals and tried so many stuff til I finally managed visuals I was real proud of.
Before level had two apple in left area (back then level was mirrored so it was to the right then.) Also the flower was at the gravi left apple, and that room looked about diff then too. But after quite many hours of testplaying (I just loved to play this lev, the funnest trick for me in lev didnt see anyone use, also there were easier and much faster moves, I got homeblind, as always) I found one route to be much faster. So I tested many things how to really finish the level, adding apple in that room was the key, played around with some 20 dif versions even after adding that room (visuals were allready done by then) and flower in head at start, in middle of that passage just felt so spot on. And the Ramone logo and Radioactive sign straight above that startblock.
I liked lev from first version but never really felt finished. Finally I got lev to where I wanted it to be. I edited the level every week for several months. And I have no idea how much time I spent with it, but over 50h, that is for sure. Never ever testplayed a level as much as I did with this. Still I missed all best routes imo this is the best level I have ever made.
7th event interviews
2nd place: Zweq
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
My first impression was that it was quite a bad choice to have 2 'frame' levels in a row. I didn't like the level at all at any point during the week and I'm pretty sure this level is one of those that nobody remembers years after when talking about world cup 6.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I found the styles I used in maybe couple of minutes so it was extremely boring lev for me. I think I played 2 hours tops spreaded around sunday - monday - sunday and maybe another 1 hour sheivloyding the end of the level and trying to figure out how to do a fast end consistently.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I was surprised dannyelmer did such a good time with the other route, so all in all the aftertaste is good about the event!
3rd place: Zero
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
The level looked quite simple and fun but also knew that hoylas like that in wcup can be very dangerous since more people can get a good placement than in harder ones.. Even tho the level was quite luckbased it was fun to play.. Atleast after the couple last events.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I could join the event as late as friday because my computer was broke. Also learning the lev was hard since i had to use two different computers during the two days which i hoyled. I got 31,46 about 30mins after i started with a quite lucky ride since i was extremely rusty. I improved it few hours later to 31,22. Next day i hoyled many hours until i got any kind of improvement and i got only 31,12. When i tried to get some last little improvement to as close to FM time as possible i suddenly got 30.52 with totally unexpected and lucky ride. Neither FM or me had really tried to do the doublespin like that and i usually just tried it for fun when i got the wheelie before the spinning.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I was VERY surprised! First of all i didn't even know you could get 30 with any other style than the one we used. Since i got the turn so nicely and bla bla i was really hoping to win the event and didn't really think people would beat it. But as always i had Kazan in my mind but 30.01 didn't even seem doable to me. Also the winner was quite wtf :p (foq nickchangers o,o)
Designer: Bludek
What was the idea of this level?
The idea was to make 30-40 sec long multistyle level. I put together some polygons, tried some routes and remade some parts to make different styles same fast. I kinda wanted to make level for everyone, that wont be very hard, but wherr some sick but enjoyable tricks are possible.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
I was deffinitely surprised by the winner of the event. I like the fact that danny liked my level so much, that it was the only level he really hoyled :)
I thought style that zweq used is the fastest (right first) and it will win, but more ppl liked left first more and it turned out to be faster (probably).
I loved the win rec and many others. My only wish was to see 29.xx rec, but it is close enough, so yeah, great results :)
Tell us about the designing process.
I made the first version of lev quite fast (1 hour maybe)and i sent it to ramone. I have smothed the level next day (and sent it again) and then i started making some more levels.
I have made one more level, which i liked too and i started work on it. But after some time Ramone sent me e-mail, that he loves the first level and that he already made severe changes on it (my 2nd version was still kinda "raw"). The biggest change he made was that he filled the hole (now nonexisting obv) under bottom apple which made some new styles possible. The loop on the left was originally much larger and the top apple was a little bit elsewhere, but I loved the changes. He also made the level brick/ground instead of ground/sky and it was like it for several weeks. We have decided to put ground/sky again much later. Filling some polygons with stone3 masklittle was my idea for original version, but it appeared on level only few days before the release, since it was quite time consuming and i didnt enjoy making it at all. But without it, the level would be much less original, so i wanted to have it in final version.
6th event interviews
1st place: Kazan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Liked lev from beginning because hard lev + pipes is good imo)
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Made sl recs with diff routes and was going to hoyl one of them, but then saw pab did Callisto pipe enterance and it looked super hard. I wanted to make time with it anyway and it was not so hard after long hoyl.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
no) knew adi time. had good competition with him.
2nd place: adi
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
I got really STOKED immediately when I saw the level. And my stokedness didn't die down during the event - the level was easily the best cuplev I've ever played.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
On the Sunday evening I cruised a lot and tested three different endroutes. Using the Euporie pipe seemed superior, especially after seeing Kazan to spin very quickly over the WC6 text.
My first route was Metis + Helike + Euporie, which also was Bjenn's route. The spin part was the only hard one so I practiced it quite much in a train lev. I found this route enjoyable and made 1:17 on Monday and 1:13 on Tuesday. Probably I would've ended up at 1:09-1:11 if I hadn't changed Metis to Callisto.
On Monday Pab did the entry to the Callisto pipe and also Kazan did a saveload run with it. I hoyled it maybe 20 minutes and got frustrated because couldn't do the entry at all. I gave it another chance on Wednesday after hearing that Kazan made it through without SL. Surprisingly I was able to do the entry quite constantly this time, and even made the whole pipe a couple of times. I thought that safe 1:07-1:08 should be enough for the top 2. I had very many nab deaths all the time and made several 1:09-1:12 times with megaslow starts. On the Friday night I made 1:07,42. Anyway the start became all the time easier and easier, so I began thinking of making 1:0 low (and perhaps beating Kazan's 1:04). I prepared to hoyl the whole Satuday night in order to get a decent time. After many hours I finally made very satisfying 1:03,18, which also would have been the winning time but then Kazan improved on the last day after hearing of my 1:03. After that I didn't play at all...just relaxed and reseted cookieclicker.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
After all I wasn't very surprised that only me and Kazan used Callisto, so I was very confident about being in the top 2. I also expected FinMan to be 3rd but was surprised about his route, which seems to have great potential. In overall I expected to see better times...
3rd place: FinMan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
The level was bad, just simply didn't like it. And that stood for the whole event. The good side of the level was that it was hard.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Found the obvious fastest route without using the Callisto pipe pretty quickly, played some train level for the after pipe part on Monday and got both my finishes, 1:12,09 and 1:19,xx on Tuesday. Really underestimated the route for example Bjenn used, thought could not be that fast, but still was correct about it being slower. Didn't really play after getting my best ride.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Callisto surprised me a lot, gave up after a few minutes as Zero had told me it's impsy already. However the wintime didn't surprise that much, even though expected something like 1:02-1:03 done with my route. And as stated, the other route was suprisingly fast.
Designer: zebra
What was the idea of this level?
I was talking with Ramone and I asked what kind of levels would be needed in world cup. He said he would be happy to have one special level like pexi's Wcup403 was. I tried that level and got an idea of a level where people would have to choose the route (=pipe) according to their skill level. Sick idea, I know. First idea was to make no-apple-level, but I had to add one apple to make the level work better. As a result, I got a very hard level with plenty of styles. I agree with many players that the level can be quite irritating, but you will get quite a rush when you finally finish it. About the level name: I have always been interested in astronomy, and have been planning to use celestial bodies and moon's names in my levels. So I decided to name each pipe according to a Jupiter's moon. That's how each pipe would be special. And I guess the level is also very special and will be remembered in good and bad.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
Yes, I was amazed. Kazan's winning rec was the most impressive rec I have seen in a long time! It's actually the first winning rec in years that I didn't watch just twice or 3 times, but actually at least 10 times. It's so sick. These kind of hard passages really show the depth of elma. You really have to master the game to make pipes like Callisto. I knew Callisto was possible, but I wasn't sure whether it will be easy and fast enough to be used in the winning rec. Congratulations team MiE for actually making it! But I really didn't have a clue about the best style. It was also very nice to watch top20 recs and see different styles.
Tell us about the designing process.
It took me about 15 hours to make the level during 2 weeks. First I made the basic layout and designed the "world cup" texts and then tested all the styles quite thoroughly. Then I added the pipe names, which was quite arduous process, because I did it by hand. And maximum polygon count (300) was reached quite quickly, so I had to make most of the pipe names with one polygon. The whole level was designed in internal editor to make it look like hand-made, like old wcup levels were. After making the names and adding grass and pictures, I gave the lev to Ramone, who told me to make some tiny fixes and remove some pictures. I did the fixes and the level was ready. Ramone didn't edit the level at all. So if you think those pipes were too difficult, I'm the one to blame :)
5th event interviews
1st place: Kazan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Lev seemed internalish from start to end)
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Not much diff styles there, found all fast with team help. Only double bounce in end found later.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Yea, bad times everybody) i know many players didnt like this event but wtf? this is world cup)
2nd place: finman
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
The level seemed like a cool one route level with some sc possibilities, none of which luckily were possible ! Of course everyone had their hopes high after hearing the level was made by Csaba which added a lot of excitement to the first day or such, but after a while it turned into pure, internal-feeling höyling.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Found the styles really fast as there was really no obvious (super)hard shortcuts that could be used so could just aim to get decent moves to höyl. Once again had to leave on Friday, so I knew I was gonna have to get a time done by Thursday night and actually succeeded in it, ending up not trying the double bounce to the dead end as I easily could improve many tenths from my time. During my 5 and a half hour höyl session on Thursday I finally got some touch to the level and despite my random 46,89 on Wednesday, all my below-47 times were done on Thursday.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Didn't expect a 45 actually, thought wintime could be some .1x or .2x unless crazy styles. All those different moves kind of surprised, proves the Csabaness of the level. ¨=D Also positively surprised by the amount of people sending in.
3rd place: Zero
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
One quote is enough for this question: The level looked hard and dame, it really was.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I have to give most of the credits to FM. I had to study during the start of the event and when i entered the lev he had found the moves we used. Maybe the only style we started to use later was the 15s bounce which FM found and I did first. My hoyling process was pretty ridiculous. I did some pathetic struggling in the lev for the couple first days and was able to get only 47.high times but on Wedneday i suddenly did 46.60 which was my final time. I improved over 1s. Before deadline my 10th time was better than the 2nd time when i did my pr :p
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Being 3rd (with hehe) was pretty surprising for me since i wasn't satisfied with my time at all but the again the lev was pretty damn hard and i simply got lucky when I made my time so early. Biggest surprise was when Kazan accidentally played 3 tries shown and did 46.56 o,o Also me and hehe having a same time was pretty unexpected
3rd place: hehe
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
I thought it's some downhill remix. At first I couldn't get anything right so I got very frustrated but later it became quite an easy level, very enjoyable, since there were no real hard places.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
The style was quite obvious. It was more about improving the parts of it. I discussed a lot about possible improvements with bamilan. He found the start style and some other moves. Managed to do 48 on tuesday then just continued to play every day. Getting 47,xx was easy after few hours of playing although it still wasn't a clean run. Later the level became really annoying but in the end I drove that 46,60. I wasn't satisfied with that run but didn't have more time to play.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Yes, totally. My run wasn't the best one so I was afraid I would be out of top10. I could see on eol that people did not bother much to play this level but still expected more people to get 45-46 times. After seeing kazan's replay I got a bit sad since with his end-style i could have won this event.
Designer: Csaba Rozsa
What was the idea of this level?
Not having too much time to design the level, I decided to create a short one. Since Downhill is one of my favourite internal level, I created something similar, without any real shortcut possibility.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
Not really, as I noted above, the level was designed to be quite straight forward. But I was amazed with the perfection of the winning recs. I take my hat off.
Tell us about the designing process.
I made the level quite fast, it took me about an hour with the internal editor. I played it about 50 times, and changed some angles and distances in the meantime. Unfortunatelly I did not have time to build a more complex and better polished level.
4th event interviews
1st place: Zero
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Level seemed very enjoyable when i entered it and also familiar since its so similar to many other ballelevs by Spef. I never really stopped liking the lev but the bounce made it quite frustrating to play, especially cause my fps was limited to 200.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
First day me and FM hoyled a style which was nearly 3s slower. We hoyled several hours already that day and I got 37,81. Right the next day FM found the new route where you took the first apples in different order. During the couple next days we both got many improvements and Wednesday i got 35,33. Improving got really hard for me at that point cause bounce was the only spot where i could get any time off. My times for 4th apple were usually about 18,3x - 18-6x so i just waited for the faster ones. Finally after a long hoyling i got 35,02 and a while after that 34,78 on Saturday.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
After talking to some people during the week, it seemed like most of the players had a different style so our placements weren't that much of a surprise but at the same time this is World Cup and its clear that you can't count on anything :)
2nd place: finman
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
The level seemed cool at the first glance and finally seemed to have more style possibilities than the previous levels. That didn't really during the week, thought about new styles daily, and after getting my final time I pretty much cruised for new moves and routes, in the fear of a better style.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
It actually took us a day to find the fastest route. By Wednesday night the style was finalized, the rest of it was just pure playing. This event was cool to play as both of us datmen found new moves, new ideas and one of us didn't actually lead for the whole week. The other route was suprisingly fast, we were quite lucky to use the faster one (at least the one performed the fastest) for once without getting to know the other route that well.
While Monday was pretty much style cruising and playing with wrong start, got 35,90 on Tuesday, 35,38 on Wednesday and finally 34,85 on Thursday, top tenning to 35,65. Didn't really even try to höyl after teh even though Zero beat me finally on Saturday night except for a couple of rides every now and then when Zero played, resulting in one 35,63.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I expected more people to get 34's but this is not a bad choice either. Kinda cool to see the biggest gap of under 40 times was between 2nd and 3rd positions, suprised.
3rd place: Bjenn
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Hmm.. many possibilities possible here, nice! Found decent one quite quickly and the level felt like crap because I thought a trick was mega hard. Turned out it was not and I liked the level again. (Good job Spef and Ramone)
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Found cool route and nice moves early, so höyled it a little almost every day. Heard rumours about another 35 route, didn't find it. Turned out bene had sent me an SL run with that route but it was a slow test run only so I automatically filtered it away in my mind, thinking only about my own route and its possible time. Had 36.50 for some days, started to hoyl for real during the weekend. Got a better move in end which s(h)aved maybe 0,2. It was hard and it took hours before I got the "hang" of it. Some hour before dödline I went from 35.58 to 35.26 (ez worth it zweq :) Then I felt very proud, because it was very hoyled imo. bene still went ez 34 go go!! =D
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I was almost sure I was going to win, but shit happens. In this case the shit was team Zero/finman (no offense =) Nothing else stood out.. but I was really shocked by their times ;P After watching recs I can tell that they didn't hoyl as much as I did. I'm hoping for a win soon.. CAN'T LET SWE DOWN!
Designer: Spef
What was the idea of this level?
First of all, here is the original lev with start at top-left apple: http://kopasite.net/up/m25pko31274d9m6/WC604Spe.lev . The idea was to make a typicalish Speflev with hangs and many routes. From the start I wanted it to be possible to jump to any hang close by or drop to bottom loops. Was a bit disappointed to see Ramone move the start, but it's good to make the competition more fair. And I did approve the final version before he added the event.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
I had no idea this route would be faster. When we tested it in sl with my team, we only got 37s times. I think it was the better bounce and 5th apple hang that we didn't consider. As a designer I'm happy to see more than 1 style in top5. As a player I am pissed not to find it (not to mention sleeping past deadline so I didnt get to send my 35.34 o,o).
Tell us about the designing process.
I made the lev pretty fast, maybe 10-15 min to make the first version. Then a bit of fixing spots and that was that. I must thank Ramone for the visuals and fixing the weird downleft part. Don't remember what I was thinking when making that. It was a very raw lev when sent, partly because I wanted it to be changed a bit so that I would not have the final version.
3rd event interviews
1st place: Spef
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
First impression: chill vroom lev, very relaxing after first 2 events. First apple a bit annoying but it's so close to start that it's oke.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
The first couple days I bounced before 2nd apple. Don't remember when I found out that its faster to just gas and jump with compression. I had found some styles for both long jumps at 45-1:00, but when Madness started höyling during the weekend, he found much easier and faster moves, the slide and push from roof. Saturday my time was some 1:56, then I decided to play all night until I get a good time. Instead I got a 1:53 and decided to go to sleep. The next morning I improved 1s, then another, to get the winning time. I kept playing until deadline but could not improve and was disappointed.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Yes very surprised, was guessing 1:49 wintime. Also surprisingly big differences in top5. Also surprised Madness didn't beat me last day like he usually does o,o
2nd place: adi
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
At first I wasn't too excited, but after some hoyling I started to like the lev a lot. Only the first apple spot I disliked the whole time. All in all I think it was easily the best level so far.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I was visiting nick-o-matic when the lev was published. We did a bit cruising and found main ideas pretty quickly. Then back at home I used much time for finding good moves and styles. They were improved until Thursday. Our team had good co-operation, for example Leeland found good moves to the start. I am satisfied with our styles even after seeing Spef's rec, because those styles seem too unreliable (at least for me). I had one bit risky style at 51 sec part too though, but not too risky.
Then about the hoyling process: On monday I got 1.59,xx, on tuesday 1.55,xx, on wednesday 1.53,xx and finally on friday 1.51,59. Unfortunately I failed to improve and was left with a rec with sloppy first 40 secs. Perhaps I should have hoyled even more hard.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
First of all, I was surprised how most players were left with times clearly below their skill level or even completely skipped the event. As the result the level of times was quite weak, at least comparing to the first two events. I was expecting the wintime to be at least 1:50,low and was worried about dropping out of top 5.
3rd place: Madness
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
My first impression was very good. Hadn't there been one slightly annoying spot (56th second in my rec), it would've been an easy höyla. Despite this spot, it's still been the least luck-based level so far and I liked and enjoyed it.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
There's not much to say, the style was quite obvious and it didn't take us long to find it. I gave it a first finish on Wednesday and on Thursday I started playing a little bit more seriously.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Yeah, fairly surprised. Expected to be like 10th at best as I didn't play too much and my rec was sloppy.
Designer: elmaster
What was the idea of this level?
Level idea was just longish tunnel lev with few exiting, more open spots, where diffrent styles are possible.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
I was suprised how fast lev was in end. When was making lev, didn`t belive so fast time can be driven. Was nice to see that mans used bit diffrent styles. It was pretty straight forward lev in the end
Tell us about the designing process.
Ramone told me that he needs still tunnel level for cup. So i decided right away to make one. I just made simple tunnel with few more open spots. After first version lev has changed a lot. Total diffrent end and lot more minor changes by me and Ramone. Ram invented lev name just last minute before it was upped. I just couldn`t figure out anything enough good :)
All this designing procress took about 2-3 hours ( I guess).
2nd event interviews
2nd event ended two days ago with Kazan on top as only one to get under a minute. Zweq took second place and keeps his lead in the standings. Here's interviews with the top 3 and designer of 2nd event.
1st place: Kazan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
At first I thought it was a good level with many of possible routes. But then of course I realized that there are only 1-2 fast styles with not easy tricks)
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
The faster you will find style, the better. So after several minutes of cruising i started to try styles in saveload as always :) 1st experimental finish i did with using left at start style and almost immediately made finish with right at start. Then after some thinking and spying Honza i made sl rec with my final style) time was 58,68. Without saveload even under minute was hard, i was hoyling brutal and bounce in train levs very much to get them both in real lev. Only few hours before event deadline i finally got time under minute.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I had no idea about other players times. Maybe somebody has 58 or maybe nobody got under min. Was surprised by win anyway, because my stylefinding skills are not good. Didn't test left at start much and almost without anpdad's and other players help i could easily miss something.
2nd place: Zweq
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
At first the lev looked like an under 1 min lev. I remember saying right in the beginning that I'm not gonna send in if I don't get under 1 min. At first the hang seemed difficult but after some tries it was easy anyway. Same thing happened with the bounce, it seemed really difficult but with some höyling I found decent enough consistency to make the lev a rather pleasant playing experience. For example I remember complaining the first 2 days but then I stopped :~~)
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
There's not much to tell. For the route I used all the way until the end I found the moves pretty much the first day and just kept refining them for 1 week. I found the brutal trick kazan used about 1 hour before the deadline and thought it is gonna be theoretically faster but no way anyone is gonna höyl that :). My time progress was something like: first finish on monday, 1.04, then made 1.02 high without bounce and 1.02 low with bounce. I think tuesday I missed 1.01.0x by few pixels and finished some 1.01.7x~. Thursday I improved time to 1.00.8x that's when I yelled on eol chat how I reached minimum goal and I don't have to play anymore. Decided to give it another try on sunday 4 hours before deadline, in 2 hours session finished 1.00.7x, 1.01 and 1.00.17
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I wasn't surprised of the times of top3 but I don't understand why there were so few 1.00 times, or even 1.01 low. Finman's replay was surprising and cool and kazan's just unsurprisingly sik
I want to thank my moter, s10g and jonsykel. Honorable mention for Stini for never giving anything, only taking everything =D.
3rd place: FinMan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
At first the level seemed really complicated with tons of styles and loads of different possibilities. After all it was pretty much one route level with the chance to take one of the apples either first or last which made the level feel more höylish. Not the funniest level to play, rooting from the fact the bounce was possible, giving no real cool feelings of being succesful in a style or ride as I could always feel the cold breeze of the clearly possible bounce..
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I checked the level without even trying right after the event started and left the idea of a complexish level in my head. However, at the end of the day when I was back, Zero already found the main route so that's it. Found moves from the start to the third apple by Monday evening. Until Thursday or such I was pretty much fully dedicating to getting a direct bounce to the apple which surprisingly many managed to use after all. As the rec proves I ended up using the "safe style", first used by Zero, and never returned to trying the bounce because the rest of the level was so hard anyway.
About they höyling process, I only got some random 1:03-1:04 rides with failed bounces before Thursday. After trying the easier style for a while I got a 1:02,xx and got some touch to the rest of the level with train levels and such. On Friday night beat Zero's 1:01,55 with a 1:01,37, on saturday beat him by almost all my top10, filling the task on Sunday with a few random luckrides.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I was surprised how bad certain people did and how far people were from my times except for the top 2. Kazan and Zweq gave me no surprise, as expected they had managed to use the bounce style.
Designer: BarTek
What was the idea of this level?
No idea really, this was just a "bonus" level I made after finishing my real wcup level submission. It started twice as big, and lacked specific design. Most people go about with some idea or inspiration before they start making their content. I'm more ass-backwards and prefer to tinker and fiddle until I stumble upon something by accident in my mind. Move polygon here, nothing. Move polygon there, nothing. Move polygon slightly 2px up to the left, OMG Lost-Internals-Chainlev idea is born. Well, something like that.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
I was quite happy to see top-2 rides with different styles. Made my nipples hard over the fact I more or less managed to incorporate the multi style aspect, in some sense at least. Biggest regret ofcourse is failing to notice the possible hang. Might seem stupid not seeing it, but when you spend lot of time on making something you inevitably go blind after some time. But people like to bitch anyhow, you can't please everybody.
However I do agree on calling levelmakers out on their design flaws, but only if they are intentional/planned to be annoying. Don't hate the makers, hate yourself for being too skilled finding that shit. It's not like Flat Track morphed into a new level just because it felt like it - you guys found a faster way to play it with new style in the start.
As for the top-3 replays I enjoyed them very much, always fun to see people driving differently and ending up around same time at the end. But I hate playing those kind of levels myself.
Tell us about the designing process.
I started making a system of tunnels, scaled it all down, tried some routes, tweaked and tested, made many minor changes, and got some input from Rambone. Lastly when the playbility was done I had to pimp it up somehow (seeing how it was World Cup and all).
Got the idea for the visuals at the very end. This process went on for several days actually. I didn't use any levmaker trick to outline the pictures, just sat down and did it all by hand. That's the best part of levmaking in my opinion. I'm like an old man enjoying dull repetition. The hardest part was trying to make it accessible from any part of the map to avoid obvious route being obvious.
2nd event deadline today
The deadline of the second event is today at 18 EEST, remember to upload your replay on the EOL site. Results will be announced in IRCnet #wc6 at 19 EEST, this time hopefully without delays. You can download the next event here on the site at 20 EEST.
If you should have any problems uploading your replay, you can send it in an email to wc6levels@gmail.com. Remember to tell your EOL nick name in the mail.
First event interviews
1st place: Zweq
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
I liked the level from the beginning and never at any point disliked it, really.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
For the first 30 minutes I didn't have much progress, so the level was definitely more complex and difficult than a random battle level. During the first 30-60 mins I höyled the slower style, which I think many used all the way until the end. I also put quite many minutes on höyling a style: go under the first dice -> brutal volt -> hang through a dice in the end. I think with those lesser styles my time was around 15.5x. At the same time I was casually discussing times with Zero on EOL and he said he missed a 14.7. After that I noticed spinfak and after 1hour got 14.3. All the moves seemed quite obvious to me, including the end which wasn't hard in my opinion. Although, I did manage to completely miss that faster start style. The next day I spent several hours and got top10 very tight 14.27-14.40 (missing many 14.1), then suddenly got 13.93 and I couldn't believe my eyes because it was 0.1 better than I thought I can get. On friday I touched the lev again for 7 tries and got 14.12 and that was the end of it.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I was expecting to win by a big margin to be honest, but others got close with kind of different moves which makes feel funny and weird inside. I'll take that as a healthy lesson and reminder how complex elma really is and I should always quadruple-check every style/move. In the end I have to remind myself I got lucky in many ways: I didn't miss any other fast styles + I got pretty darn lucky ride, I could have ended up outside top10. I can't rely on luck in the future etc blabla
2nd place: Bjenn
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
My first impression was like.. seems nice. Many possible styles to try in such a short level. And the more I played it, the more I liked it. I ended up loving the level.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
So I was playing with my teammate bene and a few other swedes, we have our skype group conversation where we share all ideas and replays. I tried different FPS values like 100, 30, 200, but then found out max fps also works good for start, and much better end. Our style first (or at least what I was playing) was to go down to the last dice and bounce to the flower. Managed 14.67 with that style. Then one of the big player swedes found better mid and from there we fought our way to a good end style. Still it was one volt which we missed out on.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I had expectations that I would be in top 10 but that like russian army or team SPEED would be ahead of me. I was thinking that top 10 would be only 13 times. People were like "ez 13" and wintime 13.8x 13.9x etc. Very exciting results! Good work SWE team!
3rd place: Spef
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Funny dice. At first didnt have a clue about what style fastest, was surprised there were many decent ones in such a short level. The end was really annoying.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I only got home from FEM at thursday and I was quite clueless about the styles, so I asked some people for some half-decent rec showing the main ideas. Later that day I got a message on irc from Berh, and after a little talking he gave me a 14.24 rec. I showed it to my team who had been höyling a completely wrong style (:D)). This happened a few hours before Kopaka told the community about Berh's hacking of elmaonline. My time was a random lucky ride, improving my pr by about 0.4 seconds. I wanted to improve it but didn't have much time to play anymore.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I was surprised by the tight top3, was expecting a faster wintime since my time didn't feel höyled.
Designer: Ramone
What was the idea of this level?
Well, I wanted to make a good hoyla, normally short levels are the hardest for me to make. Level was originally made for The Battle Cup, a cup me and Zero/TAP is planning. I love dice and often use dice (or my dice app) to make decisions. Inspiration was kinda EOL02 which was similar level so adding dice fit the theme well. And the chance/randomness of the level. I didnt plan to use it for WCup but I just didnt get any levels that fitted first event. Also I knew I wanted a sub 20 sec hoyla for the cup (only lev like that I got was a flat track by Chris, and that didnt make the cut, sorry Chris...). I had many name ideas, Roll to die, Roll the die/dice, Dice. But nothing really fitted. I always felt level was fitting for first event with the feeling "here we go" "the die has been cast", like, now its started. The WCup started. The latin translation was BarTeks idea, I didnt know about that before. so when he told that it felt perfect as first event. Also, for WCup I like themed levels, levels that sticks out and levels ppl remember. Maybe even more important than playability, people will play them anyway ;) Idea was to make a themed hoyla. But still kinda tricky and not easy to finish good rides over and over. The luck elements fits with visuals and name. That was idea.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
Yes and no. When I had made the level I didnt know at all what would be fastest. And my best time before cup was 16.xx with SL. I just tried to make it look nice and offer few possibilities. I cant predict styles anyway. But earlier in week I saw Bjenn 14.3 or 14.7 (14.7 with 6-die end) and also 8-ball 14.1x rec. And well, with merge from them I saw that that would make 13.8. Bjenn had superfast start and 8-ball had good end. And from only seeing those I also assumed ppl would find even better moves. So was kinda expecting 13.7 winride. But that was towards end of week. And YES, seeing those recs surprised me more than winrec accually.
Tell us about the designing process.
When got idea for level it was very fast to make it. But then I cruised it one million times and changed it one million times. Final changes was made few days before I added it. Also the signs wasnt there in previer versions. I wanted a more closed feel to the level and brick bg just fitted perfect imo. Didnt want that outside feel. When used with good taste I love non-sky backgrounds. I know many doesnt but ground/sky default option is available for all anyway. Also Zero saw earlier versions of the level when made for The Battle Cup, so had to change it quite much to make sure new lev to him. He really only knew the idea of level. Playability all changed.
With all changes and testing and me dunno which version is best etc etc I guess I spent maybe 15 h on the level. Ramone changed it alot, many times. He is never satisfied.
First deadline - remember to upload replay
The deadline of the first event of World Cup 6 is approacing. Tonight at 18:00 EEST. Remember to upload your replay on EOL site. Results will be announced around 19:00 EEST in #wc6 in IRCnet and shortly after here on the site. Next level will be downloadable at 20:00 EEST. There is good reason to upload your replay even if you don't feel you have a competitive time, every one who sends will recieve one point. More than that we are working on rewards for players who sends to atleast 14 points, such as an achievement on EOL site and a possible mention in the World Cup movie.
Update on server lag
The server lag mentioned in the latest post has now been resolved. Which means you no longer need to drive cautious around 15:30 to 16:30 EEST.
World Cup 6 starts
The first event of World Cup 6 has started! The first event is a level by 3 times GAA designer winner Ramone. Click the download link above or from the events page to download the first level. Be sure to download it from here or the EOL cup page so that you are sure not to get a fake version. The deadline is next sunday at 18:00 EEST. Play the level online in EOL and submit your replay on the EOL cup page to participate. Good luck!
A note about server lag
As you may know the EOL server has a lag spike once a day. We are currently working to fix this, hopefully during next week. But untill we do it is recommended to not play for good times between 15:30 and 16:30 EEST.
Site updates
As you can see the site has been updated. A countdown has been added on the homepage and on the Rules page you find the rules of the cup of course. You can also login with your existing EOL account by clicking on the 'Connect with EOL' button on the upper right corner (you must be logged in on elmaonline.net). You don't have to connect in order to participate in the cup, but when you do, you can post comments on this site and we'll be looking for more ways to make it more interactive. If you have any wishes, suggestions, greetings and whatnot you can post them on the Hype box or mopolauta topic.
Have a nice weekend!
The countdown begins
Gentlemen, mark September 1, 2013 on your calendars. We are excited to confirm that after more than 8 years it's actually happening! Elasto Mania World Cup 6 is right around the corner! For 15 weeks kuskis around the world will unite in the most prestigious contest of them all.
For those of you who never participated in one before let me tell you that this is a competition of a magnitude and intensity unmatched by anything else. Do you think you have a chance at a high place in the standings? Then make no mistake, no such thing will happen without tremendous commitment. For 15 weeks you will wake up and fall asleep thinking about the current cup level. You will sleep less than ever before. Only the most unavoidable and urgent things in your life will take priority over hoyling (such as your house being on fire).
And you too can help to make it the greatest cup there ever was. Think you have designed or can design a level that could make a good cup event? Go ahead and submit it via the form on the right and the guys responsible for level selection will get back to you with feedback. This cup can't happen without your amazing levels!
Another way you can contribute to the cup would be by a donation towards the prize pool. We are excited to offer custom, engraved trophies as motivation for the Top 3 and diplomas for the Top 10 (if donations permit). Any excess donations will be forwarded to the upkeep of EOL website.
Let your old Elma friends know that Elma is alive and kicking, this once in a decade event just might be the reason for them to wipe the dust off their old elastic moped and give Elma another shot. Remember, this is quite probably the last World Cup before Elma 2!
Information for level designers:
- Make sure you do NOT play your level online without locking it - that would make it public before the cup and automatically ineligible for inclusion
- Do not bother submitting old levels or levels that people other than you have seen before the cup
- As in past cups you are allowed to play your own levels during the cup if they are included so don't worry about any handicaps
Information for donating:
There are a couple ways set up to donate towards the prize pool and server costs:
- PayPal:
- BitCoin: 14kdT3dk38hvnQtj1uGF51Y2MjyxzE8yCA
Donations go towards 3 customized trophies and 10 diplomas to be shipped to the top players at the end of the cup. Excess money collected if any will be forwarded towards server costs of ElmaOnline.net
Let's write Elma history! Stay tuned for more information and specification about the exact rules and everything.
If you have any questions or concerns please post here
The crew behind the cup: Xarthok, Kopaka, Ville_J, px, ramone