Posted 21/07/2017 13:50 by ville_j
First place – adi
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Seemed like cool idea to have one monster level running whole 13 weeks. My first impression: 'oh super long level that Zero will win by 5 seconds'. Level felt a bit boring after first test plays but it became fun to play after finding styles. I think it was good level, reasonable length for longest level in the cup and not too hard/tricky. The idea of this event didn't seem to work well but after all only some hours hoyling was needed during last week (if you were smart enough to find and test styles earlier).
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I took wcup very seriously, so I started style finding already at 20th February, made own discord channel for wc715, added many train levels and hoped that mans would contribute for styles. After all I was the only interested in this level and found all styles myself. Seems like most of the players also had very low motivation for this level. My plan was simply to collect all fastest easy styles/moves during first half of the cup, drive example SL rec and then later hoyl when have time for that.
1st event was so boring/annoying to hoyl that I often went to play this level instead. Until 23rd February I had found all basic moves and drove 2:27,08 sl time. Events 2 & 3 were so interesting and hectic that could concentrate only on them. During 4th event (18th March) I found some new cool tricks and did 2:24,18 sl time with sloppy run. This was the last time when I actively tried to find new styles/moves.
I played a bit during 13th event on Sunday and made 2:30,06. 14th event seemed very interesting so I played only that for first days. I made my only finish on Wednesday (felt already top 5 time :P) and thought that it's safer to change level at this point. I became too relaxed and forgot to play for next 3 days. I was prepared to dedicate Saturday for wc715. However, only some 1 hour of playing was enough when suddenly did 2:26,15. I think it was solid run without major fuck ups. It's surprising hard to get even decent run in this kind of level. Wasn't very motivated to go on hoyling so quite gave up. Also wondered if should play more wc714.
I started to hoyl again on Sunday. I did constantly 1 sec faster starts (and pr run didn't have great end), so 2:24 felt very realistic. But just like on first events, I did poorly on last day. Especially 1:43 trick I kept failing.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Didn't expect to see great times at all but very surprised how bad times ppl had :D. Being in top 3 wasn't surprising, since level was very long and hard/tricky, and I had confidence for my styles. I was most worried about Bjenn...thought that he might have some 2:24-2:25 even with clearly worse styles. Other top players didn't really need to play this level anyway. Also gj Mira! Always nice to see new men in top 3.
Feelings after cup:
PRONSSI! Now I'm just happy for not giving up and using at least decent effort for last events. I planned to cruise for 4th position in overall standings but things changed after talli (and other team members) surprisingly disappeared after 11th event. It's almost the same playing alone anyway. Only style finding is somehow less fun without actively discussing about styles.
Also need to thank my team mates. Seems like Haamu was the only one besides me who could keep it up until last events (and succeeded really well on last events!) but anyway we had pretty good atmosphere in our team. I actually had no idea that talli would hoyl this cup even half-seriously, so was nice surprise :D. Also thanks to all WC organizers!
Now I need break from elma. I actually haven't played this little elma for ages but I guess wcup was very tiring in many ways. Often had feeling that I should be hoyling wcup instead of other activities. Also it was quite depressing to realize how bad I'm at hoyling.
Second place – Mira
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Third place – Bjenn
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Designer – Kopaka
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Posted 21/07/2017 13:45 by ville_j
First place – Bjenn
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Second place – Mielz
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Seeing this lev as last event, when you had to finish hoyling the Wcup715 beast, was just tragic. That's a really nice lev that would suit to the cup imo, but choosing another hard, multistyle, annoying one for the last one was just... eh cmon.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
This time I didnt have much time to stylefind, so Bjenn and Mira (who joined us just for the last event :)) started doing stuff, I was only giving some ideas for random (but working hehe) moves there and there. We got the route almost straight forward, and made sure that's the best one to try. Even if there would be better one found later, I probably wouldn't do it because of lack of time.
After we got all the moves I tried them in SL to practise, the end was obviously hard and a bit luckbased. I tried over and over to finish it, but I always missed some apple or two. I didn't have a single finish before sunday (!) and just stopped playing right after getting one, which was only okay but I didn't care too much, I was more happy about just being able to send anything :)
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Yes, noone played this seriously once again, imo. Too long cup, too impsy lev for the last event, no mans orka'd to do proper times there. I didn't think I can do the podium at all even, after just a first finish lol. Especially after missing 37.32 earlier with just one of the end apples, in the middle of the spin (omg...), and that would win me the event xd.
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
Well so the cup is over, I'm happy I did 5th in the standings :) I know it's only because Kazan and talli absence tho. Congrats to Zweq for win, and for all other mans who are happy with their results :)
Third place – pawq
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
For the first few seconds I was thinking (shouting?) “IS THIS A JOKE??”. Then I actually looked at the level, and I thought it was a great idea – another unconventional level, one that would probably be hellishly difficult to get right, but in a positive way, and I like challenges! I still disagree and don’t entirely understand all the criticism towards the lev. I expected more difficult levels like this throughout the World Cup, so I’m surprised people were so unprepared for a level that you couldn’t just cruise, but had to go wild.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I started looking at various routes in SL in parallel to the other TR guys, but very quickly got bored and decided to check their styles. By then (2h after level release), kuchitsu had already found the winstyle, with a 42.xx miss, including the slide before the last jump (although apparently that was an accidental discovery :D)! Nearly 100% of the credit for the style here goes to him, in fact I had to copy his moves before and during the slide quite carefully in order to pull it off ;D I tried to look for other fast styles later and found 2-3 reasonably close, but missed at least 9 apples in each of them! At first I couldn’t take a single apple during the final leap, but eventually got into it and managed to do 39 in SL. Later on improved it to 38 and 37 with a stronger push after the first leap, and a faster wall-to-wall turn at the left-most spot. After that came 39.13 live (Monday evening, would be 7th :O), which I was quite happy about, and also roughly at that point I started getting annoyed with the first leap, and how luck-based the push upon landing was. Soon after (on Tuesday) I discovered that maintaining ground contact after the push (around 15s) gave a huge speed boost that was carried through for at least 10s, and I quickly did my best SL time – 36.87. On Wednesday I missed 37.87 live by missing one apple in the second leap, but did 38.44 on the same evening. Then I gradually started hating the level more and more, which culminated on Saturday/Sunday night, when the neighbours must’ve heard my fury at all the misses, but somehow managed to do 38.13, which allowed me to beat Mira, early on Sunday night. Ended in a negative mood, but I still think it was a good choice for the level =)
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Yes!!! After all the misses (and hearing from Mielz that he missed 37.low) I thought I may not even be in top10! I had massive hopes for a top3 in 713 – it was “now or never” for me, and I was heartbroken to end 5th (which was still my best result though, after 5th in 711). Top3 here was completely unexpected, but also made me incredibly proud, especially beating both Zero and Zweq after Zweq said he was planning to do well in this level earlier in the week! It was one of those moments when I actually thought I may be “pro”, after playing for nearly 10 years :> One quote summarises my feelings at the time perfectly: “<lousk> pawq just came”. Once again, thanks to kuchitsu for the style!
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
After these results were announced I thought my 7th position was pretty much sealed… But more about that in the final World Cup interview =)
Designer – Zero
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Posted 29/05/2017 09:31 by ville_j
First place – Zero
Will come later.
Second place – Zweq
It seems that it doesn't matter do I play 1h or 100h, I get a 2nd position. helarous!!!!!! what a yoke!!
On the first sunday I played 1-2h and got 24.46 with right first and 20.67 with left first (swing to the right side after first apple). Then I finally found the final route and made a 19.45. After that I didn't open elma until thursday. On thursday I started using Zero start and got 18.99. On friday after 1.5h session I improved to 18.6x. I didn't play more after that.
The lev felt complex, but the winning route was too overwhelmingly fast and made everything else obsolete, I guess. The winning route was not fun to play for me. One of the worst levs in the cup. Bad. Objects and polygons seemed randomly placed. Whether the lev was going to be good or bad was going to be completely luckbased and this time it didn't work out.
I was surprised to be 2nd. I was realistically expecting more like a 5th position. I was surprised there was quite a lot of variation in the moves, and still quite equal to ours.
Third place – adi
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Nice multi style brain level. After all it turned out to be pretty straightforward (and enjoyable) höyla.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Found style on Sunday evening including 1st apple head pick. Other routes/styles felt too slow so didn't pay much attention on them. Did 19:35 on Tuesday but then forgot to play. I had 19:10 before starting höyling session on Saturday. At this point I understood better some small details and realized that should be ez to get some 18:7x. After all my final höyling session lasted less than 1 hour. 18:95 -> 18:78 felt very satisfying improvement. Decided not to play more, which was probably good decision.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Quite sick to be in the top 3 at this short höyl level. Anyway, anything can happen at this kind of level and this time had also luck on my side. Probably expected a bit better times in overall but dunno. Was quite surprised about winning style...my brains thought that it should be slower style, so didn't even bother to test.
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
My goal is to beat Bjenn and be 3rd in final standings. It means that I should take the next events more seriously.
Designer – bene
What was the idea of this level?
No idea of this level just opened SLE and started to do stuff. Markku said that short multistyle lev was most needed when I asked and he said it was oke to send late if I did it that day. So that's what I was trying to do.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
Yes I only did one 40s test finish and it seemed oke but I deleted one square that was under the flower because it was super annoying. This is why the flower is in the air because I didn't move the flower after deleting the square. I noticed you could hang the squares during my first finish so it seemed fun. I had no idea about anything so it was surprising results.
Tell us about the designing process.
I made a square in SLE and then copied it and framed one of them and then copied that a bunch of times. I was going to make a level with a bunch of hangs but did a rectangle instead for no reason. In total I probably spent 30 minutes on the level. I tested for a couple of minutes after sending it to try and determine if it was an oke level or not but I gave up on that when Markku gave feedback for the level.
Posted 24/05/2017 16:03 by ville_j
Now it's possible for you to vote for the best levels in World Cup 7! A poll has been created on mopolauta where you can choose three levels that you think were the best. You can find the poll from here.
Posted 15/05/2017 10:41 by ville_j
First place – Bjenn
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Seemed very oke cruise, was more fun later cuz found hard moves, I like challenges! Good randomness obstacles in level, good job Blaztek!
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Working some with Mielz, we both found different moves, I had vacation this week so could play more than usual, made the time on Friday and didn't play more after that =)
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Hmm I felt quite confident with this ride, surprised I actually made the end with an overall decent ride, it was my best 4th apple time ever (better than my SL ride 58.01). I was quite nervous when hoyling, but it was fun! Zweq #2 norm, Mielz made his time less than 10 min to dödline!
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
Just playing my best with the time I have, no expectations, just for fun! Kazan has been afk some but we agreed to co-operate with team SPEED (Madness, Mielz) in the recent events.
Feels very good of course to win a few events!
Second place – Zweq
Wow, I lucked a 2nd position. I was seriously hoping for a win, but bjenn had sick styles and skills, so it wasn't possible.
Höyling process went like this: I didn't play almost at all until friday. I mostly just followed Zero's progress and tried to find styles in SL. On friday I started playing a bit more seriously, like over 1h session. Finished 1.00.6x (here stats made by skint help :*)
On saturday I played a lot, maybe 3h and in the evening got 59.7x and thought oke I'm done. However, I decided to play for another hour with SL searcing for styles and found a 0.5 faster end (finished 58.3x with SL). I decided to give it some 20 min before calling it a day and megalucked 58.97. My goal was probably something like 59.2x. I didn't play on sunday at all.
The lev was good. The end was especially sick. I can't remember level having such a complex end. It felt like there are variations endlessly.
Bjenn & Mielz middle style was damn nice surprise, I did think of bounce there but I thought it's stupit and never tried it seriously. I thought it must be slower to bounce and wroom normally from there. I didn't realize you can make a long jump after the bounce. The end of bjenn was insane. It was very obvious style, but it was so damn hard that I decided to ditch it. I think it's like 0.1 faster only (if even that) than dat end so imo it was not a practical choice by Bjenn & Mielz to use it. For example if Mielz used the ez dat end, surely he would have got better time than me. But for bjenn it worked out very well it seems.
Third place – Mielz
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
I didn't like the first look at the lev, as it looked like a mix of long speedloop and surely annoying hangs. I expected this to be preety hoyla at most parts, but with 1-2 hard, luck-based tricks to pull out, and I wasn't too much off with this i guess.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
This event only me and Bjenn were playing from our coop-team, and I was the first one to try out all the stuff I could see in SL. On wednesday I think, Bjenn joined the party, finding the 14s bounce into 17-20s jump style, but he did 2wheel hang at 24s after that. He also found the end style we used (and hated xd). The next day I found reliable 23-28s part moves, and it was faster than hang as I expected. After that, only minor improvements were found and we hoyled it.
Bjenn did his time early and he was doing the endhang quite often, which I didn't understand and struggled with a lot. I couldn't finish it once, even using the easier version of it, with alo at hang instead of left volt like Bjenn did in his pr. I was preety meh and frustrated I had just a 1.00.6x fail-end finish, so I decided to play last 2h before deadline. 4mins before the deadline I finally got oke approach for endhang, did alo to make it safe and happily finished with a 59.25 :) My run wasn't great but decent enough, I had to freestyle-save at 33-35s with the spin, as I lost grip at 32.low (which didn't happen for me too much earlier).
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Yes. The event results were preety poor, seems like ppl didnt orka hoyl this one too much. I didnt expect top3 at all for myself, thought I'll end up just top10 as usual. I didn't enjoy the lev too much either, it was preety average, I just wanted to do oke finish.
When i watched Zweq rec and then others', I was surprised noone did our 14s bance or our end. The end route other mans used was 1s slower for me, because I did 1wheel hang at 45s and slightly diff last apple moves when testing. Dame, it looks more enjoyable and hoylable than what I did :)
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
I'm way too far away from tight top mans in standings, so I will just hold my position imo. What I dont like about the cup, is all the levs are hard and multiroute or multistyle at least. Ofc these should be most of the events, but not all for sure. I would be really glad if I saw 2-3 semi-hoyla events, a bit shorter and easier to play for more fun and diversity, to allow us to rest a bit from endless stylefinding and hard braining. No forced impsy styls etc :)
Posted 10/05/2017 11:14 by ville_j
First place – adi
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Seemed classic cup level with trickiness and route finding. However, it turned out to be very straightforward höyla. Good level.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I found main route on Sunday night (49,xx moves). Other routes seemed way too slow, so didn't test them almost at all. On Monday tested other start styles and wondered if it was possible to reach upper left apple directly. At first tried much trickier swing style (not Zweq style) but it felt too hard. Then instantly found current start trick when I was trying some random pelle moves. Did quick 47 sl run and showed it to my team members. I actually got a bit excited at this point because start trick didn't feel obvious.
Our team has been very inactive lately but this time nick-o-matic got very excited and planned to get in top 3. It was nice to see him actively improving styles/moves. Also talli found 2-wheel hang end and had pro ideas for 3rd apple part. However, at the end we used there nom's alovolt move (actually I used even more simply move in rec).
Not much to tell about höyling process. I think talli cruised some 20 minutes on Wednesday and made his final time 47,13. For me biggest challenge was to open elma. Seems like I made 47,51 on Wednesday as well. Next time I played on Sunday and this time felt very annoyed by not having höyled earlier. My playing was sick struggle...kept failing 3rd apple part and the part after loop. At this point nom had promising time 47,20 (I think he failed some ez win runs). I already gave up at some point and went to chase for pokemons. Luckily it was very cold outside, so I returned home quickly. I did lucky 47,51 -> 47,10 improvement some 40 minutes before deadline.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Maybe there was some 1/5 chance to win. I had very bad/unhöyled time but after all styles play big role here. I told in team channel that we need at least 0,7 sec faster styles than Zweq in order to win. Ofc felt weird to win with this little effort but that's how elma works. I feel bad for nom, again 4th =/
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
Seems like my all team mates except Haamu did quit after this event. I'll cruise rest of the events anyway. I was actually very close to quit whole wcup after 6th event...maybe wouldn't have been bad decision. Feels stupid to play without dedication. I've even started to hate elma. Anyway I must admit that route finding/style finding has been quite fun all the time - and it still is.
Shared second place – Zweq
First and foremost, I want to say something to kuchitsu: wow! I lucked a podium position again, somehow. I was BOLD enough to expect a win here, but apparently we had too slow a start style for that to be possible. That considered, I can be very satisfied with the tied 2nd place.
The höyling process went as usual. (I know it's lame to say this in every interview, but every damn week seems to repeat the same pattern). Zero found styles early on and made 49 on monday. I also tried to find routes, but none of them were close enough to what Zero had already found. Zero was happy with the cool looking start style, as he should be. We all thought it looks cool. I think this blinded us. I tried some start variations but not what MiE/TR used. :/
I polished Zero route as much as I could and slowly started playing on wednesday. I tried to play a bit everyday from there on. Level turned out to be max ez and I could improve a bit everyday. As skills improved towards the end of the event, I even got a bit carried away by the increased playability and played a bit more than I expected. That resulted in quite a clean ride. (only 0.3 slower than my SL ride). Ez 36.5x with MiE/TR start though.
The start style of MiE and TR was of course a surprise. I expected to be third and adi/talli in 36 region, when I saw nom - 37.20 posted in the results. Top3 inside 0.04 was a mega surprise.
It was also so nice to see TR doing so well. It worms my hart to see such genuine dedication and excitement. Not just endless complaining and whine by the veterans. xd
The level was quite nice. Not quite as good as skint or pab lev, but I would place it somewhere after those. Although, it did feel a bit too bland / battley. Like, "Oh I have seen this level 100 times". Anyway, the level was quite fun to play and had some rare-to-see trickery in the start. So... a good lev it was.
The cup has come to a point where I can start talking about overall victory. I really hope I can pull it off. The bad news is that motivation has been extremely low after 708. The good news is that I still have a skip unused and no crap result. Winning a wcup would make me genuinely happy, because of legacy and nostalgy and stuf... well at least for a few hours.
Designer – 8-ball
What was the idea of this level?
The idea was to make a level that's fun to cruise and that has a few roughly equal routes but also not to overtest it.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
That start to left apple swing was completely unplanned. A little sad about how irrelevant it made all of the other routes but it is what it is. The route still seemed fun to play, with cool looking moves so I guess it was alright in the end.
Tell us about the designing process.
Honestly can't remember much about it. Started out with the platform in the middle, put a bunch of hangs around, then looked for ways to incorporate loops to allow for smooth transition from anywhere to anywhere else. Then sent to WC team for feedback. Ended up completely remaking a few parts, moving flower around, etc. until a dozen or so iterations later got to the final version. I've played with low detail for a while now so decided against using pictures. The only regret is maybe not testing a lot, should have been able to spot that OP start.
Posted 04/05/2017 09:37 by ville_j
First place – Zweq
Somehow I lucked a win. It was a bit of a surprise that I could win this event. I didn't play much. I just tried to do a clean ride and then not worry about it. I actually feel a bit sorry AKB didn't win having superior styles to ours.
The höyling process went as usual. Me and Zero both found ez 15 route, except I only took it very casually on the first day, finishing only 16.9x or so. Zero made a 15 very quickly and then stopped playing until few hours before the deadline o,o. On friday I found the 'long drop' at 10s or so and threw the rec at mans. I got 15.2x with some 10 min mega luck effort, and after a bit more time 15.06. Pab was proing and did a couple 15.07s on fri-sat night (eu). We at dat are very proud of you Pab.
After getting 15.06 with relatively low effort my progress completely died. I spent probably 2-3h without any improvements. My playing went 'off tracks'. I started doing 5s part slightly wrong which gave wrong angle for 7s part. Having wrong angle at 7s made 9s almost impsy. And so on. I could only make 15.3x-15.5x times all of a sudden. Luckily I noticed this, fixed the problem and started finishing 15.low times again.
On saturday I improved to 15.01 and missed a couple of 14s. My goal was 14.95, because on SL I had 14.92. On sunday afternoon I got 15.00 and 1 hour later 14.91. I was very satisfied with the ride and called it a day a few hours before the deadline.
AKB / Jalli etc start was a surprise to me and made me feel like an idiot. I tried a few things in the start but not exactly that. I didn't realize you can just left volt after push. Sure the next part looks a bit awkward / less consistent, but I guess it's oke considering you win 0.2...
I don't recall playing a lev with hangs smooth on top, spikes on bottom. It resulted in some refreshing interesting gameplay. However the playability was very low, therefore it was only an oke lev. Maybe it deserved 1 week like lousku lev, which had similar playability imo.
This was a hectic week with 709 being on sun-thu and 710 thu-sun. It felt mandatory to play everyday without any chance for a catch of breath. I have to say I didn't like this 2 event week.
10th interview in a row feels kinda amazing considering I wasn't planning to play the cup :) This has been an interesting experiment so far. I have taken a completely different approach to this cup than any other elma event ever before. Before I would play something 1-2 days and then forget about it. Now I have been investing tiny bit of time everyday systematically. I seem to learn when I sleep? (obv as long as I have practiced something).
Second place – AKB
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
I first thought "wow, this is going to be like one of those insane impossible descending spin battle levs" and just knew a really impossible style would win. As I went on I felt more comfortable with a style that I chanced upon after trying the SLAM team style for a few minutes. After about an hour I couldn't think of any improvements in style and felt pretty comfortable.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
The other members of SLAM (Mira in particular) came up with a rather simple 16 style, and I played it for a short while, accidentally figuring out some middle moves to take a second off. All in all I probably got my first 15 time (15:38) in 20 mins, then did another hour of hoyling the next day and randomly got 15:00 ride. I tried hoyling for about 2 hours afterward to get 14 (I thought it was going to be really easy with how soon I got the other times) but did not improve. Ended up finishing 15:low a few runs in a row, top 10 looking like: 00, 03, 14, 22, 27, 27, 38, 44, 50, 53. Did expect a new best time during last few mins of playing, so often would jump out of my chair in some sort of weird reaction, only to find norm time.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I expected that it would be maybe top 15 time, but only because I hadn't had the time previous to dedicate to good World Cup hoyling and this was no different. It seemed like there was huge room for improvement, and I thought 14:mid would be winner for sure. I guess it was a huge surprise to see 2nd place: best ever for me! Surprised about Zweq result: thought he would certainly be behind me, as usual. ;) Zero should have beaten me of course too.
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
It is not really possible for me to dedicate enough time to the cup to take it too seriously, despite my wishes. I would like to aim for top 15 overall and perhaps top 3 team, but only with some miracle! Either way it is really fun playing cup again with an active team, even if we are a bit laid back. :)
Posted 26/04/2017 12:50 by ville_j
Shared first place – Madness
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
It looked good at first, but the more I played it the worse it was.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
I cooperated with Bjenn. The first day I got 29.29 after about three hours of playing. The second day I showed my style to Bjenn as he could only get 30.86 with his own style xDDD. He found some improvements and I got 28.80 later on. The third day I didn't have time to play. The last day I played for three hours in a row hoping to get at least one good time, but it never came as I always failed the last part. Wish there had been more time.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Yes. I thought Zweq would win with some 28.5x.
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
None.
Shared first place – Bjenn
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Seemed like an easy hoyla, which however turned out more complex.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Found cool and hard moves together with Madness mostly, didn't manage the superstart in real ride. I had .82 but improved to .80 (same time as Madness) when 10-15 mins to deadline or so, HAHA =D
Wish I had more time to play.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Hmm maybe thought wintime would be .7x at least, glad me and Madness won! He however had a hard time accepting a split win, since he had better time on the 3rd decimal digit :)
Third place – Zweq
Wow podium again. I had no expectations. considering that, I'm happy to be 3rd, except I'm a bit annoyed of losing 25 points because of 0.03, but I guess in this kind of lev it might happen.
The höyling process went as usual. I didn't do almost anything on the first day or two and zero already figured out everything and made 29low. I just copied absolutely everything from Zero and tried to play 1-2h a day. I didn't find any styles. I was quite exhausted after ramone uphill 708 so I couldn't do anything stylewise. I just couldn't think of anything or test anything.
I had a bad first impression of lev and it never changed. I did not have any fun at any point. OK maybe the last day was a bit more enjoyable because skills got better. It is a bit sad to do things that you don't like on your freetime. Just going with the hnngh now.
The end styles by other mans came as a surprise. (says alot about my / our braindeadity in this event I guess). Also I think madness doing 28.80 on the first day was quite impressive.
Designer – insguy
Note: I am writing this comment before the event ended so at this time I have no idea about winning times and styles.
My lev is the result of a very sad story: Every now and then one of my balle levs turns out quite good so I save them for later. Since I started the iCB balle levs I had collected about 8 of these special levs. In my opinion they were the best levs I ever made. In some of them I had even put endless hours of visuals.
Then my HDD crashed.
When I finally came back to elma I realized that I had made no backup of my eol folder. All the levs gone. It hurt more than it should have.
So when lev collecting for wcup7 started I was very frustrated not to be able to pick one of those already made awesome levs. I tried to "make" a good lev but failed like 7 attempts so decided not to make one. But many ppl kept asking if I had submitted a lev for wcup - thanks to all you guys for your support!
Eventually I made a balle lev that was at least okay, so I added some visuals and sent it in. Yet it felt kinda lame compared to those lost levs. For me it was mostly to show my support for elma and the wcup.
The Wcup staff changed the position of one apple (bottom right was initially under the "7" polygon) making two very hard and annoying hang styles impsy. I think that was a pretty smart move to prevent a lot of hate and rage :)
That being said I have no idea about the fastest style for any of the parts and am looking forward to seeing some sick shit!
Posted 25/04/2017 08:25 by ville_j
First place – Zweq
So I lucked a win somehow. Somehow I wasn't so happy, because it felt like nobody played anyway. I think I did my utmost best here. The resulting ride is my best non-internal ride, and probably better than most of my internal rides.
The level looked long and difficult so I decided to tryhard from the very beginning. I consistently played at least one hour everyday, most of the days over 2hours, resulting to over 20hour total playtime I think.
We tried the very hard spin route for the first day, but on monday I ditched it and tried something else. I took pab's bounce route idea and polished it out, finished SL 1.2x and threw rec at mans.
On tuesday I finished 1.29 and Zero 1.30. We both used very slow swinging style after bounce. Here Zero stopped playing for some reason. I kept improving mostly only the bounce part but ofc overall skills on every part of the level improved as I kept playing. Wednesday (I think) I lucked a 3seconds improvement and got 1.26. Here I thought it's already decent time, but I decided to play it safe and keep practicing consistently.
I kept lucking improvements everyday and I think thursday I lucked 1.24.2x, because tur day. This is where the progress stopped :/ for the next 10 hours of playtime I improved by 0.1.
As the week went on I added a few more polishments to the ride. For example Zero refreshed my memory about 52-55s spin, which I already ditched because I thought the extra speed is useless, can't do anything with it. I didn't realize I can just slow/brake down a bit and be 0.5 faster with norm riding without fancy stuff xd.
On the last day Zero pointed out that his 1.30 rec has 0.3 faster start o,o So I started using that. I'm happy that it made into the final 1.22 ride also, although I made it very bad on that specific ride.
Something about the bounce: it took a while to get it right, but after enough of practice it became surprisingly easy. Most of the time I used a much easier variation than what the winning rec used. In this easier variation I got backwheel on top first, throttling on the right side spike at 18s (a bit like a pipe). This style was only 1 sec slower than the difficult frontwheel on top first bounce, which was used in 1.22 ride.
Lev type was one of my favourites, aka an easy uphill + hangs mix. An absolute #1 favourite for me would be hang climb only, but uphills are oke. I think the level itself wasn't that great of a success. Maybe it was too tested, or just unlucky.
I was very surprised by people's times. I expected Zero to be around 5th and strong opposition from Kazan.
Second place – Zero
Will come later.
Third place – talli
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Mega hard looking lev with many styles possible. The style I used wasn't that hard, so was oke fun lev.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Team did all work with the stylefinding. I found the faster climb up the wall in the beginning of lev, which I think 8-ball had already found so I did no contributions ty all.
Played the lev on saturday mostly, because was my first week in a new job which drained all my mental energy. Played probably 3 hours in total, 2h sl 1h eol or something like that. Spent all my time practicing the spin part. Other than that the style was quite nice and flowy.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Again surprised by my own position. Zweqs big gap win mega surprising gz : )
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
I have really low motivation right now mostly because of the new job, but will try sending in time for every event at least. And it's not only me, but the whole team has problems with motivation. No active stylefinding and mans prioritizing everything else :s
Designer – Ramone
What was the idea of this level?
To make a short hoyla with no or very few styles. Megahoyla like Warm Up. Keep grip, no weird tricks or bounces possible. Markku didnt like it, so I made an uphillish level. I started with up, up2 and all way up til up120, the final version was too late and you all played version 119. I liked the secret area, and I grew fond of them, something you will know about in the near future.
Also I tried to convince Markku for the longest to use the hoyla.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
Very. The route in the first part was something I just did not think about at all. Adding apples was Markkus idea, I had no apples in it. And up until 11X version the start was at bottom of that minihill. Markku suggested more flow or speed in start, so added island and moved start there. Zweq is just a beast. Too bad he didnt enjoy playing it, did anyone?
And oh, the island top left of mini-u Zweq and others used seemed totally pointless to me, checking level in the end I was like, why the fuck did I add that? I almost deleted it. But figured I may have added it for a reason. Little did I know that reason was Zweq.
Also Markku gave invaluable feedback because Im not very good at testplaying. Normally I run my serious levels through Zero but couldnt do that this time, was abit lost. Markku did a good job as a substitute.
Tell us about the designing process.
The process is going very well. I got an idea for a totally amazing hoyla pack. It will be released right after the World Cup is over. Stay tuned!
Posted 21/04/2017 14:26 by ville_j
First place – Kazan
Maybe later?
Second place – Zweq
2nd again vtf. Decent result for me, especially when reflecting on the amount of playtime. I had horrible issues with Internet connection during this event.
I started slowly as always. Zero made quite a lot of testing and finished 59 on the first evening. On mon-tue I took his route and polished it as much as I could. Finding the start style was a nice feeling and gave extra motivation boost. I somehow lucked some 57.8x with low effort (I think because the lev was mega easy and I'm a very lucky person lately).
Internet connection issues started somewhere around midweek, I couldn't stay online for more than 5 minutes between router restart. There is a cabeling issue in my apartment that won't be fixed. The cabeling is not a diamond network, but a "chain", which is a beginner error. I think some other man connected a broadband to the line before it reaches my apartment and the signal got weaker enough for it to go below some threshold value. Now router just nat orka keep the connection alive at all.
I made 57.21 offline when I still had 57.8x :D), but I thought it's oke because I can make a better time later to the week anyway. Finally on friday I got le grande idea to switch my broadband to my mom's usb gak for the next 1-2months. It has worked well for both of us, so the connection problem is solved for now. I found some easier end style and started finishing all the time. My goal was to get 56 and somehow I lucked that on friday evening I think? Didn't really play more during the weekend, couldn't find faster styles either.
Lev was bland and boring looking, but good. Actually it looks like int 17 labyrinth quite a bit and I really dislike levs with such tunnel / narrow feel. Maybe I'm a fan of openended sandbox? I think I'm also becoming a fan of gravity. Maybe 3rd best lev so far?
Kazan winning was not surprising at all. However, Kazan winning 0.3 at 25s with very weird unnatural wheelie moves was surprising to me, looks like one in a hundred rides horror trick to me. I don't enjoy or understand how to play at all with those wheelie tricks (same in double trouble start), so I won't bother thinking more about that. Mielz reclay was very good.
Third place – Zero
Will come later
Designer – Kopaka
What was the idea of this level?
The idea was simply a gravity level. Gravity levels of course is a type of level that is heavily disliked by most of the elma community. Which personally I believe it's largely because 99% of gravity levels are bad (including the internals), not because of gravity itself. What I find especially annoying in a gravity level is when you are kind of just hanging in the air for a long time unable to control the bike. In spite of the generel dislike of them I think they have a place in World Cups, as those should cover most types of levels to find the most well rounded winner. So for this reason, and because I believe I have some idea of what makes a good gravity level, I decided to submit a gravity level for World Cup 6.
The level was originally sent for World Cup 6 but eventually not picked. Some ways into the level selection process of World Cup 7, I could see that we didn't have much gravity levels, if at all. Since I had never used my gravity level from World Cup 6 for anything else, I decided to submit for World Cup 7 to extend the pool of gravity levels. Being part of the level picking committee gave me a bit of an advantage, in the sense that I knew exactly what kind of levels we were missing and could tailor-make my levels towards this. Which meant that both the levels I submitted were almost unique in the pool of levels. The actual picking of our own levels were mostly left to other members of the committee.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
I tried to leave the level pretty open for different routes, but didn't thoroughly test them, so I had no idea which would be fastest. There wasn't any completely new routes found that I hadn't expected, with the exception of the two wheel hang to the right most flower. Which of course seems pretty obvious now, but I never thought that far, and had only tested routes going around the outer loop either from bottom or from top with gravity up. The latter I think could have made for an interesting replay but alas. I don't mind however the hang making the level shorter/simpler.
Of minor style details that I hadn't thought of there was the bounce from the middle loop to underneath. Which from the sound of it was pretty difficult to make, but looks pretty nice anyway.
Tell us about the designing process.
The process started almost 4 years ago during the level selecting process of World Cup 6. The original level I sent back then was a bit different. Back then it had a killer in the little nuk in the roof above start, which Ramone suggested to remove in order to open up more routes. This was the only change I made back then. After we had more or less settled on using it for World Cup 7 I made a few more changes, mostly visual. The the small hill in the bottom room where most turned was made a little higher so the wheel wouldn't so easily jump over it. The right part of the level was almost entirely without any visuals at first, since I wanted to give it kind of a raw look, but may have looked just pretty dull instead, so added all the visuals there with the cracks in the roof and the World Cup 7 text below the ground. Also decided to add the up and down next to apples.
In order to make a good gravity what I think what's important is having a nice flow inspite of gravity changing. Meaning, that when you take a gravity apple you shouldn't necessarily change direction very much, but rather you should almost not notice that the gravity changes. Seemless transition. My go to reference for a good gravity level is some Jeppe battle lev that I can't find now.
Saw some negavity towards the level right at the start simply due to being a gravity level, which I expected, but also saw some of these people change their minds later on during the week which is nice to see.
Posted 20/04/2017 12:35 by ville_j
Remember that the event #09 is a bit shorter and the deadline is already today 20:00 UTC+3. It's time to do your final höylings and send your replays in time. New event will start today 21:00 UTC+3 and is also a short one, the deadline will be on Sunday 23rd 20:00 UTC+3.
Posted 10/04/2017 23:55 by ville_j
First place – Zweq
So I lucked a win somehow. Honestly, I tried to win, prev events I just tried to make a good time and be done with it. Here I wanted to do bit of extra effort because I felt like this kind of short and very technical lev fits me perfectly and that I have a good chance of winning it if we don't miss any styles. Now I'm happy that I've won. I have always been a bit unlucky with wcups, I could easily have 5 more wins throughout all wcups (wcup 5 axxu beat me by 0.01, wcup6 I lost 2 events by small margins by using completely different route, wcup 7 I've been 2nd really many times by a small margin).
The level felt quite horror at first, but it got nicer and nicer towards the end. It just took a bit more practice than "norm" levels to get the flow flowing. This lev gets the 2nd best lev so far award from me.
The styles were found pretty much instantly after lev release and I made 35 with sl on sunday. On monday Zero improved middlepart moves. Those moves were used pretty much for the rest of the events, with some minor tweaking. On monday I had not yet played live much. I had maybe 38.xx and Zero had 36.0x already. On wednesday or so I caught up Zero and got ahead of him. On wednesday I also found much more consistent end moves. Zero was very busy with life until friday and also seemed to hate the level with a passion, so he wasn't performing too well and stayed behind me for the rest of the event. On thursday I belief I got something like 35.1x or 35.3x. I kept playing everyday a bit (like 1-2h?) except saturday maby 3-4h, making small improvements 35.19 -> 35.08 -> 35.00. I got a top10 35.00-35.20, but 34.8x was my goal. On saturday evening I was just planning to go sleep until finally got a 34 (34.82). At this point I felt like oke I'm done. I Decided to cruise a bit more on sunday though and lucked first quite clean ride and got 34.62. This made me happy.
Next lev looks norm, maby top5 poss for my.
Second place – Zero
You can listen the audio interview below
Third place – Kazan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
lev looked more like battle lev than cup lev) it was still fun to play and find styles but had few hard tricks.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
most styles we found very fast, only start found 2 days before deadline. winner styles at 1st and 2nd apples were too good for my style finding skills.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
very good times by team dat.
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
zweq got sick lead now and i have no idea how to win against him and zero :)
Designer – Lousku
What was the idea of this level? Were you surprised by the winning replay and style? Tell us about the designing process.
It was a naive level. I wanted a single route level with variety in styles on a smaller scale. I made it specifically so that I don't see good styles for any spot. That approach often works for battles and gives unexpected results, but maybe it wasn't a good idea for a cup event. I didn't do many test runs because that has resulted in overdesigned and bland levels in the past.
The first section with stick-hopping was just randomly shaped sticks. I found it interesting that there's no clear way to go below them to the first apple. It seemed plausible to continue farther along the sticks, so the first example of naivete was thinking there might be good styles where the big U-hang is looped clockwise. Team dat's start style was a nicely straight path through the sticks.
The second example of naivete was leaving a relatively huge section of airtime with a tight entrance after it. Airtime means less control where small deviations grow large, and the best style is often spinning. That was a big mistake in hindsight and I feel bad for top level players who are virtually forced to play the best styles they can find.
The third example of naivete was the second apple. I placed it deeper towards the crotch and thought you can't take it with the hang style everyone used. It was supposed to be a weird decisive spot that would give way to something unexpected. Markku tested it and found it was possible to grab the apple with the normal hang-stretch-drop style, and he moved it left to make it less pixelish. His intention was to make it a simple höylä spot, which is far better than my version. I would have probably wished to change the spot completely if I had known how it turned out, but the crew was busy juggling a big pile of levels, so I only found out about the changes when the event started. Of course this wouldn't've been an issue at all if I had simply tested and adjusted the level myself, but that view has killed too many levels so I decided to be naive. I don't even know what to learn from this. Maybe it's better to leave serious designing to real designers. :)
The end was just as intended. It was the hardest spot for myself to drive because I didn't know how to pass through the sticks smoothly, just as designed. Again, figuring out a smooth passage below the sticks was supposed to be a bit of a challenge. No visually amazing styles emerged though.
As a result of all this blind designing, the level felt awkward from start to finish and emphasized finesse and consistency. Those are worthy values to be measured in a cup, so I'm not completely regretful of the level. Still, it seemed to be the least enjoyed event overall. And really, it was remarkably awkward. If you look at Zweq's win replay, there are six spots where his wheel bumps a polygon's corner. It was just a struggle to maintain momentum in every single spot.
As for visuals, I think they turned out appropriately naive for the level. There's a sad castrated figure singing his high pitched song, and his evil twin with genitals intact lurking in a secret cave. Maybe he's the one who did the castration, who knows. I hate to admit there really isn't very deep lore behind this. I also included a bushy tribute to Zero and double barrels for Luther.
So I dunno, it was a great honor to get a level into World Cup, but I think I failed a little bit. I hope to retain some useful lesson from this. :)
Posted 28/03/2017 21:18 by ville_j
First place – Zero
You can listen the audio interview below (5th event 14:35 - 25:41)
Second place – Zweq
So somehow 2nd in pipe event, very max result for me, considering I even planned to use the skip here, mega feeling to still have the skip unused and not have bad results yet. Good styles win stuff, that's how it is.
Lev felt amazing at first, but quite quickly we noticed that one route is just overwhelming and gave up on any routefinding. It was quite easy to solve the level by playing it backwards in brain. Then you see there is pretty much only one way to do the right bottom smooth and quick. Then it was just up to finding okest route for first half. We brainstormed the route with bene on monday and hand it to Zero who worked out all the details and moves by just playing the lev norm, except the very first 2 secs brake push style which was provided by pab. With all that said I hoped to see some fast surprise alternative styles, but nope :/. In the end lev was quite addictive and non-pipey, although I still managed to die in pipes all the time. Probably it was the 3rd best level for me so far.
I started playing a bit on tuesday. On wednesday I finished a 1.40 time, I belief, and on thursday a 1.39. I couldn't finish for the next 2 days with total of 5h of cumulative höylage. At this point I felt like shit. I Played quite hard on sunday morn in panik and after a 1h45min session I finally managed to do successive 1.38 and 1.36 times. For a moment I led Zero by 0.01 xd. That's definitely going into my CV "Led Zero in a wcup pipe event". So yeah, I was completely over the moon for getting a finish without terrible mistakes and didn't feel the need to play more.
Goodness of talli rec surprised me, bounce in end and all, which we deliberately didn't want to try. Very ice cold man.
Cup going oke for me, maby I can keep it up at least one more event because 706 looks short and enjoyable for eye. I like messy and unorganized levs..
Third place – talli
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
I don't like pipes, but this wasn't that much of a pipe lev. So oke lev after some hoylage.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
adi found our fastest route quite early. I tried to find better routes and didn't succeed, so wasn't very happy about my contribution to the team. Wanted to find something new at least and came up with the volt move when coming out of the head first pipe around 30 secs. Actually took me pretty long time to find anything that works there. The trick is not done very nicely in my pr ride (wasting time by going too deep into the pipe).
I felt like this was the first unlucky event for me so far. Was going for 1.36 time on saturday, but the end of the lev got me every time when doing anything close to a clean ride. Zweq saying something like 'no finish today gn' made myself feel a bit happier :[D]. Ended up getting few 0.xx improvements on that day, so that pushed me to top3. Anyway, would've been hard to beat top2 with our styles.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Zero and Zweq surprising start route with mega man moves.
Designer – Pab
What was the idea of this level?
If I may, I will take the audacity to say that the idea was to make a pipe level. There was also a big restriction that I set to myself, which was that the level should be finishable by everyone. Obviously not everyone is able or wants to finish pipe levels, but I didn't want to make a hardcore pipe this time. To make it finishable I got the insane idea of making wide pipes. I've made ok wide short pipes before, including some good hoyla feel and style finding levels, but I was not sure if I could make it World Cup worthy. So, then I got the idea of making it multi-route, and somehow ended up with the idea of an apple bug pipe.
After making the level I thought that I failed to keep my original idea. I did some test rides and finished with a random route in about 3 minutes. The pipes were easy but the level was long, and that actually makes it very hard for non pipers. But I was very pleased to see that many kuskis played and finished. Previous WCup pipes had very few finishers: WCup6 had 11, WCup5 11, WCup4 0, WCup3 ? probably less than 11, and this one had 44 finishers. So, i think that the idea suceeded after all.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
I was able to see the process of style finding for the winning style (team [dat]), and that was indeed very impressive. Zero and Zweq found some outstanding moves in my opinion, like the whole freaking first 30 secs. I expected to see other different fast routes for the top recs, I guess that the right bottom was too flowy and that made most styles converge to the same end route, but there was a nice variety of styles and awesome moves, loved it! I still kinda wonder if there are some other hidden fast routes out there.
Tell us about the designing process.
Before making the level I had a couple months of drought of ideas, I was only making simple battle levels occasionally. I could not make a WCup level, always quitted the editor after 2 or 3 vertices, and my mind was all over the place. So, I thought I needed a strong idea to guide me before opening the editor, more of a restriction that would challenge my mind a little and help me get started. At the end, it was the same idea that helped me make the levels for Total Time Cup, which is making levels that try to include everyone in the playing, even unexperienced new kuskis. In the pipe version this was: make it finishable by many and not only pro pipers.
As i said before, this led me to the idea of a multi-style, apple bug, wide pipe. First, I made the very start, and then the whole top part of the level. Then made the middle and then the middle sides connecting with the top. And finally the bottom middle and ended with the bottom sides. This was made without any visuals and maybe took me two days. In the very next day I did all the visuals of the level. I took most of the inspiration from a game I used to play before Elma, called Line Rider, specially from two old tracks I loved when I was younger, LineRider "Make Believe" and Worlds best line rider.
The apples were not placed on the center, since that could be a great problem on an apple bug pipe level. That allowed and disallowed many little tricks and ways of getting individual apples. After all that, I came up with the number of apples that should be taken, 38 was good since if you skip the top apples you have to take all the bottom ones. I finished by making the secret area around the level, to make a little sense of that useless tight pipe at the flower.
On a side note, the first title of the level was "Pipey Mc. Piperson". This is the name of the last made-up character introduced on the last show of Craig Ferguson Late Late Show. That title had no real meaning to the level, came up with it because I was watching a lot of those Craig Ferguson videos on YouTube, and it was a Pipe character. But some days before the level was started I was listening to Hotel California by the Eagles and I got an epiphany, a revelation! (it also was 3 or 4 am) "This could be heaven or this could be hell" was the ideal title. I think there could not be a more fitting title.
Posted 27/03/2017 20:26 by ville_j
First place – talli
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Gravity makes my head boom, but gladly the fastest style didn't have much upside down play and ended up liking the lev.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
Team found the fastest apple order pretty fast. At first we had the Mielz start route (poor guy:(). Gladly Leek came up soon with the go around style for the first apple. The 3rd apple seemed pretty painful in the beginning, so I decided to spend time finding moves to make it hoylable and came up with something quite consistent. adi also found moves that worked like 99/100 with correct positioning. Then I went to test different endings and showed team some moves that allow you to jump over the last gap from the small poly in air before getting to the last apple. adi leveled up those moves with some magical clockwise spinning in air and there we had it, the breakthrough moment imo. The moves that enabled fast drop to the last apple.
Hard to remember höyling process, but I think for me was tuesday sl for 3rd apple, practice spots, test different routes, did 48 low without the long jump (not found yet) and sent in the time. Mostly spent wednesday on wondering if should go for the long jump and tested it with sl. On thursday decided to go for a decent finish with the jump and luckily got my pr after about 2 hours. Luckily, because thought I will never get decent landing at the last apple with a successful jump. After that I just randomly cruised it couple of times in sl trying to find something new and was unsuccessful. Although, an hour before the deadline decided to go for a last push, because remembered adi was talking about fast starts with 100 fps. Tested the lev with 150 fps in sl and noticed you can easily do 0,5-0,7s faster starts than in my pr ride. Ended up just wasting some precious time that could've used to get some dry sunday sandwiches from shop before the exciting results show.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Was sure people were going for u47 times even without the long jump, because it didn't seem that hard. Actually did 47.2x on thursday with pixel miss 2nd apple and rode to flower without the long jump. Others, especially Zero seemed to be pretty unlucky with the lev (if you look at his end, easy win right there).
Second place – Zweq
Somehow lucked myself to top3. In the previous episode it was revealed that I'm very tired and perhaps won't play the next event so much. I stayed true to my words until weekend when I for some reason got obsessed and wasted probably well over 10 hours of free time.
Level seemed very good theoretically from the start, many interesting TASing possibilities. We found the basic route on monday and finished 49 with SL. It seemed the only playable route, so we sticked to it from very early on. Originally we / I wroomed on top of the start hangs but then Zero found the spinning start on tuesday which saved some time and also made the start easier / more automatic. I finished some 48.9x on thursday with ultra casual playing. The lev was very fun up to 26s spot, after which everything was a mystery. We used a super difficult 26s hang style with one extra volt that I succeeded once every 30 mins. I remember I had some 1 hour session where I didn't do it a single time.
For the end we had couple of variations, all were weird, bad or slow. It remained a mystery all the way, just improvising some random crap.
On saturday I started playing a lot more and finished some more 48.xx times. sat-sun night I had a 3 hour session until 2am, where I didn't even improve. Luckily pab posted a simple 26s hang style that was pretty much the same just one volt less. I tried it and thought it doesn't work with more speed (some fuked up angle I had in SL and did faulty decision?). Luckily#2 Zero came from his cave sunday morning and did a few 47 times in 15 mins (at this point I had spent sik amount of time and felt like shit still having 48.5x). I saw Zero used pab hang style in his recs so I decided to try it also. I did the hang 6 times in a row, which is sik compared to doing it once every 30 mins. I improved to 48.0x and decided to take a 30 min walk. After walk I finished 47.5x 5hours before deadline and all pressure was finally gone and I felt oke. Meanwhile Zero went back to cave. FinMan and b3n33n never came out of cave.
The rest of the event was just chill cruising for me where I didn't care so much anymore, started missing 46s all the time and finished quite many times under 47.5x
One extra paragraph just to thank teammates, in this event being in a team proved to be very important. Level was so hard and unsmooth that minor details didn't improve just some 0.10. You know, get a bit more speed in some part due to details, some other style becomes in next part and so on. This keeps adding up until you save 3 seconds. So knowing all, or at least most of the details is very important.
Lev was good until pab hang happened, after that it was sik good. Ez best lev so far.
I was surprised talli had so much better time than adi, was expecting talli result right after adi and also expected Kazan to win with 46.xx. Pab found the jump style MiE used, but 15h before end so we didn't even try it live, for whatever reason. Was expecting to see more style variety, but un, apparently we did oke job in team dat with styles this time.
Next event looks like a pipe so quite a high chance for shit rezults.
Third place – Zero
You can listen the audio interview below (4th event 07:20 - 14:35)
Designer – skint0r
What was the idea of this level?
I was mostly inspired just to make a level in the first place, since I had skipped the two previous world cups thanks to horrible unplayable Elma in old Windows versions which basically kept me away from Elma for at least 5 years. I decided I would at least attempt to make a submission to this world cup. As for the level itself, I'm not sure I had any particular ideas in mind, except I knew it'd probably end up being a ~1 minute level with a few viable styles.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
Yes and no. On the same day the event started, 8-ball messaged me with a replay showing a variation of the winning style and wondering if that would be fastest -- and hoping it wasn't I assume by his message 8-). I didn't comment anything on it, firstly because I didn't really want to speculate or give any insight or tips, though I guess mostly because I wasn't even aware that it was possible to do... I think I pretty much anticipated and subconsciously planned most of the other styles that were used to some degree, but the winning one not at all.
Tell us about the designing process.
I started working on some levels pretty early in the submission process, but I didn't get anywhere at all for several months. I was constantly starting idiotic ideas, deleting levels, starting over, not having any inspiration at all and it was really annoying me. While I'm generally not super happy about most of the levels I make in the first place, these last years especially I've felt really void of ideas and uninspired.
I think it wasn't until the very last couple of weeks before the submission deadline that I finally started on something one night. I think I made 90% of the general level idea in 30 minutes or so without much thought. As I mentioned in the first answer, I knew it was most likely going to turn into a minute long level with multiple styles, as is my general tendency for all my levels... I can't seem to help it, and my brain simply won't allow me to make a straight-forward simple level no matter how hard I try. It's my biggest flaw as a level maker I think.
I didn't try to fight it too much, and most of the level was made pretty linearly, following the general route of the level, at least the most obvious generic one; starting at the top, going left and then right and left again. It felt a bit too simple, specially since I wasn't able to come up with any fun or interesting details along the route, so as a crutch I plopped down a gravity apple and tried to work around that as the main variation in routes. I tried making a couple of different styles that would let you decide on the gravity apple order, then added the whole top right part of the level.
I think the biggest mistake was probably the right-most apple and the immediate surrounding area, but at this point I was 30 minutes into making it and it felt like I got in the zone, so didn't want to "jinx" it or think too much. In the past that's usually what made a lot of my levels go from being decent to shitty. I just went into the game and tried out the main obvious routes, checking if things were possible and not *too* unflowy, though I'm sure many will disagree on that part. I didn't really time the routes or test them out too much, again for a fear of getting too obsessed with the details and making everything too "perfect".
So yea, after several months of attempts, all it took was 30 minutes of randomly plopping down polygons and 10 minutes of adding some simple grass and minimal textures and pictures, sigh. I think ultimately it had some nice ideas to it, but not a very good execution and I wasn't very happy with it. But considering how much time I had wasted already trying to come up with something, I was just happy to even have a level at all, so I decided to send it in and just hope for the best, letting other people decide if there was something there or not.
Posted 19/03/2017 22:15 by ville_j
Current event (705) uses the apple bug at the start, which means it can be finished without taking all apples. This is intended. You need to take just 38 apples as specified in start of level (when apple count reaches 53 you can touch flower). You can also send unfinished replays, in which case amount of apples will count as your result.
Posted 19/03/2017 22:08 by ville_j
First place – Zero
You can listen the audio interview below (3rd event 00:00 - 07:20)
Second place – Zweq
Somehow lucked myself to top3, so here I am writing this crap. 703 was quite intense, höyled probably the most of any event yet (probably between 10 and 15 hours), and this really shows in my mood and attitude towards the level and the rest of the cup. Very tired. I would have been very upset if I hadn't improved 1:02,08 to 1:01,91 7mins before the deadline. I would have been very frustrated to send in a 1:02 time because missed 1:01 probably 50 times, but 1:01,91 was satisfying time for me, because I didn't want to beat Zero because he was always a bit faster than me throughout the week. He also probably missed a zillion good times but couldn't quite get a clean ride finished. Beating Zero would have felt a bit sad, so 0.05 behind him was the perfect spot for me. After seeing I beat kazan by 0.03 was icing on the cake.
We found styles pretty much on the first evening I think. Minor details came later, like 22s bounce we started using quite late to the week (I think i never made it well on live though xd). Zero already made 1:02 during the first 12hours, i belief, which was quite sik. Good involvement from whole team dat this time, except b33n3n3.
Not much to say about the level. It was oke, but nothing special. (I guess hard to experience cool feelings after seeing tens of thousands of levels)
Just very tired now... not expecting to play next event much :( but we will see. Wcup requires such extreme endurance, dedication and time investment. I'm not even playing much and I'm still tired already.
Lastly and most importantly, here is this interview written by bene:
bene - Last Monday at 3:33 PM
I'm motivated to write some today now
zamppe - Last Monday at 3:35 PM
go write my 703 interview
inb4 "b3n3n33 ashole"
bene - Last Monday at 3:36 PM
the level was very [insert descriptive word]. We found the [insert some style] early that made us much faster than everyone else. Kazan didn't even u1 min I think that's disappointing. Bene was spamming like a crazy man about some bugbounce end style that wasn't even possible in tas, he didn't play anything or contribute anything except wasting my time. Zero was playing nicely the entire week but he was [insert something bad about zero]. Pab finally started playing maybe he will actually be there for next event. FinMan is playing other games/not interested in wcup dunno where he was most of the time.
Third place – Kazan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
cant say much about this lev because most styles were obvious. Sla made sure that it does not have complicated/annoying styles. only bounce in start maybe was hard. so it was fun hoyl lev to play and hard to cut time.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
got very good run for my style but missed start style of winners. was a bit sad.
Designer – Sla
What was the idea of this level?
First of all... Hi, my name is Alan.
I didnt have a real idea, its almost always the same case in every level i start making, then while im drawing and testing polygons, the idea slowly starts to grow. I was not going for anything complex/hard but fun, thats sure.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
Once again the player told the designer how the level should be done. I didnt have idea of certain tricks i saw on winning rec. Such as: the mini-bounce after start hang wich put the bike much less time on the air before taking second apple (instead of brutalovolting-jumping to it), thats was a simple and great shortcut that amazed me; the second little trick new i saw on Zero's rec was the one after third apple, how he alovolted at wall and then used all the ground to acelerate there, instead of just jumping to the next triangle, wich was my plan (yet another way to lose time on the air); and for the last trick/variation, at about 30.90s on winning rec http://www.recsource.tv/r/kuiqmzjwvo Zero uses the floating polygon in a different way than i planned, wich also seems a better way to acelerate and get a good speed on the next surface.
I noticed that several players got hooked bug in two different apples and i apologize for that. Ill try to avoid that on next time, althought its kinda hard to predict exact position of head and wheels on every apple-touching.
I would like to thank all those players who gave me positive feedback during event about this level, i was not expecting that at all. Also to all who played it, of course.
Posted 12/03/2017 21:37 by ville_j
First place – adi
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
Mid length, tricky and some routes to test, so first impression was nice. However, I was worried about "1st apple" that would probably require annoying bounce. But fortunately...lower route turned out to be pretty fast. The more I played lower route the more I liked it. It was satisfying to keep finding new styles/moves all the time. Final route was actually very tricky, which I think suited well to me and talli.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
At first I tested the upper route and got promising 15:65 2nd apple time with basic bounce. For the lower part I found almost all styles in 1-2 days and got 45.59 on Monday. I asked improvement suggestions from Koopa and he immediately suggested end spinning:
"ehkä lopun tiputuskin vois olla jollain konstilla nopeempi"
"jotenki spinnaisi noista kulkmista"
This did not lead to discovery of final end spinnings yet, but perhaps unconsciously it did lead to finding the 3rd last apple spin push style, which turned out to be necessary for the end spinnings to work well. For example Hosp had been trying end spinning without the preceeding spin push. And afterwards we heard that the situation was the same for finman.
On Wednesday we finally made breakthrough by finding the end spinnings (usually at least one important style/move will be found on Wed-Thu). It was found by talli after getting inspiration from nick-o-matic's rec where he had spinned in lesser extent. All in all it can be said that the final end style was truly team effort! After finding the end styles the route choice became crystal clear.
I got my first good finish 44:33 relatively quickly but had problems getting into höyling mood. For Luther the fun begins when all styles are decided and serious höyling begins...for me quite the opposite. On weekend I improved my time to 44:01 but kept failing end all the time. On Saturday night I decided to play as long as needed to get at least decent time (about 43:50-43:80). After all I became very obsessed and even skipped sleeping...or precisely went to sleep for 2-3 hours. Anyway it was very tough to play when being max tired but somehow I managed to do win time 2½ hours before deadline.
Actually I would've been 3rd with minimal höyling effort but I didn't want to speculate. Also there was good chance to win this event and/or take double victory for team, so I had to prioritize things.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
I thought that 43 would be really hard time to get without our end style, so there was chance to win. On the other hand 43 low wouldn't have been too hard to get with our styles. Maybe I was a bit surprised how fast times were driven using the upper route.
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
I just try to do my best and let's see what the result is. At the moment playing is really fun, mostly thanks to active team members. Also special mention to Haamu who is playing his very first world cup. I've spied him quite a lot and have been giving some tips to improve his time. Also Bliz made very surprising comeback after 5-6 years break and instantly started to höyl world cup!
Second place – Zweq
Somehow lucked myself to top3 again. Level was quite bad for my taste, but that's just mostly due to nuances. Generally the lev looks nice for eye and low vertex density gives bit of an internal feel. Maybe with less apples or different object positioning I could like it more, but impsy to please everyone ofc.
It was a nice surprise that the other route was faster after all, and with absolutely fantastic end style. Was very magical feeling once again to eye winning rec. I didn't put much effort in the MiE route but still enough to fully appreciate what they managed to pull off. It seems like to get this magical surprise feeling requires some effort beforehand. Like: brain has completely excluded something, then someone proves you're wrong and completely idiot and dumb person, feels GREAT! Same happened with 43. He He when saw Labs start or with WC6 zebra pipe lev.
I felt in the beginning of the week already that the top apple first route was possibly 0.5 faster. That's why I chose it and didn't spend much time with the other route. Although I doubted my decision a couple of times because Zero got seemingly easily 44.xx very early to the week, like monday perhaps. But his rapid progression stopped (I guess he realized that my shitbounce style is faster and didn't orka after that) midweek. I think in the future he should spend less time in the beginning, and keep consistently playing the current active event the whole week. Pretty much same story with FinMan also. I mean obv should find all styles first before committing max hoylage xD. Pab and b3n333n33n didn't play again, what a ashole's.
Start of cup goeded max smooth for me so far, no burn effect in the horizon yet. We will see how that continues...
Third place – talli
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
First time saw lev was when watched adi's and Hosp's replays for up and down route.
Thought it looked pretty tricky and nice. I just decided to choose the down route
because seemed more fun, and actually never even got the first apple with the up route.
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
As said earlier I took adi's moves and went for some sloppy 45 mid on tuesday and
sent it in actually cause that's what I often do and decided to not play anymore. Anyhow,
on wednesday evening nick-o-matic was talking about spins at the end drop to allow
landing more to the left for faster end. So I decided to test max alo spins with smibu sl and noticed
you can actually push from the edge after the last apple, and ofc thanks to adi's moves before the drop
I was able to find those moves pretty fast. After finding the perfect moves, I went online for hoylage
the rest of the evening before going to sleep. Pr at that point was 44.64 and was very frustrated that
needs to get bounce turn for u44 time which seemed to be too random for me to do consistently, so decided
to go to sleep and thought will send in that time. Again, the next morning on thursday, adi had pasted
a replay where he had an amazing landing using the spin moves which resulted to me thinking u44 ez with
non bounce turn and went for it. About 2 hours later got satisfying u44 finish which I sent in also and
pretty much didn't touch the lev anymore. Hope u liked cause very detailed stuff :-) Wanted to tell
all the details about the end style so people will know it was all team effort and can't thank only
one man.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
Yeah, I was pretty surprised to get so good result with the given effort. Need to thank my team
MiE for finding the style that seemed to be faster than all the others.
What are your expectations and goals for the rest of the cup?
No expectations. Will be having fun with stylefinding mostly and driving somewhat satisfying finish
with the found styles.
Designer – kuchitsu
What was the idea of this level?
The idea was to make a level using primarily "broad strokes", that is: little to no tiny details, somewhat large-scale design where every vertex has an important role and can't be removed without affecting the gameplay significantly. I can't say that I followed these rules religiously but they certainly had a strong influence on the whole thing. I was also partially inspired by roope (his battles often embrace that "broad strokes" philosophy or at least that's my impression of them) and Official Level Pack levs.
Were you surprised by the winning replay and style?
Oh yes! While making the level I had pretty much only one route in mind, which was the Zero\finman route. The top apple, believe it or not, was supposed to be impossible to take first: I even moved it a bit higher at some point to "ensure" that. But people in my team reached it very quickly, which made me worry about the quality of the level a lot. I was afraid that the bounce start will piss everyone off and the event will become a disaster. Then p-skript found somewhat reliable moves for it, which was a big relief for me, but still the bounce left a bad taste in my mouth.
So I was very, very happy to find out that the winner used a different style. And what a style it was! talli (and from what I've heard Hosp as well?) developed some incredible moves and adi executed them beautifully. The whole rec just made me smile and even laugh a bit, that's how satisfying it was to watch. It made me love the level 1000 times more and now I'm totally happy with it. Awesome job team MiE!
Other surprises include slick looking start bounce by Zweq, Zero and finman getting very close to Zweq's time with the intended style (who would have thought that the routes are so balanced?), AndrY_ getting in top15 (whaaat, I thought we are competing dude?!), and a cute replay by P3DaPro where he finishes the level without ever turning. :)
Tell us about the designing process.
First I created the starting polygon, then that triangle on which you change your direction. After that I made the bottom loop and spent some time refining it: I wanted it to be unsmooth but also easy enough to escape. Then I noticed that you can actually skip the loop, which seemed like a cool trick so of course I kept it. At that point I got a little stuck as I wasn't sure what to do, but I just tried improvising as usual and eventually came up with the area on the right. Somehow it still looked a bit plain, and then I realized that since I already made that "hollow" triangle polygon (I mean with a hole inside it) I might as well do the same thing with all other polygons except the outer one. So I did and that's when I started to really like the look of the level. After that I began working on the left part, which turned out very small in the end because I figured that the level was already long enough.
By the way, at that time the whole level used STONE2 as foreground, and that's actually how I came up with the name of the level. Because according to OLP19, if you use STONE2 without grass you'll get dunes. So I wanted a dunes-related name. That's when I remembered "Suna no Bara" (Desert Rose), some old anime I watched back in 2009. The title sounded kinda cool to me so I just went with it. Oh, and to expand on that desert theme I also added a few oasises in the form of little unreachable "islands" with some grass and greenery. Don't think anyone caught that but I like putting similar "story" ideas in Elma.
The level was originally meant for a level pack, but at some point I got sick of it and decided to just battle everything instead. However, something made me keep this one and eventually I sent it to World Cup. I wasn't expecting much, but to my surprise at the end of December 2016 I received a message from Kopaka telling that pretty much everyone in the committee liked what they saw. He also suggested that I might want to make it a little more pleasant visually. In particular, he said that STONE2 was perhaps a bit annoying for the eyes. I found myself agreeing with him so I changed the outer polygon texture to standard GROUND and also added a couple visual touches like that tiny triangle near the start. I still kept the visuals relatively simple since that was a theme I decided on at the very beginning.
In the end, the level turned out rather tricky and I think skilled players probably enjoyed playing it more than I did. Which is a little strange, but it's also one of the cool things about art. Sometimes you can't properly appreciate your own creation, but when you look at it through the eyes of others it suddenly gains new life and becomes more valuable to you. It is yet another reason to create stuff.
Posted 02/03/2017 17:59 by ville_j
First place – Kazan
What was your first impression of the level, and did that change over time when you played it?
That was normal good 1st lev of cup. Only when found hard style it became less fun :)
Tell us about the style finding and höyling process.
1st day we found only 25.xx style, 2nd day found obvious fast style, then front wheel bounce turn, then final style.
Were you surprised by your own and/or other's results?
very surprised that nobody found different turn styles.
Second place – Bjenn
I thought it looked like a promising level as a first event, relatively short with an enjoyable set of obstacles which were pretty hard when me and Kazan found the best moves, and somewhat fun at least. Well Kazan actually found all styles, mostly because I was busy. I had a plan on trying out a thing or two in SL but Kazan got to it first so I felt that it was no point for me trying.
Kazan told me that it was okay if I found some moves too, I was like "ye ye I know :P", it's just that it feels like you already have found everything haha =DD
Boomer told me "you need 21 bro if you wanna get top 5!" and so I kept playing now and then, it was a harsh style Kazan found, I had 22.22 for couple of days and I managed one more 22.22 (a tad of frustration).
I played totally 1-2 h on Sunday and suddenly improved at last when it only were 1h to dödline, got max happy and it sure gave results in the mean of my placement, "good effort Bjenn!".
Wasn't prepared that I would be number two with my tim0r, though I was pretty sure Kazan would win, crazy good ride :-)
Good start of the cup, we will see what them future events bring, I am cautious having any expectation or goals of myself, but I secretly encourage myself and Kazan that we will wreck everyone with our co-operation xD
Mega interesting (and also greatly unexpected) to see Zweq be teamed up with [dat].
Third place – Zweq
I joined team dat to be able to openly discuss TAS styles with bene, but somehow we didn't have any discussions with bene and instead I played the lev (wcup701) live normally. I have to admit it's pretty different playing with a team, something I've never experienced in a wcup because WNO members never played any cup. More or less the last time I co-operated with someone in a cup was with orcc and I don't even remember what cup that was and when, but it must be over 10 years ago. Before that I played with axxu and tomcat in kingcup, which was probably in 2004. I was also surprised how little FinMan and Zero played, also Pab and bene didn't play at all. I hope FinMan and Zero will show more enthusiasism in the upcoming events.
So I reached position 3, that is a very acceptable result. Of course one always dreams of winning, but I also knew there was ilmaa in my time. Overall the event was a pleasant experience, because I didn't spend too much time on it, 1h a day start of the week, increasing to 2-3h a day towards the end of the week. In hindsight something was left in hampaankoloon for not beating bjenn, on the other hand I was definitely not the only one missing 21s. Kazan was unreachable anyway, would have taken an effort even with TAS to beat that time with dat styles.
The level was ok, in some ways even good, but levels that you very rarely finish tend to leave a bitter taste in mouth. The good bit about the level was that as we kept finding 0.05 faster details in start, the rest of the level became easier. Route was not hard to find, took probably 30min effort with milatool to get 22.5x. But liveplaying I started very casually. I think it was already wednesday when I finally finished a 23 ride. Saturday morn I finished a 22.22 and already thought of quitting, but since I already had a good touch and felt like ez 21, I thought what the hell. On sunday I improved to 22.18 and finally to 22.11, while missing a couple of 21 rides. Those final .11 gave 2 more päänahkaa, so I guess it's all cool.
Designer – roope
After we had lost the level we had planned to use for the first event, we didn't really have any other levs that felt like fitting for the first event. I decided to make one, since in the end, it would kill two birds with one stone: I always wanted to have a level in a world cup and we really needed to get a lev, fast. I made this lev (and a few others) pretty much in the last weekend, and we decided on this one. It had to be relatively simple, höylä-ish, short, and cool visuals, and I think I somewhat achieved that. The winning style was not planned though! We did a few test runs and it didn't seem like possible to do anything useful by going over the hang polygon, but whad'ya know. At least it resulted in a cool winning rec.
The info texts left to the start were something we discussed about using way back in our first WCup meetings last summer, since there might be a lot of players that haven't used the cup system before and might not know that you have to send your replays etc.
Posted 19/02/2017 22:00 by ville_j
World Cup 7 has officially started! The first two events are now available for download. Notice that there are two ongoing events at the moment: one normal event lasting for seven days and another special event which will run throughout the whole cup (this is the event #15 so it is listed as the final event at the bottom of the Events-page.
The main purpose of this Blog-page is to serve a platform for posting interviews of the top 3 kuskis on each event, but there might come some additional posts too. We will be announcing all World Cup related things on various channels so you shouldn't be able to miss any important stuff easily.
It's time to put your stoke glasses on and get höyling!
Posted 15/01/2017 18:26 by ville_j
Check out this amazing video from the previous World Cup to get an idea what to expect from the competition!
