Map Thread Guide

[Chaosy]

Map Development Thread Guide By Chaosy Introduction Greetings, this tutorial is supposed to show you a few tricks with BB codes to make your map presentation look awesome. This can be applied for your map development thread, which can later be copied to the map section if/when you release the map. This wont improve the map itself but it will make more people check out your map, and it seems like a more serious project overall. This is not a template, it is a guide. If you want an already finished template go here: http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/miscellaneous-tutorials-456/map-description-templates-171659/​ Content To start with, your thread needs to be informative. If you make a thread that says "Guys I made a ORPG, play and have fun! *link to map*". It will not be taken seriously most of the time, not to mention people want to know what they are downloading. The following sections are included in most map threads. Title Introduction Features Screenshots Progress Credits I usually include way more than this, but I consider it good enough if it's done properly. ​ Colors Colors are a wonderful way to give a certain feel to your thread. For example if you have a campaign about a human general, having a blue color to the text seems pretty logical. However there are bad colors, and good colors. Try to read this Try to read this The light blue color is just about 10x easier to read according to wikipedia and other scientific research. (not really) It is usually a good idea to use a mix of colors that are similar. If use an orange color for an orc based map you could do something like: Introduction Write whatever here. ​ Title The title which is usually the name of your map in big letter at the top of the thread, which is the first thing a user will see. Thus, it is important to make it look good. Plain text is boring, we are going to use an image instead. And since not all of us are gifted artists (curse you, talented ones!), we will take a shortcut. Go to either www.cooltext.com , www.flamingtext.com or any other similar website to create your title image. While some think the animated ones are really good, they are not. Try to keep it simple. As such I took the following image. Do note that some filthy websites put their logos on the image which force you to remove that with a (free) photo editing tool such as Gimp. To make this easier, I just wrote an extra row which means the little logo is isolated and easier to remove. Select a region with the rectangle selection tool and press delete. image guide Screenshots Most people can do this. However few can make it look good. We are going use the BB code to make our screenshots look much better in our presentation. This method can be applied in more than one section. Basically the stable tag create an invisible multiboard, you put one image in each column. [stable] [img]IMAGE LINK 1[/img][c] [img]IMAGE LINK 2[/img][c] [img]IMAGE LINK 3[/img][r] [img]IMAGE LINK 4[/img][c] [img]IMAGE LINK 5[/img][c] [img]IMAGE LINK 6[/img] [/stable] [c] means new column, and [r] new row. I used for for my RP characters, but it's the same method, I just have text in some of the columns too. It's important that all images got the same size, you can simply resize images in paint or just google a website that will do it for you. result Name Eirlys 'Sapphire' Race Valkyr Age Unknown Position Commander Alignment Chaotic Evil Name Azele Frostborn Race Highborne Age 2300 Position Champion Alignment Chaotic Evil Name Regan Barlow Race Half Angel Age Unknown Position ??? Alignment Natural Evil Name Amy Barlow Race Half Demon Age Unknown Position ??? Alignment Natural Evil Name Linnea 'Amber' Race Angel Age Unknown Position Commander Alignment Lawful Good Name Khor Race Angel Age Unknown Position Champion Alignment Lawful Good Features I would suggest two different methods here. Either [list] or [table] both works, it depends on preference. [list] [*]Feature 1 [*]Another feature [/list] Result: Feature 1 Another feature The other method is basically the same as the one used for screenshots, though I usually prefer table instead of stable here. The only difference is that table is visible. [table] Feature 1[c]Explain feature 1 here[r] Feature 2[c]Explain feature 2 here [/table] Result: Feature 1 Explain feature 1 here Feature 2 Explain feature 2 here Small tips 'n' tricks If you put [stable] in front of a hidden tag the size get reduced, I used it in this tutorial. [indent] is a relatively unknown BB code, but it is awesome, it make everything within it appear a bit further in. Yet again I use it in this tutorial bellow each title. [center] is not used enough in most threads, you can center more than text, images, tables, lists everything can be centered. http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/map-development-202/ghostlands-260247/ is a wonderful example of this. ​

 

[BPower]

Fix your BB-code

 

[PurgeandFire]

Gorgeous!

P.S. I also wish people would be more accommodating for small monitors. >.>

Using hidden tags are great! And resizing things to have a small enough width to fit on a small laptop screen can go a long way (until we get xenforo which will automatically fix that problem).

P.P.S. If you have the time, could you attach the images to the hive? I make exceptions for sites like gyazo and imgur that will permanently keep their images, but it is still better to have them on our site so we control it. (after all, I used to think that Photobucket and Imageshack would provide 'indefinite' service, but we all know how that ended)