asm wrote:

RiskyBack wrote:

Yertle wrote: * A board shall have at least one completed test game on it prior to submission.

* A board shall be in a completed status, the Review process is NOT a feedback center.

Amen to both

This guy's a nightmare: http://www.wargear.net/games/view/5114

I tried to be nice (which is hard for me): http://www.wargear.net/games/view/5048

And then he seems to have just re-submitted the same completely f'ed-up board.

thats why i started the dev tester thread but i dont think he reads the comments on his game or the forums.... what to do...

HaHa thats probable how you felt with me before i found the forum on the Fish eh asm.. hehehe

* The board shall have some board description with either gameplay information and/or a story.

Somebody amend that to make it sound better :P Cutting it at description left pretty wide open and now it just sounds kind of dumb.

KrocK wrote:

Cramchakle wrote:

Kjeld wrote:

Cramchakle wrote: * A board shall not incorporate illicit or especially offensive content; including but not limited to pornography, discrimination, or imagery that glorifies violent crimes.

Agreed with an amendment:

* A board shall not incorporate illicit or especially offensive content; including but not limited to pornography, discrimination, illegal drug use or imagery that glorifies violent crimes.

Might also have a clause about controversial content which would include overt or derogatory religious and political commentary. While we don't want to ban those themes entirely, we should be clear that this site is not a soapbox for broadcasting personal opinions on such topics. Most people get this, but there are always the exceptions.

A board shall not incorporate illicit or especially offensive content. i think that's where it should end.

Support as Amended.

*A board must provide enough new content to differentiate it from other boards already released.

Not sure about the wording here, but we need to make it clear that, for example, WarGear won't tolerate 20 different versions of classic Risk. The case of Newfie brought this to mind.

Kjeld wrote: *A board must provide enough new content to differentiate it from other boards already released.

Not sure about the wording here, but we need to make it clear that, for example, WarGear won't tolerate 20 different versions of classic Risk. The case of Newfie brought this to mind.

I'm really pretty torn here. While it's cool that there's an American flag planted on the moon, we don't have any claim to the place; if you get where I'm going. Plus, what if someone comes along who can make RISK that looks a helluva a lot better than, say, WAR. While I agree in principle that I don't want 10,000 copies of the same thing, I don't know how or where to draw the line.

Cramchakle wrote:

I'm really pretty torn here. While it's cool that there's an American flag planted on the moon, we don't have any claim to the place; if you get where I'm going. Plus, what if someone comes along who can make RISK that looks a helluva a lot better than, say, WAR. While I agree in principle that I don't want 10,000 copies of the same thing, I don't know how or where to draw the line.

Same here.  And A LOT of people like A LOT of versions of Risk, which can kind of be good for the site, sooooo.

I meant it to be a flexible guideline. Significantly better (or new unique) graphics, or a new twist in gameplay, or a fun theme could differentiate the board from other boards and make it worthy of public release. But for really popular themes like Risk or Lord of the Rings, the bar should be set a little higher.

Ugh, lets' not get too carried away with all these rules and guidelines. After reading through all these, I'm starting to become uninterested in designing maps here. I don't want to have to go through and make sure I'm conforming to a bunch of rules and regulations when I create a board. I like making something, testing it and throwing it out there.

All this oversite on map creation is going to make it feel more like work and less like fun to me. I'm sure some folks will like it a lot and feel like their work is validated when it is approved, and that is fine. Different strokes for different folks.

EDIT: Upon reading my post, I want to make sure that I'm not coming of like a snob. I'm fully aware that the boards I make are merely average in graphics and creativity, but I find the process fun, and I just worry that some of the fun is going to be taken away by this.

None of your maps thus far should be a problem, EMonk. We're just trying to set up some minimum that people have to clear, and "average" ought to be well above that. In familiar WF terms, we're just looking to make sure that there's no such thing as a 1 or 2 star effort here.

EM, your input here is really valuable, because it would be a real shame to discourage prospective mapmakers. Rather than restrictions, this should be phrased perhaps in more of a "pointers" format?

I think ultimately we will have a fairly short list of guidelines (maybe 5 bullet points?) to help new mapmakers understand what is expected from a board, and provide some rationale in writing for what will and will not make it through review.

Kjeld wrote:

I think ultimately we will have a fairly short list of guidelines (maybe 5 bullet points?) to help new mapmakers understand what is expected from a board, and provide some rationale in writing for what will and will not make it through review.

Right. One if the reasons I've started pushing to get this set of guidelines up and running is so that the review process is transparent. I don't want to feel like I'm sending my maps into some mysterious black hole without any idea if it will be approved or not. I, for one, am not a part of the review crew; which I think helps lend a bit of credibility to these guidelines. Essentially, I'm looking for ways to keep the quality of boards high while also keeping map-making open and fun for as many as possible, and throwing in the trifecta of making sure no one feels there's anything 'elitist' about it.

Those are good goals, and I understand (and even agree) with the reasoning behind them.

I just don't want to see things like your boards, or even mine, getting passed simply because we are "in" with the review crew. Nor do I want to see someone like Smor (who has some popular maps, whether we like them or not) come here and have his/her designs failed because of some bias against him/her.

I also don't want to see a backlog of maps waiting for approval. I realize that some maps will take longer to play a game on than others, but we need to make sure that as the site grows, the review team gets bigger to keep new maps coming out as fast as possible.

I don't know if this is happening or not, but I remember it being discussed: I disagree with the notion of having a secret reviewers forum. In the interest of transparency, anything said about a map should be visible to the designer. Hopefully this will take place in the game comments (and the designer will read them), but it might be a good idea to have a review process forum where maps can be discussed amongst the designer and reviewers.

And is it really necessary to ban circle maps altogether? Rent Is Due is a really fun map, one of my favorites on warfish and it is circle mode. Many of the Risk clones on WF are circle mode, and are immensely popular, I would guess a lot more so than many of our groups rule-bending maps. I really can't see Rent being improved by having it fill mode, but I will give that some of the Risk clones would look better.

I mean everything I say here, but I am also deliberately going negative on it just to help keep a balance so we hopefully won't end up with an overbearing review process.

Also, is there going to be a player review capability like on WF? While the testers offer good feedback, we are also a select group whose tastes do not always parallel the mainstream, and I found player reviews to be a good source of input.

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/112plast/New_review_system_now_live#last

Redirecting your conversation to here, EM, lets try to keep this thread to just the suggestions and debate regarding them directly. It will make Yertle's job much easier later when he has to sort through it.

My my what an interesting thread

Regarding obscene/illegal boards:

Unless you make a map of two giant breasts with a circle filled country on each nipple and call it Pasty Wars.

On a more serious note I would make the requirements more human sounding. Something along the lines of:

Regarding obscene/illegal boards:

Use common sense when deciding to make a board with pornographic, especially violent or controversial imagery. A map of two giant breasts is going to be rejected, and you know it. A map of a giant pot leaf is going to be rejected, and you know it. A complex, artistic, interesting gameplay map pitting Columbian Army forces against a Cocaine Drug Cartel hideaway should make it through.

Regarding multiple copies of the basic Risk map:

If you are making yet another version of the standard Risk map, it's going to have to be particularly impressive in terms of either artistic content or a different style of gameplay in order to be approved. We realize there is a demand for the basic Risk map and style of play, but in the end we don't want 100 versions of the map floating around. It may not be fair, but if you are the 20th person to attempt a version of the Risk map, it's gotta be better than the 19 that went before.

For copyrighted material:

It is not Wargear's responsibility to check copyright on any map imagery you submit. If you rip off someone else's design and Wargear is sent a legitemate DMCA takedown notice regarding the violation, the map will be removed and your ability to submit additional maps for Review will be supended.

For unbalanced game startup scenarios:

Boards designed so that one starting position has an *obvious* advantage over the other starting positions will not be approved, unless and until:

1. Wargear provides a means to choose which starting position you get.
2. The unbalanced nature of the game is prominently indicated with both an icon (similar to lightning style games) and explained in the About page.

Non-reversible submissions (the Doom clause):

By submitting a board to WG you agree that WG gets non-exclusive perpetual permission to host games on your submitted board. Individual requests to remove a board from Live play MAY be honored but no automated means of removing a board from Live play will be available.

Accepted as written.

Except I'd spell 'suspended' correctly and I don't think there's any need for all the qualification of the unbalanced rules. If you want to screw around with unfair games with your friends in private games, I'm all for that, but I don't think there's any place for that in a Live/Ranked scenario.

EDIT: I just want to add that I do think we should at least mention some minimum required level of graphic appeal. The whole time this thread has been here I've been trying to figure out how to say it properly and I can't. (Anybody remember Nasal Commander? If you can't figure out how to save your board as anything other than a GIF where the territory white fill doesn't even work, you're not getting your map through as far as I'm concerned.) All I want is a <strike>rule</strike> guideline that says essentially if your map looks egregiously crappy, it will need some work before passing the Review process. How should that be phrased?

"If your map looks like crap we're gonna put it in the shitter."

Approved as written.

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Medieval%20Europe/Board

I thought we said no circle maps?

:P

I think you're probably being intentionally funny, but I'll answer as though you weren't. The question also came up with regard to Nygma's Plinko board. While it is true that disallowing circle-fill will have the side effect of making certain boards (where circle-mode is justified or necessary) more difficult to create than they might otherwise be, I think that's worth the main effect, which is to force beginning mapmakers to learn their craft before submitting any slapped-together piece of crap.

It's not circles themselves that anybody opposes, per se. It's the map-making crutch that circle-mode represents.