Map Review Procedures

The document covers the steps you need to follow in order to post an effective and functional map review. Each reviewer should have read and understand every part of this document.

The Map Review
Most reviews fall around 600-800 words, but there is no set limit in either direction. More than likely it will take you around this amount to hit all that you need to speak on, so if you're not quite there, be sure and give the review a good looking-over to see if there's something key you've left out.

Be sure and check for sloppiness in both spelling and grammar. Run the review through a spell check if need be. You are a writer, after all, so we expect you to write well every time. It is encouraged that you save your reviews in a text or Word document on your computer. If something goes wrong, we'll still have it around and there will be no issues.

Do NOT add category headlines into your review. In other words, don't stick Lighting above the part where you talk about lighting and so forth. Try to address all aspects of the map, but don't overdo it if certain things are unnecessary. For instance, some maps don't have music, while others have a retail track. It is not worth mentioning the fact that a map uses a retail track, but it might be worthwhile to say an author forgot to set a music track completely.

Provide a bottom line - a brief, to-the-point summary. It shouldn't be more than a couple sentences, but try to get it down to one as it has a bit more power then.

Award a score according to the schema, and only according to the schema. It is extremely important that you follow the schema. Do NOT just give a score off the top of your head. Refer to the schema for each and every review that you write. There is no other option.

Screenshot Basics
You need to take four screenshots of the level you are reviewing. This is set to F9 by default (in UT2004). Run around the level after the power-ups have spawned and take some nice shots of the level. The commands fly, walk, and ghost will probably be useful here. You should be the only one in the map when taking shots.

There must be no HUD visible in any screenshot, and your crosshair must be absent as well. We want our readers to see the map, not your HUD. There is an easy way to accomplish this in UT2004 - the togglescreenshotmode command. Type that into the console and everything should disappear, at which point taking clean shots with F9 is simple. Also, don't get any bots in your shots either.

Generally, screenshots come out darker than the stuff was being displayed on your monitor thanks to gamma settings within the game. This means you may need to brighten them up a bit. Use an image editing program such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, or GIMP (free) to do this.

All screenshots need to be in JPEG format with a .jpg extension. If they're not, the server will reject their uploading. Keep their size to 800x600 or 1024x768. It does not matter what the screenshot files are called on your machine, aside from the extension, of course. The server will rename them properly once they are uploaded.

In addition to those four screenshots you will need to make a thumbnail for each for a total of eight JPEGs per review. One thumbnail needs to be 200x150, while the other three are 138x104.

Screenshot Recommendations
These are some general tips to the get the best-looking screenshots you can, no matter your hardware.

First thing you're doing to want to do is make sure your in-game detail settings are maxed out. Put everything as high as it can go. As you're simply going for the best picture, it doesn't matter if you get very poor FPS when you do this.

Turning on antialiasing (AA) and anisotropic filter (AF) in your video card settings will improve the visual quality of your screenshots quite a bit. This is not required, but it is a nice thing to do.

Taking the screenshots at a higher resolution and then scaling them down to the proper resolution will make them look better in the end. For instance, if you turn on AA and AF and take the screenshots at 1600x1200, once they're scaled down to 1024x768 they will look fantastic and completely free of jaggies.

This is no need to save your JPEGs at maximum quality, as that wastes a lot of space. Keep the end file sizes under 200 KB for the sake of our server and our readers' bandwidth.

There is no set schema for screenshots, but this general guide may help you decide what to take screenshots of and which order to place them in.

- The first screenshot is the one that gets the 200x150 thumbnail. It is the one that is displayed in the news postings and the one that will grab readers' eyes first. This should be an important screenshot, so make it of something important in the level you're reviewing.
- The second screenshot is used everywhere the first screenshot isn't - random review, review searches, MotM, etc. Naturally, this one should also be fairly important, but maybe not as important as the first.
- The third is up for grabs. Of the four screenshots you took, the least interesting one should go here.
- The fourth screenshot leaves a final impression, so it might be a good idea to make sure it's interesting.

Map Uploading
As you'll notice, there is a download link in your review body from the time it is assigned to you - leave it there! Even if you're done with your review, it's been uploaded, and your bottom line and score are in place, leave the download link in there. The other crap can go, but leave the download link, please. An admin will come by, download the map to his machine, upload it to the server, and remove the link from your review himself. If you accidently delete it, don't worry about it. Leaving it there is only a nice thing to do for your admins. ;)

We're Finished Here
Well, there you have it. Have fun with your reviews, and thanks for your time and interest in our humble little corner of the Internet. If you ever need to get back to this page to check up on something, the link appears at the bottom of the page when you log in, or if you're already logged in, when you click the "profile" button at the top right.