Important message to contributors
Apr 28, 2013 7:10:50 GMT -5
Post by derboo on Apr 28, 2013 7:10:50 GMT -5
Alright, I'd like to talk about two items that could make the editing and uploading process go more smoothly for us:
1.
This is to all contributors that do or plan to preformat their submissions using the templates:
Please follow the instructions for the formatting in the Submission Guidelines closely. I've now highlighted two very important sentences that tend to get ignored a lot:
Please download by right clicking the link and selecting "save as..." Opening and saving through the browser's "file -> save page as" dialog might mess up the formatting of the code!
Please avoid HTML editors that mess around with the formatting of the code!
Especially never use Microsoft Word to edit the HTML, and only use WYSIWYG editors if you know for certain that they leave the code formatting perfectly intact.
This is very important. When the html code gets messed up too much, editing becomes a problem and no work is saved on our side, meaning you might just as well submit a word doc and screenshots and save yourself the time on the html formatting.
I know it looks daunting to deal with the HTML in a standard text editor at first, but when you only fill in content in the intended slots and always copy designated structures as a whole, it's not that hard. I reccomend Notepad++, cause it color-codes things like comments and tags.
If you want to use an existing article page as a base, always take one from the most recent update, and please save it by right clicking the link TO the page, then selecting "save as..." as described above.
If in doubt about anything concerning the formatting, please contact me.
2.
Concerning screenshots:
Please submit all screenshots up to 32-bit era as PNG or another lossless format, and please make sure that they're genuinely lossless. For example, if you first save the screenshots as JPG, then open them again and save as PNG, they still suffer from the loss of having been compressed for JPG.
Especially for pixel art games, please make sure the emulator you use saves the screenshots unfiltered and in the native resolution. In particular, we've had several examples of Sega console screenshots taken with KegaFusion that were filtered. You can go to Options -> Set Config... -> Extras and select "Raw" for "Output Stage" to prevent the emulator from doing that. Even better is using Gens Plus for Genesis games and MEKA for 8-bit games, cause KegaFusion still produces borders that need to be cropped later. When you have to crop screenshots, please double check that you don't cut away a pixel line or two on each border. If unsure about the correct cropping, please submit the screenshots with the borders.
With 3D games the process becomes less exact, but for PlayStation games, the preferred format for contributor submissions is using P.E.Op.S. Soft GPU to dump the raw video data (take screenshots by hitting F8), then cropping to the screenshot on the top left, once again taking care that the cropping is exact. If you don't want to crop the images you can submit the raw video dumps, as we can crop them with a bulk process. Some PSX games may end up with weird resolutions and aspect ratios, but that can be taken care of through image processing later. If you do that, it's always better to include the original resolution with the submission, too.
Some emulators for obscure platforms may not have an internal screenshot function. In this case, you can try to use Fraps (may not work with all emulators), or press the Print Screen key on your keyboard to insert the captured image in an image editing program (once again you absolutely need to have disabled any filter options in the emulator). The latter method captures the whole screen, so the screenshot has to be cut out. See the notes on cropping above.
Please also refer to our Screenshot Guide with exact instructions for a variety of popular systems.
1.
This is to all contributors that do or plan to preformat their submissions using the templates:
Please follow the instructions for the formatting in the Submission Guidelines closely. I've now highlighted two very important sentences that tend to get ignored a lot:
Please download by right clicking the link and selecting "save as..." Opening and saving through the browser's "file -> save page as" dialog might mess up the formatting of the code!
Please avoid HTML editors that mess around with the formatting of the code!
Especially never use Microsoft Word to edit the HTML, and only use WYSIWYG editors if you know for certain that they leave the code formatting perfectly intact.
This is very important. When the html code gets messed up too much, editing becomes a problem and no work is saved on our side, meaning you might just as well submit a word doc and screenshots and save yourself the time on the html formatting.
I know it looks daunting to deal with the HTML in a standard text editor at first, but when you only fill in content in the intended slots and always copy designated structures as a whole, it's not that hard. I reccomend Notepad++, cause it color-codes things like comments and tags.
If you want to use an existing article page as a base, always take one from the most recent update, and please save it by right clicking the link TO the page, then selecting "save as..." as described above.
If in doubt about anything concerning the formatting, please contact me.
2.
Concerning screenshots:
Please submit all screenshots up to 32-bit era as PNG or another lossless format, and please make sure that they're genuinely lossless. For example, if you first save the screenshots as JPG, then open them again and save as PNG, they still suffer from the loss of having been compressed for JPG.
Especially for pixel art games, please make sure the emulator you use saves the screenshots unfiltered and in the native resolution. In particular, we've had several examples of Sega console screenshots taken with KegaFusion that were filtered. You can go to Options -> Set Config... -> Extras and select "Raw" for "Output Stage" to prevent the emulator from doing that. Even better is using Gens Plus for Genesis games and MEKA for 8-bit games, cause KegaFusion still produces borders that need to be cropped later. When you have to crop screenshots, please double check that you don't cut away a pixel line or two on each border. If unsure about the correct cropping, please submit the screenshots with the borders.
With 3D games the process becomes less exact, but for PlayStation games, the preferred format for contributor submissions is using P.E.Op.S. Soft GPU to dump the raw video data (take screenshots by hitting F8), then cropping to the screenshot on the top left, once again taking care that the cropping is exact. If you don't want to crop the images you can submit the raw video dumps, as we can crop them with a bulk process. Some PSX games may end up with weird resolutions and aspect ratios, but that can be taken care of through image processing later. If you do that, it's always better to include the original resolution with the submission, too.
Some emulators for obscure platforms may not have an internal screenshot function. In this case, you can try to use Fraps (may not work with all emulators), or press the Print Screen key on your keyboard to insert the captured image in an image editing program (once again you absolutely need to have disabled any filter options in the emulator). The latter method captures the whole screen, so the screenshot has to be cut out. See the notes on cropping above.
Please also refer to our Screenshot Guide with exact instructions for a variety of popular systems.