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[guesst]

If you've written a review for Abandonia you know that there can be a huge gap between when you submit your review and when it appears on the front page. Why the long delay? Well depending on what you've already done there's alot of work that needs to happen before a review hits the front page.

If you're like me, you'd like to know how to get your review to the front page sooner. The quick answer is that you take as much of the work upon yourself as you can. A few simple steps on your part will insure that the preppers and updaters can get your review up as fast as possible.

Now I want to be clear, this is not the method anyone demands you do. You do not have to do any of these things. I'm sure Kosta and everyone would rather have your reviews if you're willing to write them than not. The last thing I want to discourage would-be reviewers by loading on unnecessary stuff. But if you are a reviewer who has a little bit of time to make our job easier I can assure you it will mean you will see your reviews on the front page sooner.

Below is a simple checklist that will turn your average review into greased lightning:

1. Put your Name on the review itself.
2. Go to mobygames (or some other site) and look up the year, publisher, and developer for your game.
3. Any special formatting like bolds or italics will need to be converted to HTML code. It's like the tags used on the forum with a slightly different format. This link is a fantastic resource that I've found.
4. Have 5-9 screenshots in png format 320x240 resolution.
5. Have a title shot, png format 180x113.
6. Have a news picture, 82x82.
7. Zip all the images together in a file called screens.zip.

"But that's too much!" you say. That's okay. You don't have to do all of this. In fact you don't have to do any of it. Aside from putting the name on your review the preppers for your game will do it for you, I promise. But the less they have to do the higher priority your review will be.

I've prepared this handy little form for you. Copy and paste it into a word or text document and fill out all the information you can find. This is the information we use as updaters in the order that we use it. Doing this will insure that your update looks how you want it to. It puts you in charge of your updates and makes us updaters your humble servants.

Name:
Genre:
Year:
Producer:
Publisher:
Multiplayer:
Review:

Compatibility: DOSBox WinXP VMDSound MS-DOS
Your score:
Reviewer (you):
Also try: [/b]

So there you have it. All the secrets to turn a review into an excellent review that makes all the work behind the scenes disapear and puts your review up before anyone who doesn't follow these simple steps.

Happy reviewing!

[ReamusLQ]

If you want special formatting like italics or bold fonts be sure to use html tags in your review instead of just bolding or italicising the text in the word document.
[/b]

About this, don't be sad if your review gets changed. The Grammar Squad has specific things they put in bold, italics, etc. I do a couple of the really quick ones when I'm updating because I know what the grammar squad does, but I wouldn't worry about these too much since they will most likely be changed.

[Shrek]

Well, I know you guys will eventually "fall over me" because what I'm going to say, but: isn't most of that info the updater's work? I mean, if the reviewer does all the things you are saying he should do, what's left for the updater to do, apart from writing a little introduction to the game - the so called "news" - and placing the game and the links on the site?

I agree that one of the things that is absolutely fundamental is the name of the reviewer, and most of that information could make the updater's life easier but, what the heck? "html tags"? I bet most of the guys that write the reviews don't know what that is (I didn't know, until I started making the updates at the Portuguese version of the site).

Sorry if I'm being too rude, it really isn't my intention, but I believe making "demands" like that can "scare" most of our volunteer reviewers.

[ReamusLQ]

again, most people don't need to worry about HTML tags unless they want to. As far as screen shots go, as far as I know it has been requested that the reviewers take them, because it really is a pain to install a game and play it just to take five or six screen shots when the reviewer could easily do it as well. Zipping them together into one file just makes life a lot easier for us because we have to individually download each file from the server to upload instead of just downloading the pack and unzipping it.

And that little form he came up asking about the publishers and stuff like that has been around for awhile. I think Seb might have posted it as an outline for reviewers, and anything they couldn't find Updater's would fill in the blanks.

[guesst]

@Shrek, I want to highlight this:

Now I want to be clear, this is not the method anyone demands you do. You do not have to do any of these things. I'm sure Kosta and everyone would rather have your reviews if you're willing to write them than not. The last thing I want to discourage would-be reviewers by loading on unnecessary stuff. But if you are a reviewer who has a little bit of time to make our job easier I can assure you it will mean you will see your reviews on the front page sooner.[/b]

Thie "stuff" you mention is the job of the updaters, it's true. (Actually, that's not quite true, but as far as you're concerned we'll go with that.) But updaters are as lazy as you are and have the added task of doing this for EVERY review that comes along. These pointers will insure your review doesn't sit in the queue for months until someone deicdes to make it ready for updating. That's all.

.:EDIT:. I just went and made the steps and pointers more concise. I hope this makes them seems lees daunting.

[bruno]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(guesst @ Jul 12 2006, 11:34 PM) [snapback]242996[/snapback]</div>

@Shrek, I want to highlight this:

Thie "stuff" you mention is the job of the updaters, it's true. (Actually, that's not quite true, but as far as you're concerned we'll go with that.) But updaters are as lazy as you are and have the added task of doing this for EVERY review that comes along. These pointers will insure your review doesn't sit in the queue for months until someone deicdes to make it ready for updating. That's all.
[/b]

Maybe, i have send some games to Kosta and after only a few day´s they are check and put in the main forum, i think have to do with grammar squad( yes they are here to correct the mistakes (so i think that) and put the tags), i agree that wasn´t a work to the updater, but the rest it their work, like i´ma updater in the portuguese language,i know it´s not so important or complex, like updater in the main page, but it´s all a little work to do.

Of course the sceenshots are taken by the reviewer, but you can install the game to make screenshots with less pix if you have IRFAN View, you can put the image smaller.

I hope all understan what i whant to say. :wallbash:

[Maikel]

btw, Dosbox has a good screencapture build in. Pops out nice PNG format pictures with low KB.

don't know the shortcut anymore though

[The Fifth Horseman]

CTRL+F5.

Thanks for the info, Guesst.

[SupSuper]

Yeah, thanks. I always provide most of that info, I thought it was mandatory, but nice to know I'm helping out the updaters.