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Guidelines

Please note

You can find the most updated guidelines for users and editors, hosted at googlecode:

Simple user guide to UVL
Guidelines for editors
Other related documentation index

Users

  • Tags
    Any logged user can easily tag games, just click 'Add a tag' just below the 'vote' section.
    Users can delete their own tags, but not other's. Editors can delete any tag.
    You can add multiple space-separated tags at once too.

  • Why use tags?
    Tags are great when someone is looking for a game, but can't remember its name, so these could contain typical elements found in a game.
    Tags can be used to group multiple games as sometimes searching for game name can't give proper results.

  • Writing
    Since the last update, adding a description or a review to a game is different than editing the game data. The game description is now composed by a number fo articles.
    Any logged user can add a new article. Editors can edit any article.
    Any article can be classified as

    • Main description
      A game should have just one main description, this shouldn't be used to evaluate the game quality, instead should just describe the game and eventual facts related.
      Various authors can edit it, just like a wiki article.
    • Personal review
      A review where the writer gives his own idea about the game. Nobody else should edit it.
      The content of personal reviews could be later used by editors to build the 'main description' text.
    • Officially released description
      When the text is copy/paste(d) from an official article (press release, official site)
      The writer should leave the 'signature' field empty (your effort is still recorded, don't worry), and the source field should be used too.
    • Game author comment
      Sometimes game authors find their forgotten baby in UVL, and are so kind to write something about it!
      The signature field should report the programmer name.

    When editing game descriptions, there are some special tags that are preferred over classic HTML:

    • game links
      [[game:Tekken]] > Tekken (lists all the Tekken games)
      [[gameid:11612 Tekken 3]] > Tekken 3 (direct link to the game with ID 11612)
    • company links
      [[company:Sega]] > Sega (company info page)
    • external links
      [[link:http://www.google.com]] > http://www.google.com
      or
      [[link:http://www.google.com Google site]] > Google site (note the space between the url and the description)
    • internal links
      [[link:tags Tag cloud]] > Tag cloud
    • link to game tags search
      [[gametag:tekken]] > Tekken
    • spoiler text
      [[spoiler:the text you want to hide]] > when clicking show spoiler, the hidden text is showed

    NOTE: External links and internal links are now handled with the same tag: [link]. Just use http:// in the url to make it external.

    Do not edit other people work without a good reason.

    Avoid to describe games with 'cool!' or 'the best of all the time':
    The description could be used for 'name that game' queries, so please describe what happens in the gameplay...

Game editors

  • Year field
    This field will be renamed to date, as now it can hold more info and will almost follow the ISO date format.. There will be three formats accepted:
    1. yyyymmdd
    2. yyyymm
    3. yyyy (as before)
    In this way, if only the year is needed (i.e. for graphs) taking the first 4 characters will give backward compatible data.
    The question mark to indicate uncertain dates will be accepted only with year (yyyy?) : if you don't know the month, just not add it!

  • Images
    Even if there's no limit on the number of images for each game, do no exagerate... The typical images number could be about three/five (title screen, in-game, end-of-level/game over, wallpaper)
    Don't put similar images, i.e. in-game pics should show different levels and/or game play.
    Please avoid using low quality, poorly scaled, cropped or too large images.
    For 70's and 80's platforms games, an unscaled, not lossy (pixel-perfect) image is preferred, while for the latest console and pc games when uploaded the image is automatically scaled at about 800x600 and saved at good quality, so you don't need extra work when adding images.
    In example, the typical ZX Spectrum screenshot should be a 256x192 image (as this is the original hardware resolution), saved in GIF or PNG format.
    Low quality screenshots should be used only when the game is so rare that better images simply can't be found, i.e lost prototypes.
    Extra Option: Scale ratio: Uploaded images (via URL or file) can be scaled from 20% (reduced) to 200% (enlarged).
    Enlarging can be useful for those platforms with a very low resolution (i.e. Game Gear, 160x144 pixels) where the screenshot is really too small.
    Reducing can be useful when emulators save screenshots at double size, or with large blurred photographs. In the latter case the scaled image may look sharper.
    Extra Option: With smooth: This option is crucial: When 'on' the scaling is interpolated and the image saved in JPEG 24 bit, when 'off' no interpolation occurs and the image is saved in PNG 8 bit.
    If you need pixel-perfect scaling it has to be 'off' (and the scaling ratio has to be the right one too), while 'on' is preferred when the final resolution can't be the original one.
    Extra Option: Use as cover image The image you are uploading will be the cover image too. If it is the game first image, this option is 'on' by default. Cover images should be an in-game screenshots as may describe the game better.

  • Sources
    Before using descriptions, reviews, images from other sites please request the permission to use them from that site administrator, or at least search for the typical 'Terms and Conditions' page to see their wills.
    Even with permission, please avoid using images with huge stamps over them, they are simply ugly. (UVL doesn't add any stamp over images)
    When adding images based on 'adult' contents be sure that the game is marked as 'Erotic' so that the internal 'safe browsing' feature works right. Do not post image 'too explicit' if possible...

  • Neo-Geo games
    As these games (AES and MVS) share the same hardware, just one entry has to exists for these games, under the Neo-Geo platform. The description filed can be used to state aventual cases.
DISCLAIMER: All image galleries, logos and names are property of the respective authors - This site doesn't make use nor permits the download of copyrighted material such as ISO, video game roms, software, music, movies or similar. The site is primarily based on reviews, screenshots and various game details. - Please contact me if you believe your work has been used in a way that may constitute copyright infringement.