RobotMonkeyHead Posted September 25, 2016 Share Posted September 25, 2016 CLASS 1 ⚡ Sharing • WHAT TO EXPECT: ⤵ Spoiler In this class you'll learn everything you need to know about sharing your Mugen creations on a forum. We'll cover file hosting, screenshot posting, video screen capture, and feedback etiquette, among other things. It's a quick and easy class, and the upside is that it requires no knowledge base whatsoever. It's just going to get you prepared to share your work so that when you do start coding, you'll be able to get the feedback and help you need. The etiquette you'll learn here does apply on many Mugen forums in general, but not all, so don't forget to visit each forums rule page. Let's get down to business. • CLASS MAP LINKS: ⤵ Spoiler LESSON 1: Files TOPIC 1 ~ File Hosting TOPIC 2 ~ Hosting Site TOPIC 3 ~ Files in PostsLESSON 2 - Screenshots TOPIC 1 ~ Taking Screenshots TOPIC 2 ~ Image Hosting TOPIC 3 ~ Images in Posts LESSON 3 - Gifs & Video TOPIC 1 ~ Making GIFS TOPIC 2 ~ Screen Recording Software TOPIC 3 ~ Video Hosting & Posting LESSON 4 - Release Presentation TOPIC 1 ~ Standard Info TOPIC 2 ~ What, Where, How? TOPIC 3 ~ Feedback & Etiquette • DIFFICULTY: ★☆☆☆☆ • REQUIREMENTS: None Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobotMonkeyHead Posted September 25, 2016 Author Share Posted September 25, 2016 ~ LESSON 1 ~ For Starters ☞ ___________________◢ TOPIC 1 ~ Caring is Sharing ⤵ Spoiler Share what you ask? You just joined the Mugen Training Academy. If you don't already have WIPs or something to share you're probably going to soon. But that's not why you're learning how to share your work first. On the course of your classes, it could become necessary for you to upload your work at some point, so an instructor or another student can tell you exactly what you need to do to fix it. Even if you don't ever end up needing help to fix something, you're definitely going to need to know how to upload your work for your finals in each course. That's why you're learning how to share your work first. It's also a very short step from learning how to share your work, to learning how to share your WIPs and releases on a forum. So rather than creating an entire separate course for that extra little bit, we're just going to teach you sharing in general first. That way you'll get everything in one shot, and even if you take 2 classes here and decide to devote your time to a project instead, at least you'll know how to share it. ___________________◢ TOPIC 2 ~ You Are Here ⤵ Spoiler !? Brief overview of the school and how it works. ___________________◢ TOPIC 3 ~ What You'll Need ⤵ Spoiler You're going to need stuff. Like FF3. ◉ ~ LESSON COMPLETE ~ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobotMonkeyHead Posted September 25, 2016 Author Share Posted September 25, 2016 ~ LESSON 2 ~ Files ⎘ ___________________◢ TOPIC 1 ~ About Hosting ⤵ Spoiler The first step to file sharing is putting the file you want to share on the internet so other people can download it. This is called file hosting. To do this you're going to have to get an account on a file hosting web site. There are quite a few of these, and we'll discuss options in a minute, but they're all going to require an email address to sign up. You can get one of those at mail.com without needing a pre-existing email address if you want. Another thing you're going to need is compression software. If you don't already have Winzip or Archiver for Mac (or something equivalent) you're going to want to download those. They'll compress an entire folder into a single .zip or .rar file that you can upload to your file hosting site. Once you've got your file compression software, and an email address, we're ready to start talking hosting site options. ___________________◢ TOPIC 2 ~ Hosting Sites ⤵ X Spoiler Mediafire is pretty standard issue here. The only problem you might run into with Mediafire is they like to remove copyrighted material, so occasionally some of your files might get blocked. A clever name change to the file will get you by their radar most of the time tho. Other than that, it's pretty reliable and it has a nice folder organization system. Uploads and downloads can be a bit slow, but for files as small as Mugen uses, it's pretty much a non issue. Drop-box is another option. Blurb about drop box One Drive, a few sentences about it.?? Depending on what site you use, there will be different ways to upload your file to it. Often enough, it's as simple as drag and drop. You're also going to want to figure out how to get the links to your files, so you can put them in your posts. It should be pretty easy, but there are plenty of tutorials out there if you're having trouble. ___________________◢ TOPIC 3 ~ Files in Posts ⤵ Spoiler Once you've got your file uploaded, the next step is to link to it in your post on a forum. To do that, go to your hosting site and copy the link to the files or folders you want to share. Now in the body of your post, write whatever text you want to be the link. Highlight that text, and click the link button in the editor bar (looks like a sideways paper clip). A window will pop up with 2 fields. The "Link Text" field, which should contain your highlighted text, and a "URL" field, which is where you're going to paste the link from your file hosting site. That's all there is to it, really. You can also link to other existing downloads this way too. For example, go to a Mediafire download page and copy the URL from the browser's location bar, and paste that in the "URL" field of a link in your post. This is often how people link each other to content on the Requests board, without having to upload it themselves. ◉ ~ LESSON COMPLETE ~ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobotMonkeyHead Posted September 25, 2016 Author Share Posted September 25, 2016 ~ LESSON 3 ~ Screenshots ⍗ ___________________◢ TOPIC 1 ~ Taking Screenshots ⤵ Spoiler Screenshots are key. To take them on a PC, click on the window you want, hold Alt and press Print Screen. This places the screenshot in the clipboard. You then have to open up MS Paint or some similar program and paste it. File save, and done. You can also press F12 while in the Mugen window and the engine itself will snap a screenshot and drop it in the same directory as the mugen.exe file. To take a screenshot on a Mac, hold Shift and Command (apple) and press 4. Your cursor will turn into a crosshair. Now press the space bar to toggle between window and full screen. In window mode, whatever window you hover over should have a blue tint. Click to take a screenshot. You can change where it saves your screenshots to in the System Preferences. ___________________◢ TOPIC 2 ~ Image Hosting ⤵ Spoiler Like file hosting, you have some options for image hosting sites. They all have their differences, and there are plenty of articles online detailing what those are. There are also plenty of tutorials on how to use each of these sites. For now here's a couple of the popular image hosting sites most people on use on Mugen forums. They all have help sections if you need them as well: http://photobucket.com/ http://imageshack.us/ http://tinypic.com/ http://postimage.org/ http://imgur.com/ http://someimage.com/ You can find the above list in the forums Guidelines - Section 1 - Getting Started, if you ever need it. ___________________◢ TOPIC 3 ~ Images in Posts ⤵ Spoiler Go to your image hosting site and get the link to the picture you want to share. Now just paste the link in your post. It will auto-embed the image, meaning if you paste a link to an image, it will just paste the actual image into your post instead of the link. Easy enough. If you want to resize the picture, simply click on it, and a resizing frame will appear around it. Drag the little white boxes to change the size. Or if you want to make the picture itself into a clickable link, just highlight it as you would text and click the link button in the editor. Just like with file linking, a window will pop up with a URL field where you can enter the link you want. If the image contains any 18+ material, make sure you put it in a spoiler. To do that, highlight the picture and whatever else you want to be inside the spoiler, and click the spoiler button. A blue frame will appear around the content that will be in the spoiler in the final post. ◉ ~ LESSON COMPLETE ~ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobotMonkeyHead Posted September 25, 2016 Author Share Posted September 25, 2016 ~ LESSON 4 ~ GIFS & Videos ___________________◢ TOPIC 1 ~ Making GIFS ⤵ X Spoiler Screenshots are key. To take them on a PC, click on the window you want to screenshot, hold Alt and press Print Screen. This places the screenshot in the clipboard. You then have to open up MS Paint or some similar program and paste it. File save, and done. If you want to screenshot Mugen, simply press F12 while you're playing, or while the Mugen window is active. The engine itself will snap a screenshot and drop it in the same directory as the mugen.exe file. To take a screenshot on a Mac, hold Shift and Command (apple) and press 4. Your cursor will turn into a crosshair. Now press the space bar to toggle between window and full screen mode. In window mode, whatever window you hover over should have a blue tint. Click to take a screenshot. You can change where your screenshots are saved to in your System Preferences. ___________________◢ TOPIC 2 ~ Screen Capture Software ⤵ X Spoiler Another popular way to demo characters and stages is screen capturing video of Mugen in action. Again, as a google search will reveal, there's a pretty good variety of free software you can use for this. Bandicam bla bla bla Others for PC? For Mac, the best free one I've found after quite a bit of searching was Screenflick. 60 or 30 fps, good compression options and format possibilities and no watermark. One of the main things you're going to want to pay attention to when you're doing this (aside from file size) is frame rate. Mugen runs at 60 frames per second (60fps) so you're going to want software that will run either 60 or 30 fps. 20 fps in a pinch, but you'll only be seeing 1 in every 3 frames. It's not a huge deal, it just makes your demo look a little nicer. ___________________◢ TOPIC 3 ~ Video Hosting & Posting ⤵ Spoiler To host the videos you recorded with your screen recording software you're going to need an account on You-Tube, Dailymotion, Vimeo or something equivalent. Once you've run the gauntlet of their registration process and get your video uploaded, get the link to it. Now, just like with pics, simply paste the link in the body of your post, and it will turn into an embeded video after a few seconds. I don't know whether or not future me has gotten the video resizing working again yet, so for now, you can't resize videos. Or use them as links because, dun dun dun, they link to themselves. ◉ ~ LESSON COMPLETE ~ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobotMonkeyHead Posted September 25, 2016 Author Share Posted September 25, 2016 ~ LESSON 5 ~ Releases ___________________◢ TOPIC 1 ~ Standard Info Included ⤵ X Spoiler [X- update mta work uploading at some point] Whether you're releasing something you've created or uploading a file at MTA for help, there's some standard information and previews you should provide along with it, depending on what it is exactly. Here's the breakdown: MTA Work Uploading is common enough that there's a standard form. It has 3 parts which should always be included. They are: - Description, being anywhere from a few short sentences to a paragraph which describes why you're uploading your work. - Request, a few words to describe what exactly you're requesting. e.g. "Teacher review of .def file" or "Can anyone fix this?" - Download link. Characters can vary quite a bit so use a healthy dose of common sense here. You're going to want to post screenshots (1 to 4 should be enough) or a video preview. The following info is a good idea:- A quick writeup describing the character / creation process. A few sentences should do just fine.- Basic game play features of the character, such as play style (MvC2, SvC etc)- A list of the characters moves.- Credits to creators you got your sprites or any large chunks of code from. - Download link Stages, you should post a screenshot or video preview, along with the following info: - What version of Mugen it's for (usually 1.0, 1.1 or winmugen) - Whether or not it has super jump (meaning "can the camera scroll upward?")- Is the BGM (back ground music) included in the file?- Does the stage have animations and or parallax?- Download link Screen Packs are a little more straight forward. Video previews are nice especially if they're more complex, but the following pictures are enough:- Title Screen, Select Screen, Vs screen- The Win Screen and Intro screen (not necessary, but a plus)- The Life Bars if they're part of it.- How many character select slots there are- What resolution the screen pack is for (usually 640 x 480 or 1280 x 720).- Download link Life Bars are easy. Video is good here if you've added custom hit sparks, or have some really nice animations in them you want to show off, but most of the time a couple screenshots should do here:- Life bars in 1 on 1 mode- Life bars in Simul mode (2 players on at least 1 of the teams)- The Round 1, Fight sequence - One showing the hit sparks- Download link Portrait Packs couldn't be easier.- Previews of the portraits- What screen pack they work with, or whether they're standard (resolution)- Download link Palette Packs are also super simple.- A picture of the character's standing pos with each of the palettes applied. (Gifs work too)- Names of the palettes in the previews (in same order)- Download link ___________________◢ TOPIC 2 ~ What, Where, How? ⤵ Spoiler When you go to share your work, there's a couple things you should be aware of. First, make sure you post it on the right board. At Tier-1 you can use tags by putting tag words inside square brackets in the title of the post. This won't work on most other Mugen forums. Second, if it's an edit of existing content rather than a new creation, make sure to point that out and give credit to the original author. People aren't usually too fond of passing off others work as your own, so if you come under fire for that, just be sure to point out the mistake. Third, a lot of people like to post their creations on multiple forums. Different forums have different social climates, as you'll find out if you visit them enough. For the most part, the advice given here applies across the board, but there are some specific social preferences that vary per site. If you're looking for places to share your work, here are some other Mugen forums that are worth checking out:- Mugen Free for All- Mugen Fighters Guild- Trinity Mugen- CrusaderCast- Mugen Multiverse ___________________◢ TOPIC 3 ~ Feedback & Etiquette ⤵ Spoiler Possibly the single most crucial step in becoming a skilled creator is listening to feedback. By the time you get to a point where you understand all of the feedback being given and why, you'll understand just how valuable it really is. People generally want freedback, and so people often give it. Sadly, people sometimes take it the wrong way (the wrong way being personally). Feedback is an incredibly helpful thing, as anyone who's seriously trying to get better at their craft knows. It's actually one of the highlights of the creative process, which is why it's sad to see some creators confuse it with an assault on their pride. If you share something you've made, please don't expect every single person who posts on your release thread to give only positive feedback, as in things they like about your creation. Imagine how un-constructive that would be anyway. People post critical feedback in case you'd like to improve your creation, so that you have their suggestions (not demands) for how. You can also feel free to post any feedback you want on other people's creations. This is actually highly encouraged, and is something just about every creator in the community would like to see more of. So please, if you have suggestions for a creation, by all means post it. Just don't phrase it as an insult, and you should be fine. If someone does post their feedback in the form of an insult, there are a few things you can do. First, you can just ignore it, and filter the post for useful information. Second you can point out that there's no need to be mean about it. Often it's a simple misunderstanding, or a sense of humor lost in text form. Third, if it's really bad, you can always PM a moderator. ◉ ~ LESSON COMPLETE ~ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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