WHAT TO DO IF YOUR GAME SUBMISSION IS DENIED/PENDING

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Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
If your game submission is denied, or you feel it is taking a very long time to be accepted, DO NOT make a topic asking why. Instead, do the following:

Description
- Check to make sure your Game Description was at least two paragraphs long, even if it exceeded the 500 character limit required to submit a game. At least one paragraph must talk about the plot of the game, if your game has one.
- Description must be in English. If your game is in another language, you may have a description in that language but you MUST provide an English version as well.
- If you filled up those 500 characters with irrelevant information, your game may still be denied.
- Saying "Demo" or "Work in Progress" is not a description.
- You could mention who the main character is, what the general plot of the game is about, or what the battle system is like.
- Potential players want to know about the story, characters and possible features - not about your reasons for creating the game. Any details to that effect might be completely ignored in the character count.
- While we do allow some creativity and boundary-breaking, games that contain hate-speech of any kind (racial, sexual or genderist), deliberately inflammatory language, insults towards the community and members, explicit content and the like, will be denied out of hand.

- Check to make sure that your description has proper spelling, punctuation and grammar. Even if your description meets the 500 character minimum, it may not be considered substantial enough for approval.

- Don't break lines in the middle of a sentence. The site has word wrap and will create a break automatically. Doing so will see your game denied, except in the case of poetry or artistic licence (if your whole game description is in iambic pentameter then it'll be considered artistic licence. If it breaks every line for the hell of it, denial city here you come).


Images
- Check to make sure that your game has at least THREE SCREENSHOTS. It cannot be accepted if it has fewer. It will not even appear in the submissions queue.
  • The screenshots should be of in-game footage, not artwork or editor footage.
  • The screenshots should all be different. Three screenshots of the same room does not count as three screenshots.
  • Though you are free to include a screenshot of your game's title screen, it will NOT be counted as one of your three screenshots.
  • Screenshots of Sample maps won't be counted.
  • Do NOT submit .BMPs as screenshots. Use an appropriate web format such as .PNG or .JPG.
  • Crop screenshots to a decent size. Do not crop them to tiny size in order to not show map details or so help you...!
  • The more screenshots, the better idea people have of your game and whether they want to play it or not. It also gives those checking the queue a better idea as to the quality of your game so more is always better. Unless your game is crap in which case...
  • You may be asked to provide more images if your initial map images were of a substandard quality. This is to make sure that your game is given the best chance to go through, just in case of you having picked a bad representative screenshot.
  • Pornographic material is NOT allowed.
  • While concept art is nice, it will not count. (Also, any concept art you add to your game page must have either a link or credit back to the original artist somewhere on that page. If you cannot supply that link/credit, we ask that you remove the art.)

To take a screenshot:
Hit the PRT SCRN button on your keyboard (next to the F12 key). This makes a copy of your current screen. Open an image editing software (paint.net is an online one that you can use and Graphics Gale is a decent one that is free to download). Paste the image into the software, then crop the image to the size of the game screen.
If you played full screen, resize the image.
Save as either .png or .jpg file (.png is best) and upload that image to your gamepage.


Quality
Your game must meet certain standards of quality. These standards are fairly subjective and arbitrary, but in general your game should have:
- proper spelling and grammar,
- a decent grasp of game mechanics,
- have a reasonable level of detail in the environments (especially if it's an RPG Maker game),
- be free of any obvious game-breaking bugs,
- and should probably not be about RTP hero Alex saving the world from a demon trapped in a crystal.


Other
- If you lie to us about what is contained in a game when asked to elaborate on points, it will be pulled, pending investigation. If we find certain aspects of the game description or content provided worrying in some way, we will investigate.
- Do not remove or edit key aspects of a game page in order to hide things like game score or reviews.
- Stolen assets or games will result in us checking with the initial creator and can lead to a ban if you are found guilty of doing so with deliberate intent. If you use something that was made especially for a particular game (fellow indie developers) make sure you have proof of permission when asked about it. Maps, music, sound effects, graphical resources, scripts and the like count for this - if asked to remove such things, do so.


We reserve the right to say NO to a game based on the content within. That is our right as a site which hosts and advertises games.


Here are a few links to information that can help raise your game's quality.

Screenshot Thread - Post your screenshots there, explain that you need some feedback to make them better and people will more than likely respond.

New Developer Mapping Thread - A place for those new to mapping to post their screenshots and get deeper critique.

This page has a lot of good links.


Blindmind's Mapping tutorials: 1 & 2

Nessiah's Do's and Don'ts of Mapping series:
I : II : III : IV : V : VI : VII : VIII

Indrah's Mapping in 5 easy steps

Liberty's Video Mapping Tutorials: I : II : III


- If your game is denied acceptance, you will receive notification from the person who denied it telling you why it was denied. You will generally be allowed to correct any problems they identified and re-submit.

- If your game is just taking a long time to be accepted, please be patient. The site gets many submissions and sometimes it takes a while to get through them all. Eventually you will receive notification that it was accepted or denied.

- If you are contacted about your game, do not waffle. You may be asked to explain x, y or z a bit better. Do this. We ask questions to make sure your game is fit for our site. Lying about your game content will see the game removed and yourself looking at trouble.

- If you have done all of the following and you still are not sure why your game was denied, or you did not receive a notification of why, then (and only then) send a PM to Liberty, the staff member in charge of submissions, and ask (POLITELY) why your game was denied.



Thanks,
The RMN Staff
tardis
is it too late for ironhide facepalm
308
thank you so much for this topic. :) seriously, it was really nice to finally see something like this here. well worded as well! that should kill some of the confusion that seems to abound these days. good work!
post=121975
and should probably not be about RTP hero Alex saving the world from a demon trapped in a crystal.
/
The RMN Staff


oh so that's why my game was rejected

fascists.
Hey, what if you only have one room in the game to begin with? I'm working on a one-room adventure game at the moment but it's a big room so would it still be HEH NOPE or what.
i am fairly sure context-specific exceptions are considered it is not bot handled
these are just possible reasons as to why a game might have been denied

not "your game will be denied if you do any of these things"
Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
Well technically a game can't be accepted if it doesn't have at least three screenshots. It won't even appear in the queue of games to be accepted. But the rest are mostly guidelines, yes. Exceptions can be made if the situation warrants it.
Augh... My game has been denied... Again... And I've been working pretty hard on it too...
post=123520
Hey, what if you only have one room in the game to begin with? I'm working on a one-room adventure game at the moment but it's a big room so would it still be HEH NOPE or what.

what engine? It must resemble the old Gauntlet games, lol.
i did eveything up there and it got denied for bad storytelling and not good mappingwhen i spent a good 2 weeks working on it.
Max McGee
with sorrow down past the fence
9159
post=137045
i did eveything up there and it got denied for bad storytelling and not good mappingwhen i spent a good 2 weeks working on it.


you....you think that's....long?
Hehehehehe, two weeks... I've spent more than that on just writing the plot for my new project without even opening Sphere yet.
Time does not automatically equate to quality.
There is a correlation between less time and less quality, though.

EDIT: Not that I'm saying that the less time spent the worse the game.
Yeah, there's a correlation, that's why I said automatically though. It's not a guarantee. You can write a story for years and it can be the shittiest thing someone has ever written, ever.
Max McGee
with sorrow down past the fence
9159
19 Months Later Edit: I was being mean.
Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
Max
Max's post

I do not recommend this course of action.
Max McGee
with sorrow down past the fence
9159
post=138210
Max
Max's post
I do not recommend this course of action.


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For a second there I thought that would be a hotlink to Avatar.