RF Generation Message Board

These are general guidelines that were formulated in order to provide consistency to the site. I ask that you please look these guidelines over, and make any necessary comments. Once the general guidelines are complete, we can begin the process of working on the department specific guidelines, of which the most pressing guidelines are needed for the hardware and Japanese Database.

Couple of Things to take Note of:

• Regular Members add to the site as well. As such, all the guidelines (save for staff guidelines) need to be written for not only a staff audience but also a member audience.
• We aren't looking to be anal. I don't really think it is necessary to determine how many spaces should go after a period. We are looking for general rules of thumb, not super-anal I hate the world guidelines.
• We need to get this done as soon as possible so that we can move forward and get hopping on new additions.

Now, let's start formulating. I'll begin.

General Disclaimer
The staff at RF Generation is proud to be part of the team that helps make RF Generation The Classic and Modern Video Games Database. We do our best to keep our databases growing, and we wouldn't be able to do that without your help. However, as our site grows it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain consistency throughout every game page. As such, we've created these set of guidelines as a manner to bring some uniformity to the database. We appreciate any and all submissions made to site, but we implore you to please follow these guidelines. Doing so will allow your submissions to be approved faster, cause them to be less likely to be edited massively or rejected, and make those of us who approve submissions much happier people. So, we'd really appreciate it if you make submissions following these simple guidelines. It will make our lives easier.

Verifying Information
Sometimes, if the title you are submitting is really obscure, a staff member will private message you to ask you about the title, to make sure that the title really exists and to make sure that the data submitted is factual. This may be in addition to the sleuthing our staff members already do prior to PMing you. We don't want to add erroneous information to the database, and I am sure that you, as a gaming enthusiast, collector, or both, do not want to visit a database with improper information. So, please make sure a title exists with the information you submit. We wouldn't have to reject your submission because of erroneous information.

Submitting Images
We really enjoy it when new images are submitted. However, we do have some guidelines regarding the submission of images.

First, scans must be in the JPG format. As a general rule, all scans should be 550 pixels on the SHORT SIDE. Thus, the other dimension will be greater than 550 pixels. Just set the short side (height of a Genesis cart, width of an NES box, height of a CD case, etc) to 550 pixels and let your photo editor adjust the other side to scale. There's no reason to mess up the aspect ratio. For hardware shots, you are allowed to add more than photo or scan to the database for each entry. Extra Media also allows for multiple scans to be uploaded, and in addition to that a description can be associated with extra media scans. If you need something that will resize a large batch of scans automatically and much more quickly than by doing it by hand, Arrhalomynn found a free program that you can download here:
Batch Image Resizer: EasyThumbnails v2.8

For screenshots it's almost the same but a little different. First, screenshots can be in PNG or JPG format (remember that scans are JPG only). If your emulator or screen capture software takes them in bmp you can use this program to convert them to JPG or PNG Image Converter: Solid Converter GX 1.1

On the image search results page, in the In-game shots are actual gameplay. Only one image can be displayed here multiple submissions will overwrite the previous image. Title screens are the title screen of the game. Only one image can be displayed here multiple submissions will overwrite the previous image. An end screen is the screen shown when the game has been beaten (NOT "Game Over" screens, unless that is what it says at when the game has been finished successfully). Only one image can be displayed here multiple submissions will overwrite the previous image. Action shots perhaps should have been named in-game, as they can include both more in-game shots, FMV stills, menu screens, game over screens, and pretty much anything else you want to. Action shots are just for an assortment of screenshots from the game. This is the only listing you can submit multiple images for.

Please note that we expect scans and the like to look "nice". This includes making sure that Aspect Ratios are correct, the image is 'straight' and also cropped correctly.

A note about our Character Encoding
Character Encoding is Evil. In an ideal world, UTF-8 would have came out before ASCII. Unfortunately, it didn't, and as such many sites are not coded in a consistent character set. For RF Generation, we use the character set ISO-8859-1 (Western European). As such, we can't display Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, or any other non Latin Script based language without using some form of Internet Magic. Perhaps in the future the site will transition to UTF-8, but boy is that a pain in the behind. So for the time being, we'll work around our limitations, and we'll strive to bring the best darn website that the Western-European Char Set can bring.

Titles
Titles should be the actual name of the game or piece of hardware as it was called in the country that it was released in. For example, if a title is in French then the title should stay in French. Sometimes a title might need to be Romanized. If this is the case, then I recommend that you check out the region specific guidelines for the proper way to Romanize.

Also, Titles that begin with the word "The" should have the "The" at the end. For example, The Legend of Zelda should be entered in the database as Legend of Zelda, The. Lastly, we ask that if a title has a Colon operator in it that you include the colon operator, it is part of the title, regardless of how insignificant it may be.

Variation Titles
For games, the variation title is variation title that appears on the box. For example, the variation title of an N64 player's choice game would be Player's Choice. Simple enough, right? For hardware, however, it is a little bit more difficult, and I recommend that you check out the hardware specific guidelines for inspiration as to how to add that controller variation you have.

Alternate Titles
Let's say you have a foreign title, and you want the world to know it's translated title. Perhaps there is another title that this game or hardware goes by. If either of these scenarios are the case, than the Alternate Title field is where that alternative title goes. Straight forward, no? The alternate title should conform also to the same guidelines as the Title field.

Regions and Countries
Regions and countries can be a bit confusing. To guide you through the process, there is this little blurb on the subject. The only required field in an addition or regional variation addition is the region field. Simply stated, select the region that the was released in. What if the game exists in multiple regions, such as North America, Japan, and Europe? The game would need to be added three times. If the game is region wide, the region field is all you need to fill out and you can disregard the country field; however, what about games that only work in certain countries in a region? In that case, you would need to select the countries from the Country field. To select more than one country, hold down CTRL (or whatever the Mac Equivalent is) and select the countries that you need. If you want to deselect a country, click the country while holding CTRL. It should be noted that countries will only work with its associated region, with one exception. In order to allow for PAL-A variants, Australia can be selected in Europe. For the record an entry will always be tied to a region, even if it only works in one country in the region . Keep that in mind. If you find that a country needs to be added to the system please contact an administrator.

Year
Pretty self explanatory. This is the year this title was released. Not the year that its regional equivalent was released, but the year that the title was released in its specified region.

Part Numbers
Part Numbers are the unique identifiers associated with each piece of hardware or game. For example, the part number of the Wii Remote is RVL-003. To learn more about Part Numbers and for guidance as to where to find part numbers, see the database specific sections.

Barcode / UPC
UPC, or Universal Product Code (or EAN, etc), they mean the same thing. The UPC (Barcode) is the product bar code for a game or hardware title. If it is a barcode then, how the heck is it added to the database? Well, a bar code is an encoding of a number (in the case of the UPC), and you will generally find that number above or below the bar code. It should be noted that on these bar codes there are sometimes two small numbers at the corners of the bar code. Those are also part of the UPC, so don't forget to include them. Lastly, do not put spaces in the barcode, it should be one long number. For now, we only allow one barcode per entry, but that may change in the future.

Media Format
Pretty self-explanatory. Select the correct media format from the list. A media quantity field will then show up once the media format field is entered. If the media quantity is not 1 then we ask that you enter the number of CDs, DVDs, etc. that the game came on. Sometimes a media size field will show up, if you know the size of the cartridge then we ask that you enter that size. If you need a media format added please contact an administrator.

Well, I've written stuff specific to all submissions. Comment, and add or edit recommendations. Please remember that these guidelines or hints are the basis for all of your section specific guidelines? Consider the following:

• Are these anal enough?
• Is anything missing?

Okay, it's been 2 weeks since I asked for comments, and even longer since we had the meeting...

Guys, I need these to be looked at and I need comments or recommendations or edits made. Yes, this is creating structure on the site, but it is for the better. The system can be confusing, and we need to ensure that we are giving people the proper guidance to ensure that they are submitting things correctly.

I would also like to mention that if this thread doesn't have meaningful comments in it by Friday, you'll all be receiving a wonderful reminder via our Private Messaging system. I care about the well being of the site, and we got to get this done to make sure that we are preparing for the future. The time to sit this issue on the back burner is over, it is now time to act.

That seems pretty thorough.  I'm not really a man for details, but I think it looks great.  Consistancy is so clutch in gaming sites.

Should something be included as to "making sure a game isn't already submitted with a different title"?  I know we had problems with that a few times.

Ken

Very thorough!



A few things about title additions I would point out (maybe):

Titles like "The Adventures of Dino Riki" should be input as "Adventures of Dino Riki, The"

Also, using a colon in the proper place should be noted.

Those are my only thoughts on guidelines (that you haven't covered)

At the top of this page there are a bunch of general guidelines that were written for the site. These guidelines will be the basis for uniformity amongst the site, and also the framework for section specific guidelines. I ask that you please make necessary comments on these guidelines, and I also ask that these guidelines were written intended for not only staff members but also our regular members.

One thing you may want to include is for submiters not to include it in any languages the site currently cant support.  I've seen a number being submited in Japanese and figure it's because I have the encoding for the language.

Yeah, I think version 4 of the submissions system will have a space for the foreign title / UTF support, but until then yeah, you're right.

you mention in detail the size images need to be but nothing about quality. not everyone has photo editing software so things like CD's being rotated properly might be tough to ask for but boxes and carts should all be scanned straight and cropped. any scanner tool can handle those basic tasks.

I didn't realize that I still hadn't commented on these guidelines.  I think they're good, here's one suggestion (I'm gonna go over it again later to double check for other stuff):

In the guidelines you state that regions are for countries that the game works in, but I personally think it's better to change that to regions being based on where the game was sold/distributed in.  Also, PAL-B should be changed to PAL-A regarding the comment about Australia being part of the Europe region for variants (thanks for adding this btw). 

I changed the game addition guidelines, that change makes choosing a region identical to choosing a region for hardware. Also changed PAL-B to PAL-A.

Thanks -- that was quick!

I mentioned something about Images Den, they should now know that they can't upload crap.

Both Part Numbers and UPCs should contain no spaces.

In the case of part numbers only use hyphens and/or forward and back slashes if they are present on the cartridge/CD/DVD.

If their is no part number on the media itself then you may refer to the box and/or manual to try and locate a part number.

I've been putting spaces in the UPC's myself. They appear that way on the cases and the UPC lookup on google refers to them in both ways. Also I find it helps keep the numbers from getting messed up with there's a break every few digits or so. But if the concensus wants no breaks then that's fine too.

Also I was wondering if we should adapt some sort of standard on hardware pics in regards to the backgrounds? I think the hardware pics would look much better on a solid colour background that gives good contrast than everybody's carpet. :P I took a few questionable pics myself that I second guessed and a few I re-did on a white background and it makes a helluva difference. With the new site layout I think even more so.

I think we should spend some time discussing how we can increase consistancy within the database. In lieu of the guidelines that are being written vigilance within the staff needs to be at it's peak.

Some of these things have been discussed before so I'll add them here as well as they apply.

1. genre Everyone should do a database search for breakout. I use this one as a easy example of how we need to address Genre classification, which will apply to both hardware and software for new games as well as old. For games with more than one title it may change but even just the breakout titles alone have 3 different genres for the same game. Some of the odd ones are left over from before we had a drop down list to choose from.

2. UPC, Part numbers. some discussion have already taken place as to how to bring order to these. Should we use spaces, slashes, dashes etc to separate numbers or letters that sort of thing.

3. Publisher, Developer Square, Square Electronic Arts L.L.C., Squaresoft is an example we already have in the database. Since it is a searchable field i think we need to work on getting these in order as well. The stranger the name the more varied the variations of it people wil use which means the bigger chance of missing games in searches. Same applies for the Developer field as well. Keeping in mind company name changes, partnerships, regional differences etc.

4. Controller Standard Controller, Dual Shock, dual analog etc. Many variations exist for controllers. We need to nail down some boundaries here, maybe on a system by system basis.

I know this may seem like a lot of work but really it's not. A staffer can edit 10 pages in 5 minutes, a team a whole sub-section or system in less than a week or two. I edited 8 games I found within my own collection in mere minutes. The importance of this will only increase as the site becomes bigger, more staff join and our reputation grows. Once we establish a few working guidelines for consistancy we can have an ongoing thread for any gmes/systems whose info is in question or a staff member is unsure on how to proceed.

Try going into your collections and sorting them by genre or by publisher, you'd be surprised by how many variations there are. Or pick one of the bigger collections on the site and sort by genre or publisher, and see some of the odd standouts that can easily be edited.

Feel free to add anything I've missed and ask questions, I'm sure we'd all like to see plenty of feedback on this as it will only make our database that much better and professional.

What is needed is a database of publishers and developers etc., much like how mobygames works, then when a person puts a name in, a list of matches appears which the user can pick from.

It's the only way to have uniformity

No spaces in UPC - and / only if they are part of thye code.
Sony games as an example of an acceptable -

As for unifying developers and publishers.

The original final fantasy wasn't made by SquareEnix just as the newsest wasn't made by Square. Publishers/developers  names shoulda appear in our database as they did on the game when it was released.
Thats why we have EA, EA Games, EA Sports, EA Sports Big, Electronic Arts, etc, etc

The same goes for Midway, Capcom, Sony, Konami, Universal, Take2/GS(Global Star Software)/Rockstar/2k/2k Sports and many other pub/dev groups that generally get lumped together.

If what you meant was getting rid of instances like EA(correct IMO) vs. E.A. and Acclaim(correct also) vs Aklaim then ok that makes sense and i am all for it :)

Exactly. Companies change names all the time and I think we've got a good handle on that, It's the Square Soft versus Squaresoft ones we have to work on. Or the Bioware versus Bioware Corp. (proper) ones as well.

We should also encourage the addition of ISBN numbers as well, I usually add them as part numbers but I'm sure some people may think that information isn't relevant or useful to this site.

We've never had a true set of standards of how entries in the database should be entered, and this was fine when we were a small site, but now that our database is getting to become pretty prominent, it's come back to bite us in the butt.

We should have had guidelines long ago so that these differences wouldn't be a problem, but since a lot of information on the site is from before we started talking about standards, there are a lot of inconsistencies out there. 

The most important step right now is to stop the bleeding and make guidelines to ensure that no more problems are added into the database.  Once we have guidelines, the problems should be contained and we should be able to start correcting them.

As Keith said, correcting shouldn't take that long if we all work together.  Even if you don't have the 5 or so minutes to correct flawed games, at least make a note in the items to be fixed thread so that you or another staff member can correct it later.

A quick response to the varying publishers...what about creating a database of publishers as a dropdown list?  This way members can click on the dropdown list, then type the first one or two letters to get to the publisher...this way there would be no inconsistencies.  We can still separate EA from EA Sports, and Square from SquareEnix or whatever it is called now.  It will take a while in the beginning to get all the developers and publishers in a list, but it shouldn't be all that bad.  I'd be more than happy to go through all the NES developers for starters.  We can then create a thread here and/or on one of the public forums for publisher/developer submissions (or make a script so that when a new publisher/developer is used in a new game submission or game edit, the reviewer [staff member] can verify the addition and the publisher/developer will be added to the publisher/developer database/list).  What do you guys think of that?

This should also make it possible to make the publisher/developer clickable, which would then list all games released by that developer/publisher (some other sites have this and it's quite useful...not sure how hard it would be to program this?). 

Oh, we can do that, and we can also do a developers list. Such a thing could even be developed into it's own databases.

Didn't I already say that?

I'm not sure if we need a drop down list but a database does sound cool.

With a drop down list we'd still need a "other" blank, it would have to be constantly updated and people will still confuse similar names or misuse old ones for new games and vice versa.

Imagine a drop-down list this long (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_developers) for each submission, yikes.  :o

A few ideas on the database. We could have Developers and publishers' pages with the games they have been involved with, history of the company, notable accomplishments, addresses, websites, awards won, employees etc etc. Maybe even corporate logos as images when possible.

A dropdown list is a good idea, but it has to be an intelligent one, say it kicks in after typing a few letters and shows a list of possible suggestions.

The way HOL works (amiga database of which i'm also an admin) is each entry field has a little search box next to it, so for example you type in core, click the search box and a little window pops up with with a list of matches, you click the one you want and it fills in the field.

I am thinking this sounds like a no guys ;)

There are just WAY to many publishers out there to make the dropbox a feesable idea.

Never mind in the US but the fact that these lists are world wide and cover all gaming platforms including PC makes a list of developers and publishers over the years probably 1/4 as plentiful as the number of games we would be adding lol

I've already begun removing the spaces from between UPC's, and have done 15 so far. I encourage staff members to pick a system and plug away at it and post it here so others know.

Maybe we should mention no spaces for UPC's in the submission FAQ as well, but otherwise keep an eye on new submissions.

I'm working on the Xbox 360 right now and I'll do the Xbox next.

Finished editing the UPC codes for the 360 (all regions), will start the Xbox section tomorrow. Feel free to pick a system and plug away.  :)

In case your wondering, there was 47 spaced UPC's in the 360 section and it only took 10 minutes to do them.  ;)

Also in case you question the validity of this keep in mind that spaces in the UPC codes screws up database searches which although isn't a search field for members it is for us. So if it's to become a searchable field later on better to clean it up now than later.

Regarding the UPCs, won't removing the spaces make certain UPCs alike that would otherwise be different?

I.e., some barcodes have an extra number on the left and/or on the right.  If one game or item were to have a barcode "1-23456-78901" it would look the same as an item with the barcode "12345-67890-1" when removing the spaces/dashes.  However, IIRC, the first 5-digit number resembles the company, and the second 5-digit number resembles the particular item/model, and the last 1-digit number is occasionally used for revisions?  I'm not 100% positive on that, but if that is the case, then removing the spaces/dashes would make it seem as tho two items are identical from the same producer and the same model whereas they could be completely different (incase we ever implement a script for creating a UPC etc from numbers in the UPC/barcode field).  Wouldn't it, in that case, be wise to use dashes or something rather than putting the numbers together?  What do you guys think?

Using a simple 12 digit number is as much for member convienience as it is functional as a search field. Right now we have two types, and since the search function recognizes spaces in between searches are hit or miss at best. We needed to set a standard so the whole database can make use of barcodes/UPC's. I've added at least 200 UPC's of my own to the database with spaces in them, but since that type was only used by a minority even I had to agree it was for the best.

I think it'd be better to have 3 or 4 search results which include the one your looking for than turn up nothing at all.  :P

I joined this site a few days ago to cross reference soe of our UPCs:
http://www.upcdatabase.com/
It was kinda insightful.

THe begining is indeed for the company the second part is also for the product.
I am also not certain about revisions but i think the ability to use 10 numbers 12x leaves many more possibilities for a UPC code than i could fathom this early in the morning.

To get to a uniform data field for UPC for all entried in the DB, could we just not do a search/replace function to eliminate all spaces at once?  Obviously, I do not have direct access to the DB, but for those that do, this may be an option.  Even exporting it to Access, doing a search for " " and replacing it with "" would do the trick pretty quickly for all entries in the DB.  Let me know if this is feasible.

Also, to prevent future occurences (and work on our part in editing submissions), could there be a filter placed on this field that prevents non-numerics?  This might help stop the bleeding as well.

I agree that it would be more convenient and easy to keep it uniform, but I was more concerned with using the data in the database to find relationships between items.  I.e. if two products have different publishers on the packaging, but the same producer digits in the UPC, it's likely that the publishers have more in common than meets the eye...and this info could be useful for people trying to document certain items or regional releases.  In other words, if someone were interested in collecting all items from a particular company and its subsidiaries, then all that person would have to do (assuming the database would be complete with information) is to type in the producer digits in a UPC search form (which would also be possible with the current method, but may yield more and incorrect/unwanted results).  It's really only a minor thing, so it's not too big of a deal, but it's really impossible to work backwards once the spaces/dashes have been removed, so that's why I thought it might be a good idea to change the guideline to using dashes or something of the like (and make the search field similar to the field used when inserting the cd key during a product install).  Just an idea ;)

Yeah, breaks don't really exist in a barcode, you enter it in as a long number into a register.

So, it's time to move this to the Thinktank.

General Public:

Here are the general submission guidelines for the database. Please review and comment, as these guidelines will help to ensure that we stay uniform and professional into the future. After two weeks, I'll write the final general guidelines, which will then be approved by the staff.

Please look these over and comment, these are really important to the future of the site.

I'm merging this into general guideline discussion.