This section serves as a place for members to organize testing lobbies and provide feedback for unfinished maps. The following rules are designed to provide the highest quality and maximum exposure for the content and services contained within this section. When giving feedback make sure to follow the forum rules and proper feedback etiquette. MAP PREVIEWS I. Maps that are not yet completed shall be posted in this section. Members and staff will provide their constructive feedback and criticisms of the maps in an effort to help forgers create polished and refined products. II. It is required that any map submitted for testing have a preview thread associated with it. This ensures that members who test a map can provide feedback directly to the author. Refusal to create a preview thread will only hurt the author of the map by limiting feedback and certain testing leaders may reject testing the map all together. III. Thread format: Please follow appropriate portions of the forum rules when posting maps. For your convenience, a map posting template is available in this thread. The template may be modified if necessary to best display your map, but please ensure all of the essential elements are present. IV. When a map author feels a Work-in-Progress map is ready for release, the author should contact a moderator to have the thread moved from the WIP forum to the Maps forum. Please refrain from creating a duplicate thread in the Maps forum. Maps in the "Maps" forum are completed works which will receive no more updates at which point qualify for a feature on the front page. TESTING - FOR HOSTS These rules and guidelines are based on the best practices for running large and successful lobbies and will be enforced whenever possible. These rules will ensure ease of management and maximum exposure for hosts as well as provide quality assurance for those that request the service. I. Any member can create a testing thread however, the purpose of a testing thread is to test each other's maps so if you are looking to only have your own map tested then you must submit it for testing. Threads labeled TESTING that ask for their own map to be tested will be locked immediately. II. Test Lobby Hosts agree to uphold the responsibility of ensuring that any maps submitted in their thread get ample play time. III. Testing lobbies must be listed at least a week in advance of the planned date. This ensures that enough people can discover the thread and sign up. Threads that do not follow this rule will be locked immediately. IV. Recurring testing lobbies shall be contained within ONE thread and be periodically updated. The thread will be stickied to make it easier for members to discover and sign up for the service. (If applicable, please have the day of the week clearly displayed in the title.) V. During a lobby, please refrain from relinquishing control of Party Leader. If control must be relinquished, please give control only to a player who can be trusted to run a fair lobby. Halo 4 has a great local files browser allowing users to upload files to their fileshare from the pregame lobby; any member that wants a map tested should have it in their fileshare for the partly leader to access. VI. You may feel free to require that a player attend the lobby in order to have a map tested. Please ensure that, if attendance is required, at least one map is tested for each player in attendance prior to the lobby concluding. If you do not require attendance for testing, please test maps in the order in which the requests were publicly received. VII. Following the completion of a lobby, the host should post a feedback summary in the lobby thread. If possible, the host should leave more detailed feedback in the appropriate map threads. All testers are encouraged to post feedback in the appropriate map threads. The author of the map may not be in the testing session so it is important that they receive feedback. Seeing feedback from test sessions lets everyone know of what they can expect from that particular host's service. TESTING - FOR TESTERS I. Members interested in a recurring testing lobby shall subscribe to the thread to receive updates on when the next session takes place. II. Some lobbies may require your presence to have your map tested. Please participate for as long as possible. If you will be unable to attend for the entire duration, please arrange for someone to take your place. If you come only to test your map and leave immediately after then Testing Hosts have the right to blacklist you and your maps from their sessions. III. Any member that wants a map tested should have it in their fileshare for the partly leader to access. You can upload files to your fileshare from within the pregame lobby using the file browser in the start menu. IV. Follow all guidelines in the lobby threads when participating in a lobby or making a test request. III. In the event that a player must leave, it is best practice for them to replace themselves with someone on their friend's list. Whenever there are not enough members to populate a lobby simply invite friends of friends and have a map of their's thrown up for testing and give them feedback however make sure that it is done on a first come, first serve basis so that people late to the party will have more incentive to come early to have their maps tested in the event the party dies down. This a great way of getting non members involved with the Forge Hub community.
Edited, as oVR incorporated all of the worthwhile suggestions into the above post. Much appreciation to oVR and the staff for considering my suggestions. I deleted the rest of my post to avoid confusing people about which post contained the actual rules.
IDK about this one. Perhaps it would be better to qualify it with "major" updates? It seems a bit silly not to be able to update the map if, say, it gets into matchmaking and some HLG lover finds a completely broken spot. Perhaps change the prefix name to "Testing Lobby" to avoid confusion? I can see how new members / first time forum users would think the prefix meant "I want my map to be tested" or "this map is in the process of testing." A week is a bit extreme especially if you're looking for something with a low player count like 2v2. It seems a bit strong to lock a thread posted six days before the lobby, but it also seems silly to have members posting testing lobby threads the day before the lobby occurs. Perhaps a happy medium is to say "Forge Hub recommends listing testing lobbies at least four days (insert arbitrary date here) in advance of the planned date, and more if your lobby will have more than eight players." Gonna go full grammar **** here and say "should" and add "to avoid cluttering the forum" at the end of the sentence, just to make the somewhat obvious reasoning clear to everybody. The "should" thing applies wherever "shall" is present just to remove the somewhat hostile/controlling tone that comes with "shall" without sacrificing the meaning at all. "Forge Hub requires that" is another better way to put it. Again, gonna full **** and suggest "During a lobby, Forge Hub recommends you not to relinquish control of Party Leader to anybody who you feel cannot be trusted to run the lobby" because there's no way to enforce the rule and no real reason to. It seems like more of a tip than anything. Self explanatory. The part after talking about how to use the file browser is common sense / could go in its own "Help" section rather than being in the rules, as it's not really a rule. I just made a couple of basic suggestions. There are a couple of suggestions about details that I skipped over just because they're minor. If you'd like, we can talk on Skype.