GameAmp: Guide Rules; Guidelines & Tips (must follow)

3. Building the Guide

To be able to make a guide readable; categorize the subjects of a build. For instance make a short story as prologue to how you came to your guide followed by skills, tactics and such. As example:

1) introduction
2) skills & attributes
3) explanation of the build
4) Tactics
5) Strengths, Weaknesses and conters

If you make an in-depth guide on how to use an existing build; be sure to put the creator of the build in an disclaimer. Make it known that your guide is an explanation on the usage and that you have not invented the build yourself. If this is not done, and we find out, we will consider it plagiarizing and remove the guide. We will then disapprove the guide and credit will be deducted.

When you are writing the guide; don't hesitate to explain things. Don't count on people to instantly know what you mean. Write it as if it's for people that don't know anything about the game. Doing so will provide a very informative and solid guide.

4. Images

Images is what makes the guide appealing. However some things are of importance while using images. First the size is important. People find it annoying to side scroll and trying to read. Therefore making images 600 pixels wide is highly recommended. Not all people have access to programs like Photoshop. GIMP however offers a very free photo manipulation program which can be used for editing images.


4.1 Skills

Most imporant of a guide are the skills. You can show them in 2 ways:

1:
Make a screenshot of your skillbar; crop it; and add it to your guide. Describe the skills below. Example:

1: Awaken the Blood
For 20-39 seconds, you gain +2 Blood Magic and +2 Curses, but whenever you sacrifice health, you sacrifice 50% more than the normal amount.
2: Soul Barbs
For 30 seconds, target foe takes 15-27 damage when an enchantment or hex is cast on that target.
3: Spiteful Spirit [elite]
For 8-20seconds, whenever target foe attacks or uses a skill, Spiteful Spirit deals 5-35 shadow damage to that foe and all adjacent foes.
4: Spirit of Failure
For 30 seconds, target foe has a 25% chance to miss with attacks. You gain 1-4 energy whenever that foe fails to hit in combat.
5: Spirit Shackles
For 8-24seconds, target foe loses 5 energy whenever that foe attacks.
6: Price of Failure
For 30 seconds, target foe has a 25% chance to miss with attacks and takes 6-25 damage whenever that foe fails to hit in combat.
7: Insidious Parasite
For 8-18 seconds, whenever target foe hits with an attack, you steal 5-17 Health from that foe.
8: Defile Flesh
Hex Spell. Sacrifice 20% max health. For 8-18 seconds, target foe receives only two-thirds Health from healing.


2:
Use the skill icons from our website. Easiest way is rightclicking the skill icons in our skills section; copy the link of the image like shown below and add it to your guide:


In the end it will look like this:



1: Awaken the Blood
For 20-39 seconds, you gain +2 Blood Magic and +2 Curses, but whenever you sacrifice health, you sacrifice 50% more than the normal amount.
2: Soul Barbs
For 30 seconds, target foe takes 15-27 damage when an enchantment or hex is cast on that target.
3: Spiteful Spirit [elite]
For 8-20seconds, whenever target foe attacks or uses a skill, Spiteful Spirit deals 5-35 shadow damage to that foe and all adjacent foes.
4: Spirit of Failure
For 30 seconds, target foe has a 25% chance to miss with attacks. You gain 1-4 energy whenever that foe fails to hit in combat.
5: Spirit Shackles
For 8-24seconds, target foe loses 5 energy whenever that foe attacks.
6: Price of Failure
For 30 seconds, target foe has a 25% chance to miss with attacks and takes 6-25 damage whenever that foe fails to hit in combat.
7: Insidious Parasite
For 8-18 seconds, whenever target foe hits with an attack, you steal 5-17 Health from that foe.
8: Defile Flesh
Hex Spell. Sacrifice 20% max health. For 8-18 seconds, target foe receives only two-thirds Health from healing.


4.2 Screenshots

Screenshots are a great asset to the appearance and comprehension of a guide. But there are several ways on how to make a screenshot. Try to make it 'less usual'. If you make a farm guide to farm a certain boss you can make a screenshot of the boss in subject; but you can also put your character on the foreground and point to the boss. It gives it a slightly more 'personal' touch. If you are making a running guide make a screenshot of your character running. It gives more dynamic to the image which will make it more appealing.

When describing skills; add, for example an image of your character while casting it. It helps to illustrates the description. Its of course not a necessity; but it will greatly improve the general looks and break the amount of text. Using pictures and breaking up the line of text make the guide more readable. Imagine a large paragraph on a website; after a few lines it is hard to find the line you are at. Using pictures break it and give more sense of 'knowing' where you are with reading.

There are several ways to make screenshots. The easiest way is the one provided by the game: by hitting the Print Screen button. It makes a shot of your screen at that moment and will save a *.BMP-file (bitmap file) in your GW installation folder in the subfolder 'screenshots'. Sometimes you might like to have the screen only; and not the User Interface. You can press Control + Print Screen to do so. Also pressing Alt+Control+h will hide the UI and will do so until you press Alt+Ctrl+h again. This provides a better way on a good composition since you have all the time to make the frame as you like.



There are also programs that allow you to make screenshots easier and directly into a JPEG format. good examples are Fraps and GameCam. Both can be used as freeware but will display Fraps/GameCam in the screen and will be limited in usage until registered.

5. Text, fonts and colors

The most important thing of a guide is nonetheless the text. It describes on how to use a build, the order of skills to use, how to deal with counters etcetera. However text can also destroy a guide. Using unreadable fonts; colours the lack of reading marks will make it very hard to read and pretty much rends a guide useless. If you make a guide; keep in mind that the use of the default colour + 1 exclamation colour (to lift words; chapter heads out) is more then enough. It will make a guide easier to read and will provide a better overview on the guide. Also bear in mind that fonts should never be too small. Again; this makes it very hard to read.
In general; using the default fonts provided by GameAMP is perfect for the readability. Seen the colours of the site; Orange , Yellow and Green are the best colours for highlighting words/sentences. Colours like blue and red will make it hard to read.

6. Armour, Runes, Weapons & Attributes

Always make sure you have the correct distribution of attribute points; the needed runes and armour of the build you describe. If you want to be sure no errors can slip in; make screenshots of your armour descriptions, attribute window and put them together in an image. Always try to be as complete as possible while providing information. Never expect people to 'know' what you are talking about nor think; they can figure it out themselves. A guide should be 100% complete in all facets.

Same counts for weapons. provide people with all statistics the weapon has. Also using weapons from PvE is best to do. Making a PvE build but showing PvP weapons will first of all make the accuracy of the guide questionable. Also the fact that PvP weapons can be made perfect makes the build appear; to good to be true. Use weapons people can get/make. If you make a guide of a PvP build; then of course you can use PvP armour and weapons. However; for combo builds (PvE & PvP) and PvE builds; use items which people can get. Don't tell people they 'have' to have some elite weapon.

7. Hosting images

For hosting images; i would like to refer to Evil Geeks guide on Screenshots, Images & Signatures.. Bear in mind that GameAMP allows you unlimited hosting space for images without downtime due to overused bandwidth because the image is downloaded to often. YAY for no more froggie images ^.^

8. Examples

A few good examples of guides are:
Missions: Borlis Pass by Mimori
General Game Information: How to Ascend - Tyria, Cantha, Elona by The Beano
PvE: Spirit Lord Build by Tribina
PvP: The Flashy AvA Air Ele! by Everdream

9.Final Note

We will look into guides with a much more critical eye from now on. This thread will help you into put together an eye-catching, informative guide. Be sure to follow the guidelines and make sure the build you post is 100%. Thrown together builds and guides will be filtered out and not approved. Guides have the highest credit award at this site and therefore it is not unfair to expect some work for it.
Guides help the community to think about possibilities andstart discussions on how to improve a build. This guideline will ensure that the guides posted will benefit the GameAMP& GuildWars community.


Mriswith ~ Forum Moderator
GameAMP staff