Something very basic that everyone should know when joining but unfortunately not everyone does.

Welcome to GameBanana! or just hello if you are not new to this site

GameBanana is all about the community and their quality submissions. A well made

submission is profitable for both sides: the creator and the user. So it’s the best for you if

you present your work in a proper way: informative, illustrative and attractive. That means

the more information you put in suitable submissions page, the better it attracts more

downloaders. Hopefully.

So today we will take a look of how we can make a proper, appealing submission and some

other basic things you should know about the site. If you think this may be useless, you are

definitely wrong, Submissions are mostly flagged because of lacking the stuff we are now

going to learn!

:

So let’s start off with the name. It should be short but not imprecise; it should not be too

abstract but still have a pleasing sound. You have to decide what impression it should leave

on someone who reads it. Serious? Funny? Scary? .You can put your username as your

personal sign in it, like ‘Death Anxiety’s Submission Tutorial’. This is especially nice if you

plan to make a series of skins/maps or give them a very personal touch like a logo or custom

objects. Moreover it might be useful if your name stands for quality submissions, so

everyone knows “Ah, its him again.” We want to get away from things like “6R00TALZ

dRaGg0N 4K 47” or stuff like “6est 4WP skin on teh paqe”. This is just ridiculous. Seriously.

:

After we have thought of an adequate name we now need to categorize our skin. Those

small dropboxes are overseen regularly but they cannot be overrated in their importance:

Once you chose the wrong game or category no one actually finds your skin or map. To make

it clear: You made a defuse map called de_bomb_defusal2011 for Counter Strike Source and

put it in the hostage rescue section of Counter Strike CZ. Guess what. No one who searches

for a nice and awesome CSS de_ map will ever find it in his entire life.

Second thing that is caused by misleading categories: the site will soon get a chaotic place

where admins and users have to complain about the circumstances.

So now we have a name and a category for our submission, but the user still might not know

what he is about to download on his hard drive. Therefore we need to write an informative,

appealing description of our work. I will throw in some basic questions you need to ask

yourself when writing a description.

Example

Skin XYZ

What do I need to write?

First of all you could start asking yourself questions like

- What is it? (Reskin/retexture/recolor/model of what?)

- What was the motivation to create it?

- Why should the user download this skin and not the one of another creator?

- Who helped me?

- How do I install it (very optional)?

Next thing will be an example description, a very basic idea of what you could write about

your skin. Remember, it is just an idea, nothing fixed. I have seen so many nice descriptions

which are pretty unusual but you’d better post one like the following than just a “mh…dunno

what to say lol my skin lulz”.

Example of an adequate description

Cheers guys,

This is my second model on this site. Basically it is a NAVY Type Nuke Launcher built in 1960

during cold war. It replaces the grenade in game and adds a totally new experience to

Counter Strike Source.

I created this one since I was always on the search for an extraordinary Grenade

replacement. If you searched one as well, here you go. This release features

- Complete new view model and world models

- Phong

- 4 different High resolution Textures

- 10 sets of custom animations

- Buypics

Special Thanks go to UserXYZ who made the wees and UserZYX who made a bunch of

superb textures for this release

To install it, simply put the cstrike folder in the “steamapps/counter- strike source” folder.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The red marked phrases in the example are things you really should mention, the nearly

unreadable text is the things that you could or should add to make it an easy read for your

potential downloader.

This is a very basic draft of how you could do it, don’t forget you can always be creative and

put all the information in a short story or something extraordinary. Never forget to think if

you need to credit any other users and make a clear statement concerning the license.

Nothing is worse than getting disapprovals for not crediting the guy who added the Phong

for example.

Okay let’s list what we have learned so far. Therefore I step back and use the picture on top

of this tutorial or better said appeal on the content-making-GBUser with at least a bit of an

idea what customizing is about.

So now I am going to take a closer look of what the creator of this skin did wrong (not only

me, you should figure it out in less than 10 seconds, go!).

I DON’T want to say that the skin was bad, but is presentation is and this is what I am going

to show on several points which are marked red on the image. I will proceed from the left to

the right.

1. The description is not providing further details. There is just the information about

the color and that’s pretty much it. We know how to do it better.

2. The lack of decent screenshots. The creator used the same screenshot twice so take

you time and make a screenshot of every perspective available (Render, viewmodel,

worldmodel etc.). I am going to explain the more or less simple art of screenshots

later on.

3. The credits. UserXZ-Making is not the things really meant by this important box. You

could add Valve as the model creator since the author didn’t make out if he created

the model or not, but that is just an optional point. Of course credit everyone who

worked on your submission

At least the author did not mess up the category, then it would have been a perfect

example. But I went on the frontpage, chose a skin and could explain common errors on

it. That shows that something really needs to be changed about this, not in a technical

way but in the common sense of every skinner/mapper.

Another advice: Don’t fool around in the commentary box of your own skin insulting

other members if they criticize your skin. The maker of the given example did so:

“Why do you use your fucking time on hating someone? your just a bunch of geeks!

@UserXYZ I dont get any kind of profits, so you can go f**k your self!!!”

Guess what. You will not make any friends in a community acting like a geek yourself.

Another thing that is important when categorizing your submission are tags. Tags are words that describe your skin/map/spray/etc. with one word. You made a wooden AK with a skull on it? Then you should add wood/wooden, AK, Skull or anything that describes your skin well. Tags are used by the search engine so if someone searches for wooden skull he will find your skin. They cannot be overrated in their importance.

: * *

Enough about site rules, let’s go on learning something about making nice screenshots. Screenshots are the most important advertisers of your work since this is the first what the user is going to see. The first screenshot should usually be a render but if this is too advanced either make a very good screenshot or sit down and learn how to make it. I made a pretty long guide explaining the very basics.

Anyways, let’s talk about the things you might need. If you made a skin any game that you run in Steam (even if it is a non-steam game running via Steam), congratulations, you can use the in game screenshot engine (strike F12 if you want to make an instant screenshot) and catch it up in your Steam Screenshot Library. But before we do this, let’s turn of the HUD that shows (for your skin unimportant) stuff like Ammunition or Health. They block the sight on our map/skin so we really shut them down. Therefore we need to first enable the console.

This is how we activate the console:

Simply click “Enable Developer Console” in the Advanced Keyboard Settings Tab of your Counter Strike Source Options or do it the harder way:

1. Open up your games library 2. Right click on Counter Strike Source 3. Choose "properties" and after that "launch options". 4. Add "-console" (without "") in the upcoming window.

When we now start Counter Strike we see a text box next to the main menu. Now start a server and buy your skin. Then press Escape which will bring up the console. First of all type in sv_cheats 1 to enable the functionality of all commands, then type cl_drawhud 0 which would be blocked if “cheats” are turned off. Now make a nice screenshot of your skin without the HUD (choose a well lit area, reload for example to show as much of your skin as

possible) and press F12. Make sure you set the graphics to maximum (even though you get low FPS) and set the resolution as high as possible, imo widescreen looks the best.

Now you can add a title or your name on the image and make other screenshots from the world view perspective if you made world models.

You can of course try to make a render as mentioned before.

The possibilities are endless, so go ahead and get a little artistic, it is worth it. Even if you miss to turn of the HUD try to make it look good by cropping it to a certain amount:

Programs that might be useful:

- Fraps , if you are not running Counter Strike Source or a game via steam - SnagIt , if you are not running Fraps or Steam - The Print button on your keyboard , if you don’t run fraps or SnagIt - GIMP/Photoshop , if you want to edit your render - Paint.net , if you can’t find GIMP or pay Photoshop

That’s actually it about making decent screenshots; just keep your eyes open for maps with nice spots to make a nice snapshot. These principles work as well for map submissions, just turn of the HUD , go into spectator mode and fly around and find relevant/beautiful spots in your map that represent the map as a whole piece not just that corner you made nice for having something to screenshot.

This is basically what you should know before you visit the website and upload your stuff. There is nothing magic about putting some effort in the final step of your creation, the better you do your work the more appreciation you will get in the end.

Thanks for reading; I really do hope that this tutorial will help some beginners to get an idea of what this is all about. If we start actually doing something for the site we will get an engaged community representing a structured, well made website which everyone likes to visit regularly.

For the real newbie: check out the next two sites for some forum / related words. Unfortunately you have to deal with insults even though it’s a bad thing.

If you are really new to gaming and game customization, here is a list of vocabulary you might use when releasing a submission or talking about one.

Word – Definition (scheme)

.GCF – GameContentFile used by many steam games. This file contains all the data the game needs to run.

Animation – An animator uses the model to animate certain parts. Without an animation, we would carry a

static, never moving object with us.

Archive (.zip; .rar; .7zip etc.) – File(s) or folders which has been compressed by a compressing algorithm to

reduce the amount of data (used to share files). Popular software: WinZip and 7Zip (used to pack and unpack)

Banana – Long and tasty. Everyone loves it.

Capturing – meant is: screen capturing. Method to record the image data provided by your graphics card. Used

to record video tutorials and gameplay videos (exception: Source games, they have a record feature built in).

Compiling – Process of making content from a 3D program available for the game itself. If we modeled and

animated a skin in 3DsMax we need to compile it in order to get file formats the Source engine supports. OR

the process of making a map ready to be CSS friendly. Compiling Decompiling

Counter Strike – originally a Half Life Mod, then turned into a standalone First Person Shooter. Current version:

Counter Strike: Source.

CSA – Soon added tool to approve/disapprove submissions of other user. Useful to obtain a constantly good

quality of submissions.

cstrike – main folder of Counter Strike : Source. Contains all game files extracted from a .gcf archive

Critics – Antithesis of flaming, the criticizer should say what is good and bad and elementary what to improve.

Honesty is required but no insulting or anything that could stop the maker from keep learning on. This is the

most important and most sensitive process of skinning so use your brain before writing.

Faggot – Someone who basically has no idea of everything . Long form of ‘fag’ .

Fail – Someone who fizzles at doing something easy. The thing that happens is the subject of the fail .Used by a

viewer of the said failure.

Flaming - uncontrolled insulting / doing down of something , often without a reason. Popular in the recent

games of the Call of Duty franchise.

First person View – The virtual world seen through the virtual characters eyes

Map – Also known as levels. A Map is an environment used by a game. A map can be everything where the

virtual player is able to move and play inside.

Model – 3D Mesh where every Polygon has a place in 3D space building the model we use in game.

Modification – Additional or modificated content of a game. There are several types of mods, the full

conversion mod changes as good as everything on a game while a simple skin only changes the look and feel of

a single weapon.

Normal Map – 2D Map often generated from the 2D Texture that generates height information out of the

colors. If the Normal map is combined with the texture the skinner can create details on the surface of a model

without actually modeling them into the model.

Polygon – Smallest part of the 3D Model. Most models contain more than thousand polygons (depending on

complexity)

ReadMe – Text file coming with some releases. Often credits of the author and/or short instructions on how to

use the downloaded files.

Release - Any kind of submission. Something uploaded by a user who worked on it.

Rendering – 3D rendering is the 3D computer graphics process of automatically converting 3D wire frame

models into 2D images with 3D photorealistic effects on a computer. A render is used as an advertisement for a

skin.

Reskin/Recolor – A skinner edits an already existing texture by adding detail, changing the colors or particularly

replacing parts of the previous texture by overlaying new one.

Retexture – The skinner makes a complete texture from scratch, often using only the UV Map as reference.

SDK – Software Development Kit. Some game developers provide this tool to the customer so that he can

create additional content in a development environment like a map editor. Without it, no modding would be

possible/easy to do.

Set - referring to this site: individual combination of an avatar (profile picture) and a forum signature. Avatars

are 50px by 50px and signature must be sized 250px by 25px.

Skills – Something that everyone wants to have but no one really gets.

Skin - Complete or particular replacement of the default weapons in a game.

Source Engine – Popular game engine used by Valve’s games. This engine generates the final output image we

see while playing a game using the engine. It renders the image.

Spam / Spammer – Someone who releases tons of crappy pieces of work in a very short period of time.

Spray – Personal image that can be tagged in a map in Counter-Strike Source. Everyone on the server can see it.

Specular Map – Tells the engine where to put shine created by incoming light.

Static Lighting – Lighting “painted” on the texture itself. Makes it seem 3D even though no dynamic light source

is influencing it.

Steam – platform to run and activate games, play with friends and buy stuff from the steam store. Often

declined “The death of the user rights”. Highly overrated by publishers.

Studio – A working group where every member has a certain function. The members are mostly working

cooperative.

Texture – Image that is later folded around the model. Something comparable to the dress of a model. Some

do it Gucci, some do it KiK (Textile Discounter).

Third person view – The virtual world seen over the shoulders of our actor

Troll – Annoying creature living in forums. Feeding from unripe bananas and often living in Indonesia. They

usually don’t get older than 12-13 years (meant is: mental age).

Tutorial – Detailed Manual that often explains things step by step and should be hold as clearly understandable

as possible.

UVMap – After having created a model the texture need the object as unfolded mesh as a 2D image.

VMT – Valve Material File. Contains the information what is put on the model, how it is put on the model. The

engine knows how to handle the model : How it reacts to light, what normal map it should use and what base

texture. Without it we would see nothing in game.

VTF – Valve Texture File. Contains the basic texture

Wee/World model – The model seen in third person view.

_________________________________________________________________

(DeathAnxiety)

Stays tuned for further releases or check my previous work!

YOU MAY NOT COPY THIS PIECE OF WORK

COPYRIGHT 2011 DeathAnxiety

You might only take the advices and use them for your further GB-being.