By BritishBulldog1



1. Please do not use the .rar extension to pack your maps, use the .zip extension. Not all players have winrar and they are unable to unpack the files. With the re-direct being haphazard at best, downloads from servers vary tremendously. I've seen players getting upto 900MBs per sec from one of my servers, yet another player on the same server is only getting 13KBps. Players won't wait for 45 minutes or more to download new maps, so please give them all the same opportunity to download from an external source and to be able to unpack the file.

2. Create the zip file with the folders already in place; ie usermaps should be the lead folder and the map name under that (eg usermaps/mp_foldername/mp_mapname). It would then be possible to tell everyone to simply download to their cod4 folder and the zip programe will do the rest.



3. Note that I haven't included the mod folder above. The .iwd file only needs to have the images file in it - NOTHING else. This makes a cleaner install with everything running from the usermaps folder and with no need to complicate things.

4. Readme file. Not only should you include a readme file, please place it in the map folder. If you leave it outside the map folder, you will overwrite one from another mapper and the next mapper will overwrite yours. Protect your readme by leaving it in the map folder, it also ensures that is downloaded with the map from the server if redirect is used.

5. Have your map tested by a group of trusted players before launching public beta's.

Just so that you have some understanding of what we admins do, I have to upload the zip file to my mirror. I then have to upload the map to the server and also to the redirect. So I am having to upload the map at least three times.

By releasing public beta(1) maps, you get a plethora of players telling you of things they've found, you correct it and release another public beta(2), only to find there were some glitches you missed, so yet another beta(3) comes along and yet more errors are found, or some players come up with recommendations on changing aspects of the layout (cap zones etc.) So, you finally get to a final release - hopefully!

So, to get to the final release takes 4 or more releases and that means the server admin has to upload the same map 12 (YES TWELVE) times. What is worse, is that if these are public beta's, just how many players have now got the wrong map if the admin hasn't kept abreast of all the updates??? What about players that keep finding that they are joining a server running the map that they want to play, only to find that they are downloading it yet again? Help us to solve these problems by finding someone you trust, with a server who is prepared to assist you and to run closed beta testing sessions and please, please, please ignore the crys from the public gamers who whine that that they are being excluded. They are being excluded to stop all the above problems and to ensure that when the map is released, it is as clean as it can possibly be. This benefits them far more than they realise, by not cluttering their hard drives with different versions of the map, or overwriting previous versions.

6. Lastly. Do not change the name of your map with each release and keep the map name as short as possible, but also keep it unique. The only name you should change, is the zip file name, to keep track of the version number. If you keep the same folder name throughout, the player will always have your map in the same folder. If you change the map name with each release, a player could find the same map in the folder several times over. If you keep to the same map name with each release, it will simply overwrite the last one.