As you've noticed, I've added this forum to have a separate place for people to post their own custom and modified designs, be they 'Mechs, vehicles, ProtoMechs, battle armor, even custom weapons, and allow others to comment on them. Depending on usage, I might later on make separate forums for 'Mechs, or even separate them by tech base, but to start, I'll just have this one forum. Please use this forum for all design submissions, rather than placing them in other areas on the site. I may go back and move any located elsewhere here, so they can be found more easily.
A few guidelines please:
Make your topic Subject descriptive. It should preferably state both the type of unit, tech base, maybe even era, and the unit's name. Examples are:
2750 Star League 'Mech - ThunderClaws TC1-B
3060 Clan Vehicle - ThunderBunny II VTOL
Please have one topic per design. That way people can find your design more easily. The author of the thread can always post a modified design based on his/her or another's new ideas, and <i>if done sparingly</i>, I guess others could post modified designs as well. But I would prefer others limit themselves to comments and suggestions about the designs, and maybe just list suggested changes, rather than post entire new designs. This isn't a contest; you don't have to one-up the original poster.
Please use the Text TRO feature of the HeavyMetal programs where possible to produce the text for the designs. This is done from the View > Text TRO menu selection or by hitting the F5 function key. You can copy the text with the button or by highlighting it and using Ctrl-C, then pasting it (Ctrl-V) into your posting window.
Please put the CODE/CODE tag before and after the design within your post to have it displayed in monospaced type which aligns better. See the FAQ link above for more information about this.
This works fine for everything /except/ the fluff text: each paragraph of fluff will be on one line, making it unreadable. You have a couple choices here: you can copy the text first to NotePad, and insert line breaks where you want them, or you can end the CODE section before the fluff, and begin it again afterwards. That will wrap the text properly, but it will be in larger text. Those more familiar with HTML or other editing methods, please feel free to use those.
Do NOT copy text based on the HTML printouts done by HMPro, etc. It includes the specific carriage returns necessary to display on a browser, and this forum will add others it thinks are required, making the results not pretty and take up a lot of space.
Do NOT be afraid to edit your post. If something doesn't come out quite right, just click on the Edit link below the post and change it until it does.
Please be NICE! I probably don't need to say this, as I have great respect for all you guys and gals, and the way you've conducted yourselves. But designs are very personal things, babies in a way. If I spend time and effort coming up with a design, go to all the trouble of posting it, I don't really need someone trashing it completely, especially in a nasty manner. Constructive suggestions are great. But with different gaming styles and different experience levels, it's rare you'll see what you feel is the perfect design. But guess what? Your designs probably aren't perfect to the other person either, so cut them some slack.
Feel free to also post the data file for the design on the File Submissions pages. If you do so, please refer in this forum to the exact filename, so that people can download the file as well if they like.
That's all I can think of for right now, and I need to get back to work, so I hope you enjoy the new forum and profit by the experiences and ideas of others.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Rick Raisley on 2002-01-15 13:42 ]</font>