Welcome to the Evaluation Queue section of Volrath's Castle. This section is designed to show the public how we rate maps here at Volrath's Castle, and to give the public a view of what maps are currently in queue and what they have been currently rated. This section of the site was designed for both my testers and the public. The public part of it is primarily letting the users who submitted their maps and what the current rating on it was. The testers will be able to use this so that they can see which maps are still in queue, who's tested which maps, and which maps still need to be tested.

The Evaluation Queue is a system I use to rate maps submitted by users and fans from around the globe. The whole system works like this: I recieve the map, code it and post it on the site, notify the testers, and then I wait for the ratings. Now, before I post ratings I wait for at least 2 reviews first so that I can get an average score. Once the testers send me their ratings, I update the correct pages, and then make a news post on which maps have complete the queue phase and what their ratings are.

The rating system can seem complex, but it's actually quite simple. Ratings can come narrowed down to a X.Y format. Which means the I accept ratings anywhere from 0.1 - 5.0. Now when I get two reviews in I take the average score and post the appropriate rating. If I recieve additional ratings on the map in question, then I re-evaluate the map with the new ratings and post an updated review.

Now the ratings themselves are actually incremental and are based as a 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5, not 3.4, or 4.6 or anything like that. So once I've gotten the reviews I get the average score gathered up for posting. If the score falls into an additional decimal place (Example: 4.25) then I round up to the next tenth NO MATTER WHAT!!!! Here's what the actual average ratings dictate as for the final score.

• 0.1 - 1.4 ::
• 1.5 - 2.6 ::
• 2.7 - 3.6 ::
• 3.7 - 4.7 ::
• 4.8 - 5.0 ::

That's right! Quality control is what we are looking for at VC, that's the idea of the rating system. To help show what maps are good for the general community. My tester here have their own preference in mind when rating maps, but they dilute that with the general map preferences also so that the review is general and not oriented around the testers preferences. Here's what the map is mainly graded for:

::Visual Quality

» Different things fall into play here. We are looking as the "eye-candy" pleasure of the map. Does it please the eye? Or is it not a good map on a visual level? Things of this type include tiling errors, improper use of tech buildings, ect.

::Map Fairness

» We like to make sure that players are receiving maps that are at a good level of fairness. This includes things like resource disbursement, starting location positions, ect.

::General Gameplay

» Now we are to the point where we would see how the map runs. Does it run smooth, or is or errors in it? Does the AI put up a fight, or does it just stay in a little compressed circle at it's base? These are the types of things we look at while testing gameplay.

::General Thought

This is the point where the tester would kick back and give the map their overall general recommendation of the map. This would be when the tester would decide if this matches up, and if it does - to what degree...

This is the Evaluation Queue, if any of you have any questions or comments please contact me at volrath@volrathscastle.com. I hope you all like this system.

Now that you know about the Evaluation Queue, you can view the log.

View the Evaluation Queue Log File

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