Hello there, everyone! This thread that you’re seeing right here is known as The Official Community Rules and Guidelines, and the title says it all. We’ll be going over appropriate behavior in the Community, as well as clearing up a few things. So, without further adieu, pack your bags, buckle in your seatbelt! Please save your questions for the end of the ride, and please follow all the [soon-to-be] aforementioned rules. That’s how we keep this Community metaphorically clean, after all!


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The Moderating Team
First off, you have to know the Moderating team! If these guys state you're creating an issue, it's best you decide to listen to that judgement! Cooperate with these mods and you'll be fine, they’ve all proven to do their jobs well!

Admins
Adrian Marceau
MegaBossMan

Moderators
Rhythm_BCA
TheDoc
Reisrat/Tarsier
CHAOS_FANTAZY

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Directory
As you can see, the community is divided into 7 categories:



- The Personal section includes your personal messages, sent and received. Don't pester a user and don't attack them either! Nobody appreciates that!

- The News section includes news by the developer, Adrian Marceau! You can also see threads here on how various contributors make their work. This is where you need to go if you want to catch up on recent events.

- The General section includes everything else, just user created threads for fun and enjoyment. Yes, you can put threads in this section, all by yourself. This section is for anything not relating to the other threads, and mostly everything here is for fun. Don't spam threads for silly purposes or no purpose, don't ask everyone what they're doing, don't announce your return here unless it's in Official Player Introductions or Goodbye/I'm back and don't be a jerk period. Also, don't make a thread on how do you do something in-game because the Strategies section is for that.

- The Fanart and Fanfic Section section is specifically for user content regarding Prototype, from the likes of writing to showing off your artistic chops.

- Play as your favorite robot masters (and maybe yourself) in the Roleplay section! Create your own threads for roleplay use or join one other's.

- If you need a bit of help beating the game, or want to give advice to random users, check out the Strategies section of the community. This is where you go if you need help with the game.

- The Mechanics section includes updates on mechanics of the game, though not many updates are made here. This is where you go if you don't understand a certain mechanic. If it's a mechanic, it's probably there.

- The Development section is used for user ideas for the game. Suggest your ideas here and who knows? Perhaps your idea could be in-game. The Prototype depends very heavily on fan interaction and ideas, so if you're able to help make it grow, then by all means help.

- Finally, the Bugs section includes bug reports. Please keep your general posts out of this one, no need to give Adrian false alarms. If you see something weird that shouldn't be there, put your reports here. Pictures and detailed explanations are very welcome here. Small bug reports should be posted here

-While it's not technically a section of the community, the chat section has you on a live chat with other players. Meetings are held there every Sunday night (more details here, unless there's a hiatus in progress.
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Community Rules
Next up, we have the Community rules! After all, how are you going to follow the rules if you don’t know ‘em, eh? It’s very simple, and if you’ve ever been on some sort of previous Community before, you’ll most likely know what to do. Heck, if you have a moral sense of right and wrong, you should’ve figured it out here, but might as well have our rules in paper, right?

#1: Please do not spam in the Community
You should know the difference between spamming and posting. Posting has a reason to be posted, and isn’t just general conversation. General conversation goes in the Chat, by the way. Second off, posting repeatedly in the same thread or posting the same thing in multiple threads is not the way to go. Please review your posts before you post them, and ask yourself if you’re spamming or not. Nobody likes spam, OK?

#2: Please keep proper posting etiquette in the Community
Everyone has a different sense of etiquette, but we’d like to ask you follow these specific things. Please, no disrespecting other users, that’s incredibly rude. No attacking of other users as well, that’s also rude. If your post is generally going to offend users in a way, you’d better rephrase your saying. Slight cursing can be excused, but we’d like to ask you to refrain from that if possible. Any heavy cursing isn’t allowed in the Community, and if you're going to take the effort to censor it, then rephrase it instead. Also, correct grammar is always appreciated around here! While we're not asking you to be an English major, don't speak in broken tongues. Also keep in note this is a primarily English-based Community, so please keep that in mind!

#3: No Multi-posting in the Community
Leave at least 24 hours between two consecutive posts in the same thread. If you need to add something, just edit your original comment. Otherwise, don’t double-post. Don’t get surprised if your comment is altered in some way by mods, as double-posting's really obnoxious.

#4: No pointless bumping on a thread in Community
If a thread has been inactive for some time, please don’t bring it back “just because” you felt like it. If you do, it’s either because you want to refrain from making the same thread about a topic, or you have a significant update or contribution for it. Otherwise, please don’t necropost.

#5: Speaking of, no pointless threads in the Community
Before you decide to make a new thread, think about if it’s necessary or not. If someone else is covering the same topic, post your thoughts in that thread. If it’s just a thread because you wanted to make one, you could either post it in another thread, or talk about it in the Chat. Pointless threads can flood the Community and cover other, bigger topics, so please think about the necessity of your thread before you post it.

#6: No flaming other users in the Community --Relates to keeping proper Community etiquette--
Debates are completely fine in the Community, as long as it’s kept civilized. However, if it’s resorted to swearing, name-calling, or just downright insulting other people, it’s gone too far. It really just falls into demonstrating the type of person you are, and while you don't have to be a saint don't be a downright jerk.

#7: Please respect and listen to the Mods/Admins
These guys were put up as mods for a reason, so respect the guys, won't you? They try their hardest each day to make the Community a fun place for YOU, so make their job a little easier, too. These guys know what they’re doing, ok?

#8: Please keep religious/political/sexual discussions out of the Community
These things just scream flame wars, so please don’t try to start a conversation about these things. Posts and/or threads that focus on these three topics can be expected to be deleted for the safety of everyone on the Community. That shouldn't need explaining.

#9: No inappropriate links/images
No posting of inappropriate links or images in a Community post. This is fairly obvious, so please use common sense when dealing with this rule. No links that conflict with #8 either. ROMS and Emulator links aren’t allowed in the Community either. These things just SCREAM legal trouble, and that’s something we want to avoid.

Disclaimer!: If you happen to need to post a link that contains cursing, please put a disclaimer or "NSFW" before.

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Some Miscellaneous tips on navigating the Community
Here are some misc tips on the Community! Please keep this in mind as you go along the Community!

>First things first, you'll need 5,000 battle points to post and 10,000 battle points to create a thread. You can get that much in about 5 minutes, so don't panic!
>If you want details on how to use some fancy text techniques, then click here to read an article on how to use these amazing formatting techniques.
>If you want the people of Community to meet you, introduce yourself on this thread! This is also the place you post in if you’ve come back from a long break. Please do not post a thread for any of this!
- Suggestions (put them here for game-related stuff and here for website-related stuff)
- HELP ME! stuff (put them here or here
- Spam
- Bugs ( Quick! Put them here
- and finally, Chat stuff (you can chat here and rules you can look through here.
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Well, this is the Community Rules thread! Took us long enough, yes, but this is all common sense! This thread is mostly for the people who are new to the online community lifestyle, so if you’re already an experienced user on here, chances are you already know most of this! As always, this thread is subject to change and new rules as time passes and changes, so please keep that in mind! If you feel we missed anything, please post below! If that’s it, I’ll be heading off! See ya next time!

[Special thanks to Retro Pikachu, TheDoc, and of course Adrian]

-MBM

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[This section was written by Community Moderator Brorman, special thanks to him for this massive write-up! I owe you one!]

Hello! I'm going to give you a quick show-off of all the great formatting features, with explanations on how to use them!

The Basics

Everyone who has ever used any kind of word processing program knows about bolding, italics, and underlining. Some online forum users or more advanced WP program users might also know about striking!

How to use these simple, yet so amazing features?
Like the features themselves, it indeed is, very simple. Just do the following:

Depending on your effect of choice, choose the letter bold, italics, underline or strike, and type it inside square brackets, like this: [b­]

Next, type something, like: [­b]What a great guide there, Bror!

And then to finish the whole thing off, after the text, type in: [/­b]

Result should look like this: What a great guide there, Bror!


You can also use multiple effects at once, just do the same as earlier, but type them like this [b­][­i][s­][u­]TEXT HERE[/b­][/i­][/s­][/u­] and so on...


Media and Colors

So, how do I link cool websites like MMRPG? Simple, like this: MMRPG

First off, type some more square brackets, like this: [insert your message here]
You don't have to put in a message, but if you want to have some fun or look really cool you should definitely do it.

After typing in the coolest message of human history, paste in your link of choice, of course you don't want to link anything harmful or shocking since other people have feelings as well. If you enjoy mischief, you hopefully also enjoy getting banned.

[Click Here to Play MMRPG!]­(­http://megamanpoweredup.net/rpg2k11/)

Click Here to Play MMRPG!

That's enough about linking. Next up we have images!



Images are really great, picture tells more than a thousand words they say, and this goes for making bug reports as well! When calling the exterminator (or in the case, sending bug reports to the programmer), remember to send them some definitive proof of those pesky bugs existing!

Just like earlier, square brackets is the way to go: [image]

You can change "image" to anything you want and it will appear as a mouse-over tooltip for the image. It's a great way to add a description or name to an image.

Next, upload a pic or find an existing one from wherever, remember to keep it safe though. No one wants to see anything unpleasant or shocking. So we were making a bug report, right? Well let's put the image link inside parentheses.

[imag­e] (h­ttp://puu.sh/6lNAs.png)




That's all for images. At this point, I'd probably like to preview my post (wink wink) before sending it, just to see that everything is like it's supposed to be.



Well then, let's move on to the coloring part.

To make things more colorful, you need 2 things.

Square brackets, and a type.

This time, inside those square brackets, you'll type in the message, just like when linking stuff.

[It's great to know how colors work!]

Well, that guy doesn't really know how to use colors yet apparently. Let's try adding in some curly braces and types.

[It's great to know how colors work!] {explode­}

It's great to know how colors work!


But how to create dual-type text? Simple, inside the same braces, add an underscore = _ and then add another flavor of your choice. Like this:

[It's great to know how colors work!] {expl­ode­_freeze}

It's great to know how colors work!

The list of types is the same as the list of Player Colors, found from the "Edit Profile" menu.




Yay! Now you have mastered the basics of formatting, there are some features that I don't know of because they aren't listed here... But I'll add more in as soon as I know.

Comment guidelines are pretty easy to follow - stay on topic, don't be rude, don't double-post when you can easily edit, and don't create 100 topics in a row just because it's fun. Oh, and no adult stuff or bad language. Ever. This is a kids' game, people! ;)

-Brorman