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Area submission process
You should have gotten approval to make the area in the first place. Once you have gotten your area as complete as possible, to the point where it needs testing you should notify the builder's admins. You should areacheck your area (see Building Tools below) and make sure it passes. This is very important because if your area does not pass the check program, then it will crash the testport. Once your area passes area check send an application in with details of the major features of the area and we'll give you an address to email it to.
At this point your area will be allocated vnums, put up on the testport and sent back to you. You must use that version of the area that has been sent to you. You will be given a god character on the testport to test your area with. You will then test your area, and you will find bugs. You will fix the bugs and send back the fixed version of your area to be uploaded. You will be notified by return email (unless you are on the tport at the same time as the builders admins) that your area has been updated to the testport. You will then test your area again, find new bugs and send it back in. All areas have to be sent up more than once. In fact most will get sent up many times. In order to be eligible for testing, an area must have mobiles, objects, rooms and resets completed.
Area Review Process
When you think your area has been tested fully and is ready for the real game it will undergo a review process. Your area will be first sent to Dalvyn who will go over it very carefully looking for problems with the area and making sure that the area meets the building standards. He will then send back an email with a list of changes he wants done. Often he will have suggestions on how to better do something or do something differently, and he will ask questions about what is going on in your area. You will then answer questions and edit your area file, making the changes asked for. In general these changes are not negotiable. We have a set of standards in place to try and keep the game balanced. You will then test your area file, and when you are satisfied with that version you will send it back in for the next stage of review.
Revisiting an area
You might decide sometime later that you want to do a major revision of the area. When making your area in the first place you must do so not with the intent to add to it later, but with the intent to submit a fully completed area that you will not need to rework later. However, sometimes a quest is thought up, additions are thought up after the area has been in the game for a while. If the additions are minor, the area administrators will most likely be the ones to do the editing. If it is major, then your area will be sent to you (you must get current version from the game), the thread about it moved back to the New Areas TODO on the forums (providing there is not too much IC information in the thread), and you will be allowed to edit it. Once complete your area must go through the review process above again. This process will take time to do, just the same as a new area review.