Referee Academy - The Basics

[Puma]

Referee Academy - Part One - Layout Creation

Hello and welcome to a little tutorial I've been planning to do this for quite some time now. Actually, I wanted to do it last weekend, but I kinda... procrastinated I suppose, so there you go!
As announced in the Chat Thread, this tutorial will consist of four parts, all found in the first three replies here, as soon as they are finished:

-> Layout Creation
-> Damage and EP Cost formulas
-> Status Effects and Abilities
-> Basic Writing Tips

If you have any additions to make, feel free to add onto those I initially provide here, it can only get better! I also planned to make this tutorial a small collaboration at first, but I think if anyone can add stuff to it, it gets even better, so that's what we're doing! Let's get going, shall we?

You've probably seen a lot of reffings done by now. Some are super well-written, cool looking or both, some seem a bit more simple but get the job done quicker and some are just extremely unique. But how can you create your own, without just simply copy-pasting an existing one? That's what we're going to cover in this short tutorial. Creating your own layout!

Let's begin with the steps you'll want to think about in order to create your template:

• Basic understanding of the table BBCode
• Structure of the rounds
• Rules and Combatants

Also, please note that I'm merely aiming to give some guidelines here. I'm just doing this for the sake of the community, not because I think that I'm the uber-master-referee-of-the-universe or something.

The "Table" BBCode

So, this is the one bbcode, that you probably won't get around using in a complex template. But why is it important? Well, it allows you to align several objects next to each other, without taking height or width of pictures into account. Sounds simple, I know, but in the right hands, this bbcode is your bread and butter when creating awesome unique templates! For the sake of having an example, I will make up a fight, I just figured that I probably shouldn't just take the last mock battle for obvious reasons, so let's do this! We will also use this example for parts that follow, as to have a consisting guideline, alright?

Slowbro / M / Regenerator / 100 HP / 100 EP vs. Snorlax / F / Thick Fat / 100 HP / 100 EP

Slowbro: Hydro Pump¹ - Psychic - Brick Break
Snorlax: Chip Away - Swagger - Shadow Ball

Now, that would be straight to the point and shows what the Pokémons' current situation and commands are. But damn, that's boring! Let's make it a bit more graphical, by adding pictures of the Pokémon themselves, and displaying the HP and EP values as bars for example. There are tons of way to do this, so get creative! I will be keeping it really simple this time around, but feel free to get more complicated in your own work.


Male
Regenerator
▓▓▓▓▓100 HP▓▓▓▓▓
▓▓▓▓▓100 EP▓▓▓▓▓
Hydro Pump ~ Psychic ~ Brick Break


Female
Thick Fat
▓▓▓▓▓100 HP▓▓▓▓▓
▓▓▓▓▓100 EP▓▓▓▓▓
Chip Away ~ Swagger ~ Shadow Ball

Doesn't that look a lot nicer already? Sure, they aren't next to each other and the bars are a little different in length, but who cares, right?
NO! Not right! You should care! That's where our tables come in now!

So, how does a table even work? It's quite simple, actually. Every table begins, obviously, with the table bbcode [ ctable ] and always ends with [ /ctable ]. Of course you will have to remove the spacing afterwards, that's just to let you see the code at all. So, we have created our table, but how do we put stuff in it? Tables work with Rows and Columns, you will always begin with a row, then add several colums to it, afterwards creating a new row until you're satisfied with the amount of info you put in there.
To give you better visuals on how to think of rows and columns in your templates, think like that: Rows include a set of informations, those sets are the columns. For example, one row could include the name of every Pokémon, each colum IN this row then consists of those specific names. You create a row by writing [ tr ] inside of your table. Proceed by writing [ td ] to create a new column. Make sure that every column and every row is concluded with a [ /td ] or [ /tr ] respectively. Now, I've been rambling a lot, let's see those in action! For the sake of presentation, I will write it down as both a schematic and the final product.

[ center ][ ctable ] [ tr ] [ td ][ /td ] [ td ] [ /td ] [ /tr ] (This will create the table and then proceed with the first row, including the pictures of the Pokémon. I also centered the whole thing to make it look nicer.)
[ tr ] [ td ]Male
Regenerator
▓▓▓▓▓100 HP▓▓▓▓▓
▓▓▓▓▓100 EP▓▓▓▓▓
Hydro Pump ~ Psychic ~ Brick Break [ /td ] [ td ]Female
Thick Fat
▓▓▓▓▓100 HP▓▓▓▓▓
▓▓▓▓▓100 EP▓▓▓▓▓
Chip Away ~ Swagger ~ Shadow Ball [ /td ] [ /tr ] [ /ctable ] [ /center ] (Now this looks more complicated than it is. Basically, what I did is creating one more row, with another column to house all of Slowbro's data, then one more with Snorlax' stuff. I did this out of simplicity reasons, feel free to create as many rows as you'd like! For example, Oslo is using a row for each piece of information, which makes it look really nice and professional, while also making it possible to use any picture or font size he wants in there. Here's a good example.)

And here's what this little mess of code will look like:

Male Regenerator ▓▓▓▓▓100 HP▓▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓100 EP▓▓▓▓▓ Hydro Pump ~ Psychic ~ Brick Break	Female Thick Fat ▓▓▓▓▓100 HP▓▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓100 EP▓▓▓▓▓ Chip Away ~ Swagger ~ Shadow Ball

Now that's what I call good looking! Or at least better, that is. You could always play around with bold/italic/underlined settings, or size for example. Use some pictures or different symbols to spice it up a bit! It's all up to your creative mind at this point!

Structure of the Rounds

_{Not the most obvious step, as most seem to believe. You will have to think about how you want all of your rounds to look like. Let's see, in general, you can divide the whole thing in four big parts.}

• The information about the battle, as well as who's fighting in it.
• Info about the battling Pokémon pre and post round.
• The round itself, how everything plays out.
• The referee notes, with stuff like duration of status effects and explanations in it.

Well, obviously, most choose this order, out of the logic, really. It's simple and the order makes sense, so why change a working system? Well, there could be several reasons for it. Maybe you think that information could be presented better in a different way, always try and play around with settings, there is no law that says that information about the battle has to be at the top! You could even merge some of those points together for a fresh take on things! Just because most people do it one way, there's no need to do it like them. In fact, as long as all of the information is in there somewhere and it looks good, why would anyone complain? Just remember one point, transparency is key.

Rules and Combatants

You might be thinking this is a redundant point and yes, maybe it is, but none the less, it's worth mentioning that those should be in every single round of a battle you post in, for several reasons. The most obvious one being reference of course, it prevents people from screwing up more often than need be. (I chose "more often" on purpose. There's still people like me that manage to screw it up) So, how are you going to present those and what is important to include in your layout? Don't worry, I got you covered.

• Who's fighting who? (Duh.)
• How many Pokémon fight how many?
• Where are they fighting? What special rules apply in the chosen arena, if at all?
• Are there any additional rules that are important in this battle?
• How long does it take for someone to be disqualified if they don't post? (DQ Time)

Doesn't seem like a lot and yes, it really isn't, but it's important to be included none the less. As I've said before without much explanation, "transparency is key". But what does that mean now? If your layout is too cluttered to find, or doesn't include the necessary information at all, it's bad. It doesn't matter how flashy or cool-looking your layout is, missing information or making it hard to look at is a no-go. Let's do a short recap, to see what you should and shouldn't do, shall we?

+ Using tables to convey information in a clear and logical way.
+ Including all necessary information in every round you ref.
+ Structuring your posts in a way that is easy to read and refer to.
+(...)
- Discard important information for the sake of design.
- Adding so much information, that the layout looks way too cluttered.
- (...)

_{And that concludes the first part! Feel free to add onto it, give more dos and don'ts or ask some questions you have!}


Frequently asked questions:
Q: But Puma! Why would you begin with the Layout Creation you dummy?! Shouldn't this be the last step?!
A: Yeah, it should be. I'm aware that the other points would seamlessly connect into each other if I did this last, however, this part is most dear to me and I felt like writing it first. You can look at them in whatever order you feel like anyway, so I don't really see this as an issue. Sorry if I annoyed anyone with my order!

Q: Puma! Your tutorial looks bad and you should feel bad!
A: Not even a question, but sorry 'bout that. Thing is, my connection died once while trying to add in a link and then everything went down hill, so I had to start over again. I'll get to make it look nice soon. (tm)

(...)

Notes:
¹ I'm aware that Slowbro is in fact not able to learn Hydro Pump. This is on purpose and will be used in one of the following tutorials.

[Puma]

Reserved for Part Two.

[Puma]

Reserved for Part Three.

[Puma]

Reserved for Part Four.