Guide: Report a Rule Breaker

Now, I am sure you all want to make Brawl a better place, right? Well, you can help is improve by reporting rule breakers! In this guide, I will teach you first-hand how to report any rule-breaker you see!

Things you need:

• A forums account
  
• A recording software
• The ability to take screenshots
• Access to imgur.com

To get a forum account:



Recording softwares:

Well, there are many recording softwares out there. I find the most on this MinecraftForums thread, and that is where I got most of my softwares.

1.CamStudio

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

2.Hypercam

HyperCam captures the action from your Windows screen and saves it to AVI (Audio-Video Interleaved) movie file. Sound from your system microphone is also recorded.

3.Virtual Dub

VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms (98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/Vista/7), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images.

4.Jing

Jing is a screencasting computer program launched in 2007 as Jing Project by the TechSmith Corporation. The software takes a picture or video of the user's computer screen and uploads it to the Web, FTP, computer or clipboard. If uploaded to the web, the program automatically creates a URL to the image that can be shared with others. Jing is compatible with Macintosh and Microsoft Windows.

5. Screencast-O-Matic

One-click screen recording on Windows or Mac with no install for free.

6. Kazam

Kazam is a simple screen recording program that will capture the content of your screen and record a video file that can be played by any video player that supports VP8/WebM video format.

7. RecordMyDesktop

It is a desktop session recorder that attemps to be easy to use, yet also effective at it's primary task. As such, the program is separated in two parts; a simplecommand line tool that performs the basic tasks of capturing and encoding and an interface that exposes the program functionality in a usable way.

8. Active Presenter - Free Edition

Record full motion video with crystal clear quality and high fps (depends on your computer speed). Capture screenshots automatically with mouse clicks or key presses. Automatically generate appropriate annotations for each action.No watermark or time limit!

9. Freeseer

This software is very good at recording video from firewire, rca, s-video, vga, and even local desktop. Freeseer is open source software, licensed under the GPLv3.

10. Wink

Is a freeware screen-capture and tutorial-creation program. It supports many features such as input-based capture and text annotations. Navigation buttons can be added to any presentation and the bitmaps for all presentation controls can be edited.

11. MSI AfterBurner

Is a graphics card overclocking and monitoring software that also records uncompressed video. Note: This software is primarily an overclocking application read carefully before using. If used in a wrong way it has the potential to destroy your graphics card.

12. Ezvid

Ezvid is the world’s easiest free screen recording solution for Windows. Simply download and install Ezvid, click the “screen capture” button, and begin recording your desktop, browser, or gameplay. Perfect for tutorial creation, showing someone how to do something on the internet, or showing off your website or game, Ezvid is the perfect tool for Machinima videos and all kinds of screencasts and tutorials. Ezvid automatically records and renders your video at 1280 x 720 HD, optimized for sharp display on YouTube.

Now, we have to upload the video! The staff requests you to upload videos on to youtube.com.
Converting softwares:
Did one of these recording softwares not give you the proper file extension? Use a converting software and convert the extension!

1.Format Factory

Format Factory is a multifunctional media converter.
All to MP4/3GP/MPG/AVI/WMV/FLV/SWF.
All to MP3/WMA/AMR/OGG/AAC/WAV.
All to JPG/BMP/PNG/TIF/ICO/GIF/TGA.
Rip DVD to video file , Rip Music CD to audio file.
MP4 files support iPod/iPhone/PSP/BlackBerry format.
Supports RMVB,Watermark, AV Mux.
Format Factory's Feature:
support converting all popular video,audio,picture formats to others.
Repair damaged video and audio file.
Reducing Multimedia file size.
Support iphone,ipod multimedia file formats.
Picture converting supports Zoom,Rotate/Flip,tags.
DVD Ripper.
Supports 50 languages

2. Any Video Converter

Any Video Converter Freeware- the Free Video Converter - is the most renowned free video converter for converting video files between various formats, with fast converting speed and excellent video quality. This powerful free video converter application makes video conversion quick and easy.

Input formats: avi, asf, mov, rm, rmvb, flv, mkv, mpg, 3gp, m4v, vob, YouTube videos and more

Output formats: avi, mp4, wmv, flv, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, mpg (PAL or NTSC), mp3, wma, ogg, aac. Note:Better for converting to wmv for use in particle Illusion.

3.SUPER

Super is a freeware audio/video converter which can convert to many different formats.
Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer. A GUI to FFmpeg, MEncoder, MPlayer, x264, musepack, monkey's audio, true audio, wavpack, ffmpeg2theora and the theora/vorbis RealProducer plugIn. If you need a simple, yet very efficient tool to convert (encode) or play any Multimedia file, without reading manuals or spending long hours training, then SUPER © is all you need.It is a Multimedia Encoder and a Multimedia Player, easy-to-use with 1 simple click.

4.MediaCoder

Mediacoder is a free audio/video converter. This program is constantly updated a lot and supports many audio/video formats. Also, if you have an Nvidia card, this program supports CUDA acceleration.

5.Ffmpegx

Transcoding on a Mac is a serious pain, especially since MS only supports very limited codecs and only the AVI container format. As of this post (Feb 22, 2010.), the only video format that MS is supposed to handle for adding video to prims is MP42 in an AVI container. This is what it generates when it renders it's own video.

There seems to be a bug in handling this on Mac platforms though because adding video to a prim doesn't always work. Download this tool to fix it. Instructions below:

The download instructions ask you to download mpeg2enc.intel and a tar file containing mplayer and mencoder. They fail to tell you to unzip the archive and select the unarchived binaries during the installation phase, so the steps are:

1) Download ffmgepX (IMG file) and mount it, drag it to the Applications folder.

2) Download the mpeg2enc.intel file.

3) Download the gzipped tarfile of mplayer and mencoder and unarchive it.

4) Run ffmpegX from the Applications folder and when it asks for the installation location of these files, use the finder browser to locate each file separately, even though it says to locate the tar file for both mencoder and mplayer.

6.Sothink Free Video Converter

Sothink Video Converter is 100% free video converter software for converting rich formats of video audio files, with high definition and top speed. The supported media formats includes video AVI, MP4, MPG, WMV, 3GP, TS, FLV, RMVB, MKV, H.264, HD Video, and audio MP3, WAV, WMA, OGG, etc. Let you enjoy high definition movies on desktop PC, laptop, many portable media players and latest mobile devices.

7.T@b Video and Audio Converter


This utility will convert a great variety of video and audio formats into files which ZS4 can read/import

I am sorry about the majority of the softwares being of windows. I just saw this thread, so I had copied it, and I intend to add more, and take suggestions to add and mistakes to fix from the community! Also, full credit goes to Forbiden1 for finding all these softwares and creating the thread

Screenshots:
NONIFICATION: Reports currently will not be accepted by the staff team if you are a normal player reporting someone by screenshot, but hopefully soon, they will.

Screenshotting players can be a serious part of reporting. For example, a screenshot can catch an advertiser, a disrespecting player, a spammer, a glitcher, and much more! To take a screenshot, you would
hit Fn+F2 on a mac and just F2 on windows. You have to hit the function key (Fn) on a Mac because as default, your F2 key is used to turn up your brightness. You can change this by:
1. Going in to your System Preferences and selecting the "Keyboard" button

2. After this, you want to make sure you are in the "Keyboard" section (Framed in Red) instead of the "Keyboard Shortcuts" section and click on the option that says "Use Function Keys as Normal Function Keys". That option has to be selected to take away the FN button

Now, once you have your screenshot and all, you will have to find it. On Windows, you have to:

1. Click Start → Run. If you don't see "Run" try holding down your "Windows" key and press the R key.
2. Type %appdata% (case doesn't matter but be sure to include the % markers) and click OK.
3. Open the .minecraft folder.

buuuuuuuttttt I do not have a Windows! So I will explain you how to do it on a Mac with screenshots!
Step one:

Go to your toolbar, click on your desktop until you see "Finder" in the top left corner, and then click "Go".


Next up, after you click "Go" click on Go to Folder, and type in exactly what I say: ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/screenshots. This should bring you to your screenshots folder. Now, to find your screenshot, you may either have your Minecraft open to give you a filename to find, but another way you can find the screenshot is using the "Timestamp" that screenshots are named after. The timestamp for screenshots to record there names are: YYYY-MM-DD_HH.MM.SS.png. For example, 2015-02-10_17.05.01.png would translate in to February Tenth, 2015, at the specific time of 17:05:01, or 5:05 PM and one second, as the timestamp uses military time.
Now, when reporting a player, the staff requests you to first upload the pictures to , so they can easily view the image. So to upload an image to imgur.com, you :
Step One:
Open Imgur.com and click on "Upload Images"

Once you click on that, a popup should appear, and from there, you want to click "Browse Your Computer"

From here, this depends on what type of Operating System you have. Basically, you just do what I did above and find your screenshot, and double click on it, and it should upload.
Once you upload your image, you should get a page that looks like this:

I just chose a random image
Now, after this, you want to copy the link, and then we get in to the last section of the Guide
Filing the Report
Now, after you have your screenshot, you want to go to report.brawl.com, and that should re-direct you to https://www.brawl.com/report/. If you use the Dark theme on the forums, you should get a page like this:
So now, we want to file the Report
The report is basically quite easy to file. The first question just asks "Who broke the Rules". The second question asks how he broke the rules. Did he glitch? Did he advertise? Did he use hacks? The third question is just basically asking what Brawl Server this player broke the rules on? Did this person break the rules on WarZ? The Hub? Finally, remember that picture that we uploaded? You would put that in the fourth question, or a youtube link to a youtube video.
A completed report might look like this:

Now, once you submit your report, you may be wondering "Well, how will I know when the Report has been dealt with?" Well, if you go to https://www.brawl.com/report/view/, you can see all of your personal reports:
The screen should look like this:

If you forgot to put something in your report, and staff have not resolved it yet, you can use the "Update" button, highlighted in yellow, to update the report. You can check the status of the report by looking under the "Status" tab, highlighted in blue.
Rewards
You can be rewarded for making Brawl a better place! At the end of the month, the top three people who reported the most players get rewarded with gift codes for the Brawl store! Most Brawl News's can be found here, but you will be tagged on the thread if you won!
The Rewards are:
First Place: $25 coupon for Brawl Shop
Second Place: $20 coupon for Brawl Shop
Third Place: $15 Coupon for Brawl Shop
~ What not to do ~
There are many things not to do when you discover a rule breaker. I will tell you not what not do, and proof of a quote from the rules section to support my claim highlighted in red and bolded if there is a reason in the rules.

• Do not accuse others of hacks in-game, or "hackusate". This greatly gets on the nerves of moderators, and you will be warned if you do it, and told where to report players. If you continue to do it, you may face a mute
  
• Do not put a video/image of a hacker in your signature
  
• Do not make threads stating that you discovered a hacker. These will be immediately locked or deleted.
  

Did I forget anything? Reply on this thread, PM me, or write a message on my profile!

~RyGuy

 

I know This is for most players who just hackusate people in-game

 

Do you guys think I should add a "What not to do" section?

 

Thank you!
UPDATE:
Added the "What not to do" section

Keep in mind, if I did forgot something, please tell me! Thank you!

 

Thank you for all the feedback guys! Is there any other sections you guys think I should add in?

 

Thank you!

 

I have been given permission to bump this, as it still provides very useful information to the community.
EDIT: Do you guys think I should also add a section about Ban Protocols?