Balance
Whether of not players of equal skill/performance have an equal chance of winning, particuarly for 1v1s and evenly-sized team matches.

How to improve:

• Left/Right symmetry
  
• Don't have random blocks, or purple blocks
  
• Not giving certain spawns better access to good positions and items
  
• All players sharing the same or a similiar spawn
  
• If the stage has left/right symmetry but has freespawns on the line of symmetry consider instead haivng 1 free spawn for each of the main 4 corners of the stage. This is more for team-play than 1v1s or free-for-alls
  
• Clever use of teleporters to make a sort of forced symmetry

Options
How many choices there are that aren't obviously bad ones or redundant ones.

How to improve:

• A variety of items that aren't too obviously better to go for than the other ones
  
• A stage layout that doesn't incentivise camping in a specific spot
  
• A decent amount of different places in the stage that are meaningfully different from one another

Looks
How pretty it is, whether or not it fits a nice visual theme, and if it's a chuckleable meme.

How to improve:

• Making use of the default details and backgrounds, but don't overuse them
  
• If the map has a theme, have the items be and be in places that make sense
  
• Use nice-looking custom art or a re-themed version of the default art

Readability
How quickly someone who is unfamiliar with the stage can know where everything is and what's going to come from the edge of the screen, a cannon, or a block.

How to improve:

• Use camera zoom or custom camera to include more useful information at once
  
• For custom tiles, have blocks, platforms and backgrounds that are behind invisible blocks have a black-outline. This makes it more clear that they're spots you can stand on instead of background.
  
• For custom backgrounds, have them be less saturated and more dark than the blocks and platforms are, and/or a different colour, and/or use the same background tile everywhere so that it becomes recognized as the background tile.
  
• If the stage uses a potentially fatal laser or cannon, make sure that it's slow enough and starts far away enough from they player so that they can notice it and then run away.
  
• Giving a hint of what exactly is inside of a blue or orange block, such as through the stage name or by placing the item it contains ontop of it.
  
• Itemspawns having a short initial delay
  
• Don't hide a predetermined item with another item

Flexibility
How many different match set-ups a stage works well for.

How to improve:

• Not requiring more than 2 mods
  
• The mods that are required being part of a major and multi-use modpack such as UFF, GCN or Bolus.
  
• Make sure that the stage actually works well for both the host and the guests in online play by preventing laser or hugeness lag, and by not relying on items that only work in local
  
• Stages with enough weapons for 8 players
  
• Making use of both freespawns and teamspawns if the freespawns woldn't be good in team-matches
  
• Stages with less than 8 spawns but without weapons right next to a spawn that can easily be used to kill the other player who came out of the spawn
  
• Stages where everyone shares a spawn
  
• Stages in which having low-gravity or a helmet from one of the modifiers doesn't make the stage impossible, or the best strategy being to hover under the obttom of the stage and keep doing that.

A stage doesn't need to be high in all of these to be good.
If you were to think of these things as all being on independent scales of 1-10, having all of them be 9 or higher would not only be difficult to make, but also limits the variety of stages there are to play.
e.g. If you're making a stage for 1v1s flexibility and looks will probably have to be sacrificed a bit, or if you're making a stage for a 2-7v1 you'll probably have to make some sacrifices to balance and options.

Some isc tips, most of them about getting more subscribers.

If you have 2 or more blocks, 2 or more backgrounds, or 2 or more platforms that you either made or ripped from a video game put them in a folder in the downloads for that type of tile stating either what their theme is/what game they're from/your username.
This makes going through the tiles quicker both for you and whoever downloads your stage, can help people find out what the tiles are from if they don't remember, and can help you shill yourself/ a game you like.

If your stage requires a mod or mods tag that mod it in the title, or at the very least put it in the descripiton.
It makes it easier to find for people looking for something like that, and if they don't want anything like that it makes it easier for them to avoid it.

Don't use 2 or more mods if the stage-concept would still work with just 1 of them.

Make a collection and include all of your stages that aren't bad. You may also want to include some stages in the colelction that aren't from you to pad it out and to promote a stage you like.
This makes it easier for people to find your stages, since it's more obvious than the option to check your profile, requires half as many clicks, and no scrolling through your profile. This is especially important if your profile is private.

Take a screenshot of your stage that shows the whole map. For certain maps you may want to also take a screenshot of it half-way through, such as to demonstrate the laser pattern in a laser-dodging stage.
For duck game you can find the picture in your duckgame folder.
Add this screenshot the workshop-page of the stage.

For backgrounds you can use anything with a resolution in which both x and y are a multiple of 16 pixels. Don't use anything that has seperating lines. Mention and link where it's from both to be nice and to attract people looking up the thing you used it from.
If you think a tileset needs a little something, go into photoshop or gimp, and select-by-colour to change it.

I love money.

Wash your hands to maintain both your health and the health of others. Youy may want to wash your hands once or twice in the middle of the proccess, which is fine but not as important.
Washing your hands at the end is also somehwat important, but not as much.

Get either toasted or stale bread
(fun fact: french toast was invented as a more appetizting way to eat stale bread)

Turn on a frying pan or skillet and put some butter or margarine on.
Personally, I aim for 300F, but I think most poeple prefer 350F.
This is both to avoid the batter sticking to the pan, and to give a bit of a taste of buttered bread.

In a large sandwich container or whatever is flat and wide and deep enough crack 1 egg for every 2 or 3 pieces of bread you're preparing. Add milk dpending on personal tastes, depending on whether you're more worried about the bread being too eggy or too soggy.
You can also add vanilla extract during this stage of the process.

Your strategy for this will likely depend on the container, but you sohuld try to mix the ingredients around with a fork until it has a good consistency.

Lay a piece of bread in the container with the batter, then flip it, add it to the pan, and repeat for the rest of the pieces of bread.

If at the end you have batter left-over, either pour it on the bread in the pan, put it in a side area of the pan for a sort of fried-egg, or get out another piece of bread.

You'll probably only have to flip it once, but if you want to make sure you do it evenly you can flip it more.

Once you're done flipping, you can add cinnamon, brown or powdered sugar, bannana slices, jam, honey, syrup, a small amount of cocoa powder, chocolate, berries, whipped cream or whatever.
just make sure you have at least 1 sweet source of sweetness, whether it be a sweetener or a sweet fruit. Or else it will just feel like eggy bread.

French toast might not be the best food to do this for, but generally if you're cooking for yourself or only 2 or 3 people it's worthwhile to cook a bit more than you need so you can have an easy meal tomorrow.

Custom blocks and backgrounds
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=543713190

It's awfully lonely in here.