How can I get my game into the showcase?
As the head of the showcase section (ok, as the only person working on the showcase section), I get quite a few requests to put game X on judge Y into the showcase section. Often, I'm not nearly so quick to reply to these requests as good ettiquette would dictate, but when I do get around to doing so the answer is almost always a qualified yes.
The qualification being that the data be presented in a fashion which I can turn into a showcase fairly quickly. Depending on the data construction of a showcase can take anywhere from 6 to 30 hours. I like 6 hour showcases. Below I'll go into detail on what can be done to make a game easy to showcase, but in general it's consistancy.
I have no problem with the idea of a 30 game showcase section. If need be I'll start rating them by quality, providing reviews, and writing summaries. None of that has seemed necessary with the few games that are in there now, but it's not an objectionable situation.
What can I do to expidite the creation of a showcase?
This is no single thing you can do to make my life easier than keeping your game data consistant. The reason this is so helpful is because I usually use a collection of Perl scripts to massage the data into a presentable form and every exception in the data means I have to add another clause to my parsing scripts.
By consistancy I mean consistancy of format. Don't send three files that contain all the press each in a different format because the GM switched mailers three times. Don't have 1/2 the messages wrapped in judge headers/footers and the rest without. Don't send me broadcasts in one file and press in another.
Often people send me many files related to the same game, and it almost always results in a loss of chronological information. When you separate press into one file and orders into another it becomes necessary to collate them by message timestamp just to tell which messages happened before and after each set of results. Ideally results, partial-press, results, and broadcasts will all be in one huge file. I love huge files.
Don't sent duplicate data. There are few things than can cause me to throw up my hands in surrender on a showcase than realizing that the fall 1905 results are in a file twice. It leaves me suspect of all the other data, and forces me to keep alert for other duplications.
But my data doesn't conform to your rediculously strict requirements. What can I do?
You can help me to put it into the consistant format I'll need. That means delete any duplicate messages. Combine messages into the same mail folder before you send them to me (after removing any non-related mail). Little things like that can go a long way.
What if my data is really non-standard, though (postal, non-judge)?
Well, we can see about working something out. Currently the Showcase has nothing but judge games because it's so easy for me to generate maps for them, and because their overall consistancy of format makes it easy to strip personal email addresses and things like that. Still, the Pouch aims to be medium neutral, and I would really like to have a Cat-23 game in there or maybe even a postal game. I would be willing to (slowly) do more work to get a good game in. If you've got a good candidate, let me know and we'll talk.
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