The first year I pretty much just wanted to see what was going on and do things that seemed fun. Optimizing the week wasn’t really on my mind, and as such I didn’t look on their website for scheduling aids. I used the schedule they gave me at the event and picked things coming up that looked fun. (Or that were Risk...) As such, I remember leaving the event and somewhat lamenting the various things I didn’t find time to do. For example, I wanted to play a crayon rails game but didn’t find time to as there was always something else I wanted to do that overlapped it in some way. Not that I actually wish I’d done anything differently, it was a blast, but there had to be a way to optimize my time better.
The next year there was a scheduling spreadsheet for download on their website. Every round of every event was listed and had coloured cells blocking out the times a game was played. There didn’t seem to be a lot of fancy things you could do, but it made it easier to visualize the overlap of events. I didn’t play around with it very much, pretty much just on the car ride down. (Hey, gotta find something to annoy Pounder with for 8 hours, right?) It helped identify in advance certain things (like how Vegas Showdown and Queen’s Gambit massively overlapped) but it wasn’t everything I’d want.
Last year the previous spreadsheet was gone and in its place was one that just listed every round and some small details about the rounds. The extra work to build out a picture of how long things were going to take was gone. Basically it was a big collated list of the printed schedule they hand out. You could derive all the information about conflicts and such from it if you worked at it, but you really had to work for any detailed information. I didn’t notice the difference until the car ride down (I downloaded it to my laptop beforehand assuming it was the same as the year before.) I definitely feel like I had less of a plan last year than I did two years ago. (It didn’t help that my laptop battery died on the way down and my power cord was conveniently in my apartment in Toronto.)
At any rate, I went to their website a month or so ago and browsed the scheduling tools they had available. Pretty much the same as last year, and no sign of the detailed spreadsheet from two years ago. This made me a little sad, but then I remember that my job is basically building funky spreadsheets and I could probably make a pretty good scheduling tool if I set my mind to it. And in a twist I actually have put some effort into it! The spreadsheet is starting to get pretty fleshed out, and I’m going to post some screenshots here. Feedback would be very appreciated, and I can send an alpha copy of the sheet to interested parties.
I’ve set it up so that there are two ways to add a round to your plan. You can pick and choose individual rounds you want to play in or you can select a specific set of rounds you’re interested in for a whole game and it will select all the rounds that compose that event. Here’s a screenshot showing the Games tab, where you can make global choices.
Column G is where you make choices. The dropdown menu there lets you pick between All, All No Demo, Finals No Demo, Playoff No Demo, and Demo Only. All chooses every round associated with that game name. All No Demo does the same but ignores the demo. (I don’t really need to go learn how to play Vegas Showdown, for example!) Finals No Demo takes all currently available heats and all of the playoffs. Playoff No Demo takes all currently available heats and the first round of the playoffs. Demo Only takes just the demo.
After a choice has been made the sheet autoupdates the information in columns F and H. Column F tells you the maximal selection you could make for that game given your current choices. Note in the example I cannot add Liar’s Dice to my plan as it’s availability is “Conflict”. I could plan to play a game of Queen’s Gambit, but I cannot play even the first round of the playoffs. Column H tells you why you can’t sign up for all the rounds of the event. I can see that the only thing holding me back from playing Liar’s Dice is the Vegas Showdown final. So, if I don’t end up making it that far, I can go play Liar’s Dice.
If you don’t like what the sheet has done for you and want to edit the selections you can switch to the Rounds tab, shown below. You can also use this tab just for gathering more information.
Look at the Saint Petersburg rows in the above screenshot. The demo is currently Available as it has no conflicts but I haven’t chosen that I want to play it. The first round is coloured red and marked as a Conflict. Column N then tells you what it conflicts with. I chose to plan for Can’t Stop round 1, so I can’t play Saint Petersburg round 1. If I wanted to release Saint Petersburg round 3 for some reason (maybe I’m cocky, I’m pretty sure I can win just round 2 and advance) I could just go clear cell K589. It would then autoupdate everything else. Great! Note you can sort or filter this sheet by the availability column to see what stuff remains as possible choices to fill in gaps in your week.
Speaking of gaps, what does my week look like? Switch over to the Time Slots tab and take a look at the summary, shown below.
I can use this to see where I can fit more stuff in. (Looks like Wednesday afternoon is free!) You can also use this tab to look for food breaks. Friday at 4pm looks like a great time to grab a bite! Or I could play Ace of Aces heat 4… I don’t really need to eat, do I, Pounder?
When it comes right down to it I’ll probably end up throwing the schedule out the window once the week starts and something random comes up, but the C&O minor in me wants to find a way to optimize my week and I think this sheet is off to a good start to getting there!
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