Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 12:44:16 +0100 From: Tournament HeadquartersSubject: W2WT: Tournament News 11-July-97 (A) Greetings, Tournament Warlords! This message contains a number of important administrative requests for the Tournament. It's also a general-purpose "update" message to let you know what is coming up in the Tournament. Please read the whole thing carefully and write back to me as necessary! (Sorry, no fun story this time... :) ) *** 1. Tournament Status: I apologize for the delay in getting the Practice Round started; we had a bit more trouble than we expected getting all four of the Scenario Packages synchronized and working properly. The good news is that the "final" versions of the scenario packages are essentially ready, and as soon as the Moderators make sure there are no more lingering bugs, they will be sent out! (As you will see when you get the scenario, we added some special last-minute touches to the scenario, and it took longer than we thought to get everything ready.) Tomorrow I expect to finalize the player rosters for the initial Practice Round games. Those of you who are not yet Certified will still get to play, though! We have not yet turned anyone away; those who are certified after the player rosters are made will either be included right away as substitutes, or else we will create additional "Quick Round" games for you. At the moment we have 182 players "Activated" and an additional 19 still working with their Email Buddies to get certified. The Certification process has been a big success; most players have been certified without any trouble, while about 1 in 8 was given some tutoring and is now able to play. Meanwhile, about 40 players (1 in 6) failed to respond to their Buddies and/or withdrew from the tournament for other reasons. Had we included those in the Practice Round, 2/3 of the games would have been disrupted and the round would be a nightmare! A list of upcoming Tournament events is given at the end of this message. *** 2. Essential Notes, Reminders, and Requests: A. We now have a History Archive available via the usual Tournament Site (http://www.heeter.net/w2wt/index.html). The Archive includes all the tournament announcements and messages sent so far, and outlines future messages that will be sent. If you think you may have missed a message, lost a message, or forgotten something, just refer to the Archive. Also, if you want to know what is coming up next, it is a good place to look to see what we are planning on doing. B. From now on the Tournament Database will be sorted by player alias. Please include your Tournament Alias in any email sent to Headquarters, so that I can most easily look you up in the database! (You are free to change your alias at any time; just email me and let me know.) C. If you have not yet downloaded WarBOT for your machine, please do so immediately! Here is the download information: (1) If you email warlords@pixgen.com and put one of the following commands in the Subject: line, WarBOT will be emailed to you as (large!) attached file: Subject: GetDOSWarBOT (PC, DOS version. ~400k when 100% ready.) Subject: GetWinWarBOT (PC, Windows version. 1.4 MB total.) Subject: GetMacPPCWarBOT (Mac, PowerPC version. 1.4 MB total.) Subject: GetMac68kWarBOT (Mac, 68k version. 1.2 MB total.) (2) If large email attachments are a problem for you, get WarBOT from the Web via http://www.pixgen.com/elam/warlords/ (3) If you have downloading problems, email Elam Birnbaum, elam@pixgen.com [ Special note to Windows users: Be sure to unzip FOXW2600.ZIP into the new WarBOT directory on C: drive created by the install program, so that WarBOT has access to all the necessary FoxPro resources. ] D. If you are taking a vacation between now and September, and you have not already notified us about it (check the list below to see if you are listed!), please let me know when you expect to be gone, so that we can remember to hold your game for you and not eject you as a "Lost Player"! (Any notice given at least a week in advance is fine, but sooner is better.) E. In the process of certifying the players we set up a Russian-language Tournament Support Group, which basically allows all the players who are comfortable with Russian to discuss the rules and such with each other. This was very helpful for those players whose English was not very strong, because they were able to easily get advice about the rules and other tournament information. Since we also have a number of players from Germany, France, Sweden, and some other countries where English is not the native language, we thought it might be a good idea to set up some other non-English Support Groups. If you wish to join (or even coordinate) one of these groups, please reply and let me know which languages you are interested in. I will put the information up on the Web and set up some semi-automated email mailing lists for each language. I've also noticed that we have many players with either aol.com, hotmail.com, or geocities.com as their internet provider. I thought it would be a good idea to have "Internet Support Groups" so that if you have technical problems with file transfers, email, or other tournament things, you have a group of players with similar technical arrangements that you can discuss things with. If you want to join one of these groups (or start another similar group), please write back and I'll make up a list. As with the language groups, I'll make a semi-automated email list for these groups. F. We could use a few more players to serve as subs/extras during the Practice Round. If you know already that you would like to play in more than one game during the Practice Round, and if you are not on the list of subs below, write back and let me know immediately! G. The Warlords Remailer (to be discussed in more detail in a later message) now has a feature allowing you to customize the time-and-date stamp used in any game deadlines sent to you. (In other words, if you live in Australia at +1000 from GMT, instead of telling you that your gamefile is due at 5 pm Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, it will tell you that it's due at your own local time of 7 am on Wednesday.) If you do not live in the U.S. Eastern Time Zone and you want to take advantage of this new feature, please write back and let me know what timezone you are in (offset from GMT; for instance California is -0800 and Germany is +0200 in the summer, I think). ******* List of Practice Round "Subs" and "Extras" ******* (needed to pad all 4 branches of the tournament to a nice multiple of 4 players; also needed to fill in for Lost Players; also allows players to get extra experience) Lord Aerrrichk Little Puppy - Slayer of Dragons Henry IV Sir Uriah The Littlest Warlord Apache King Chu of Formosa Erchamion Dragon Lord Gary VIII Rorqual Nightrazor ************* List of Known Vacations / Absences **************** Kevin Broughton: July 2 to 13 Paul Miller: July 4-20 Kent Storey / Lovesword: July 10-20 Per-Ove Jakobsson: July 12-22 Martijn Dashorst: July 13-27 Rich Rose: July 14-28 Demitrius Berg: July 17-28 Barry Brook: July 18-25 Magnus Goransson: Last 2 weeks of July Bill Irwin: July 26 to August 2 Gary Holcombe: August 2 to 10 Brent McDonald: August 8 to 18 Jeff Smith: August 9-16 Dan Clarkson: August 9-16 and last week of August too Stephane Assadourian: August 11-23 Alex Webling: September Henry Griggs: Sept. 27 to Oct. 26 Conrad Episcopo: August 22 to Sept 2 ********************************************************************* *** 3. Upcoming Tournament Stuff: (Steps K-Y from the tournament plan) [ Steps A-J dealt with Registration and Email certfication and are done now! ] K. You receive a Scenario Package from Headquarters for the upcoming round. If you have trouble you communicate with the Scenario Team. (Estimated date: Monday July 14) L. You get a "Remailer Summary" from Headquarters. (Tuesday 15th) M. If you are player #1 in a PC game, you get a message from a moderator asking for your choice for a Hero Name. (Thursday 17th) N. You receive an introductory message from your Moderator announcing your game assignment. (Saturday 19th) O. You then receive a game-intro message from the Remailer (Sat 19th) P. You then receive a "Confirmation Request" from the Moderator (19th) Q. You receive the Remailer Quick Reference from Headquarters (19th) R. You reply to the Moderator with a test gamefile to confirm that you are "ready to play" and have the army set installed correctly. (21st) S. You work out any last-minute problems with your Moderator T. You get a "Game Ready" message from your Moderator. (22nd) U. You wait a little while until the other games are ready. V. Then you get the "Let the War Begin!" message. (est. July 24th) W. Finally you get the official starting gamefile. (also July 24th) X. And the Round Begins! Y. The next day, you get Rules Tutorial #1 from Headquarters...