Future Marathon Front Page Design Ideas

2012-07-11 05:29:50 am

INTJ

Necroing this thread a bit, since I think this may be the appropriate one:

Is it possible to somehow display the "current prices" during the whole time they are available?

The idea behind this is simply, that people are (probably) much more driven to actually donate for a chance to win a price when it is visible the whole time.
For example, the runner wore the MegaMan caps in previous Marathons, they were visible the whole time. Such a method would be a bit more clunky for example for the Baby Link clothes Wink

or simply (Kirby!) pictures. Despite them being equally awesome, people can only see them when they are presented during specific times of the runs.

There was a second stream - maybe you could use a webcam for this and set the prices to there? As in: Still show the ~picture prices on stream from time to time and add, that if people want to see them a bit more they could open the second stream to do so.

Or another idea would be reserving an extra screen region on the stream to display those?
Or somehow 'implement' the prices into the room? Such as, let one of the commentators hold the picture (Although they probably would appear to be a bit small)

As I said - I think people are way more willing to donate for prices, when they more or less are constantly visible.

Necroing this thread a bit, since I think this may be the appropriate one:

Is it possible to somehow display the "current prices" during the whole time they are available?

The idea behind this is simply, that people are (probably) much more driven to actually donate for a chance to win a price when it is visible the whole time.
For example, the runner wore the MegaMan caps in previous Marathons, they were visible the whole time. Such a method would be a bit more clunky for example for the Baby Link clothes ;) or simply (Kirby!) pictures. Despite them being equally awesome, people can only see them when they are presented during specific times of the runs.

There was a second stream - maybe you could use a webcam for this and set the prices to there? As in: Still show the ~picture prices on stream from time to time and add, that if people want to see them a bit more they could open the second stream to do so.

Or another idea would be reserving an extra screen region on the stream to display those?
Or somehow 'implement' the prices into the room? Such as, let one of the commentators hold the picture (Although they probably would appear to be a bit small)

As I said - I think people are way more willing to donate for prices, when they more or less are constantly visible.

mike89

2012-07-11 05:41:16 am

SEGA Junkie

That's a good idea, it'd also save commentators' time from saying things like "these are the prizes we're giving away in this run". The more focus we're able to give to a) what's going on in the current run and b) the charity, the better.

CyberBotX

2012-07-11 08:20:19 am

Insane Killer Robot

I thought the problem with an automated solution was that it would still require some manual input to keep the times in line. And even then, the times could get skewed (I've heard many instances of the times in SMK's tracker program needing to be input manually). Maybe an easier solution would be to have something semi-automatic where the times for the prizes to be shown could be input and then it handles things from there.

Sir VG

2012-07-11 08:39:34 am

Fucking Weeaboo

If the prizes are being shown via the 2nd screen, it could be very easy to have a program running that shows the images and then can change it via a time schedule, or make it a one-button push and the new stuff is shown. And if you set up the screen region right, nobody will see the program or interface stuff - just the image of the prizes. It's something that could be very easy to code.

I was thinking of something like that too for keeping track of times with the Google document - just have the program keep track of start, stop, length times and just have minimal interaction with those running the station. Hell, both items could run from the same program - telling it to change games can pull up the images for the prize stream and the title/runner info on the main stream at the same time and if it's possible to interact with the google document, update that too.

CyberBotX

2012-07-11 10:47:41 am

Insane Killer Robot

It's very possible to interact with Google Docs (they have a nice API for it), but one thing that I noticed during SGDQ 2012 is that there were times when people forgot to update the Google Spreadsheet of the schedule with the real times (most of the PC block, basically). Either you'd have to make sure everyone diligently keeps it updated or use another method to keep the display correct.

Sir VG

Edit history:

Sir VG: 2012-07-11 11:02:13 am

Sir VG: 2012-07-11 11:02:10 am

2012-07-11 10:57:46 am

Fucking Weeaboo

Quote from CyberBotX:

It's very possible to interact with Google Docs (they have a nice API for it), but one thing that I noticed during SGDQ 2012 is that there were times when people forgot to update the Google Spreadsheet of the schedule with the real times (most of the PC block, basically). Either you'd have to make sure everyone diligently keeps it updated or use another method to keep the display correct.

That's why I figure if the program can keep do all those items, then it would be less to worry about/mess up. Hell, when I started working the station, nobody told me about updating the sheet at all.

I know I could program something for displaying names/pictures, but I'd have to look into the API to see if I could work with it, given my crappy programming skillz. Tongue

Edit: Yeah, it's for C users and I'm a VB user. Sucks to be me, I guess.

Lag.Com

2012-07-11 12:41:39 pm

sda loyalist

This is absolutely the sort of engineering I love doing.

Sir VG

2012-07-11 12:44:31 pm

Fucking Weeaboo

Go for it lag. I suspect you'd come up with something 1000% better then what I could come up with anyways.