WIP: Waiting for the Jury Prize Announcement

I had originally planned to announce the winner of the Showdowns & Shootouts Jury prize selection today, but that is not to be. As you will recall, the voting on the contest closed this past weekend, so we had our winner. It was actually a fairly close race, with the winner being decided by only three votes!

We sent an email to the winner but we haven't hear back from him. Since we don't want him to read about this before we've personally contacted him, we're going to put off this announcement until next week.

In the meantime, here's a sneak peak at the Work In Progress (WIP) illustration that will run with the story. Once again, I'm using Strata 3D CX6 to create this image. BTW: You might recognize the cowboy on top of the trophy as being the miniature that was in the bottom of last week's whiskey bottle image.

This image is still very rough (and, of course, I removed the winner's name from the plaque). So far, I'm mostly happy with the design (which, I must admit, is loosely inspired by my own Origins Award sitting on a shelf in my office). So far, I like the general shape, but there are some technical issues I need to resolve to make the image look better. For example, flat surfaces do not really look great with reflections. They tend to look lifeless and uninteresting. I may need to add some curvature to the name plaque, or get creative with my reflection maps in order to make this work.

Anyway, hope you enjoy this sneak peak of this image. Oh, and if you're interested in this sort of thing, here's a wire frame view to show you what the image looks like as raw geometry without the pretty textures applied. As you can see, there is a lot of detail on the cowboy figure, which was actually exported from Poser and placed in Strata 3D. It actually has a lot more detail than I need, but I don't feel its worth the hassle it would take to create a good, lower-polycount version of the model.

See you next week when we finally reveal the winner's name.

S&S Voting Report

This weekend we passed the halfway point in our month-long Showdowns & Shootouts Jury Prize selection process. So far, response has been about what I expected it to be with about 50 people voting so far. What I did not expect was that there would be one runaway leader at this point. One of the entries has an almost 2-to-1 lead over its nearest competition.

After these two big leaders, there are several other adventures racking up impressive voting. In fact, every single adventure has received at least one vote (and no, it's not just from the author).

I'm not going to taint the results by publishing who the leaders are, but I will publish the top five at this time (and they are listed in order of their publication number, which does not coincide with who's leading):

• SS001 - Ambush at Coyote Canyon! by Al Theobald
• SS002 - Bullets for Breakfast! by Ross Edwards
• SS003 - 1,000 Horses for Helen! by Carmen Cerra
• SS004 - Hurrahin' the Sky Pilot! by Dan Hash
• SS005 - Holed Up! by Lance Gamble

If you don't see your favorite adventure up there, it's time to vote or stat campaigning to convince your friends and family to agree with your choice and get them to cast a vote, too.

You can read the adventures here: http://www.hawgleg.com/2007_contest_winner.asp
You can cast your vote here: http://www.hawgleg.com/polls_vote.asp?PollID=1

By the way, remember that everyone cast a a vote is eligible to win a saddlebag full of cool prizes!

Voters’ Drawing Prize (valued at about $60) Randomly selected from everyone who votes Whitewash City Starter CD ($15 value)  One item from the Gutshot General Store (approx. $20 value)  One copy of the collected S&S paperback book (approx. $20 value) Gutshot miniature: ($5 value)

See yuh back here on Thursday fer our next, 

regularly scheduled pow wow.

Showdowns & Shootouts: Vote Now to Pick a Winner

As I said Tuesday, the time has finally come, mi amigos. We have finally opened the voting for the second-place prize in our long-running and much-delayed Showdowns & Shootouts Adventure Writing Contest. The details are all over on our Website, so you really should mosey over there and read it in detail.

Here's a relatively short version of what's going on:

• Back in 2007 we started a contest where people would send us ideas for adventures suitable for use with Gutshot. Some were real short (set-up and some loose ideas), others were real detailed with character names, stats, and detailed maps and game objectives. The contest is, of course, called Showdowns & Shootouts.
• We selected 12 of them, rewrote them into a standard format and posted them online as free PDFs for people to download for free.
• We got some of our gaming buddies to help sponsor the contest: Arnica Montana, Hotz Game Mats, Whitewash City, Knuckleduster Productions, and Scale Creep Miniatures all donated prizes... in fact, all told we've got more than $500 in prizes! Again, check out the main site for a list of all the goodies.
• Back in last summer (yup, summer 2010) we finally printed the last adventure. Yeah... there was a HUGE delay, which I'm gonna talk about shortly. Then in Summer 2011 we finally got around to decided who won the Grand Prize (we call it the Judge's Prize). It was awarded to Tom Reed for his adventure, "The Great Dry Gulch Bank Robbery!"
• Now it's time to select the second prize, which we call the Jury's Prize. This one will be selected by the general public at the Hawgleg Website. It's a contest that's open to anyone who will (hopefully) take the time to read the adventures and pick the best of the group (not counting Tom's two entries -- he's already earned one prize). You can get the adventures for free here:  http://www.hawgleg.com/2007_contest_winner.asp
• The author who receives the most votes will win the Jury's Prize and get more goodies than he can fit in his saddle bags (again, hit the main site for a full list).
• Now, here's the cool part, everyone who votes in this contest is eligible to win a $60 prize package. Yup, just for taking the time to vote, you could cash in on some cool stuff!

Everyone who casts a vote in this contest will be eligible for a special Voter’s Prize package valued at about $60. The Voter’s Prize includes: Whitewash City Starter CD ($15 value) One item from the Gutshot General Store (T-shirt, mug, etc. approx. $20 value) One copy of the collected S&S paperback book (approx. $20 value) Gutshot miniature: ($5 value)

Not bad, eh? To vote in the contest, just head on over to the Hawgleg Website, kick back and read some great adventures, and then cast your vote for the one you like best.

You know, what, folks? It's late, I'm more than a little tuckered out from getting things ready (wrote the news story at the Website, created that graphic you see above, and even cleaned up a few coding errors I found in the back-end software that tracks your votes). So, I'm gonna sit back and finish my beer and we can palaver about the contest and why it took so danged long to finish during the next blog update on Tuesday.

Thanks fer yer patience, I'm beholdin' to ya. See ya Tuesday.