The 2014 e23 Releases and Speculation Thread

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Proteus

Those Traveller Deck Plans may be a bear to release usefully, though: do you merely emulate the print product, with large-format pages to print and overlap? And is the original structured-drawing data in a friendly file format to render into PDF, without needing to grunge it up through an optical scan?

Or should the PDF improve on the original, and take advantage of its new medium, by including a single-page full illustration of the complete ship for GMs who want to print out maps at their own scale, and/or on a more commonly accessible sheet size (like ledger paper!)?

If the way the Car Wars maps were released is an indication, I believe the answer to this is "yes." I expect we should get both.

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by KevinR

Checking the list o' Car Wars products, it looks like these are the only ones missing from e23:
* Car Wars Deluxe (1301)
* UACFH (7150)

Both of which are mysteriously listed as "In Production" on their pages.

[RevBob]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Both of which are mysteriously listed as "In Production" on their pages.

That's a database glitch; the entries "mysteriously" got deleted in the transition to the new store, and you're the first person who bothered to say anything.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Proteus

What is a "production review" in term of the SJG workflow?

A "production review" is a review of a release-candidate PDF. Such a PDF incorporates a title page with credits; final, edited text, laid out and paginated, and consequently a table of contents and an index; art; quotes; legal annotations (e.g., copyright info and trademarks); and such minor details as page footers. A product's production PDF represents the first time that all of those elements are assembled in one place. Production review is a check to ensure that there were no errors in assembly.

To add a little contrast: There are earlier PDFs, sometimes called "preview" or "preliminary" PDFs. These exist when the product is in "production" (no "final"). They contain paginated copy but little else; for instance, there are blank boxes where the art and quotes will go, there's no index, and the page references are all "p. 00." Such PDFs are often reviewed by authors, editors, and other people – sometimes for contractual reasons, sometimes to speed up the later production review when we're waiting on art.

Originally Posted by Proteus

I've been presuming it's the final step before staging for release [...] However, Kromm's recent post suggests that may not be so, since items which have passed their production review (according to his blog and/or RPK's Twitter fee) are listed as "in final production".

The purpose of any review is to find errors, which in this case may include leftover editorial mistakes, truncated copy, ugly whitespace, bad justification, font glitches, missing ToC or index entries, and a hundred other things. Once those are smoked out, they're submitted to the production staff, who correct them; this correction process is what "final production" entails. The last check on the file after final production is done is called a "prepress check" or just "prepress." That's the one to look for if you're waiting for something to be uploaded (though there's a hidden step between "prepress" and "release," called "staging," where a file that has passed prepress awaits upload).

It may be helpful to note that at SJ Games, editors are not production staff. Editors interact with authors, and fix copy in Microsoft Word. Production staff interact with editors and artists, and lay out copy and art in QuarkXPress and InDesign. Editors who know the copy check the work of production staff and look for errata, but they do not fix errata because they don't work on the laid-out product, only on the copy that went into it.

[Proteus]

Thanks, Kromm; that was a very useful answer on the timeline and division of labor.

(And, as an experienced InDesigner, let me just say, "Quark? Ewwww…." :-) )

[RevBob]

Originally Posted by Proteus

(And, as an experienced InDesigner, let me just say, "Quark? Ewwww…." :-) )

I used to build church directories in Quark 3.x under System 8. "Ewww" is right...

[sir_pudding]

There was no SJGames release today, right?

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

There was no SJGames release today, right?

Road Atlas 6, The Free Oil States.

[Christopher R. Rice]

I'll be putting up a new survey in a week or so...not that we have many choices left.

[Jerander]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

I'll be putting up a new survey in a week or so...not that we have many choices left.

So, if we're just about at The End of our choices, does that mean we're getting close to the release of After The End?

One can always hope...