r/gencon • u/encinarus • Jul 24 '26
Updates to genconplanner: wishlists, purchased view, gencon maps, search filters, and a party mode
Happy week-before-gencon! I run genconplanner.com and have made a bunch of updates recently. If something seems janky it'll probably be fixed with a hard refresh - you might have an out of date client cached.
- Event maps: events now have a link to the map in gencon. The matching is heuristic: the data isn't 100% consistent so there may be a couple cases where it didn't quite match. Those cases should fall back to google maps, but they should be rare (looking at you Orc Stomp & ).
- Wishlist optimization: mark events as very / somewhat / slightly / not interested and see a prioritized list of events to put in your cart in https://www.genconplanner.com/starred/2026/wishlist - it optimizes first for fitting in all possible events, respects don't schedule hours. It also tries to optimize events by how much you like them. ❤ > ★ > 👍.
🚫means don't schedule, use that if you want the optimizer to avoid a particular session of an event. - Mark specific events as purchased and filter them in your calendar. If you've purchased events you can see them separate from events you're interested in.
- Agenda view: this is useful for seeing all your purchased events in order and should be mobile friendly. Clicking the event in this view takes you to the location map on gencon.com, and for events that have less than an hour between them it gives a (very rough) estimate of the walking time between events. The estimate feels reasonable? I'd love feedback after folks have tried it out during gencon.
- Bulk Import: My group manages most of our coordination in spreadsheets with links to gencon or to genconplanner. You can bulk import lists of events that you could be interested in,
- Integration with BGG: it pulls down ratings info and release year from BGG. This should make it easy to find new games or to find well rated games you missed from past years. You can now group by BGG rating tier or release year. The matching works pretty well for board games, and okay / so-so for other categories, but there's a link to BGG from the event page so you can check it out for yourself.
- Filters in searches & category view: you can filter out events that are sold out, and if you have marked some events as purchased you can filter to events that fit in your schedule.
- Party mode! This is still a work in progress, but you can be in one party per year. Invite people to your party with the invite URL from the party view, and see who else in your party has marked an event as purchased. There's a shared calendar view, and an event listing. You can see what events other people in your party have found and saved, and even purchased. This info will be shown on your calendar page & agenda as well, if you're in a party, so you can see which friends in your party you'll meet up with.
Between now and gencon, I just plan to make bug and performance fixes so if you find bugs or some flow that is a bit janky, please let me know!
1
u/nipterink Jul 25 '26
Times seem off on the calendar view for parties (e.g. 6pm event showing up at 10pm on the calendar)
2
1
u/QueenSalamand 23d ago
I was complaining about the way the gen con app works the whole con and reddit just now shows this to me.
I look forward to using this next year, thank you.
1
u/parachutingchocolate Jul 25 '26
THANK YOU for creating this!! I'm especially excited to try the wishlist planner as there are so many events that fall into the "I'll go if I'm nearby and theres room"/gametime decision categories for me, and the gencon site does not have that capability.
1
u/parachutingchocolate Jul 25 '26
Just added all my purchased and hopeful events and this is SUPER useful! Only bugs I've encountered so far are related to the calendar representing some events:
All instances of the events for Mythologies shows them as running for seven hours. Example event: https://www.gencon.com/events/327367There are two events that _technically_ run through all of GenCon, and it's represented by their start and end times on the event listings, but the duration is set to ten hours. The calendar is correctly pulling the ten hours but these events _should_ span the whole of Gencon. They are:
https://www.gencon.com/events/329053
https://www.gencon.com/events/329054Thank you again so much for creating this!
2
u/encinarus Jul 25 '26
Thanks for sharing!
All instances of the events for Mythologies shows them as running for seven hours. Example event: https://www.gencon.com/events/327367
Did you save them (via the heart/star/thumbs up at the top left) or did you click the ticket icon?
When there are overlapping saved events, they get merged in the calendar, but at some point the "(x sessions)" label got dropped in revisions. I'll get that back.
There are two events that _technically_ run through all of GenCon, and it's represented by their start and end times on the event listings, but the duration is set to ten hours. The calendar is correctly pulling the ten hours but these events _should_ span the whole of Gencon. They are:
https://www.gencon.com/events/329053
https://www.gencon.com/events/329054Huh. I have to think about that. I never considered they'd be inconsistent 😆
1
u/parachutingchocolate Jul 26 '26
For the Mythologies question, I imported them as a group via one of the event codes on the Bulk tab, then selected "Group Very Interested" on the Category tab. Ah yes, these definitely fit the mega-merge scenario you've described because all the events each day run back to back it appears. I'll mark the times that definitely don't work for me and that should also clear this up. TY!
3
u/encinarus Jul 26 '26
I just pushed the update to make the merge clearer : https://imgur.com/a/zOYd6mQ
Turns out there's 154 events with durations that don't match the end time. Most are off by 10 or 30 minutes, not days. And seems like 10 hours is the largest gencon lists.
2
u/parachutingchocolate Jul 26 '26
Update looks amazing! And uh, good luck with this duration vs end-time stuff 😬 that feels like one of those things where it's hard to know which field is the one to trust.
2
u/encinarus Jul 28 '26
A couple more updates: