Starting a Game

A “game” in reeln is a workspace directory that tracks segments, events, renders, and game state. This guide covers creating one.

Initialize a game

Provide the two team names and your sport:

reeln game init roseville mahtomedi --sport hockey

This creates a game directory in your configured output_dir (or current directory):

2026-04-02_roseville_vs_mahtomedi/
├── game.json        # game state and metadata
├── period-1/        # segment directories
├── period-2/
└── period-3/

The segment directories use sport-specific names:

Sport

Segments created

hockey

period-1/ period-2/ period-3/

basketball

quarter-1/ quarter-2/ quarter-3/ quarter-4/

soccer

half-1/ half-2/

football

half-1/ half-2/

baseball

inning-1/ through inning-9/

lacrosse

quarter-1/ through quarter-4/

Preview before creating

Use --dry-run to see what would be created without writing anything:

reeln game init roseville mahtomedi --sport hockey --dry-run

Additional options

reeln game init roseville mahtomedi \
  --sport hockey \
  --venue "Guidant John Rose Arena" \
  --game-time "7:00 PM" \
  --level 2016 \
  --tournament "Presidents Day Classic" \
  --description "Pool play round 1"

Flag

Purpose

--venue

Arena or field name

--game-time

Scheduled start time

--level

Competition level or birth year (loads team profiles)

--tournament

Tournament name

--description

Free-form game notes

--date

Override date (default: today)

--output-dir

Override where the game directory is created

Interactive mode

Run without arguments for guided prompts:

reeln game init

This walks you through each field interactively.

Note: Interactive mode requires the interactive extra: pip install reeln[interactive]

Double-headers

Running game init twice for the same teams on the same date automatically creates a _g2 suffix:

reeln game init roseville mahtomedi --sport hockey
# Creates: 2026-04-02_roseville_vs_mahtomedi/

reeln game init roseville mahtomedi --sport hockey
# Creates: 2026-04-02_roseville_vs_mahtomedi_g2/

Team profiles

When --level is provided, reeln looks up team profiles from your config directory. Profiles store team metadata — name, abbreviation, colors, logo, and roster — so you don’t have to re-enter them for each game.

reeln game init eagles bears --sport hockey --level bantam

Team profiles are stored at:

{config_dir}/teams/{level}/{team_slug}.json

See Configuration for config directory locations.

Other sports

The same workflow applies to any supported sport:

# Basketball
reeln game init lakers celtics --sport basketball

# Soccer
reeln game init city united --sport soccer

# Baseball
reeln game init twins yankees --sport baseball

Next steps