End Game Lights/Sound Effect Confusion?

[Brandon Holley]

Hey Everyone-

I noticed this at the Suffield scrimmage, but thought it had more to do with people just wanting to test their minibots than following the rules; does anyone else see a lot of confusion occurring regarding the start of the end game?

The "scrambling roadrunner noise" (for lack of a better description) has typically been when the "end game" starts in years past. Last year it was when teams could begin hanging, its been a pretty typical sound that I'm sure any veteran is familiar with. This year it occurs 5 seconds before teams can deploy their minibots.

While I presume most teams knowledgeable in the rules will still understand that they cannot deploy their minibot until the tower base color changes and the clock strikes 10 seconds, I've seen many teams already deploying their minibots at that "scrambling" sound. I believe I understand the intention of telling teams to "Ready, Set, GO!" for the minibot race, but it seems like some teams need to really brush up on their understanding of the rules (as is the case every year).

Just an observation, anyone else experience similar findings?

-Brando

[Matt Krass]

I'm still seeing this phenomenon on the NJ Regional feed, it seems like teams rush over and deploy as soon as they hear this sound I've seen it happen at least twice resulting in a tower disable.

It's an understandable mistake, I know the rules and I still expect to see minibots deployed the moment I hear that sound, not sure it was a wise choice.

And before it is said, yes teams should always read the rules and be observant of changes like that, etc, etc, but while we have lots of rookies, we have far more veterans that have trained, almost in a Pavlovian way, that the scrambling noise means endgame, it's not very nice of the GDC to shake that up!

Matt

[Marc P.]

Historically, the audio cues have never been an "official" marker of any sort of change in game state. As far back as I can remember, teams have always been told "Do not rely on the sounds, always go by the clock."

For the autonomous -> teleop transition, I've always heard "when the clock hits 0, not when you hear the ding ding ding" for drivers to step over the starting line.

This year it is especially easy to tell game states based on the colors in the tower base. Towards end game, flashing yellow = get ready but do not deploy. Once the tower goes solid red/blue, you're safe.

The audio cues tend to be very inconsistent, depending on the DJ and what sort of equipment they are using. Sometimes there is a noticeable delay between the game clock and sound effects, sometimes sounds don't play at all, sometimes they're drowned out by music, sometimes sounds in the music itself sound like game sounds and confuse them.

I can understand some jittery drivers itching to be the first to deploy instinctively triggering on the sound effect at 15 seconds, but I see it more as the "Ready, set" before the "go." It'll take some driver training and self control to avoid getting your tower disabled.