Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

Im sorry people, but there is no orange pin! They are BOTH red (And the same red, at that).

Took RGB values from the center of each pin:

Top "Red" pin:
R:244
G:27
B:36

Bottom "Red" pin:
R:245
G:33
B:29

Saying that, according to here, "Orange" requires a Green value of over 120, plus them being almost the exact same color, Im fairly certain there is no "Orange" pin anywhere.

Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

Ooh, the #1 plus #3 game where everybody goes on a wild goose chase finding a nonexistent #2?

Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

Which we will take as a hint that there is no 2nd alliance on the field and we are back to 5 v 0 game

Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

YES

Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

I don't know about the 'don't look into it too much' (you never know with the GDC), but I can confirm that, having interned for FIRST and being particular about my cubicle decorations - you can never find ANY pushpins that match in that office.
:)

Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

Could the image from the "RickRoll" video perhaps be referring to a specific game element, such as a rolling goal?(like ftc 2010-2011's moving goals)

Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

Usually when a song or singer photo is used such as in 2011 in Logomotion the yellow tube was a score multiplier when placed during the autonomous period. Now knowing FIRST they will likely have the game name in reference to one of Rick Astley's songs. However the placement of the tacks i doubt is coincidental. 2 red, 1 yellow and 1 blue. It cant be that the red alliance would have significance then the blue alliance since alliances are chosen at random for teams, both blue and red. I do believe that the tack in the lower left hand corner is slightly different then the other tacks. It looks more like a flat head tack then a traditional extended head tack. It could also be Photoshopped in. It looks rather different then the rest of the photo. The game in itself could have something with the one of his songs as well. I find it highly likely that his song "Never gonna give you up" is the song of choice. Such as keeping a specific item from the others "Your never gonna give up your said item"

Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

WATER GAME! Always a water game...

Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

In all seriousness about the pins, what if the game objects are colored, like in VEX Gateway, so all goals are neutral and its the objects that score for the team. Also, the objects stack and there is a yellow multiplier object.

Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

Wait... Call me crazy, but there's the mic in the picture. Maybe the addition of voice command? Like the addition of the Kinect last year.

Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

Could it be that we will have 3 teams? maybe a 2v2v2 red, blue, yellow? 3 minutes into the video, 3 different colors. Maybe the reason the one red pin is different is because it doesn't count. It's not a real push pin, so thats not a real team location...

Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

I cant see definitive proof that both of the red pins look any different, it just seems like the viewing angle causes it to look a little weird. They both have shadows, too.

Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

I'm not sure about that. You have to stand several feet away from the kinect to register movements properly, and the amount of ambient noise in the stadium would make voice controls a very inconsistent proposition.

I also can't see 3 teams, since that would require an unorthodox field shape and pose all sorts of issues.

The way I see it, there's 3 main possibilities.

1. Longer matches. The screenshot was taken at exactly 3:00, and a longer hybrid period would make the Kinect a better proposition without introducing balance issues. In a mere 15 second hybrid the benefit of Kinect over what you can easily script is practically none (if not net negative) because scoring your starting gamepieces is about all you can do in that much time. Double or triple the length of hybrid, and now that entire 30-45 seconds is available to you without having to use extraordinarily complex vision processing, and Kinect becomes very heavily incentivized over a vanilla autonomous program.

2. Triple Play part dos. It's been brought up year after year in speculation (never gonna give you up...) and it fits the "sport-original-sport" schedule.

3. This is technically an unofficial hint, they're rickrolling us and it's a dead end. An ever-present possibility.

I'm going to wait until the official hint before I make any bets on anything though.

Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

I agree. There must be a reason for the two red ones. What about unbalanced (as in number of teams per alliance) alliances? For example, perhaps the red alliance is made up of two teams, the blue one, and the yellow one:
red alliance: two teams
Blue alliance: one team
Yellow (new) alliance: one team
(I guess the yellow and blue would really be "alliances"
when you are a red alliance, you have strength in numbers, but goals scored would count less (or half) of goals scored by yellow or blue.

This would add another layer of complexity to the game, and I also agree with other's posts that a 2x2x2 and definitely a 3x3x3 would get way too crowded.

Thats my two bits

Re: 2013 Game Hint!
 

Red, blue, and yellow pins, photo of Rick Astly.... YES! IT'S A WATER CHALLENGE!!!!!!

Now that that's out of the way...

I think that the recurring number 3 was just added to troll us. I would love to see a close rerun of triple play though (Never gonna give up the game??) It's my favorite game, so this would be so cool.


As far as speculation into a third alliance goes, 2 vs. 2 vs. 2 would be really interesting, but it's reading a bit too far into this. IF we're going to pay that much attention to the pins, we might as well consider a 4 vs. 2 vs. 2 with some sort of twist on scoring and multipliers as well as heavy cooperation.

From the picture we can speculate the challenge may have some play on music or sounds though. Vocal commands during hybrid?

Screen shot was taken at 3:00, so longer match maybe?

If we go by the "You know the rules and so do I" , I think of Lunacy. It was 4 years ago, so some teams probably still have at least a few members who were there during that year. Would explain the white wheels, and perhaps 'roll' refers to the reappearance of a moving goal. I would like to see this too.

Equally possible is that we're just providing some lunch-break entertainment for the people in the GDC. Can't wait to see what they send out next.