When will the first official game hint be released?
 

We are 3 weeks away from kickoff, but no hints are released yet. Anybody know when to expect the hints to be released?

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Before kickoff, if there are any.

And in all seriousness, hopefully not until after next week. I'd like to be able to focus on finals.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

When you're not expecting them to be released.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

You can expect them when and if they are released.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

I think that Ryan Hall did some research last year that showed the average date of release for game hints was December 21st.

I would expect sometime around then.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

I believe that it is usually within a week of Christmas. You can think of it like a stocking stuffer from FIRST, or a lump of coal depending on your thoughts about the clue that year ;)

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

You know, I think we'd better stop talking about hints until they are released (and we will put them on the forum them).

What if they are watching places like this forum, intentionally not releasing them because everyone is waiting!


Just an idea! I don't want to influence you to not post about hints!

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Last year, the hint was released right at the beginning of finals week at our school. I'm pretty sure I missed at least one problem on each exam from thinking about the hint.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

The less we talk about the game hints the faster they will come.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Exactly!

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

How do we know a hint hasn't been released already?

Has anyone checked the Nth letter of each of Frank's blog posts where N is the next Fibonacci number modulo number of years since FIRST was founded?

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Well I was sitting in class today and thinking... What if we have the hints for next few years all lighned up in front of us for all FIRST competitions.

This year in FLL their was a majority of Block shaped pieces (the truck, the climb, the ambualance) and in FTC the challenges requires blocks. FRC it might requires blocks.

Last year was the year of the circle. FRC we had a disk which has a circle at the bottom of it, FTC? Rings!!!! which have circles!!! FLL? had a lot of circular challenges (like the bowling element.)

Maybe next year will be the year of the triangle and we will have lots of triangular pieces.

Now this is just a theory that is very weak and not supported very well.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

I seem to recall seeing something about a square donut with a triangular cross section...

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Clearly the lack of a hint is a clue to the lack of a game! ;)

I don't understand the obsession with game hints :confused:

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

So here is the honesty check.
Did last year's hint actually help any teams :-)

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

No, but we did have someone arbitrarily guess the game a couple of hours before kickoff. :D

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Probably in 3013... but Who knows?

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

You know when a game hint has been released, when something sent out from FIRST (or posted on the blog) clearly says GAME HINT on it.

For some reason this year has been the worst so far in threads begging for game hints and overanalyzing. There's a whole lot of passionate, engaged students out there. My usual message still stands: spend your time on other, non-FIRST endeavors while you still have time. Hang out with your family & friends. Go do something that doesn't have anything to do with robots for a little bit. Maybe you'll gain a new perspective on something that will actually help you during build. Most importantly, get some sleep.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Quoted, bolded, and enlarged for truth.

Or, go study for finals. If you don't have finals, get ahead on some of that studying you might not do during build season.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

sleep who needs sleep :D not me

im busy trying to figure this years game out and preparing for season sleep is non existent in my eyes :)

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

You play a dangerous game.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Sleep? What is this sleep of which you sp....ZZzzzzzzzz

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

The most dangerous game. Oh wait, nevermind. (*)

Sleep and spend time with the people you will entirely ignore for the next 2 months

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

In olden times, former GDC member Dave Lavery used to post hints right here on CD, from which we could learn the exact nature of the FRC game -- IF we could decode them. Unfortunately, Dave's code was exceedingly complex. Something akin to translating all the technical facts into Kurdish, all the historical facts into Navajo, all the numerals into Chinese, and then scrambling the characters, re-encoding in EBCDIC, and then posting the final text in pig-latin. That explanation is actually a bit oversimplified. No one ever really understood any of Dave's hints.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Idk, 2010 was probably the worst. The hints for the 2009 game were released very early in December and were pretty good. However, for the 2010 game, there was a red herring in November that made everyone crave an official hint that wasn't released until December 24th; it was pandemonium.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

I believe that one of the hints for 2009 was a fish. Don't know about you, but I wouldn't have guessed low friction playing surface (or moon rocks) from that. I believe someone got moon out of that, but that wheat was pretty effectively hidden in the chaff.

2010 was the only year where someone actually used the hint to figure out what the game was going to be IIRC. Someone looked at the thickness of the polycarbonate sheet and estimated that soccer balls could fit nicely in it.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Why catch up on sleep now? If you can't get the sleep you need during build season you are clearly doing something wrong.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Yeah, I was just saying the amount of posts begging for the game hint in 2010 was the worst.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

A good non-FIRST endeavor would to be to study for your Amateur Radio License. :D The off-season is the only time I have to study for my Extra ticket.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Fun bit of hint trivia: The 2007 game hint was used to determine the game piece of that year. Here's the post (the pictures are gone, but essentially he rendered a picture of a tube on a spider leg from the game hint)

Of course, the challenge's rules don't change if you figure out the game early, so it is of no help to you to do so. Not to mention that you won't know if you're right until the exact same time you'd figure out the game the regular way.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Wasn't there also one year, early 00s, where the game hint was a BoM, and someone actually built part of the field, VERY similar to the final product?(IIRC it was for a double-level trailer similar to what was used in Lunacy...Zone Zeal?)

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

These were the best type of hints. Just random hints dropped throughout the forum. It always fun going through the hints after Kickoff and realizing the meaning of each hint.

If we get a hint, you will know about it.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

I'd say if you unscrambled the anagram "Vet hurdling FIRST tetra" from 08 and got the encrypted manual open, you'd be pretty sure that you were right.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

"No one ever really understood any of Dave's hints."??? How can you say that??!?!! I understood every single one of them!!! (and so did Bill Murray!) :)


-dave




..

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Except even if you solved the anagram, you couldn't decrypt the manual without the proper capitalization and punctuation (Drive!Straight?turn!LEFT!?).

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Anyone know the history behind Dave putting a good inch of black space at the end of his posts? All the old ones I've seen seem to have this same "Dave gap" too.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

From what I can tell, he just likes his posts to have extra white space. On the other hand, there are two dots at the end this time, rather than only one. Double the dots... Double the robots! :ahh:

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

I talked to FIRST, and they gave me a hint:
Boxes fly, robots stack

















Lol. that's a joke!
The more we wait for the hint, the more time it will take for them to release it!

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Oh, great. Dave and his Morse code strike again.


And I'm willing to bet that some portion of the game animation is currently busy on Dave's render farm... otherwise, why would he be out here stirring up confusion?

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

What do fish have? Tails

What comes to mind when I say "Fish Tail"? Fishtailing

What is "Fishtailing" referring to? Pulling a Trailer

Game Hint Explained

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Actually, I believe the fish in question was a moon fish...

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Who said the hint had only one solution? We are dealing with some slippery fish here (no pun intended)

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Touche', Dave.


BTW, I notice a striking resemblance between your Other Car, and the Chinese 'Jade Rabbit' lunar rover. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Congratulations on continuing to inspire. :)

Now that China has joined the moon exploration club, and has several FRC teams, maybe FIRST should revisit Lunacy?

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

With automated moonrock counters on the trailers!

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Did anyone figure out the rick astley hint from last year my guess was rick rolld flick rolld its frisbee but i am wondering was that actually the hint?

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

No FIRST was just trolling us.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

I can't believe I missed this. Murray stared in the movie Osmosis Jones http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181739/ = Water Game! sorry had to :D .

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

I don't know if anyone remembered the survey FIRST sent out from last year, but they asked a question about procuring game pieces on it (which wasn't really a hint). I would think the GDC would do something along the lines of ultimate ascent, by having easy to procure game pieces.
In looking at past games, it seems like the GDC really likes sports (1992 - tennis balls, 2008 - yoga type balls, 1994 & 2010 - Soccer Balls, 2012 - Basketball, 2013 - Ultimate Frisbee). I LOVE how they work with sports themes, so we can relate our work with robots to games & game pieces that many people are familiar with.
The GDC gave us a somewhat difficult challenge by making us work with frisbees last year, so maybe this year is another odd game such as a football game, golf game (ouch) with WATER features ;), or maybe even a NASCAR/Indy Car type #racingrobots game?

But really...

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

See: Overdrive, 2008

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

In one of the Behind the design videos, they talked about how one member of the GDC suggests a football game piece every year.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Unlike a water, game, I'd bet it will actually come up one of these years. And I'm thinking that next year could be that year.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

I wonder how we can make that out of COTS parts and build it as quickly as possible...

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

What if the hint is already released but RP-1 style? Like, all you have to do is print out the FRC Blog page, look for occurrences of typographical errors, those will spell out the location to the secret... oh nevermind, way too complicated ;-)

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

NOTHING is too complicated for the GDG. Nothing.

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

It just hit me upside the head what you meant with "RP-1". You mean Ready Player One, right? That was a fantastic book.

On to the speculation: maybe the errors of threes and fours, coupled with dates, produce something like Morse code.<evil laugh>

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

From my understanding that was never technically an official "Game hint" all that was labeled with that picture was "A look inside the GDC lab" I think we all just got a little excited and speculated it like crazy:D

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

So your saying i guessed the game based off a troll?
Also by the pictures they keeping posting up on facebook and twitter with throw back Thursday it seems they keep showing ones involving kick balls? coincidence

Re: When will the first official game hint be released?
 

Taken from this thread from last year (and updated info for 2013):

I actually totally forgot that I even did this research last year...thanks for reminding me! :yikes:

And I'll add on:
8. The only year that there were 3 game hints was 2008.
9. Out of the past 10 years, there was only more than one game hint for 4 of them (interestingly, these were 4 consecutive years).

My guess for this year's game hint (yes, I think there'll only be one): Friday, December 20th (since December 21st is a Saturday).