2006 Game Thread
 

Well, we're all excited since tommorow is kickoff for the 2005 game followed by 6 intense weeks of design and building of our robots... followed by weeks and weeks of competition. Weeks of lack of sleep and numb minds. So, I figured... why not get a head start and start preparing for next year. What do you guys think the 2006 game will consist of?

Re: 2006 Game Thread
 

Water game!

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There will be a flying robot. It may only be ground effect, but there will be one that will fly.


Wetzel

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So I see it only took ONE post for "water game" to show up in this thread. I think it must be a requirement that every game design thread have this somewhere.

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Don't you think it is sorta early to begin talking about the 2006 game when we have not even started the 2005 one?

Anyway Aignam, you have got it all wrong, in 2006 we are going to have orange Kool-Aid from which all of our robots will have to take nearly 75% of their energy from!

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I don't know why this cracked me up so much... but it's just so... typical. Hillarious for someone without a lot of sleep like me.

Matt

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A dozen or so small swarmbots need to accomplish a task in the given time rather than one big robot.

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With inflatable clowns...of course.

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We'll be competing on popcorn again. It's "retro".

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If there was ever a thread that deserved a :rolleyes: this is definately it.

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And let's not forget the Krispy Kremes...

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I see a game that I will spend the week before reading 500 some odd posts trying to figure out what some cryptic clue means such as, "the left footed elephant walked around on Abe Lincolns hat to reach a velocity of 12 feet per second"

Oh well, I'm certainly looking forward to it!

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come on it is to early for this.

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American Idol for robots and nerds.

Better get those text to speech programs running!

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I have a feeling next year, the competition will involve submarine robots that need to fish out rings at the bottom of a tank of green Jello. It'll be hard to see, so teams will need cameras mounted on the robot and a little monitor on the controls to see what's goin on.... yeah I'm positive thats it.

In the future, FIRST will make teams build robots that move with legs. Or maybe you'll see one this year... who knows what 1474 is gonna cook up this year MUAHAHAHA! :cool:

lol yeah right :rolleyes:

-Alex

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I'm amazed at you people! Why haven't hamster-powered robots been mentioned yet? It would completely revolutionize the game. Think about it...

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Hamsters have been specifically disallowed as power sources for the past two years. :rolleyes:

It would make things interesting though...

Wetzel

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I think footballs will somehow be involved.

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Oh man, I can SO turn that into a game!!! 2006 here we come! :)

-dave

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Bad Dave!
No Krispy Kreams for you! :D

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Hmm... We could end up having a game where you need to have a robot that stacks the Krispy Kreme doughnuts but then another robot can "eat" the doughnut off of the pole thingy and if that happens the robot who's doughnuts were eaten needs to cry cause his doughnuts were eaten and the other robot can do a victory dance. Then we bring out the waffle sticks and maple syrup for center of gravity, balance, and power. ^.^ Yup... and this is all going on while muffins of various types are being thrown on the field. Doughnuts, Muffins, Waffle Sticks, and Syrup, all that's missing is the eggs and OJ and we'd have cooking robots.

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It'll be underwater, 3 on 3 on 3, on a triangular field with a side length of 63 feet. The clue will make sense and give clever people a good idea of how the game will work.

Wait, that was supposed to be this year...

Edit: Dave Lavery will accidentally expose the secret of the game in midsummer with some offhand remark.

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Its so obvious, the robots will have to pilot segways!
Or even aquatic segways! :ahh:

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:yikes: wait... that's just crazy enough to work! Aquatic Segways! Then the drive team will be in scuba gear.

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Here are some possibilities:

So assuming that FIRST continues to grow at this rate, both in US and Internationally, we will also have a surge of teams. Which means either 3vs3 or 4vs4 alliance. However, I would like to propose a new idea: I agree with Roland. This new field has to be a triangular shape.

Why??? Because Dave, in creating the 2005 game, gave an absolutely blatant clue towards the 2006 game. Think about these tetras for a second: 4 triangles connected on each edge. Alliances of 4 on a Triangular field! It has to be it!

With this comes the style: a triangular field would be difficult to maintain aquatically. So there I would hold off til 2007, if anybody would like to start a thread about that. However, anothe rpossibility is the Krispy Kreme arena. Circular. It would have a hole in the middle where we'd put the human players. In a donut shape, it could be aquatic. The human players would fish little things out and hand them to the robots. It would be marvelous.

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in 2006 there will be MOVING PARTS ON THE FIELD... (and pink has already discussed the flying robot technique and this is when we'll impliment it.) :rolleyes: no balls, boxes, OR tetras either... also, the drivers will be in the CENTER of the field, looking around at the other robots driving around, and the point of the game is to safely get your human player from one side of the field to the other. :D and yeah, sure, water will be involved.

so we'll have Boats! and helicopters (planes dont have enough room for takeoff) and then normal robots.. althrough eventually some team will design their robot to turn into a Transformer. ooo.. that would be cool...

the possibilities are endless. :)

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hows this far out idea, every team can have multiple robots. like 3 mini bots or something

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I can imagine how you would pick the human player who would have to go through that thing and make out alive :D

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haha yeah... well the human player i would pick would have to be a ninja! :-D and probably be the smallest person on the team. :p but then you'd have to be careful for any non-gracious professionalism team that would aim to injure your human player... o.o;; human players should be given force fields. :) or maybe mechs. you never know. :D

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I would guess that they will do somethingvery similar to this year, but they will probably mix objects so that people have more to do...
Not just boxes or balls or tetras alone. Otherwise people will just repeat the same things... and its all about innovation, so they wont want us to do the same things.

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We shouljd make like it like FIRST Survivor. Your robot competes against other ones to see who's coolest who's shinier. And you program the robots to do different tasks autonomously and the ones that lose are voted off the island....ya...I think I might need some sleep.

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FIRST survivor? And I thought it couldn't get any wierder when someone mentioned green jello and knocking off team mates. I think that at that point the focus will shift from building a robot that performs a certain function to outfitting one with spinners and speakers and making it chrome-plated. :yikes: Actually, I'd like to see that.

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as one of my friends from journalism camp would say:

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Chainsaw...check.
Grinders...check.
Flamethrower...check.

Like a Swiss army knife and sooooo much more. :D

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but weapons aren't allowed on the robot though :yikes:

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Actually, you can do anything you want to your robot...after the competition. :D

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When I read this year's clues, all signs pointed to the number 6 repeatedly. Maybe the challenge for this year was supposed to be to create a demon-summoning robot . . .

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I don't know if I should be scared or not... but this is FIRST so that explains everything... including the meaning of life! :rolleyes:

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The meaning to Life, the universe and everything is 42. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy said so. :D

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Ack! *brain starts to hurt and dissolve*

Let's just concentrate on the 2005 game eh?!

>_<;

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but what about those of us who like to speculate???

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I had an interesting thought about the 2k6 games, What about something like PVC Pipes as the game objects? Something like 1'-2' sections capped at each end, with various goals to put them in different ways. I don’t think FIRST has ever done a game with this kind of game object :)

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Something like this?
:D

Wetzel

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Well, what have we done?
We have put things on top of each other, on top of goals, in goals , hung from things. thus i think we will be putting stuff on other robots, takign them out of goals and dropping from things....
:eek:

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Well, look at the game this year. It's very creative. Instead of balls or boxes, we have tetras. FIRST has had something different each year, so I don't think it's going to run out of ideas any time soon.

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Haha, we were thinking about pimping out a past-years robot, we were thinking 2004 with the big pneumatic tires, putting them on stubby pneumatics and putting like 6 air tanks there to give it a bouncy ride... Duct tape rims and a sub box would take up the rest of the 120 pounds...

Pictures when we're done...

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FIRST Survivor??? I'd make sure 616 won that one. ;)

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Sorry to ruin everyone's fun but, this is nuts!!!! The second week of competitons for the 2005 season are just starting thursday. Let's wait until after Atlanta to make our predictions and have fun with the current game at hand. But i like the ideas though.

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What every they do for the game itself, I think that the OI and the RC need USB ports and high speed radios. That way there could be faster transfer of data and we could have cool assesories. You could put a printer on you robot. Then they could play office wars.

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the first thing that comes to mind when I hear office wars and robotics in the same thought: Paper Clip Cannon.

Has anyone ever considered using a Confetti Cannon? Those things rock! (Why? Because I invented it in a concept drawing last year) :rolleyes:

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Wow just noticed somthing! Look at two years ago, the game was stack attack, and the scoring objects were square/rectangular. Look at last year, where the balls were round. And this year, tetras. Notice a pattern? Its the FIRST logo from right to left. My prediction is that the game will next year involve boxes again.

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I think it would be awesome if they could someone combine the last 3 year's games all into one (stack attack, first frenzy, and triple play).......some tetras, some boxes, and some balls all going at once, along with maybe some moble goals, a hang bar, a ramp, I dont know, but it would be awesome.

Also, maybe a game a CTF for next year? If they could find a way to do that, it would be cool.

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Personally I'd like to see another game with ramps. Either the (2002?) balancing ones of the 2003 not balancing one. Actually I just like the hieght differences. Not sure why but I think they add a whole new element to the game.

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Some kind of interactive field would be cool, your robot trips a sensor and it makes the goal move... something like that.

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I think that having all three games would be cool , but personally I'd like to see a small water hazard or something . Or put a split ramp in where the ramp only goes halfway across the field on each sidebut theyre connected so you would have to go up the ramp turn , go across the top and come down the other side
! ^ !___
!___ .....!
......! ^ ! something like this

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hmm...Water + Electronics + People = BAD :P

The 2006 will probably be similar to this year..lots of penalties, cool designs, people doing crazy things, etc.

I want a field that reacts to what you do...Place object A on Sensor B, Object C is placed on field and you have to place it on Sensor D or something.

I'm pretty sure they will keep the camera and probably add a new sensor..like..Bump sensor..hit an object and it activates something? I know they'll probably try to get more teams to use the camera since its like the gyro when it was released...no one used it until a few years later...

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I don't what it is going to be but i just wish they have stairs. Not like the 2004 game but like standard size stairs for buildings. Maybe something like you have to place an object somewhere in order for a door to the stairs to open and then at top have a relly small space and do something like king of the hill (only for one bot) or i don't know as long as it has stairs I'll be happy. :D

Dave

Re: 2006 Game Thread
 

Hmmm. I can think of penalties for "unintentionally" pushing a robot off the stairs and down to their doom. Would make it pretty exciting though :)

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wat im thinking is they are going backwards on the logo
two years ago crates=box
last year balls=circle
this year tetras=triangle
and next year the will incorperate the entire logo

my 2 cents....

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In auto: a big circular rotating column with bright yellow or green dots: hit yellow 10pts, hit green 50!pts

In the game: about 5 COMPLETELY different items that can be scored in a 3 different scoring bins ( one is a taped off section of the floor [ 1 pts], one is a PVC square [3 pts], and one is a bucket at the top of a high thing [10 pts] :)

The CLIMAX: robots have to climb a set of standard stairs and put up an arm or something up.

Swarm concept is introduced ... Vex or FIRST comes up with new RC that supports multiple "mini-robots"

water ... do an Indian corn rain dance because thats how long people have been asking for FIRST to have water :D

PS: 1 min of typing for 447 ideas and replies ... muhahaha! :ahh: KILT!? on a ROBOT!?

Re: 2006 Game Thread
 

I agree, there is a lot of money that could go to waste if something "sprung a leak" :p I have no Idea what it could be, but I'm thinking that it might include multiple objects to grab.



oh.... and I HOPE that it includes the green jello :D

Re: 2006 Game Thread
 

Finally, someone suggests something other than just "WATER GAME!!!" An interactive field would be a seriously fun way to spice up the game. I'm thinking some sort of obstacle course where two to four bots compete by stepping over laser tripwires, dodging small potholes, perhaps a water section (even I can't pass that idea up) where after finishing the other sections, bots have to float across an area to reach the objective. Certain tripwires could also set off a slide that pushes you opponent bot back a section or something. The options for this are endless, but the complexity of the game could make setting up some competitions hard.