Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

Agreed. That portion of my post was to be taken in jest. But we clearly could have a human player throwing/shooting a ball. We did it in FIRST Frenzy: Raising The Bar did we not?!?!

Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

yup, tossing the ol' pigskins around wouldn't pose a problem...except that i can't throw footballs..

Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

Going back to the football theme, in football games, teams going for a field goal have to kick the football between the goal posts. But what's there to stop that football from going into the audience and potentially hitting someone? A net. It can't be that expensive to hang some cheap netting around the field to stop stray footballs, can it?

Maybe this is all just wishful thinking, since I've always wanted to have the robot throw/shoot scoring objects into the goals, program in some ballistics calculations, targeting systems.... oh the possibilities.

Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

Two years ago, FIRST Frenzy required shooting balls into a basket from ~15 feet away and no netting was used to protect the crowd from either bouncing or badly thrown 4-square balls.
But if field goal kicking is one of the tasks, some netting might come in handy.

Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

good point. Dang, but I'll be in even WORSE trouble if i have to kick field goals...

Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

i know what is meant by kicking field goals but... ya it would be bad cuz a lexan and aluminum structure would really hurt to kick, so if thats the case make sure to wear steel toes.. haha poor humor..

Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

And it's an open secret that we'll have that Easy-C compiler with us this year.

At my heathen college, at least two people on my dorm floor didn't know it when I began to play it :(

Have you not read Dave's posts championing a 1v1v1v1v1 game? I think that may be where we're headed...

Did you not read last year's game hint? You wouldn't call the fact that Triple Plays were performed by John Neun and George Harrison in the 1930's obscure?

Then you didn't read the thread...but I agree.

Bucko, what kind of mailboxes are you talking about? Because I'm $@#$@#$@#$@# sure that Matt Leinart couldn't throw a football into my mailbox.

If you're talking about a big blue, side of the road mailbox...than maybe. But I doubt it.

I assure you that you will have a lot less trouble programming this year with the new coding system.

Two guarantees:
1) No field goals (as much as I loved Flutie's drop kick)
2) No robot projectiles

I think it will be footballs, and the goal will be on a central truncated pyramid. In it, rather--a deep depression in the top of it.

Aw hell, why not throw out another couple halfass predictions.
1) green cmu cam
2) autonomous at end of the match--robots must stand on the ramps of the pyramid to get points at end
3) 1v1v1v1v1. Why not make it exciting?
4) no goals near the sides of the field, to minimize errant throws into the audience.

Why is there no one else on this thread at 2:50 AM? Are there no other college students on this board :)

Well, we'll see in two days won't we!

--Petey

Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

Just a thought about the CMU cam since it keeps getting brought up.

We couldn't get the thing ro stay callibrated because the light conditions varied so much at the competitions even day to day, so unless FIRST solved this problem with say powered LED targets on the the scoring object and goals or something else to eliminate this issue I have difficulity in believing they will just give the same camera again.

It kind of like the IR beacon from 2004 it was better in theory than in the practice of the competitions because there were too many interferences when you got to the competition the FIRST hadn't accounted for. I would hope that for any new sensor this is considered before it goes into the kit again.

Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

First off, forgive me if I break some unwritten rule that I haven't read yet, but I just stayed up till 3:ish reading through 42 pages of ideas we've come up with from three lines of text hints. Amazingly, I've got some ideas nobody else has mentioned yet.

In a very particular order... (random) ^__^

the 5 bots with pasta, thing. 5 pasta stations. two on each side of the field, one in the middle. fits with the symmetry idea, doesn't it?
~or~
yes, more on the pool noodles. maybe there will be a bonus noodle cap that there is only one of. I like my 5 legged octopus idea, cause it'd be cute.
~or~
interesting things with autonomous could happen this year, like one bot on autonomous at a time with the game divided into 6 equal segments. I'll finish with the rest of my ideas later, because I have to go to school now. YAYS!

Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

Seeing how this is the game hint thread, I will venture my guess prior to ranting. . . . then I will rant.
'First thing that came to mind when I saw the word pasta was pool noodles. I think that these are plenty sturdy to use as game pieces and they could be really fun to manipulate with a robot. As for the 5 'bots clue, how about if they give us vex kits (or similar) that allow us to make 5 robots per team. An alliance, then, might be made up of all the robots from one team. That would allow for a smaller (more economical) field also.
Montana's green heights. I am thinking that this isn't related to football. I figure this is a structure that resembles a mountain and perhaps something green that the CMU can pick up and track.
As for the shovel's show, the first thing that came to mind was a pile rather than a hole. Perhaps you have to make a pile of a certain color of pool noodles. That, again, would bring the CMU and green into play.
Yet another guess is that on top of the mountain is a randomly moveable hole with a green rim around it into which you have to place pool noodles that your robot has collected from the field. That 5th robot is a part of the playing field and it is actually a big robot that can pull or push your team's robot out of the hole when it falls in. For autonomous, you have to find the precisely placed/colored noodle that will release the other noodles or give you some related advantage.
Now for the rant. What's this about an extra piece that we have to buy? Didn't that $6,000 that we paid go towards the kit (as well as costs associated with putting on a big travelling show)? It seems that a $125 part, especially one discounted to $58 when purchased in bulk, could have been thrown into the box with the rest of our parts. Perhaps these are the afformentioned pool noodles. After all, we had to buy boxes for Stack Attack, PVC and end-pieces for tetras, etc. I guess that would make sense.
I guess I also just talked myself out of a rant.
Good luck teams!

Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

Yeah, what doesn't make sense is where would you put them? Assuming retail here: $5/noodle, $125 worth of noodle- that's 25 noodles. That's a heck of a lot of noodles to put into your car.

Assuming your standard 4" diameter, 48" long pool noodle... that would consume a volume of 20" x 20" x 48". I guess it could fit in most cars? :confused:

Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

they have already used field goal uprights as the goal.

that was 1995, ramp and roll. fyi, this was also a 1v1v1 game.


man i'm getting old....

Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

for a game piece obsessed with a shovel's show... I think someone was right when they thought of spades and poker. (credit to my senior English/literature teacher for getting me to think of alternate meanings and synonyms of shovel's show. I am working on the football assumption as I like football a decent amount and it hasn't been done before in FIRST that I'm aware of. Ok, connections time. in poker, at the end of a hand you SHOW your hand. another word for shovel is spade. What is it called when you show all spades? A flush, right? Now we just replace shovel's show with flush(ing) and what is the first thing we think of that has to do with flushing? If you are like 90% of the population, you should know what I'm thinking now. I think we will be throwing footballs through a game piece deserving of flushes. a toilet seat. Can you imagine how much fun that would be for everybody involved? I sure can. Granted, I suppose this could be considered a long shot, but hey, its my pet theory now. also, five cards in a poker hand, you "see" someone an amount, and can "raise" the stakes some if you so choose. And as for the "green heights" has anybody else seen how much poker has been on tv recently? there's a fair amount of green felt on a poker table... and cash too...

I think maybe the noodles must be dug through to retrieve the footballs with which to score. and for the heights, I think there will be a platform of some sort in the middle of the field. yeah, long shot, huh?


A toilet seat is a much nicer target than a mailbox size wise, anybody know how much a toilet seat costs?

Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

Sara,
We're not getting old we've only been out of college... 4 years
Nevermind, we are getting old.
Pete

Re: 2006 Official Game Hint Discussion
 

He could be on to something. In the case that my football idea is off, and it is something to do with spaghetti shaped stuff/batons/something else, I could easily see bowls in the corners.

But again, 5 bots...why not 6? and why the contraction to 'bots, aside from an 8-10-8 haiku?

Very bright.

Very smart newbie here!