Re: Next Year's Game?
 

Well, I'm imagining some kind of ramps that you get points for being on at the end of the match. Perhaps the flag must be balanced on top of a pole on a ramp ?

For that to work there has to be some incentive not to be on the ramp, though... such as getting more flags!

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

My idea for next year's game since I am involved with severe weather up here is a severe weather themed game.

The robot would have a rotating tornado down the middle of it and using some means (suction or mechanical) would pick up "hail stones" or something similar to the poof ball game piece and once up at the top the shooter must then score by firing said game piece, score on a fixed goal or on a chaser robot? With of course the chaser robot trying to avoid.

Human players could assist in some way with the hail stones.

The scoring could somehow be related to the Fujtia scale that tornadoes are rated on.

No trailers, need a faster paced game, faster speed for the robots, not so that every robot gets knocked over but a bit more intensity would be nice, more action and scoring and a less cluttered field than this year.

The rotating funnel cloud or "tornado" once the cloud makes contact with the field could also pick up hail stones from the field as well and score, not just score with it's allotment of pre-loaded pieces.

I'll let someone else add were and how they would like to see lightning and thunder introduced to this game.:)

Hopefully someone from FIRST reads this and I've just saved a whole lot of people a year's worth of planning and design :)

Now from a camera operator perspective....anything but white on the field floor as it's a huge problem to adjust from shooting the field to the players at the control stations and up to the stands to the stands.

Now how ironic would it be though for Team 188 "The Blizzard" to be driving force behind a tornado?

Sorry, I just had to much time on my hands this morning while I am waiting for some parts for my news/chase truck so I had to write this :)

Mark

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

Blizzard won't. Robowranglers (team 148) already did. There were some other helical loaders that were pretty fast too.

You definitely have too much time on your hands. I do too, if the first thing I thought of was that that's already been done...:D

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

What I posted was just the theme, brighter minds than me can go ahead and make everything massively complicated and write hundreds of pages of rules and tweak the idea into a game, another theme would be something green energy related or making best use of energy as afterall the whole go green thing is not going away.

and yes...one of the very rare times when I had too much time on my hands, incredible.

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

Echoing a whole bunch of other people:

1. Not getting penalized for being good! (Is your boss going to punish you for blowing away the competition and making the company a lot of money?)
2. A game where the robot is more important than the human player (isn't this the FIRST Robotics Competition?)
3. A game where we can unfold again! (I understand why they did it this year, but the games were a lot better when we could unfold.)
4. A game where autonomous and the end mode matter more. (This year, autonomous and the end mode amounted to "let's run away so we don't get score on more").

Definitely seemed like this year's game was meant to even the odds between rookie and veteran teams.

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

[quote=StevnIndustries;856642]Echoing a whole bunch of other people:

1. Not getting penalized for being good! (Is your boss going to punish you for blowing away the competition and making the company a lot of money?)

If you work in news, believe me "I've been there" and that's about all I can say in a public forum but yes I have seen some who do well get dumbed down and held back for just that, blowing away the competition too often. When I read about that rule it sure hit home believe me although I doubt they out that rule in there for that reason or but then again it sure teaches you that being too good in a certain area can cause others to react negatively.

I don't agree though with that type of rule, no one should be penalized for being too good, if someone or some team IS too good then it just gives others something to study and work up to that level or at least try but knowing that you might be penalized leads to not wanting to try so hard.

m

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

Apparently I'm not one of them

I've said it before, and I'll say it again ... That rule is not a penalty, it is a condition. Teams need to pay attention to that condition and make a decision as to if it's worth it or not to 2x or 3x their opponents score.

FIRST is about people and inspiration, not robots.

On this, we completely agree.

I'd like to see this as well, however the last few times that the endgame mattered people complained that it was worth too much (ramps in '07, hanging in '05).

really? Then please explain 67 and 217 dominating their tournements. This year threw a curveball at the veterans, true ... but it, in no way, leveled the playing field, nor should the GDC try and level the playing field. IMHO

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

Yes, the rule is a condition, but the effects of said condition are penalizing. What you say is true about making a decision of whether or not is it worth it to outscore an opponent by two or three times their score, but not in a game like this. The score was extremely hard to measure until after the game was finished and the balls were counted. I do not think that the drivers had enough time to make an accurate judgment based on an estimation of moon-rocks in three different trailers. Also, with the risk of having the opposing alliance score super-cells, it was a much better option in most cases to just score as much as possible.

This is very, very true. However, during the actual game, one would think that the robots, not the humans, should be the ones doing most of the scoring. Compared to last year, human players had an infinitely larger role, especially with this year's endgame.



I would love to see a more intense autonomous period and an endgame as well. There were virtually no incentives to scoring in autonomous this year, apart from scoring on an immobile trailer (and that's only if the opponent's robot's autonomous mode did not last the whole period and if your robot had target-tracking and some darn good code.) Also, GDC seemingly took the massive amounts of points scored in the endgame the past few years into account. Overdrive's endgame bonus seemed completely fair and balanced last year. While it's true that some teams carefully loaded super-cells into their robot during the last twenty seconds, most teams left them in the hands of their HP's. Again, I don't think that the HP's should have played such a large role. (That's not to say cross-court super-cell shots weren't epic!)

Very true again, regarding 67 and 217. Though off the top of my head, I can think of numerous rookie teams that did just as well if not better than most of the veterans: 2753, 2775, etc. While it's true that veterans generally have had the upper hand, this year things seemed to be a bit different. I don't want to generalize teams, but as a whole, I saw more two and three digit teams fall to 4-digit teams than last year; heck, four digit teams in the 2000's to be more precise. I recall two teams (2655 and 2415) overcoming the 1st alliance in the quarterfinals at Peachtree. They went on to win the regional, with 2415 winning a second regional at Palmetto. 2775 made it to the finals of their division, and 2753 was on Einstein. These are just examples I experienced personally. There are probably many more that I can't think of. I do think that the playing-field was leveled this year, and I think FIRST was right in designing a game that did so.

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

next years game should be SOCCER! the robots have to try to score on the opposing teams goal while their goalie trys to prevent it.
:) :) :cool:

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

O_O
very interesting....

Curtain Game
 

Here's my game idea:

The field is divided in half down the center (between driver stations) by a large black curtain (permanently attached to the floor), the curtain has opening on each of the far sides (by the human players)with ramps leading into the gaps, and a opening 1/2 or 2/3 robot starting height beside each. (the openings in the curtain are at the edges, so that it is hard for driers to see through them).

The robots would collect scoring objects on their own side (the side of the curtain their drivers where on), and score on the other. The drivers would be challenged to score, because they could only tell where their robot was, based on communication from teammates, debugging lights, and potentially (I don't know if FIRST would be willing to do this) laptops attached to the drive system, allowing the robots to send back video :ahh:.

The scoring object could be anything, my suggestion would be posts that you have to stick into holes, or some other manipulation intensive scoring challenge.

It would increase defense (because you have the advantage of sight when defending, making it easier and more worthwhile). Allow programing innovations (scoring using semi-autonomous routines, because its hard ot control scoring manually without *much* vision.). Increase the importance of humans through teamwork (Human players, could communicate with their drive teams), while letting the robots score. And the challenge would mix up strategies and ideas, challenge drive teams, and require innovative design and building, while allowing openings for rookies, to work in easier, but just as vital positions, like defense.

Stretching FIRST to the limit and creating a new fun FRC game.

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

Everything Lunacy wasn't :P

Re: Curtain Game
 

i think this is a fantastic idea. it would prove a great challenge, and if FIRSt allowed the feedback of video cameras, the system would prove a greater challenge because the drivers would have to be able to swtich their perspective of vision every time the crossed to the other side of the field form which they are already on. but posts might not be the best choice unless you could make sure that they did not harm the robots.

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

Where do you submit ideas to the GDC.

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

For FRC or FTC? For FRC, the Game Design forum here is checked every now and again by GDC members. They may or may not use anything in there.

I'm not sure about FTC, though.

Be warned, though: I don't know who the FTC GDC is, but they may or may not also check said forum for ideas...