Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

EDITED TO MATCH EXTRA INFORMATION:

The math that I did:
2500 Panel Lights = 2500 Teams --> Thus, this is one order, Possibly for everything they are getting from Rockwell.

14 Amber Stack Lights (Or 14 E-stop Buttons) / 3 per Alliance * 2 Alliances Per field - 2 Spares = 2 Extra Fields Being made this year --> That knocks out all of the remaining stack lights

~250 High Speed Counters & 500 Photosensors = 2 Photosensors to One Counter = Two Seperate and equal scoring Goals for Each Alliance (Like the two Logomotion racks)

500 Photosensors/ 19 Fields = 25 Sensors per field = 12 per Alliance + 1 Spare

250 Counters / 19 Fields = 12 Counters Per Field = 6 counters per alliance

6 counters per alliance = 6 Scoring Levels?

168 Roller Limit Switches= Some lever Element or Robot Interaction Element on Field? These style of switches are not like the standard microswitch that were used on the Tower for Logomotion. These are heavier duty than those, and the roller indicates that something is designed to roll or slide past the switch. With a 99% probability, I can say that these switches aren't intended for user interface, or something like the minibot tower...
168 Roller Limit Switches / 19 Fields / 2 Alliances = 4 Switches Per Alliance


As for Tennis Balls as game pieces, to make a field reset faster what if the field was a gently sloped "^", where the dropped tennis balls roll down to the ends of the field, and were collected in a large hopper? This would eliminate the driving hazards and speed up the field reset... This would also explain the "Heavy" Field, because surface would need to support the robots... And why else would they need the high speed counters? A normal counter would easily have the frequency to count, say, soccer balls rolling through a photogate...

And if the balls rolled back to a hopper, that would mean that the switches could be used to trigger a "Dumping" mechanism that would dump that hopper into a robot, maybe scoring extra points?

This would also be an interesting twist of strategy, making floor pickup less effective due to the game pieces "running away" and a robot that can quickly and effectively travel across the field to collect from the dumpers more effective than floor pickup.

Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

Pierce, just so you know, there will be 19 fields this year, not 15. This will skew your math a little bit, but many of your points seem valid.

Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

all of you have been focusing on the really technical side. at first glance ANCHOR stuck out in my head. i'm sure that some people have thought that this year is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the titanic.... now how perfect would that be?

Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

Thanks! I will re-evaluate!

Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

Alternatively, they could be similar to ball pit balls. They're hollow plastic, come in bright colors, and definitely have similar flight properties to wiffle balls since they're so light. Couldn't cause too much damage either.

Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

The water game strikes again! First off, there are a few ideas floating around that work with this Titanic theme. Regolith is an iceberg-like surface. Bill's throwing around loaded sentences about stormy weather. A sloped field would be like the tilted and sinking Titanic. But the question remains, why make a game about a failure in design that killed hundreds of people?

I think we should focus more on the technical aspects anyway. Let's imagine for a minute that there is a hidden message in the list. They wouldn't order parts specifically for their secret message, so they would have had to do what you just did, which is go out on a limb and see if there was anything that could have a double meaning on the list. Except that it's such a stretch that you could do it for any item on this list! Example:

This a road we should not travel down.

Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

Obviously something on the field will be happening fast enough (and/or often enough) that human judges would have a hard time. This could be anything moving on the field: field elements, game pieces, or even robots.

Whatever is happening that needs to be counted, it seems like the timing of the counting is critical. Maybe the match time will not count continuously, or maybe an event on the field must take place within a certain time. eg. If there was a plate on the floor in front of the feeder stations last year connected to a ROLLER LIMIT SWITCH and as soon as you backed away from the plate a timer would start and you would have to place the tube (detected by a PHOTOTRANSISTOR) within a certain amount of time or it would be invalid. The VERY HIGH SPEED COUNTER could be part of the timing mechanism or could keep track of the scores (it seems like the scoring will be faster than hanging tubes).

I also really like the idea someone posted a while ago about the counter being used in the finale when a bunch of mechanisms fire at once.

Although this is even more conjecture than the rest of my post, at the beginning of this thread everyone was talking about the photogates detecting "breaking a plane" and the only time I ever hear "did the ball break the plane" is while watching a football game. also: in a football game, the clock stops for all kinds of stuff, something that a VERY HIGH SPEED COUNTER could be used for.

Even if its not football (unlikely) the number (10-12 per field someone calculated) is a LOT. Even in Breakaway, there were only two goals per team, so unless there are bunch of goals worth different points (imagining aim high + ski ball) they could plan on lining up the photogates in areas to make "end zones".



I would LOVE a mixture of Aim High and Ski Ball. :ahh: The programmers would have fun.


edit: flying ski-ball game could use all kinds of balls (even tennis) and would explain the extra polycarb if the field was going to be encased for safety

Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

I don't know if anyone said anything about this earlier, but (according to wikipedia) 2012 has been designated Alan Turing Year "commemorating the mathematician, computer pioneer, and code-breaker on the centennial of Turing's birth."

Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

This has to be by far the fewest posts for a game hint ever. We would normally get this many posts in a matter of hours. Interesting!

Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

Nobody wants to look up each individual part. Oh wait, that's what i'm doing right now!

Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

I think that everyone is getting tired of speculation after we spent since the day after the championship in that "2012 game thread".

Plus I agree that it's too much work to really think about this hint. Poems and pictures draw the crowd easy because they are simple.

Or it could be a great conspiracy by the GDC, formulating a game hint! The participation in the game isn't as necessary! Must be a game hint! Has to be.

Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

15 second teleoperated period, followed by 1:45 of autonomous play, followed by a 15 second autonomous minibot race around a little track? :D

Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

This type of hint locks out/shuts down the CD members who are creative problem solvers but are not techies. Like me. It also impacts rookie input, I'd imagine. If they send out another one that is more along a less technical line, there will be a lot of speculating and fun posts from the non-techies, I'm sure.

This lack kind of shows you another side to it, doesn't it?

Jane

Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

If a student has the ability to use google, they should have the ability to give some sort of input if they want, regardless of being a rookie or non-techies.

Re: First Official 2012 Game Hint
 

Well, going off of what I know for sure has been on field before (don't know 100% but I do notice some things that have NOT been on the field before), the AMBER light, which when lit will be quite similar to red since it will be orangish and the cameras will have a hard time distinguishing between these lights, which could easily be part of the challenge of autonomous mode is doing a task where the robot has to do something with the lights. There are 14 of the Ambers lights as well, which would be one per field if going by the count of others things that are on the field of 1 each. However, there is also the hood for the Amber light for the robots so that's another something in there, with a count of 2500 so that's obviously for each robot (although I think we'll need more seeing as how team numbers are way up in the 3000s).
Also, the count of 14 e-stops not 19 confuses me slightly since we'll be having 19 fields.
Also, the RSLogix stuff at the bottom.... only 1 and 2 of those items. Quick Google search tells me it's from Rockwell (obviously) and it's a programming software. Now, I don't know if it's just for the field seeing as how small of an amount they are donating but most likely. Do not know if it has been used before, though.
Some interesting things going on, though. :)