Quote:
Originally Posted by Navid Shafa
While I am not under the belief that hockey pucks are in our near future, I am willing to agree with the following logic that was proposed to me:
The Mystery Box in the KOP: 3" x 3" x 60", 6lbs
Proposal: Pucks in a long cylindrical tube (minimal weight increase and space reduction)
Individual Puck Size: 2.875" Diameter, 1.25' Thick, Weight 2oz
45 of these pucks would come out to 5.625 lbs and 56.25" when stacked. That would certainly fit the extents and leave a little room and weight for packaging...
|
Everyone can agree that a 3" x 3" x 60" box is unwieldy, and since FIRST is giving them out (and they have no motivation to make our life unnecessarily hard, I mean, they exist for us student's benefit), I think we can be quite certain that the objects in that box
must be in a box of that size for length purposes. That would mean most likely no hockey pucks, and besides, it even looks like they ship from suppliers in
much more reasonably sized boxes anyway. I would guess other suppliers would follow suit, I mean, its probably more expensive for shipping companies to handle boxes like that too.
Anyway, I just wanted to put out my thoughts on a few criteria that the GDC uses to create their games (recently):
- The games have to be spectator friendly. One of the main goals of the entire FIRST organization is to expand its reach, to spread STEM to more schools and therefore educate the world's youth about the STEM fields. Many people will have their first exposure to FIRST by attending events as a spectator (or watching online, doesn't really matter), and if someone doesn't understand what's going on or finds it boring, they aren't very likely to peruse i, to create a team. This goal is much bigger than simply "changing things up" for a new game. A corollary of this is that the match will most likely be head to head (i.e. not 4v0, 6v0) because, well, head to head matches are really exciting and just "score as much as possible" in real time is, well, boring for people who aren't way into it like we are. Another would be that it has to be pretty simple on the surface.
- All teams must be able to field a robot that can contribute to an alliance, even boxes on wheels. Just as FIRST wants to have more teams join, they want to retain their new ones. If rookies are able to be good contributes to their alliances even with their likely limited resources, I would guess that they would be more inclined to continue in the competition, even recommend that other schools join.
- The game has to be safe. This means no small hard projectiles. Lacrosse balls are undoubtedly out (I used to play before I sold my soul to Dean and trust me it hurts). Real hockey pucks are most likely out too, even if they tried to limit them to only ground shooting (a la 2010), since one will go flying somehow. There are other alternatives, so I just don't see why it would be worth it.
These criteria along with the pretty explicit AndyMark field hint lead me to believe that 3v3 will be staying. I would also guess that the primary surface for the field will be the same too (or at least not be one that leads to lunacy play).
As for the hint, I generally don't like to look to far into them since, well, you never have really had to (well, 2013 was pretty tough, but anyway). Frank is is recycling the 2014 manual while standing on what looks like a standard field and tells us that "Change is coming". Assuming that he is referring to the manual, I would guess that there will be a major restructuring of the rules, like penalties, or the way teams are ranked and put into eliminations. Things in the Administrative manual have changed in accordance with this too, like Elimination matches now being referred to as Playoff matches.
Honestly I doubt the hint has anything to do with the actual game pieces or the play of the game itself, its just telling us that there will be a major change in the way we go about competing.
I can't even imagine how much fun watching this thread as the GDC is.