Quote:
Originally Posted by Katy
Please understand I have a great deal of respect for how difficult it must be to make a new and challenging game every year and that I know no game will please everybody.
With that said I will also say I think this game did an absolutely terrible job considering several importaint needs (mainly those of rookie and low-budget teams.)
Many previous games have had real time scoring systems which for whatever reason do not have a great history of working. I think that a game like this (where human drivers and players won't be able to even clearly see nearly half the scoring zone and there is so much counting) simply isn't reasonable without an absolutely bulletproof real-time scoring system. Teams often miscounted last year when all they were doing was counting balls through a hoop...how are we going to keep track of rows in two dimensions...plus spoilers? What a mess.
I think the tubes will pop and people will get spider legs in the face.
I think we will see a decent-sized population of rookie teams and low-budget teams get to competition only to realize the model they were practicing scoring on is not an realistic representation of the one on the field. Teams are going to need to build the entire scoring structure to simulate the balance and momentum of the swinging parts. That is no small structure and many teams do not have the storage space to keep such an object together. If they had made the object smaller and put more of them on the field it would have been more reasonable.
I can't believe we are still using that green light. I think that is simply inviting old teams to dust off their code for tracking and make a new autonomous mode. At least vary the sensor...autonomous is hard enough for rookie teams without having all the older teams already know the sensor.
I am worried that some hard feelings may occur when headstrong drivers cause uninvited robots attempt to climb on other robots and things break. I suppose that is not FIRST's concern but it is still a potential problem.
I think this is not a crowd friendly game. Yes it is "shiny" but the general crowd of people who watch competitive robotics are either generally the sort of people who like to know what is going on or friends/family of people competing. Both groups care about the score and I do not think this will be an easy game for an audience to score in real-time.
With all that said this is still the game we are playing and I wish you all the best of luck.
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Another concern with the rack is that it's expensive to build. Somewhere on chiefdelphi someone said that the wooden version of it costs around $500 to build, and it's still not going to be the same as the competition model. Even if you have the money and space for a rack, your next problem is time, especially on smaller teams. Rookies are going to have a pretty hard time this year I feel...