Quote:
Originally Posted by sejeff
Mike is right, the judges will do everything in their power to help you get approved and out on the playing floor, that's why I love them.
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I completely agree. They know that you've put 6 weeks of blood, sweat, and <sometimes> tears into the thing...so not being able to play at all is definitely not what they want. Between all of the available resources, you will somehow find a compromise and be able to play so long as you agree to their terms...which are always in my experience within what the GDC puts out.
1885's own example:
In Atlanta '08, on Friday a ref (who was also an inspector on Thursday) noticed an angle connection on our radio modem serial port. We put our controller 1.5" from the rear of the robot. No big deal we thought, since we could put an angle on the radio modem connector and connect the radio while staying within the dimensions. Little did we notice that the connections themselves were not allowed to be modified in ANY way, which the ref pointed out to us with the rulebook. We made it through 2 regional competition inspections
and Atlanta inspections without a single word to us, so our plea to the head ref in Atlanta was for us to keep the angle connector on. His compromise in return was that we were not allowed to dispute a match in which our robot stopped responding due to communication issues, as was his interpretation of the intent of the rule. We were allowed to compete if we agreed, which we did. Believe me, we're triple checking our compliance with the specifics this year!