[apalrd]

@BJC: 2004 was not Stack Attack (that was tim and jim's least favorite year and Mom's only year - 2003), it was FIRST Frenzy, but it was a ball game. 2003 was a non-ball game). Also, @ your last comment, we have OCCRA for that. With only like 5 pages of rules total, student-built requirements, and no bumpers (full contact!).

I like the idea of modifying the alliances a little bit. Anyone remember how 2001 was a 4v0 game where everyone worked together, against no-one (they did everything based on time). I can't see them changing any time soon based on the field layout, except maybe moving 4v4 or something (and removing the human players at the ends).

I really really want a non-ball game. I hate ball games, because (with the exception of 2008) the ball game robots look less exciting then those that don't handle balls.
Look at 33's past robots.
2000 was short enough to go under the goal, yet extended with a billion-segment (actually, it was no more than 5 segments) elevator, to score and hang.
2001. Shortest 33 robot that still exists (nothing past 2000 is remembered by most). It hooked to two goals with its double-headed design, and dragged fallen robots off the ramp with some hooks that could be lowered on the front. Back in this time there was no autonomous mode, no bumpers, no CIM motors, and a PBASIC processor with 63 bytes of variable space, yet it still made it to finals on Einstein without problems.
2002. Large robot that collected soccer balls, first 33 bot to have honeycomb, and had an articulated chassis to lift the goal off the ground after it was latched (it jacked up the rear wheels to lift instead of moving the hitch). This robot had sorta-bumpers as part of the goal hitch, but they were part of the robot, unlike now.
2003 has a giant arm to stack boxes, and when the arm is down forward it can do "death spirals" where all of the wheels are off the ground but the front pair. From these days came the "happy feet" to climb a wire mesh ramp, PBASIC autonomous mode, PIC Co-Processor to count encoder clicks and feed them via DAC into an ADC on the PBASCIC controller, and no bumpers.
2004 bot. It was known as a refrigerator, because it was a giant box on wheels. The least exciting robot we have.
2005: They stacked semi-large heavy tetras on odd-shaped goals, using crazy manipulator arms that moved with many joints to pickup and place tetras. Ours has an arm with two joints and a pneumatic-actuated three-fingered hand (the middle finger is separate from the other two; great for victory motions). This robot has bumpers on the front and rear, although they are not the pool-noodle type we have now.
2006: Rolling boxes with turreted (or non-turreted) shooters, a storage mechanism, and a rule that prevents extension above 60" (the starting height). Like 2004, you see rolling boxes, although these actually do something cool. Ours had a rotary ball sorter.
2007: Tubes on a rack. Like 2005, we see manipulators of many sorts, with roller claws, gripper claws, and other claw designs on multi-jointed arms, elevators, and other crazy contraptions. It looks cool. Ours has a sweet arm with three joints (a shoulder and elbow on the main axis, and a wrist rotation on the end), and a pneumatic claw. Unlike this and last year, there are no limits on where you can touch opponents robots, and bumpers are not required.
2008 was similar. Manipulator arms for really big game pieces. We had an elevator where the top roller on the ball fell back to go under the overpass. It looks cool and drives fast.
Then we come to 2009. This is my least-favorite game. Many robots that can't extend out of their starting box driving around and shooting moon rocks into trailers. There was some excitement, but not much. Many robots closely followed a few designs, and the robots don't demo quite as well as we want, especially with slick wheels (other than that they are pretty cool to demo though).
2010: Lots of short robots with kickers. Some have hanging mechanisms, some are better than others. Not much special in most, but some can hang or manipulate balls well and excell.


2011: I hope we have another year with robots that get bigger than they start. Something like 2007 or 2005 would be ideal for me, but something that makes teams think outside the box and where the GDC does not decide what people should/will/must build to manipulate the game pieces, as the large number of rules this year required a ball manipulator basically be a kicker of sort. Maybe the scoring should be simple like this year, but any bonuses should be worth more than 2 points. If we want to build a giant 5-jointed arm to pickup a soccer ball via 6-fingered servo-actuated hand and to gracefully pickup a ball or build a catapult to whip the balls across the field (with limits on ball speed to prevent damage, of course) why can't we?


I've been thinking, why doesn't the GDC combine elements from previous games into a "best of the best" game? Giant moving goals (2002) + giant game pieces (2005-2007-ish) + big bonuses (2007, 2004) + terrain (2001,2003,2004,2010) would be ultimate. Except designing a robot to lift really heavy goals with large PVC rings over teeter-totters or over bumps would be a pain to design and build, so you they could do something like "score large PVC rings on your alliances moving rack to get points, then move it to a platform to get more points, then elevate yourself off of it for even more points, plus a bonus if you're elevated on it while it is on the platform." so you don't have to do it all. You could have robots that specialize in doing one thing well, like scoring on the rack or moving the rack to the platform. You could have defensive robots that move the rack somewhere else to make it harder to score, like moving the rack off the platform or scoring negating rings. What could rookie teams do with kitbots? Probably nothing with a kitbot by itself, but building a single-jointed manipulator arm would be fairly easy and could do a decent amount, scoring on low levels of the rack, plus they could make it strong enough to lift the robot off the goal as well. What could more experienced teams with better manufacturing capabilities do? multi-jointed arms to play game pieces higher up and large hitches on the back to carry racks and lift themselves. How could you make it even better? multi-shaped game pieces (like squares = 4 points, triangles = 3 points, circles = negative 3 points, goal on platform = 10 points, robot hanging off goal = 5 points. The platform could be something to fight for, having room for only two robots and two towers, so other robots have to hang off the side if they want to join, or something like that. @DaveLavery: No vision. The cRio has a hard time with vision, but combined with the rest of the robot systems, it is almost impossible.


As soon as we get a hint, whether from Dave via extra punctuation translated as Morse code or an actual hint, I know we will say it's a water game. And it won't be. But, until the kickoff, we will have no idea. That isn't to say we can't think about what we would like the game to be.