Game Simulator

[Jason Rudolph]

I was just checking out the FIRST web site , and I found that they have put up this game simulator...
http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/2002/first_2002.swf

[Joe Matt]

If you haven't seen it yet, it's in the White Paper for download (WIN, Flash, & MAC).

[Joe Johnson]

Just saw it myself. It is really great.

Hats off to team 217 for a great tool.

If anyone from 217 is out there listening, I have a few small (okay not so small...) improvements:

There should be a central ball queue.

Balls should be able to go to and from the queue to the following places:
Out of bounds
Each human station (10 balls at reset)
Each side of the field (20 balls at reset)
Each robot
Each goal

This would make it a 2 step process to get balls off the ground and in a robot and from a robot to a goal, but it would make all the features of the game doable -- at present, robots do not have balls, balls in human stations are not usable, etc.

Robots should able to "attach" to goals afterwhich moving one moves both. This is probably pretty tricky to do since there is a lot of geometery required and currently the robots and goals do not rotate. This feature would be nice but is not really a huge deal if it is too hard to do.

If you took the "attach" feature to extremes you may be able to attach two or more robots to eachother. You may let robots attach to ball locations so that a single click would take a ball from one place and put it in another (without going through the queue). Another example would be that if a robot & a goal were attached, one click would let balls go directly to/from the robot from/to the goal.

Finally, it don't recall if it displays the qualifying points as well as the match score, but it would be nice if it did that as well. (I suppose it does, but I was not looking at the time).

Bottom line, it is a VERY cool and useful tool. I hope they make it better.

Joe J.


From the central ball queue, balls should be able to

[Jason Rudolph]

You can use the balls in the human player station, you just have to move the goals close to the human player station. I had problems with this at first too.

[Joe Matt]

There sould be a thing where you can move your bot over to the end zone and pick up the balls in your team area. You sould also be able to clamp on to balls/goals in order to move them and mabey use the keyboard to move the bots around and make a game out of it, with AI for the opposing bots. But a VERY good tool none the less for rookie teams and vets working on stratage...

[ahecht]

The only change needed to make it a good simulator for strategy purposes is a tether feature to allow bots to be in zones 1 and 5. other than that, it is really good.

[Tom Fairchild]

Originally posted by ahecht
The only change needed to make it a good simulator for strategy purposes is a tether feature to allow bots to be in zones 1 and 5. other than that, it is really good.

Now who would need that?????

~Tom Fairchild~, who can't think of anyone who'd have a legal non-entangling extension.

[ahecht]

We've actually come up with four legal extensions (two self deploying and two deployed by the bot), and are trying to decide which to use.

[Edward Debler]

Regarding Game Simulator comments:

The 2002 FIRST game simulator as designed was intended to duplicate the movement of robots and goals to various zones on the playing field to give teams a "feel" for the steps they might take during a match. An example of this is, the orange balls can only be added to a goal if it is placed within reasonable proximity to the player station. Once that goal is moved fully out of zone 1 or 5, only the (nearest) yellow balls can again be added to it. Since the most probable scenario for balls to be scored is to have the goal somewhere near a ball location, that is the way the simulator was designed. Moving and controlling balls into and out of robots (that would in reality only hold a few balls) would add considerably more complexity to scoring.

Latching & Rotating:
Although Brian Debler considered robot latching to goals (or other robots), after many hours of development, it proved to be a very difficult task. He also considered rotation of the robots with/without goals attached (or rotating the robots about the goals) and found that the trigonometry involved was immense. Therefore these tasks were not included in the final simulator.

In any case, latching and rotation are not essential to operating the game (simulator). I emphasis the word (simulator) since that is exactly what it was designed to be. It is not an interactive game like something Nintendo might produce. The main objective of the simulator was to provide a visual medium that teams could easily use to assist with developing their game strategy as well as use during a match to track instantaneous match and qualifying scores. Judging by the number of hits on the Chief Delphi website (2136 as of this moment), I believe it has accomplished that objective.

Tether (or whatever):
There have been so many questions, comments and responses (to and from FIRST) that they all seem to be contradictory. I don't even want to go there in responding to any of them. In any case creating a method for the game simulator to account for scoring a robot in two zones would probably not be too difficult however, without firm direction from FIRST this late in the competition, I don't believe it would be that useful.

Simulator Development:
I would point out that Brian Debler worked more than 30 hours in less than 4 days (in his spare time) to solely develop the simulator so it could be available to all teams as soon as possible after the initial kick-off. He also of course accomplished this for no fee.

If you believe a more elaborate (realistic) game simulator would be of great benefit to FIRST teams in the future, then we should urge FIRST to fund development of a game simulator that would be available as part of the game kit and/or available to teams immediately after the 2003 kick-off. Of course, this would mean that FIRST would need to have the simulator development project started about 4-6 weeks before the 2003 kick-off.

I welcome any comments and suggestions regarding the development of a future game simulator for 2003.

[Hubicki]

Excellent job on the simulator. Your designers did a great service to all of the teams by taking the immense amount of time to create it. Only compliments were made from here at team 007. We can't thank you enough for this invaluable tool.
~Hubicki~

[Lance]

Very Nice! This is a very useful (simulator) to calculate both score and qualifying score. We appreciate your hard work and time spent creating this model and we hope everyone finds it in time

Team # 016 (Baxter Bomb Squad)

[Wetzel]

Originally posted by ahecht
[b]
The only change needed to make it a good simulator for strategy purposes is a tether feature to allow bots to be in zones 1 and 5. other than that, it is really good.[b]

Originally posted by Tom Fairchild


Now who would need that?????

~Tom Fairchild~, who can't think of anyone who'd have a legal non-entangling extension.

*waves hand*
We do! We do!
Or at least, we its working now...

[jeremy562]

http://users.110.net/~jeremyw/score2002.html

This is a simple scoring calculator that I put together a while ago. Not as fancy as the other one (that's beautiful) but it works and might be more feasible for use at competition.

[ahecht]

Well, check out our high-tech game simulator! It is entirely customizable and user friendly, as well as object oriented.



Okay, so maybe it is a magnetic whiteboard and some magnets, but it works!

[Wetzel]

Originally posted by jeremy562
http://users.110.net/~jeremyw/score2002.html

This is a simple scoring calculator that I put together a while ago. Not as fancy as the other one (that's beautiful) but it works and might be more feasible for use at competition.

It dosn't seem to include the ability for one robot to be in two endzones, unless I am using it it wrong....