2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative

[kmusa]

Originally Posted by Joon Park

Actually, from what I gathered at regionals/champs, quite a few teams considered the variable. It's just that very few teams actually built to account for it.

I know I was skeptical during week 1 about the ball deterioration being a huge factor, I was proven dead wrong during shooter testing. We then spent the rest of the season, right up until the championship, trying to build a ball compression tester that would account for that. We never got it to work.

[this probably belongs in 2012 Lessons Learned: The Rebuttle]

Sorry about digressing, but I need to offer some clarification. Our big problem was that our shooter's performance wasn't very repeatable - we need more research in the off-season.

The balls are cheap, foam basketballs. Early in the season, they were described as all from the same lot (Q&A, maybe?). From comments from Championships, sounds like there was a second lot. They vary in size, weight, and compressibility. From what we saw, as well as others (525 posted their ball data, 12.5% was the highest range of values for a single ball), each ball also varied in uniformity - orientation was significant. (And there was a hysteresis effect as well.)

And what did we ultimately see? Some teams shot well, some didn't, and 16 was in a class by itself.

I will echo earlier comments - whatever game peices the GDC selects, they need to be available quickly in reasonable quantities, and for a reasonable price. Companies deal with these issues all the time - sign the NDA, and get ready for a really strange purchasing cycle.

I am so glad we went to Championships, and I can't wait to get back there again.