2013 Game Hint!

[Walter Deitzler]

I think that if there was a third alliance, it would be a white alliance, because the FIRST logo colors are red, blue, and white, the 3 colors of the FIRST logo.

Just a quick thought, more to come later.

[Samwaldo]

personally, as a driver, i would LOVE a 3 minute match! more time, more competition, bigger scores

[MrTechCenter]

Perhaps the "3" represents 3 game pieces? This year we only had one game piece, Logomotion had 4 if you count ubertubes. Lunacy, however, had 3. Lunacy revisited? I think so.

[Maldridge422]

Rick Astley does repeatedly say "Never gonna run around a desert you." I would assume a "Never desert" would have lots of water. Also, a limit on "running" would seem to point towards a challenge more geared towards swimming or floating.

[z_beeblebrox]

Do the game hints ever give meaningful hints about the game?

Anyway, I think the GDC is just rick-rolling all of us.

[rachelholladay]

You know, this came from the GDC lab. They never said it was a game hint. Maybe they just really like the song...

(if it is in fact a game hint, it seems a little earlier than usual. I had always thought of game hint as holiday gifts)

[daniel_dsouza]

Originally Posted by z_beeblebrox

Do the game hints ever give meaningful hints about the game?

Great question! I'd like to say no.

In 2011, our hint was another picture "music/song/artist/singer" related. She sang the song "Locomotion". The name of the game that year was "Logomotion". Did anyone connect "Locomotion" to scoring inner tubes on pegs to form the FIRST logo with a minibot endgame? I think not.

This year might just be the same thing: a hint to the name of the game, which really can not tell us anything. Especially because (according to CD patterns), this year's game will not be sport oriented (Rebound Rumble sort of implied basketball).

[Whippet]

Originally Posted by daniel_dsouza

Great question! I'd like to say no.

In 2011, our hint was another picture "music/song/artist/singer" related. She sang the song "Locomotion". The name of the game that year was "Logomotion". Did anyone connect "Locomotion" to scoring inner tubes on pegs to form the FIRST logo with a minibot endgame? I think not.

This year might just be the same thing: a hint to the name of the game, which really can not tell us anything. Especially because (according to CD patterns), this year's game will not be sport oriented (Rebound Rumble sort of implied basketball).

Am I the only one that connected the pole she was hugging to the minibot pole?

[coalhot]

Quick! Someone count the number of minute holes in the corkboard! It must be a clue!

All joking aside, I think the game will have something to do with the Curiosity landing. Just an educated guess, and probably a bad one at that...

[Tetraman]

Originally Posted by z_beeblebrox

Do the game hints ever give meaningful hints about the game?

Yes.

However, this is not an official game hint. Official game hints are given a page on the FIRST website and given proper fanfare as a Game Hint in an email blast. All other 'hints' by members of the GDC or FIRST before then are just poking at the collective mind of CD to squeeze out some ideas for next year's design discussion they haven't thought of yet. Which is a good thing.

That said...I think the only thing here that can be considered a game hint at all is the screenshot at the 3:00 mark. I would welcome a 3 minute game - like 2:30 match with 30 second hybrid.

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by z_beeblebrox

Do the game hints ever give meaningful hints about the game?

Anyway, I think the GDC is just rick-rolling all of us.

Was about to post 2006's hint, but found a better history:

Originally Posted by EricH

2003: y=ax^2+bx+c, a reference to the scoring system
2004: Some lines from Stairway to Heaven, by Led Zeppelin, referring to the stairs and the bar on the field.
2005: a riddle, involving Pi, amethyst, two players to make unassisted triple plays, and other references to 3, pointing to the game name, Triple Play
2006: "Five 'bots tangling with pasta, A game piece obsessed with a shovel's show, And seeing Montana's green heights." In shape, that was a roundish riddle; in hindsight, it covered what you'd do with the game piece, the offense/defense periods, and the CMUCam vision targets.
2007: Image from the game animation, showing a scored game piece on the #5 column, top peg.
2008: The doozy of doozies. Hint season opened with every team getting hint #1, an IR receiver that would work with a standard remote, in the mail. Hint #2, a couple weeks later, was GPS coordinates leading to a statue of the tortoise and the hare in Boston. Hint #3, "Vets hurdling FIRST tetras", was most of the password to the encrypted manual--scrambled, of course, and without punctuation.
2009: First the opah. Then, a riddle that lead from the Zamboni plant to the maker of the game piece to a couple other places.

[Justin Montois]

I just hope for a game where I can hold as many game objects as I design for. (2006, 2009) I'm kind of tired of the limits, one soccer ball, one tube, three basketballs. Give me some flexibility

[Siri]

Originally Posted by daniel_dsouza

Great question! I'd like to say no.

In 2011, our hint was another picture "music/song/artist/singer" related. She sang the song "Locomotion". The name of the game that year was "Logomotion". Did anyone connect "Locomotion" to scoring inner tubes on pegs to form the FIRST logo with a minibot endgame? I think not.

This year might just be the same thing: a hint to the name of the game, which really can not tell us anything. Especially because (according to CD patterns), this year's game will not be sport oriented (Rebound Rumble sort of implied basketball).

I don't know about the minibot pole, but I do know several people that got Logomotion-->making FIRST logos-->inner tube game.

People in 2010 figured out that Hint #2 was an extra gate, and therefore there would be a field split into 3rd by a barrier we weren't supposed to carry robots over. Some even deciphered Hint #1 as a ball track and connected it with soccer (because it was a World Cup year and/or they determined the scale).

I don't remember much useful coming out of 2009, but 2008 was the IR year. It was also the GPS coordinate year, and there were people that found the tortoise and the hare statue and determined it was a race (presumably NASCAR-style given field size limitations).

...Now, if you're asking whether anything useful was done as a result of a game hint, that's less clear (barring the IR sensor). If any teams trusted their conclusions enough, they certainly could've gotten a head start on everything from barrier traversers and NASCAR drivetrains to soccer ball possessors and inner tube grippers, among others. Whether anyone did is another story. It's a bit of a leap of faith.

EDIT: and what efoote said.

[Jibsy]

Originally Posted by nathannfm

Not that it helps much but the picture seems to be genuine, it still has metadata on it. It was taken today (10/11/2012) at 9:42am with an HTC EVO 4G at these GPS coordinates 42.989937, -71.467928 (google map) http://bit.ly/ReaHbF

Near a river...

You know what that means!

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Gregor

Was the problem the pads themselves, or the fact the the human player could disable the robot? I'd like to see something like that, but if the pressure pads weren't sensitive enough/too sensitive/had other problems, what else could be used?

Neither. The human disabling the robot was due to a safety issue.

The real problem is this: You're going at your sprinting speed, and you have to stop, completely stop, in a rectangle that's about 2'x3', and you're going in the 2' direction, or the robot enables and immediately disables. You can slow down, but that increases the "disabled" time. (The target at the other end was more like 4' square.) Oh, and you have to have your full weight on it for it to be active.

As I recall, some offseasons used a hand-pressed button, so you had a bit more time to hit the brakes.