Official FIRST STEAMWORKS Teaser and DLC Pack 1!

[gblake]

Stirring the pot:

Remember how scarce large(ish), soft(ish) wheel became last season.

Good luck to everyone who needs (Steam) Railroad-style wheels for their mini-bot this season.

[K-Dawg157]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

Our team came up with the same thing!

We were thinking Hockey Pucks could be the "Coal" and you score them in a "Hopper"

I think this is on the right track. Someone mentioned Pipes too, Steam Pipes might play as well. Maybe a year of 2 truly different game pieces.

So, to incorporate the pipes, there's a wall with a machine in the bottom that the "coal" goes into to produce power, you need a certain amount of coal to get it to work. Then, there are pipes you have to line up/ place on the wall to connect the machine to a blimp that needs power. Longer pipes more points etc. If you connect the pieces, the blimp floats and you get extra points.

This would allow rookies to be successful in pushing the "coal" (not too difficult just have to drive) and the teams obviously would work together. This also incorporates "taking flight" without having drones.

***EDIT***
Maybe the coal is pushed up a ramp incorporating ramps? (I forgot about the ramps when writing this)

[Tsukunea]

YES!! I might finally get to use the 1/8 scale train wheels that I designed in SolidWorks! I really do hope something in this years game has rails.

[g_sawchuk]

Items from the FRC STRONGHOLD Trailer that were irrelevant to the game itself:
-Tents - only pits, which weren't a part of the game play
-Handing off a wrench - game did not relate to co-opertition
-Schematics/sketches: Really, they were random scribbles. Just relates to robot plans, once again not relating to game play.
-Sword in tower: Not relevant object.
-Dragon and hex pattern on field: Could argue standards, but not a field element.

The only really relevant pieces related to the THEME, and the nature of possible game elements aesthetics - not GAME PLAY.
Many of the phrases like "rally your kingdom" related to the general idea of FIRST - working together, alliances - nothing game specific. Some took phrases like "face the challenge ahead together" as larger alliances facing some sort of AI item - it simply was relating to alliances, once again, nothing game specific.

One can over analyze as much as you'd like, but in reality, the teasers are likely just to show case the theme of the game - thus, a teaser, not a hint. Sure, some parts of the teaser are related to the game, but they aren't necessarily game specific.

For FIRST STEAMworks:
Numbers are easy elements to over manipulate - you can find lots of them: clocks, number of items, fingers - you can really warp them however you like. Similar to politics, it's easy for politicians to warp the statistics into something that supports their cause, just like an individual may warp them to devise a theoretical game.

Over-analyze all you want, but with all these ideas it's highly unlikely that:
A. The teaser reflects game elements.
B. You will all agree on a theory - even if one person gets SOMETHING right, it will likely get buried along the other obtuse guesses.

The safest take away is that this game is related to a steam punk nature - the top hat, googles, hairdo, airships.

What would be useful discussion would be to discuss how this theme effects FIRST goals - it would be purposeful, helpful to FIRST for feedback, and be used to still make this game attractive to incoming high school students, regardless of its apparent cheesy and childish nature.

[346CADmen]

Wasn't going to get into this thread but...
"prepare to take flight"!
I see people taking off shoes and waiting in long lines.

[mrail]

Wow. Let's not let our imagination run away. Steam is hot, water is a conductor, coal is hot and dirty, drones may be unsafe, minibot would have to be hardwired as they would be controlled by the RoboRio.

Based on the safety inspections in the previous years, FRC would not ask us to play with fire, steam, coal or anything that could cause physical harm to anyone.

I like the idea of gathering enough fake coal in a boiler like target and when enough coal is gathered, the balloon takes flight.

Maybe the football shape is important. Throwing a spherical ball is somewhat easy. Throwing a football straight requires a spin on it's long axis that is perpendicular to the direction thrown. That would be a nice challenge...

[mwmac]

Originally Posted by mrail

Maybe the football shape is important. Throwing a spherical ball is somewhat easy. Throwing a football straight requires a spin on it's long axis that is perpendicular to the direction thrown. That would be a nice challenge...

https://www.amazon.com/First-Pitch-Q.../dp/B00Y59ZBQ0

[Type]

Most teams can't even have a robot that drives half the time, having something in the area that could lose control and cause damage to people probably won't happen. That's just my opinion but I just think a flying game won't happen for another couple years maybe, I could be wrong though. And what if this year you have to almost dig for coal, like there is a big area and you have to scoop it out and the more power. The endgame could be to reach a certain amount to be able to get your blimp going. Ramps could be included for the coal to sit, so 2 ramps, low part facing each other to keep the coal in place. Just an idea

[SpaceBiz]

I personally doubt the blimp will be a game piece because of the trouble FIRST went through last year to remove game elements from the logo. Coal is the most likely of any prediction so far to be a game piece.

[JR0405]

Is there anything at Disney that relates to this? I thought I read an old blog post that said the GDC goes to Disney early on for inspiration.

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

I think it will be about collecting coal and water(game pieces) and depositing them into an engine(Coal below and water way up above). Though it's a wild guess, I think it would be neat if there were two piles of water and coal along with buckets filled with game pieces with a rule saying you can only move and score game pieces using the buckets. Thinking the endgame has something to do with minibots and a blimp.

[CurlyFries]

Here is my thought on the teaser: the Stronghold teaser last year was pretty vague (as was this year's), and the biggest thing that carried over from the teaser to the game was the image of the flag on top of the tower and that flag changing. In the game this was manifested as a simple, visual scorekeeping device mostly for the audience's benefit. FIRST is trying to reach out to the general public with these teasers, so they are going to use the most visual element of the game in the teaser so people recognize it when they go to events.

What was the most visual and central part of the teaser? The blimp. My best theory right now for the blimp is that it will play a similar role as the flag did last year: a visual representation of a goal completed (aka a field element and not a gamepiece or robot). This representation might be a blimp on the field "flying" after being fueled or something like that.

With that said, I do have another theory about the blimp for you conspiring guessmakers out there. I noticed in the image attached below that the main blimp wasn't the only flying machine. In fact, there are five: two different blimps, a Da Vinci looking plane, and two of the same sub-looking plane (yellow circles). I therefore determined that the flying machines must be, yes, minibots. And no, minibots will not be flying around crashing into stuff. I imagine it would be more of "attach your minibot to this zipline" or something that would IMITATE flying.

I still mostly think that the blimp will be a field element used to mark an accomplished goal, but there is still the minibot possibility. The only thing wrong with "flying"/zipline minibots is that the assumed minibot in the workshop scene clearly has tank tracks meant for the ground. Also I just thought it was kind of interesting that FIRST used the same exact image twice in the picture, except flipped (purple circles).

This was a lot longer than I thought it would be, I apologize for my spewing of fanatical guessmaking.

[Ringo5tarr]

I have made statements in the past that I expect this year's game to be similar to logomotion or rack and roll and I still stand by that statement, I also agree with CurlyFries on how the Blimp will act like the flag from last year, however the idea currently bouncing around seems to be that you will "power" the blimp by playing "coal" in a scoring area, I disagree, while the teaser is most likely still missing some crucial information (e.g. the tower and boulders from last year) I think gears will be the game pieces, large foam ones, scoring would be done by putting them on pegs, and those would either A. act as the counterweight to raise the blimp, or B. robots would have to precisely place them so that gears could interact with each other and a robot could turn one gear to turn another on the opposite end and raise the blimp. But these are just my thoughts, Like I said, the teaser is probably missing something

[ahartnet]

The tower was actually pretty prominent in last years teaser. It's just that it was overshadowed by the flag.

If the FRC community had queued in better to the tower (rather than say the flag or phrase about "kingdom"), I think boulders could have become a reasonable game piece, as that is a common visual for tower defending.

It makes me wonder which thing that isn't so prominent that we're missing. What could the blimp be intended to distract us from?

[Ringo5tarr]

Originally Posted by ahartnet

The tower was actually pretty prominent in last years teaser. It's just that it was overshadowed by the flag.

If the FRC community had queued in better to the tower (rather than say the flag or phrase about "kingdom"), I think boulders could have become a reasonable game piece, as that is a common visual for tower defending.

It makes me wonder which thing that isn't so prominent that we're missing. What could the blimp be intended to distract us from?

Gears, sorry if this sounds like I'm beating a dead horse