On Game Design

[Matt Adams]

Originally Posted by Matt Leese

While I normally don't like to include more rules and I'm not even sure if this would ever be a good idea, but perhaps FIRST needs to look into a way of recording the costs of machining time? If FIRST is supposed to approximate real-world engineering in any way, this would seem to be an important part of the program. That said, I don't think any simple system would work nor am I proposing any. It's simply a thought.

Matt, I just read all of the posts that you've written on this topic. I understand the points that you are trying to make, however, I disagree with your FIRST pillisophy. I'll admit that I haven't been involved in FIRST for as long as you have. We're from different eras.

From your posts, What I am seeing is that you would like to have a game that is like the following:
You're in a 24' x 48' arena. 2 blue robots against 2 red robots. There are 30 soccer balls across the field edges. There are two 5' wide, 4' tall stationary octagon-shaped PVC goals, designated blue and red. Each ball is worth 5 points when you get it inside the goal. Most points wins.

This is a straightforward game, the rules are simple, and everyone has the same objective. Get the balls off the floor, put them in the goal. The tasks aren't trivial, but they're not difficult. The machine with the most consistent ball gatherer and unloader should win every time. You don't run the risk of picking the wrong "key of the game."

Personally, I find that boring.

And here's why:

Strategy.

After I saw the game released this year, I knew that there would be no robot that could do EVERYTHING consistently. One or two teams came somewhat close.

Everything:
Grab the goal
Climb the 6" steps
Knock off the 10 point ball
Hang from the bar
Fully secure the big ball from the floor, small goal, and big goal.
Pick balls off the floor
Capture the balls falling from the drop chute.

I personally would rather see teams make their engineering choices on their game strategy as opposed to the costs of components on their machine. You won't be able to control the dollars spent unless you limit FIRST to a single distributor and have a mile of bookkeeping. To be honest, the $3,500 limit appears to be more of a gesture than a true check. I think that the dollar limit really just ensures teams aren't using immense amounts of titanium. Limiting machines down to a much lower dollar amount just won't make the impact that you're looking to see, because the amount of money that teams typically spend on their robots only makes up between 10% and 20% of teams' budgets as it is.

Money is not what limits teams' success. Experience does. It always will.

Originally Posted by Matt Leese

We shouldn't be encouraging rookies to just build a robot that moves. We shouldn't make the tasks so hard that rookies fail. We should instead aim at the level where it's not accomplishing the task that's the differentiator but how well the task is accomplished.

I can tell from this comment that you don't like the idea of hanging, it's very 0 or 1. Hanging or not hanging. 50 points or 0 points.

I'm not so sure that I'm a fan of this either... especially in 2003's game where being on the ramp was the deciding factor on if you won the match or not in 95% of the cases. However, the points were balanced this year. 50 points was appropriate. 75 would have been too many. It should be noted that many competitive alliances had robots that did not hang, and they were very successful.

I do not think this year was complicated. There were no complex math formulas. You could read the points on the field. 5 points for the purple balls in the goals, you double the ball values if you cap the goal they're in, you get 50 points for hanging on the bar. For anyone attending a competition, this was easy to explain.

I think that restricting the "everything" list to one or two things will really limit the objective of this program - inspiration. Seeing robots twice as capable as your own with the same restrictions is awe-inspiring. I think FIRST wants to see more students with their tongues wagging over something incredible.

Loosing to incredible machines is okay in my book.

I think that rookies usually fail when they try to bite off more than they can chew. Hanging was a tough task, and many rookies who tried to do this via climbing up the steps had two seriously challenging things to do. This was perhaps the wrong choice for many rookies.

But I bet they learned a lot.

And I bet they'll be back next year.

Matt