2006 Official Game Hint Discussion

[Petey]

Originally Posted by phrontist

That would be great!!!

A few thoughts, added as I've perused the threads.

A) There is a very real significance to

'bots

that I can't figure out. You know they've puzzled over this hint for ages. There is no way that contraction (complete with apostraphe) is insignificant.
B) I liked the "Montana Green (power)" idea, but then I realized that the green in the hint was not capitalized like a pronoun would be. Again, this would not be overlooked. This says nothing about the Joe Montana connection, of course...I think we will see a connection in hindsight (footballs? god I hope so). Me? I'm going with a "butte" in the center of the mountain, with a CMU cam.
C) I don't think we will see straight PVC pipes. There is no "tangling" involved in uncooked noodles. And I HOPE we aren't going back to tethers.
D) I wasn't around for the last placebo game, but the hint of a sentient gamepiece and an odd number of robots seems to suggest such a device.

Or, it could tie back in to what was suggested during the other thread--that perhaps autonomous mode might come at a different time than usual. Could one robot be disabled? Nuttyman may be right--the Joe Montana connection could be moving the autonomous mode to the end.

Yes! Because what is the 4th quarter of two minutes? The final thirty seconds!

HANG ON!

Originally Posted by gabrielse

What does a shovel have to show? A hole.

Will this year's game involve negative obstacles?

Brilliant! This ties in perfectly. No, artdutra, we don't have to worry about digging into a hole, because we can already assume, based on Montana, that there will be a raised surface. If you place a hole in a raised surface, it isn't necessarily subterranean, globally speaking.

E) I'm liking the 1984=Montana's 1984 connection in terms of 2+2=5.
F) Skimoose--sharp catch on the shell (not equal to) spaghetti but still pasta note, and the football analogy. You can't get tangled in shells, but it could be a colloquial use of tangling, more like interacting with.


Ok, done.

Here's my idea:

A center goal raised and ramped. There is a hole in it's center--this is the destination for the footballs that are the game pieces (obsessed with the shovel's show? Possibly a reference to the ancient physics theories of Xenophanes (sp?), a Greek philosopher who believed that gravity was explained by a desire of inanimate objects to be with their like. Rocks fall because they want to be with the ground, which is more like rocks than air, etc.)

Bots can take a defensive stance of blocking the hole without actually entering it or ascending to the plateau (or Butte, or capital of Montana) that is the top of the (square? pentagonal? hexagonal?) large raised goal shape thingy.

The autonomous mode will come at the end of the match. Robots will use the CMU cam to drive towards the ramps of the central goal and rest upon the ramp (HDPE?) of the central goal at the end of the match for bonus points.

This keeps human players from having to throw balls up (e.g. unintentionally at refs/scoring table/audience) as they would to throw through a hoop. Footballs are complicated to corral and roll. Robots will be primarily gatherers (to funnel footballs to their human players) or defenders (which seek to prevent balls from entering the central storage area.)

One thing I can't figure out:

2x2? (2+2=5 1984 reference?)
2x2x2/3x3? (maybe one bot is randomly disabled every few seconds?)
1x1x1x1x1? (applying Darwinism to the robotics competition, where the weak band, in a laissaiz faire fashion, to overtake the strong?)

But other than that...I think my game fits the hint. A few concerns:

A) Hey, I'm probably totally wrong
B) Doesn't incorporate the baton idea hinted in the previous hints thread, unless maybe those are alternate scoring/defensive mechanisms.
C) I don't think the field will be pentagonal.

Can't wait to see what happens. But if they're football, I'm gonna be pissed...they have to wait until I leave to use the type of ball I'm most accurate with

--Petey

p.s. It's 10:20 PM. Santa hasn't come yet, but Dave Lavery and the GDC brought me a headache for Christmas!

Yes, that's a SA smiley. Hopefully I won't get the tranny image for bandwidth leaching SA sometimes gives. If it is...mods, it ain't me fault.