lamancy in the games

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

Pucks in hockey.

are round!

I think large beanbags would be an interesting game piece.

It was (1999).

Imagine a game object like this which moves either away from you, or towards you constantly.

like a box of kittens?

maybe for the FIRST 15th anniversary game they could combine all the games from the last 14 years into one 10 minute match?

It would be like a Goldburgh-machine competition! (lamacy would be less than 3%)

[Rich Wong]

Originally Posted by Drew

..... but when last year came around, at times it could drag on with the capping, but began getting interesting twords the end of the season, ........

The season is not over so give it a chance.
Even you said last years game was dragging, "but began getting interesting at the end."

The end is not here yet.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

[hockey pucks] are round!

Not from the point of view of the stick they aren't...

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Drew

has anyone been noticing the lameness of the games in the years?

...and yet more and more people and more and more teams show up to play them every year. Hmmmm. So from that I must conclude that (choose any one):

A) the quality of the games just doesn't matter - we would all build robots to play "rock-paper-scissors" if FIRST told us to, cause it is just so freakin' much fun to build a robot until 2:30am every night for six weeks!
B) the 25,000 people participating in the process of building robots to play this year's game are all morons that love to play games that suck
C) the original premise is not quite correct, there is some room to improve but the games are not all that lame after all, and they provide a reasonable challenge for the teams to design toward and a reasonable level of excitement for the audience to watch
D) the original premise is way off base, the games are perfect and absolutely impossible to improve upon

I may admittedly be a little biased, but I think I am going to go with option "C."

And, yes, if you didn't notice - Dean, Woodie, and I take these sort of comments a little personally. Believe me, if you ever saw some of the ideas that never made it into the final games, you would really know what a "lame game design" could be! (Dave thinks about the "score points by throwing Krispy Kreme donuts at Dave and Jason Morrella" game).

-dave

[Bill Moore]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

Pucks in hockey.

One aspect of the games I would like to see change is the interaction between robots, and 3 on 3 robot hockey would be a good example.

In recent years, most alliances have worked together in an individual manner. (Team XXX plays defense against Team ZZZ, and Team YYY will fend off defender WWW while shooting at the goal.) The robots have not been challenged to act harmoniously to achieve a goal. I know many folks did not like the 2001 game, because of its' indirect competitiveness, but the robots that year were forced to work together as a unit, not individually to achieve the alliance goals.

There have been posts this year talking about "feeder robots", and that may have happened, but to a very small degree overall. Otherwise, robots have acted on their own to accomplish their part of the alliance goal.

A hockey type game though would force the robots to work together and set up passing plays. (i.e., the robot who carries the puck across the "blue" line cannot be the robot who scores, unless the puck is passed to a partner and returned to the original robot, or stolen by an opponent and stolen back) I would love to see more interaction in this manner, rather than the manner in which current games are designed. This is just an example, there are many quirky rules that would need to be hammered out, but the idea of having alliances interact with each other to win is the key point.

[DjAlamose]

General design Stuff:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/fo...play.php?f=148 (oh look, a parent menu)
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=42208
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=38139
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=38141
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=38142
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=38140


Water stuff:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=45731
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=41024

We don’t need extraneous discussion about next year’s game or game ideas in this thread. Please keep this thread on topic about how lame the game is.

(these words do not reflect my opinion but only the main argument of this thread)

[JackN]

(My comments may be a little bias because this is the second game i have ever seen.)

This game is more exciting then last year for sure. There are so many different ways to play it that it is very exciting. There are shooters corner scorers defenders, and countless inovative designs for each way. Last year all teams did was cap goals over and over again. There was very little in the way of Change form match to match. This year there is so much need for scouting for your aliance. Last year all that mattered was who could cap more.

[Eldarion]

Originally Posted by 1derboy

(My comments may be a little bias because this is the second game i have ever seen.)

This game is more exciting then last year for sure. There are so many different ways to play it that it is very exciting. There are shooters corner scorers defenders, and countless inovative designs for each way. Last year all teams did was cap goals over and over again. There was very little in the way of Change form match to match. This year there is so much need for scouting for your aliance. Last year all that mattered was who could cap more.

I repectfully disagree. Last year's game was very challenging to design for and interesting to watch due to the many varieties of arm and drivetrain designs. I also find it more interesting to watch the robots have control over the scoring objects from picking them up to putting them in/on the goal.
Not to mention that autonomous was so challenging no one got the vision tetra capped!

However, I suppose all this does is to prove that this year's average difficulty was about the same as last year's. I think FIRST is doing a pretty good job designing the games if all it comes down to is personal preference!

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by dlavery

(Dave thinks about the "score points by throwing Krispy Kreme donuts at Dave and Jason Morrella" game).

Sounds like an interesting game to me. Since you and Jason can't be at every event, local volunteers would have to stand in as Krispy Kreme targets. I'm all over that!

[Drew]

Originally Posted by BRosser314

I have too thought about this and concluded, althought it may not be false, and first might change thier minds about the game based on our feedback for the next year. I have concluded since Zone Zeal in 2002 we had balls (circle), 2003 Stack Attack we had boxes (square), 2004 FIRST Frenzy we again had balls (circle), 2005 Triple Play we had tetras (triangle), 2006 Aim High we yet again have balls (circle). My conclusin is with the exceptions of the first few years FIRST is now going to a fashion where they go from ball to new crazt object back to ball then back to new crazy object, and for that to continue. For examples back in time th4ere was the floppies (pillows).

but you have to take into consideration floppies (pillows rectangles or squares)

[Adam Richards]

Originally Posted by dlavery

(Dave thinks about the "score points by throwing Krispy Kreme donuts at Dave and Jason Morrella" game).

-dave

Wouldn't one of 116's sponsors, Dunkin Donuts, be a little irritated at you guys for participating in a contest using game pieces from one of their major competetors?

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by dlavery

(Dave thinks about the "score points by throwing Krispy Kreme donuts at Dave and Jason Morrella" game).

Well, there you go -- another spotlighted post. All Dave Lavery has to do to have a post spotlighted is mention his Krispy Kreme addiction.

[Drew]

let me restate my question.... because most of you have been commenting immensly, The fact of lameness being with the IDEA!!!! of the game not the Whole idea of robotics, You all seem to be straying to far as to saying about how we win every competition and then your god or something and trying your very best to criticize the opposite of what I say. Debatable topic indeed but were talking about the lameness of the game idea rather than the lameness of the competition... maybe that will have some more mixed feelings

[Julia Magoolia]

Lame? I don't think so.
Last year when I first saw the game, I'll admit my first reaction was "that's it?" I mean, sure it was easy to understand from the audience POV, but.. it can't be hard or anything. As build season wore on, I was proven wrong- there were so many ways of going about this project! Then during competitions, I found myself holding my breath so many times, hoping that my team wouldn't fall over as it tried to cap, and it always seemed like forever when I was waiting for the score to come up.
This year, at kickoff my first thought was that the game would fail to please. While I guess that's true for some.. This year has been so exciting for me! You can never really tell which way the matches will go- even with robots that seemed to have identical capabilities, I can never tell what will happen.
As of now, I'm very fond of this year's game. It's easy for the audience to understand, there's options in what you can do, and it's a challenge for veterans and rookies equally. Teams can choose to specialize, or try get everything done. In my book, this game is marked as a success for the GDC.

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Drew

let me restate my question.... because most of you have been commenting immensly, The fact of lameness being with the IDEA!!!! of the game not the Whole idea of robotics, You all seem to be straying to far as to saying about how we win every competition and then your god or something and trying your very best to criticize the opposite of what I say. Debatable topic indeed but were talking about the lameness of the game idea rather than the lameness of the competition... maybe that will have some more mixed feelings

A couple of years ago FIRST invited teams to participate in a game design challenge. This may have been repeated since then -- I haven't searched recently. If FIRST offers this again, you should try it, Drew. It might give you a new appreciation for the difficulty of designing a really good game. And BTW, I think the last several games have been really good.

Or you might end up giving us an even better game. We'll never know until you try it.