2006 Season - The Negative

[MikeDubreuil]

Originally Posted by Cory

I think you need to differentiate between FIRST and Hatch. Hatch was responsible for the scoring software.

Now you can definitely hold FIRST responsible for keeping Hatch onboard, after their piss-poor performance last year. If they aren't fired for their incompetence this year, something is seriously wrong.

You can hold FIRST accountable for all the problems I spoke of because of their lack of system integration testing. They should have held their own tests where they run 50 matches and make sure everything works from a ball sensor to the final ranking. FIRST should do the system testing themselves on their own time. Not on my time during the first week of regionals.

If FIRST had done system integration testing…

• They would have realized the center goal could only hold too few balls before clogging. Specifically, balls bouncing out and other balls in the goal not moving down the chute and scoring. This was not “part of the challenge” it was a lack of testing.
• They would have realized the numerous issues with the corner goal scoring software. Specifically the issue where the software would inaccurately count the number of balls if the corner goal was filled with balls.
• They would have realized the ranking software wasn’t ranking teams properly. Specifically, the challenge of manually changing match results in order to affect rank.

The game and all of its related systems were never properly system tested. Teams attending early regionals were forced to endure the pain of that.