2007 Official FRC Game Hint / Email Blast

[Tetraman]

Ok...Here we go.

The field is split into two sides, red and blue. split between a type of field obstruction like a ramp or stairs.

On each side are three towers of large tube rings labled 5 to 1, shrinking in size/similar in size, stacked in three towers. The tube rings are colored red and blue and are stacked on opposite sides of the field.

Ready set go, aliances try to move the color rings to their side of the field and put them in order. A ring on the color field recieves 1 point.

If ring 1 is stacked on top or below ring 2, that team gives 5 ponts. If ring 3 is on top or on bottom of 2, 5 extra points, 4 similar 5 more, 5 similar 5 more, making a total of 20 for the stack, 5 more for the rings on color, 75 possible total for each side for three stacks...

Rings that touch on the side of each other of similar number recieve 2 points if the ring touches another. So if a 2 touches 2, thats 2 extra points, if 2 touches 2 and that 2 touches the third 2, thats 4 points. If 2 touches 2 touches 2 touches the other 2, thats 6 points.

So if each three stack touches each other so each stack touches the other two, thats 30 additional points, and 105 total points

Plus 25 for robots doing something at the end.

[Travis Hoffman]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gladiators

I'm thinking the robots will be playing a variation of the "Assault" game from the American Gladiators TV show.

Assault (1989-1996): The two contenders competed separately against a single Gladiator. The object was to fire a series of five weapons to hit a target at one end of the playing field. Below the target, a Gladiator used a cannon to shoot tennis balls at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour at the contender. The weapons used by the contenders were located near protective barriers and varied from season to season. The weapons included a crossbow, pneumatic "rocket launcher", and "cannon", a handgun, as well as softballs at the final station. Hitting the bullseye scored 10 points (10 for the white circle & 7 for the red in earlier seasons) for the contender. In the most common version of the event the contender earned a point for each weapon fired as well as a bonus for crossing a finish line near the Gladiator's platform within 60 seconds. Getting struck directly by a tennis ball (ricochets off the floor or walls did not count) ended the round.

***************************************

Robots must wear different-colored Spandex unitards to designate their alliance. "Zap", "Turbo", and "Gemini" will serve as honorary human players who man the tennis ball cannon that attempts to block the shots of the robots as they shoot at targets high up on a platform. The 5 point hinged disk in the game hint(hinge cropped out at top of photo) is one such target. The targets will have different lights behind them to aid targeting via the vision camera (the green-lighted target will be worth the least amount of points per hit since more teams know how to target that color). The higher-point targets will also be harder to reach - further away, shielded in some manner, etc.

Because it will be hard for humans to score the number of times an alliance's robots hit the targets, there will again be some kind of automatic scoring system that will most likely not work as well as the designers intended, hence the indirect reference in Dave's sig to the Dirty Harry quote, "I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself", in the same way that the scoring software will lose count again this year.

[RKElectricalman]

well I honestly do think we'll have four other clues, since today is the 21st and we have clue number 1 (out of 5)... 4 days from today is Christmas! when the REAL, or the most detailed/least confusing clue should be released.

21st - clue 1 [most vague clue]
22nd- clue 2
23rd- clue 3
24th- clue 4 [ the biggest tease clue! ]
25th- clue 5 (Christmas!) [most detailed clue]

Maybe this could mean, five game periods? (auto/off/def/free for all/2nd auto!) Or maybe one robot has to stand on a platform to open the scoring area, and the defense robots try to kick it off, while offense tries to score? I like Greg Needel's proposal of how the game piece sort of looks like a taurus. This is confusing :-( and i'm late for work! I really hope more clues come out!! I guess more sleepless nights to come

[MAteo9944]

I think that the background kind of looks like you are looking out from the bottom of a transparent inner tube.

[Elgin Clock]

I'll take your Johnny Five, and raise the stakes.

Originally Posted by RKElectricalman

Maybe this could mean, five game periods?

Extra periods? Kind of like the one the grammar whiz Dave Lavery is leaving around the forums at the ends of his latest posts??

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...15&postcount=8

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...6&postcount=70

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...3&postcount=10

[aztech75]

Originally Posted by IndySam

Remember the history with these hints and baseball.

Who is a famouse #5 and what did he do?

The game must be based on reggie bush... sumthin with footballs hehe

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by IndySam

It took way too many posts for some one to post Johnny 5 here. The first thing I thought was "Number 5 is alive"

What this tells me is the game will be called Short Cicuit, we will therefore have a robot on the field that we do not control as a scoring object. We need to place the robot on a diamond plate goal.

[ewankoff]

maybe there will be 5 diamond plate platforms and points can only be scored when the robots are on the platform

[Rob2713g]

Originally Posted by Peter Matteson

It took way too many posts for some one to post Johnny 5 here. The first thing I thought was "Number 5 is alive"

What this tells me is the game will be called Short Cicuit, we will therefore have a robot on the field that we do not control as a scoring object. We need to place the robot on a diamond plate goal.

After the initial 10 second autonomous, there is a point where 5 robots are human controlled and 1 is autonomous.

[Vince lau]

Originally Posted by RKElectricalman

well I honestly do think we'll have four other clues, since today is the 21st and we have clue number 1 (out of 5)... 4 days from today is Christmas! when the REAL, or the most detailed/least confusing clue should be released.

21st - clue 1 [most vague clue]
22nd- clue 2
23rd- clue 3
24th- clue 4 [ the biggest tease clue! ]
25th- clue 5 (Christmas!) [most detailed clue]

I was thinking the samething, 5 clues, or a countdown till the offical clue

[Jay Trzaskos]

Follow me here for a second... What if the diamond plate circle is a marker desgnating where teams need to score? There will be plexi or lexan circles placed around the field, eitherhanging or placed on the the field itself, that the robots must either pick up or take down before sliding onto one of three marked scoring pegs that are at varrying heights at each end of the field. This picture is of the blue allainces 5 point scoring area. The other two scoring areas will most likely be 3 points and 1 point. the reason the circle in the picture is cropped off is because it shows the peg where the plexi/lexan circles would slide on. The one point "goal" would be the easiest and the 5 point "goal" would most likely the highest in the air, or in the most difficult to reach area of the field.

[Caio]

Ok, I got some ideas... and i know i'll be repeating some that have already been posted, so just consider it being my support of those ideas...

so

First i figured to break it up into multiple parts. First rarely has things working together to only mean one thing. So i split it all up

the circle
the diamond plate
the 5
the background

For the circle

• it could be referring to a ball game piece. First enjoys using triangle boxes and circles for their game pieces, probably because its their logo and... ya

• a disc (similar to the nerf-style discs that someone posted a link to in page 8 or so)

For the diamond plate

• We know that diamond plate has been used for ramps in previous years
  it has also been used for stairs. In reference to a post made on the first pages of the what seems to be stairs underwater around the main circle, i agree. I don't know about a circular staircase going up to a circular platform, but its possible that that piece refers to stairs

• diamond plate could also be the top platform of some sort of "hill" like the people that have mentioned a "king of the hill" type game. I agree with them as well.

For the number 5
I'm seeing a LOT of ideas running around with the number five, but, being how i am, i think a little more simple then all these references to baseball and such. I think that 5 has a more basic meaning of

• 5 possible goals

• 5 robots in a free-for-all

• 5 obstacles on the field

• 5 robots attacking (1 defending)(as also mentioned)

• 5 special locations on the field that allow you to do something you can't do anywhere else, like the tetra game and the loading zones

• I like the 500 lb weight limit

and of course, the background
One thing i'd like to point out, that Tom sort of did, but made a connection with something else. Notice how the whole background seems pretty similar to all the other parts, but there is that right side that catches my eye every time i look at it. Its like its different from everything else. Tom made the connection of it being an image hidden in the clouded, twisted, blue background, but he referred to a piece in the fake hint that was released a while ago. When i looked closer, i realized it looks a lot like the scoop of some robot like a ice-snow-remover-thingamagig that cleans the street... you know what i'm saying . It also looks like a robot is attached to it, like the scoop is facing toward the bottom of the image, and the robot (the black part right above the scoop) going towards to top.... this could be indicating that our robots will have to push stuff around more than it has to manipulate it, similar to the Raising the Bar challenge with the balls on the ground and you have to push them around...
aside from that note, I don't think that it would be underwater. As people have pointed out, its much to complicated, unless first themselves supply some sort of basic structure to allow teams to all have a waterproof robot. Dealing with water and robots is, imo, much too complicated and dangerous for FIRST to throw on both veteran and rookie teams, because of the issues it involves of electricity (12V battery) and expensive electronics.
Perhaps the blue simple shows that its 1 team (or ffa).

I also wanted to point out, did anyone else notice there is no green in the clue? Could it be possible that the light we need to detect with the camera is now blue? thus the blue background? and the black mixed with the blue show that there is not team colors?

thats my two cents, i'll see if anything else comes to mind...

[woody]

In the second "Short Circuit" movie Johnny Five parachutes out of an office building... Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, its a 125 pound flying robot!

As for the stop light thing, that hint from Atlanta/grand rapids might be plausible... There will be lights made with red green and blue neons.. The only problem is these lights could then be used to make just about any color you can imagine... So teams will have to track an almost infinite number of colors!

Inner tubes: Inner tubes have been used before, if I remember correctly. The background in the hint looks like water. And Dave posted that crazy water scene a while back. So maybe theres some credibility to the ring shaped game piece idea...

The quote from Dave's signature is from a comic author, if i remember correctly. The fantastic four was a comic.. So again there might be some credibility there.. Or maybe the GDC is just anticipating a whole lot of robots engulfed in flames.

One last one. As mentioned much earlier, maybe its a reference to the five of diamonds in cards. Perhaps we'll be using round disk shaped objects to score?

[artdutra04]

Cinco de Mayo is celebrated in the 5th Month on the 5th Day.


That's it! The playing field parts are pinatas and maracas!


¿Se puede decirnos mas por el juego de la competicion del robot, o necesitamos esperar hasta el seis de enero?

[Ashwin]

this clue is vague
don't they normally give like a riddle ... what happened to that?!?

anyways here is what i think...

1) the most literal would be ... there are 5 diamond plates and the robots have to get on them and something like that ... maybe of the end... Basically the king of the hill idea that has already been said or SUMO style (maybe there is something surrounding the plates making a boundary line that u have to stay in or something ... like in the picture it looks like water.... but i donno about water)

2) or maybe its like musical chairs .... there are 6 bots... and only 5 plates (chairs) to start out with .... and they keep taking a "chair" after each period of the game.... the alliance with the most bots remaining wins!

maybe the field object is made out of diamond plating or is a pentagon or is a diamond plated pentagon... or maybe diamond plated boxes

wasn't the ramp last year made up of diamond plating...???? or something like that..... maybe the diamond plating could be what a part of the field if made up of ....

also, is it just me or is the river thing in this http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=41024
picture the same as the background in the clue like the same color....

or maybe there is something made of diamond plating that is high up or there are like 5 of it ... 5 colors for the light... the game mite be called HIGH FIVE !