[Official 2008 Game Design] OK, so YOU design the 2009 game...

[dtengineering]

Well, my first suggestion is "keep doing whatever it is you are doing", because we've had a great time playing the games over the past five years. But since this is a request for suggestions and ideas... kind of an online brainstorming session, let me pass along a few ideas that I have thought might make for good games:

Game Pieces: A number of ideas have come to mind, most prominently old car tires because I have to walk past a rack of them going from shop to shop here at school. Cheap, indestructible, readily available, lots of different ways to grip them and they are "about the right size". I believe "milk crates" (the plastic crates in which milk cartons are shipped) meet similar criteria.

The Field: The field can get a bit crowded at times with six robots on it, but I wouldn't want to have any fewer qualifying matches. I think opening up the playing field a bit would allow not only for some interesting field elements (like the platform and bar in 2004) but would allow for a more 'open' game. An additional benefit to a wider field would be that there might be room for a "goal" or other opening in the wall between the alliance stations. Varying the traction surface in different areas might also be interesting. Perhaps a "sandbox" filled with washed gravel or something like that in the middle of the field might be interesting.

Field Elements: "Bridging the Gap" would be a great name for a game... I would envision a couple of ramps... maybe only a couple feet high... but robots would have to assemble or place a bridge across the gap in order to gain some kind of advantage. Perhaps the elements to build the bridge would be present somewhere on the playing field and the robots would just have to put them in to place.

Human Players: I like seeing human players physically involved in the game. I thought the tetrahedron game had a good method to allow players to safely interact with the robots.

Video Control: During what is now "auto" mode, a curtain could fall between the drivers and the field so that the drivers could make use of the video capabilities of the new control system.

An off-the-wall idea: I'll just throw this out there... but what about playing "tag". The side bumpers could be hooked up to a switch. Whenever your side bumper got touched you would be "tagged". I'm not sure if it would be "freeze tag", or whether the "tag" would send information back to the field scoring system, or what, but it would be something a bit different from past games, but still really easy to explain. Maybe a form of "laser tag" would work better as you could track who was doing the tagging as well as who got tagged. Another option is from the world of radio control airplanes, where each airplane drags a streamer behind it, and the planes chase each other around the sky trying to chop up their opponent's streamer with their own propellor. Whoever has the longer streamer wins. That suggests something like flag football where a robot starts with a certain number of streamers (or other objects) velcroed to it and other robots try to get them.

One final suggestion is that whatever we do, the robot should appear "cool, useful and interesting" when demonstrated away from the playing field and other robots. Our "Aim High" robot has become our #1 demo robot simply because we can take it anywhere and fling nerf balls about with wild abandon!

Thanks for asking!

Jason