Game Hint #1

[AustinSchuh]

Originally Posted by DMetalKong

As in the strings that JPEG compression uses? Or the kind that FIRST has diabolically hidden inside this image?

I cut down the output to the following to show what I was getting and how I did it. I just included samples of the interesting parts that I found. A fair amount of it was just random garbage. It was a couple of hundred lines. I replaced the spots that I cut out with "..."

austin[50984] carbon /tmp
$ strings clue1.jpg 
JFIF
Exif
Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh
2008:12:03 19:56:22
JFIF
Adobe_CM
Adobe
b34r
7GWgw
AQaq"
...
}y,ul
05AO
5jPhotoshop 3.0
8BIM
8BIM
8BIM
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>com.apple.print.PageFormat.PMHorizontalRes</key>
        <dict>
                <key>com.apple.print.ticket.creator</key>
...

[SalenaLynn]

Ok, so I've actually taken the time to read the entire post, and I have to point out some stuff:

1) WE ARE NOT PLAYING A WATER GAME! Student built robots + water + electricity = BAD IDEA! FIRST would never allow that, to much of a chance for us to hurt ourselves.

2) The ghost text and pictures in the background of the clue are not important. We've all established (several times) that we know what other site shares the same picture FIRST is using, and that it was scanned from a book. Yes, the file sizes are different, but that could be due to any number of things.

3) The new camera will most likely be used as a major part of the game. In the past few years FIRST has been pushing for more and more teams to learn how to use the cameras and sensors, so my guess is that being able to be entirely or partially autonomous will lend teams a large advantage.

That's all I'm gonna rant about for now.

PS: Please do take the minute to search the post, its not that hard, and it will make peoples lives a lot better, and this thread a lot shorter. Hugs!

[Nin_estarSaerah]

Originally Posted by SalenaLynn

The new camera will most likely be used as a major part of the game. In the past few years FIRST has been pushing for more and more teams to learn how to use the cameras and sensors, so my guess is that being able to be entirely or partially autonomous will lend teams a large advantage.

Thanks for reading the thread. I agree about the camera, and so we should be thinking about the clue with regards to the camera. the ideas mentioned about moonlike objects or terrain, fishing, or finding a human player sound like good ideas.

Perhaps there is a moonlike object or lunar terrain, with a fishing task. a combination of several ideas? Perhaps we have to "fish" in craters?

I still hold by my former discovery: The Opah is the King of the Herrings. We've gone off in a billion different directions, and that is exactly what they wanted us to do.

[bobwrit]

Interesting find.... At the first store, they've put up the game kit's. http://www.logoloc.com/first/RNR/2009GamesKits.html The picture I found most interesting is the one atached. Could the game peices be pucks?

[alectronic]

Originally Posted by NBurek

First off I'd just like to say that I think everyone is reading into this way to much. I doubt that there is any hidden message in the picture or that it has anything to do with the text that was on the reverse page of the book. I also doubt that it is a water based game because the field for that would just be to hard to build.

I think that the idea about the terrain being similar to the moon is practical, but the idea of it being a slick surface just screams lawsuit after some kid slips and breaks something while trying to get the robot on/off the field.

I also think that it could have something to do with the dot pattern on the fish. As mentioned before, the new camera this year is going to have a lot of capabilities and I think one of those is shape/pattern recognition. I also like the aforementioned idea of having the drivers windows painted black so that they can't see and must navigate using the camera.

Does anyone else get the feeling that they don't even design the game and that they just randomly release a clue and let the FIRST community come up with the ideas and then base them off of that?

I also think that there should be a prize at the end of the season for whomever had the closest guess, based off the hints, as to what the game was.

I think the prize is a fun idea, except for the fact that everyone's guesses are so similar / there is so much quoting and stuff.!! How on earth would you determine the winner?

[alectronic]

Originally Posted by DMetalKong

was opah already tried?

if you guys are looking for passwords, and I have no idea about character limitations and stuff, did anyone try last years manual password? or 2007?
maybe the second hint will lead to the password for the image. although, i must admit that I think that is way to advance. the image and all the talk of the water and stuff is totally just to throw everyone is a flurry. clearly, they succeeded.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by bobwrit

Interesting find.... At the first store, they've put up the game kit's. http://www.logoloc.com/first/RNR/2009GamesKits.html The picture I found most interesting is the one atached. Could the game peices be pucks?

That better have been in the FTC zone.

The FTC game uses hockey pucks, and the diagram is that of their field.

Not a hint. Back to your regularly scheduled thread.

[Mew187]

Originally Posted by bobwrit

Interesting find.... At the first store, they've put up the game kit's. http://www.logoloc.com/first/RNR/2009GamesKits.html The picture I found most interesting is the one atached. Could the game peices be pucks?

Those are for the FTC game, face off.

[Nin_estarSaerah]

Originally Posted by bobwrit

Interesting find.... At the first store, they've put up the game kit's. http://www.logoloc.com/first/RNR/2009GamesKits.html The picture I found most interesting is the one atached. Could the game peices be pucks?

I do believe that this is from the FTC game, FIRST Face Off!
This game has several ideas that have been mentioned in this thread. usually, if an FTC game is like an FRC game, it is like the FRC game of the year before. This actually throws a new spin on things. The FRC game can't be too much like the FTC game, or it gives teams that do both an advantage.

EDIT: sorry, looks like other people posted about the FTC game while I was typing, sorry!

[DMetalKong]

Originally Posted by bobwrit

Interesting find.... At the first store, they've put up the game kit's. http://www.logoloc.com/first/RNR/2009GamesKits.html The picture I found most interesting is the one atached. Could the game peices be pucks?

Those are for the FTC game. Edit: already mentioned above.

Anyway, I've been messing around with the raw JPEG data in notepad, and by deleting the XML and a tagged section named xpacket, I magically made the image still load (although it won't load to Chief Delphi, says its not a valid image file), albeit at a lower resolution (now why did that happen?). New file size is 77.6k. To tell you the truth I have no idea what I did, or what relevance it might have.

[bobwrit]

Whoops. Forgot about FTC, sorry. /derailment

[alectronic]

Originally Posted by TEAM2579MENTOR

I think it might actually be a water game, because I was talking to someone in the Arizona Regional and I asked her what the 2009 game would be, and she is like a water game, where the robots swim around. But then again, this can be just to throw us off.

as i mentioned earlier, FIRST is more intelligent then to tell regional directors / people not in the MA office anything like that. i know people have said that they have heard about the directors looking for covered pools - think about it - they expect high school students, presumably with little to know mentor support at least in the design aspect, to design a water capable robot? no, they don't. but i do agree with the idea that there will be common types of motors or wheels, mostly because of the new control sys. I think it would be perfectly reasonable to see a common thing like wheels for what I would call a test season.

[Ice Berg]

I don't know much about this whole encryption within an image thing but I've read the whole thread so far and can't remember anyone mentioning if they had tried running the seemingly identical image found at:

http://www.australianseafoodexports....rderonline.htm (site)
http://www.australianseafoodexports..../moonfish1.jpg (image)

Was it only the FIRST released image that had these embedded encryptions, because if they were in both images it would probably rule it out as being anything meaningful.

[KHall]

New possibility.

With all the mathematicians, engineers and science folks out there, I'm surprised this didn't come up before now. After all, aren't all those formulas written in Greek letters?

Opah is the English spelling for the Greek word that means something like "CHEERS". Its often yelled out loud at celebrations, such as baptisms, big fat weddings and such.

Maybe we'll be building robots that dance, smash plates, wave handkerchiefs, and even spray a little Windex on people. Or maybe the game will be to pick up flowers and put them into bunt-cake shaped holders.

With the new controllers its a sure bet that some of the robots will behave like they've had a little too much ouzo.

OPAH !!

[pschre]

Out of all the ideas posted on this thread, the two that I'm throwing my support behind are:

1) Moon, Fish, Ocean being a so-called Zen variation of Rock Paper Scissors, where the disciple must have a certain non-attachment to the outcomes of each play in order to be mindful to grab the pebble and ultimately win whenever the master plays Ocean.

2) With the backwards text and all, realizing that fish backwards is HSIF (Hybrid Systems Interchange Format), defined on http://repo.isis.vanderbilt.edu/definitions/ as "an interchange format for hybrid system models that can be shared between modeling and analysis tools. HSIF models represent dynamic systems, whose dynamics includes both continuous and discrete behaviors."

"Both continuous and discrete behaviors" sounds to me like dynamics that a robot would need to be mindful of, so to speak, if it were to play Moon, Fish, Ocean. A more specific prediction of game rules, I won't suggest, but I've heard that with the new control systems robots can communicate with each other, so maybe that will be a factor as well.