2010 Game Hint #2

[Taylor]

Assuming both hints are showing field structures, I can draw four conclusions:

1. The yellow plastic plates guard the potential trip hazard. This insinuates that people must move along the length of the field quite a bit. There are two types of people who would do this: Referees and Human Players. Since 2006, the Human Players have been pretty much stationary; perhaps this year the HPs will have a more dynamic and active role in the game, moving up and down the field.

2. Hint #2 either shows (roughly) a third of the field, either in the middle or near one of the drivers' stations. There are no other field elements shown, and more importantly, no place for the Hint #1 contraption to connect. Therefore, the Hint #1 piece must be either smack dab in the middle of the field, perhaps running the length of the field, or near the drivers' stations. (I'm using the theory of a bowling-ball-return-style track here).

3. If Hint #2 shows an outer third of the field, the "chamfer" that has been on the corners the past couple years must be gone, and we're back to a rectangular field.

4. There are no boundary markings shown on Hint #2, so the entire field is shared by the alliances (unlike 2008 when it was in quadrants or 2006 when it was in halves) and there are no floor tracking markings (as in the white tape in 2004 leading to the bonus balls). Furthermore, the robot starting postions are not on the sides of the field, like they were in 2006 and 2009 - rather they will be near the drivers' stations or in the center of the field.

With the carpet (perhaps tile?) floor and wide-open field, this promises to be a fast-paced, highly interactive game with scoring largely on the periphery of the field, like 2006.
Perhaps the game pieces are stored at an elevated location along the opposite drivers' station wall; the robots must go the length of the field to gather the game objects. The goals at least begin near their respective alliance stations.

As a side note, it is easier to clean spilled Diet Coke, Krispy Kremes, Haagen-Dazs and Cracker Jacks off the yellow plastic sheets than carpet.

[nathanww]

There are no other field elements shown, and more importantly, no place for the Hint #1 contraption to connect. Therefore, the Hint #1 piece must be either smack dab in the middle of the field, perhaps running the length of the field, or near the drivers' stations. (I'm using the theory of a bowling-ball-return-style track here).

I'd be wary about the lack of the Hint 1 contraption and the conclusion that this will be a "wide open field". We've already established that the render could be missing elements, and in any case, the steep vertical camera angle means that there very well could be a suspended track system we're just not seeing.

[zakthemac]

ok, if you look at the playing field of 2009 you see the gates have one ramp, but this year there is 2 sides to the ramp, the hint is we have carpet this year. last year the playing field was off the ground by like 2/3 of an inch this year were on carpet and flat on the ground.... so the gate now have a tripping hazard......... I THINK...... ITS THE ONLY THING I CAN COME UP WITH!!!

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by nathanww

... in any case, the steep vertical camera angle means that there very well could be a suspended track system we're just not seeing.

Originally Posted by Taylor

... the Hint #1 piece must be either smack dab in the middle of the field, perhaps running the length of the field ...

With no major elements or objects shown, I think the emptiness is the hint. What is the point of showing an established field structure by itself except to highlight that it is, in fact, by itself?

[viper110110]

There appears to be a border around the field, which is why there are 2 parts to the trip gate. With a raised border (about 2 inches it looks like) there could be something they fill the field with. This could possibly be water, or they might do corn kernels (see the first game). I thought they were going to save the remake of the original game for the 20th anniversary (next year), but I might be wrong. They could also have the field empty and fill it as we play.

With the other hint, those could possibly be rails that we have on our bot that we use to move, and we don't even use wheels this year.

As a side note, the first game hint could be we attach our bot to one end of one of the poles with our teammate beside us, and we have a tug of war with the other team

EDIT: I don't know about any other competitions, but the GTA regional is held at the Hershey Centre, which is a hockey arena, so ice is definitely not out of the question.

[FIRSTtm134]

They wont go back to regolith this year. there were to many issues with it. There was the major static problem, and the field always had bumps in it that robots would get stuck on do to the robot restrictions. Chances are with this hint they are just telling us the gates moved a little. thats probably it. Dont read into this too much becaues as we know the hint never reveals much.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by zakthemac

ok, if you look at the playing field of 2009 you see the gates have one ramp, but this year there is 2 sides to the ramp, the hint is we have carpet this year. last year the playing field was off the ground by like 2/3 of an inch this year were on carpet and flat on the ground.... so the gate now have a tripping hazard......... I THINK...... ITS THE ONLY THING I CAN COME UP WITH!!!

The ramp has always had two parts - a fixed part outside the field and a moving part that levered down onto the field for robot access.

Originally Posted by viper110110

There appears to be a border around the field, which is why there are 2 parts to the trip gate. With a raised border (about 2 inches it looks like) there could be something they fill the field with.

The edge of the field was always a piece of aluminum angle, 3x3 or 4x4 and about 1/4" or 3/8" thick. It is cut down a little bit at the gate location, as shown in the hint.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by DannyB1259

what about the standard ~25'x50' field but instead of having the drivers stations oh the short sides facing each other why not having all the drivers on the long side facing the crowd, this would allow the gates to be on the ends which would make loading robots onto and off the field much smoother

The thing with that is that venues are all set up differently. While many arenas have the black backdrop curtain running parallel to the long side of the field, there are definitely many where the field is in a different orientation in relation to the audience. At Kettering, the bleachers are set up running parallel to the long side of the field, and the curtain is parallel to the short side. Having all of the drivers on a long side would make make one side of the audience very unhappy.

A hexagonal field would be neat, but it probably wouldn't be a regular hexagon. You could have two longer sides for the alliance stations, two shorter sides for human players, and the other two sides would be the same size as the human player stations, and the gates would be located there.

Or...the field could be triangular. Like the recycling logo, you know?

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Taylor

1. The yellow plastic plates guard the potential trip hazard. This insinuates that people must move along the length of the field quite a bit. There are two types of people who would do this: Referees and Human Players. Since 2006, the Human Players have been pretty much stationary; perhaps this year the HPs will have a more dynamic and active role in the game, moving up and down the field.

This might be true, but back in Triple Play there weren't any lateral supports for the field along the areas there the human players ran.

[bladetech932]

Can you explain more/show pictures? I want to understand this better.

ok the side railing is made of 7 pieces for easy setup and each piece looks roughly like this
============+============+============
_______==______________==______________==________
============+============+============
with the + being the link between two pieces the = being frame and the _ being empty space
now since their is an odd number of pieces it cant be in the middle but their is always the old position
but if you look at the picture here http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles/FE-00032.pdf
the old position does not have two yellow things on both sides their-for it must be in the position between the old spot and the middle
and like i said before they did not move it for no reason

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by EricH

Sean: Animation can be a form of CAD. For example, you can use it to determine whether or not you can see a particular part you need to see at X time. Of course, this doesn't seem quite in your dad's style of animation, so it's safest to assume that 1) he got some major help doing the game animation; 2) he got another few computers to run parts of it; or 3) this isn't from the game animation per se (that is, it's a scene from it that has been substantially upgraded).

My comment was intended for people to consider the usage of this image, rather than the origin. People were puzzled over the omission of the polycarbonate siding or why the yellow guards weren't bent. If this image was intended for the same or similar purpose as the animation (whether or not it is actually part of the animation), absolute detail is not essential. This may well be a rough graphical representation (a "cartoon") rather than an in-depth draft.

[Jon Stratis]

I've seen quite a bit of assumptions floated here without much to back them up. For example - how much of the playing field does clue #2 show? To determine this, we'll base it off the official field drawings from last year (http://usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/...aspx?id=11624).

Those drawings dictate that the rail is roughly 18 inches high, and the spacing between the vertical supports is roughly 72 inches - with the exception of the sides next to the ramp (the two fully visible sections in the clue) - those are roughly 49 inches wide.

Using that and a simple ruler, we can conclude that we can see roughly 175 inches of the side of the field - or 14.5 feet. The field the past few years has been 27x54 feet, with the 54 foot length the one we can see here - this means we can see roughly 25% of the length of the side wall of the field here - if we assume a similar 4-gate setup as years past, this becomes 50% of each side wall.

Also using a handy ruler, you can deduce that the bottom right corner is roughly 84 inches (7 feet) from the side wall - that's halfway towards the center of the field.

Put all of this together, and you can draw out a little diagram that shows what portions of the field are visible (the shaded regions below). Also included here are the possible locations of a third gate, as people have been speculating on that.

Given this visible area, what can we conclude about the game? Well, there could be no field pieces, like 2009. There could be a huge wall and overpass like 2008. There could be a huge central rack like 2007. There could be goals like 2006. In short, there could be anything, because we can't really see too much, even after we multiply it by 4 (or even 6).

Of course, there's still a lot of speculation in what i've come up with... but it is grounded in quite a bit of fact and in simple economics - it's highly likely that they aren't going to radically redesign the field, since that would require completely new fields. Reusing what they've had in the past as much as possible makes sense.

[rsisk]

Man I hate it when people muddy up our rampant speculation with facts and logic, jeez

[Kims Robot]

So I have been pondering, and my mind keeps going back to Ladder Logic. I couldn't find any great photos of the field... anyone have any good ones on their websites? I remember it vividly, but its hard to describe. And its a good example of odd shaped fields for those who have never seen one 96-98 were odd fields, if I remember right 99 was the start of the rectangular size...

The reason I keep thinking back to this, is that I agree with the idea that the first hint could be some sort of ball track when it is flipped upside-down from how it is shown in the image.

Now if you look at the second hint, if we guess that this is just a typical field gate in the corner, but guess that it is showing that there are no corner structures like the last two years, that means the corners of the field are open from obstruction. (See my guess on the FOV in the attached image).

Then, somewhat like Ladder logic, you could have some sort of grid or high ball track structures that slant down to portions of the field, possibly from the centers of the player station walls... or maybe they go in an upward fashion? or maybe they go from the centers of the sides (more like rack & roll). The center could be a bin or a ramp or anything really, not sure we can tell anything about where the "ball tracks" might actually be/lead to.

I attached a crude drawing to show what I mean (fastest for me to draw in powerpoint).

I dunno... active imagination and flashbacks from too many past games!!

[Mike Soukup]

Originally Posted by Kims Robot

So I have been pondering, and my mind keeps going back to Ladder Logic. I couldn't find any great photos of the field... anyone have any good ones on their websites? I remember it vividly, but its hard to describe. And its a good example of odd shaped fields for those who have never seen one 96-98 were odd fields, if I remember right 99 was the start of the rectangular size...

Not great pictures, but they're better than nothing. Here's one and another.