2010 5th Gear FRC Match Simulator

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by gblake

There are two subjects in your message - One is that everything stopped at 135.

A Breakaway match is 2:15 or 135 seconds long.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Vikesrock

A Breakaway match is 2:15 or 135 seconds long.

Doh!!!!! - Color me embarassed - I didn't even think about that (obviously) - And I will forever instinctively think that all matches should be as long as they were in my rookie year (140 seconds). - Thanks Vikes

Bill - Near the bottom of the client GUI, you should see a thermometer-style graphical illustration, plus text, showing of how much time is left in a match; and in the final seconds you will see big semi-transparent numbers floating over field, counting down those final seconds.

That just leaves us with the do_we_need_to_create_a_remote-server-GUI_? question.

Blake

[gblake]

Folks,

This is a duplicate of a post I just put into a couple of threads about scouting - If you already saw the other one, you can skip this one.

I'm curious if anyone has tried using the 5th Gear Simulator as a way to test drive their scouting metrics or their scouting recording keeping tools/methods, or their scouts (the humans)?

Imagine this:

• Install 5th Gear on enough computers for 6-player matches.
• Have 12 of your team members pick a simulated robot and stick with that choice.
• Run the 12 players through several 3 vs 3 qualifying matches while the scouts use your team's scouting tools/metrics.
• At the end of the quals see if you have successfully identified the best player-plus-simulated-robot combinations and can agree on their rankings and/or suitability for allying with one another.
• If you are in the mood, do a draft and see how the resulting alliances fare against one another.

5th Gear stores matches and lets you replay them (in the sense of reviewing them), so if scouts are missing important observations, replays can be used to train them; or if scouts are disagreeing about how to evaluate a robot/driver's performance they can look at the replay together and try to reach a consensus.

Finally, while I think this can be a great way to evaluate scouts, metrics and tools, a word of caution is apropos. Remember that a simulation is not reality. At best it is an useful approximation of important aspects of a match and leaves out others. For example, 5th Gear doesn't simulate what happens when a harried pit crew forgets to install a fully charged battery, or when a weak axle or weld bend or breaks under stress during an important match, or ...

Blake
PS: 5th Gear doesn't simulate end-of-game hanging/lifting. To factor this into a scouting exercise; roll dice to see which robots that were in position at the end of a match should be given the bonus points (while the other bots continue to score regular points).
PPS: 5th Gear doesn't assess penalties. Assign a few people to referee duty and let them keep track of penalties if you want that level of realism. They can watch over the shoulders of the players and/o watch the server's monitor.

[[TBT] Vampire]

Game works great! Thanks 5th Gear! We spent an entire lunch session LAN-ing this at one of our meetings. It was awesome!

[gblake]

Originally Posted by [TBT] Vampire

Game works great! Thanks 5th Gear! We spent an entire lunch session LAN-ing this at one of our meetings. It was awesome!

Great!

Did you have any "Ah-Hah!" moments when the simulator gave you an insight you didn't have without it? or was it just fun to see who could pwn who?

Either answer means we did our job well.

Blake

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by gblake

Great!

Did you have any "Ah-Hah!" moments when the simulator gave you an insight you didn't have without it? or was it just fun to see who could pwn who?

Either asnwer means we did our job well.

Blake

If you guys want to know any direct design and strategy decisions that the game helped me make, the solidification of a midfield oriented robot with roughtop over KoP rubber to outpush at the return. Other teammates used my tunnel use in the 20 point video as rationale to build an 18 inch bot...

[[TBT] Vampire]

Originally Posted by gblake

Great!

Did you have any "Ah-Hah!" moments when the simulator gave you an insight you didn't have without it? or was it just fun to see who could pwn who?

Either asnwer means we did our job well.

Blake

Lol yes sir we did have a few of those moments.
Buttttt mostly it was a who could pwn who thing.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

If you guys want to know any direct design and strategy decisions that the game helped me make, the solidification of a midfield oriented robot with roughtop over KoP rubber to outpush at the return. Other teammates used my tunnel use in the 20 point video as rationale to build an 18 inch bot...

Originally Posted by [TBT] Vampire

Lol yes sir we did have a few of those moments.
Buttttt mostly it was a who could pwn who thing.

Thanks guys - The reason I pester folks for feedback is because we have so many directions we can take as we improve the software, and I'm looking for clues about the best paths to take. Any time I can tease a few details out of someone, it's a good thing.

Blake

[gblake]

Version 2.1 Released!

See this update in the FIRST 5th Gear Forum
Version 2.1 Announcement. It includes some bug fixes and few modest improvements.

Thank you David and Dave.

Enjoy!

Blake

[Chris is me]

Didn't install for me. Can't fund a texture file...

Did the off center holonomic drive thingy get fixed? I figured out if you grabbed a ball and tried to strafe, the robot would basically "orbit" a point forward of the robot and ball.

[Wildcat]

Keep getting an error saying "Unhandled Exception: The given key was not present in the dictionary" I've gotten this on around 4 computers now, and only 1 computer is working

[Joe6391]

Same error here.

I can get the server running, but when I attempt to connect the error: "Unhandled Exception: The given key was not present in the dictionary" pops up.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Joe6391

... "Unhandled Exception: The given key was not present in the dictionary" ...

Guys - Thanks for the heads up - I'll make sure David hears about this ASAP so that he can try figure out what is different from our test environment(s) - Blake

[Chris is me]

I reinstalled the old 5th Gear 2 so I could still play. If anyone wants the old version, PM me. Also, if anyone has 5th Gear 1.x, I deleted my ZIP on accident...

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I reinstalled the old 5th Gear 2 so I could still play. If anyone wants the old version, PM me. Also, if anyone has 5th Gear 1.x, I deleted my ZIP on accident...

Keeping older version available for a while sounds like another item to put on our ToDo list.

Blake