I need Hangin'-A-Round

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I want to play it again. Ask me if I want to play Quad Quandry again.

Could you forward me the manual? I might want to set something up this fall for my old team, and if not I just want to feel nostalgic.

Originally Posted by Rich Kressly

I loved this game ... so many fond memories from game design and competitions. You going to be using the game Blake?

Chris - Foster Shucker said he was going to Zip it all up and post it in a web site where folks could download it; however, I'm not finding that hypothetical Web Page at the moment. I'll ask Foster. If he hasn't gotten around to creating the download page I'll email the individual files to you.

Rich - The Northern Va community college system and Prince William Co Schools teachers are collaborating again this summer to create a trio of low-cost robotics workshops for the county. The advanced one needed a challenge that would be fresh for the young students in the workshops, I suggested HAR (I have a complete suite of game pieces in my garage). The students will behave plenty of good ideas at their fingertips if they do a little research; but they won't have ever played the game themselves, and they won't have the luxury of a full season to make perfect copies of any idea they see in a grainy photo or video. The result should be a good compromise that gives them a tough, but conquerable challenge.

At least that's my story and I'm stickin to it.

Blake

[Chris is me]

One of the World Champions posted a complete step by step guide for building their robot. I would suggest some way of prohibiting access to this.

[ManicMechanic]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

One of the World Champions posted a complete step by step guide for building their robot. I would suggest some way of prohibiting access to this.

It might not be necessary -- so many new parts have come out since 2007 that better bots can be built, and every year, the winning robots get better. Every year at the end of the season since 2006, our team has looked back on its robot and says, "This is the most versatile, most sophisticated robot our team has built", and they're right. And relative to the field, they have ended up in more or less the same place as the year before.

[Chris is me]

That is true. The design posted is stupidly simple and easy to build, yet perfect for high scoring games. It has room for improvements... If I run this game for Shaker students this fall like I'm considering, I'll probably tell people not to use it, just to let them learn the ins and outs of a design process themselves.

Now I want to design a new Hangin-A-Round robot. Good excuse to learn VEX CAD, I guess.

[ManicMechanic]

Blake,

I loved this game and am glad that you're bringing it back.

One modification I thought that would make a great game even more interesting and lead to a greater variety of robots is to make the 2 end-game tasks (bar and Atlas ball) increase greatly if your alliance gets them both. For example:

Hang on bar: 15 points per bot
Get Atlas ball: 15 points only (instead of doubling the low & high goal points)
Get Atlas ball AND hang on bar: 40 or 50 points to the alliance

I've always thought the "division of labor" idea would create more diversity and make alliance selection more challenging.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by ManicMechanic

It might not be necessary -- so many new parts have come out since 2007 that better bots can be built, and every year, the winning robots get better. Every year at the end of the season since 2006, our team has looked back on its robot and says, "This is the most versatile, most sophisticated robot our team has built", and they're right. And relative to the field, they have ended up in more or less the same place as the year before.

It's not just materials, either. Our students have a much more sophisticated sense of design and VEX parts capability now than the students did four years ago. The students of 2006-7 simply didn't have the accumulated expertise of four years to draw on. I know that our Hangin' Around robots look like farm implements compared to those they built for Elevation and Clean Sweep.

[Foster]

I know that our Hangin' Around robots look like farm implements compared to those they built for Elevation and Clean Sweep.

We have ours, it's a simple pusher with a double articulated arm to hang. There was an auto mode that swung around the atlas ball and pushed it into our zone.

With what we now know about gears and mechanics we would be able to build a robot that would be able to both score in the goals and hang.

[ManicMechanic]

Originally Posted by Foster

We have ours, it's a simple pusher with a double articulated arm to hang. There was an auto mode that swung around the atlas ball and pushed it into our zone.

You must have stolen the blue prints for our Hangin' Around bot (or we stole yours).

Even better yet was our bot in the April 2005 pilot competition. We had 4 weeks and put together a cracker box on wheels that had lousy turning radius, totally non-functional manipulators and performed worse than the Squarebot.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

One of the World Champions posted a complete step by step guide for building their robot. I would suggest some way of prohibiting access to this.

Chris - When you get a spare minute, please send me a URL for the location of that design info - My email address is described in my signature info - Thanks in advance - Blake

[Rich Kressly]

Great, Blake. I loved the end game in Hangin A Round. You could win it on a rolling Atlas Ball, you could win it by dumping out an opponent controlled Atlas Ball, you could win it with a few balls in a high or low goal, you could make a late comeback with a hang, you could spin the platform to prevent a solid hanger from hanging ... I think it'll play nicely in your VA program. Let us all know how it goes.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Rich Kressly

Great, Blake. I loved the end game in Hangin A Round. You could win it on a rolling Atlas Ball, you could win it by dumping out an opponent controlled Atlas Ball, you could win it with a few balls in a high or low goal, you could make a late comeback with a hang, you could spin the platform to prevent a solid hanger from hanging ... I think it'll play nicely in your VA program. Let us all know how it goes.

FYI to everyone - Just in case it isn't obvious - The stuff is available for anyone to borrow - Blake

[Foster]

Game files can be found here: Hangin'-A-Round on the Downingtown Area Robotics website.

Let me know if you have problems