2013 Game?

[Pauline Tasci]

stacking game! a stacking water game

[Tom Ore]

2013 Game: Skee Ball

The game field has four giant skee ball tables. There will be one in each corner of the field – two for red and two for blue. The skee ball tables use maybe 5 or 6 inch diameter balls. In the center of the field is a ball pit which is initially empty. Above the ball pit is a ball bin which stores the balls at the start of the match. There will be 50 or 60 balls – half of them red and half blue. In autonomous mode, the robots deploy minibots into the empty ball pit. At the end of autonomous, the ball bin opens and all the balls fall into the ball pit. The minibots spend the entire match driving under the balls trying to find balls of the correct color and tossing them onto the field in the correct direction. The human players move the balls to a rail similar to Breakaway that rolls the balls back to the ball pit. For the endgame, there is some sort of mechanism that requires the two alliances to work together to move the balls back into the ball bin. The human players can toss balls directly into the ball bin during the endgame. The win is worth 9 points and the coopertition score is proportionate to how many balls get moved back to the ball bin (maybe 0, 3, 6, or 9.) The endgame helps field reset.

I'd really like to see another game where there are multiple ways of scoring (2008), or maybe even multiple ways of scoring with the same game piece (2006: in the hoop, or in the lower scoring area). Something that can bring back the niche robot. Sounds pretty interesting.

[maxweberh]

Correct me if I am wrong...
but i don't remember a game where in robot assembly was required. For example picking up a blue cube and a red cube, and putting them together inside the robot perimeter and then putting those somewhere. Teams could use the kinect to help put the pieces together and automate assembly. Kind of like Wall-E pushing the stuff inside of his body chamber and then creating the trash cube. That is what i hope is part of the game for next year.

[Sunshine]

WELL,

We've had soccer, basketball and car racing. Time for volleyball.

[Borobo]

I've got 2 suggestions
1) rectangular boxes about 1' high by 2' long by 1' wide that weight about 25 lbs. Robots have to pickup boxes and stack them in one of 2 sectors of the field,(which is flat), these being a protected area on you side of the field, and the other being anywhere else, where stacks can be dismantled by opponents. the scoring per stacked box is different for the sectors. possible endgame, there are 2 ramps, you get more points if you drive onto crates stacked next to the ramps, the scoring going something like 5x the number of crates high you are. ex. 3 feet high, 15 points per robot.
2) field filled with tiny balls, like the size of ping pong balls. mixed in, with something like a ratio of 20:1, are some other larger balls like racquette balls. at each end of the field is a stepped series of 3 platforms each perhaps 8 inches high and each with a bin on it. these correspond to 1, 2, or 3 points. the thing is, only the RB's actually score points. teams, therefore need to choose between dumping huge volumes of balls quickly and filling the bins inefficiently and dumping RB's only/mostly and more slowly filling the bins but scoring more points. I don't know what the endgame would be yet.

[AZNkommander]

I wouldn't mind seeing a game focusing on speed and scoring... Maybe something like hockey?

[Randomness]

I like a bunch of the ideas on this thread, so I combined most of them: varied game pieces/roles, open field, durable pieces, tetras, and an easily understandable game.

Here is my idea:
Have a variety of medium-sized PVC game elements - some a simple pipe with a cap on either end, some tetras, maybe some other weird shapes, with an average dimension of 2' x 2' x 2'. This would make it very difficult to manipulate each one with the same grabber, but also allow a simple box bot/snow plow (like the robot from the game animation) to score. Each of these elements needs to be brought onto your side of the field for points, similar to a capture-the-flag or Hungry Hungry Hippos. Last, PVC is durable and easy to find (although making tetras would be hard).

The endgame could revolve around stacking the PVC game pieces - give 5 points for each foot off the ground, if fully supported by other pieces and not a robot. In order to prevent a team from knocking over an intricate stack, there should be a protected zone large enough to fit a stack or two, but small enough that you couldn't pile all of the game elements in (points are still scored as long as the game piece is on your side of the field.) Stacking PVC elements on top of other elements, and not on a robot, would prevent dangerous 10+ ft-tall towers that could topple. Smaller towers would not be a major issue - a 2' PVC cube is not a significant safety hazard if elements are removed from the top down, and stacks will not tumble a significant distance out of the field - especially if the protected zone is in the middle of the field.

One problem is that announcing the score will take a while (although it does add a bit to the suspense)

[Savvy578]

The Hunger Games: FRC Edition. But in all seriousness I am assuming the return of an unusually shaped playing piece like the tetras. It would also be nice to see a flat field again.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by AZNkommander

I wouldn't mind seeing a game focusing on speed and scoring... Maybe something like hockey?

Did someone say "hockey"?

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh....php?p=1166651

</shameless self-promotion>

[lorem3k]

Originally Posted by Tom Ore

2013 Game: Skee Ball

I'm the man at Skee Ball - just ask anybody at your local Chuck-e-Cheese. I like this idea, but I think having a ball-feeding minibot that can choose the right color of balls (esp. if it's a Tetrix-based bot, which is what 2011 was originally supposed to be) is a bit much.

Originally Posted by Borobo

2) field filled with tiny balls, like the size of ping pong balls. mixed in, with something like a ratio of 20:1, are some other larger balls like racquette balls. at each end of the field is a stepped series of 3 platforms each perhaps 8 inches high and each with a bin on it. these correspond to 1, 2, or 3 points. the thing is, only the RB's actually score points. teams, therefore need to choose between dumping huge volumes of balls quickly and filling the bins inefficiently and dumping RB's only/mostly and more slowly filling the bins but scoring more points. I don't know what the endgame would be yet.

There would have to be some kind of penalty for scoring ping-pong balls, or else there wouldn't be any incentive to selectively score racquette balls.

[Borobo]

the penalty would be that the bins wouldn't be very big, so by just dumping, you would be lessening you ability to score later and sacrificing number of possible points for speed. I think you would see midrate teams who just picked up 200 balls at a time and dumped them and highrate teams who spent the match trolling for balls and separating them internally via software and light sensors and complicated conveyors, then dumping at the end. I also like it because it opens up a lot of defense strategies, like do you just hold like a 1000 balls so no one else can get them, do you block them from getting to the bins, do you specialize in getting balls out of bins, or do you just do the traditional push them around and annoy them defense.

[lorem3k]

Originally Posted by Borobo

the penalty would be that the bins wouldn't be very big, so by just dumping, you would be lessening you ability to score later and sacrificing number of possible points for speed. I think you would see midrate teams who just picked up 200 balls at a time and dumped them and highrate teams who spent the match trolling for balls and separating them internally via software and light sensors and complicated conveyors, then dumping at the end. I also like it because it opens up a lot of defense strategies, like do you just hold like a 1000 balls so no one else can get them, do you block them from getting to the bins, do you specialize in getting balls out of bins, or do you just do the traditional push them around and annoy them defense.

Actually, this could be overcome pretty easily by dumping the balls into a hopper/tank on the robot with ping-pong ball sized holes in the bottom to act as a sieve that only holds on to the larger balls, and then dumping the contents into the scoring bins.

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by pauline589

stacking game! a stacking water game

A stacking water game? Sounds a bit like a 'nailing jell-o to a tree' game...

[lorem3k]

Originally Posted by Libby K

A stacking water game? Sounds a bit like a 'nailing jell-o to a tree' game...

Hey... a Jello-based game would be great, a bit easier to contain than water due to its semi-solidness.