2013 ACTUAL game hint!!!

[MARS_James]

Originally Posted by karomata

as soon as you added like 148 or 1114 to one of the allainces, it unintentionally becomes 6 on 3.

How so?

[Eagletron]

I think it will be played like The Mayan Ball Game. Played on a rectangular field, with alliance partners. The goal is to work together as a team in order to put a ball through a hoop high off the ground without using your hands. If the ball touches the ground before getting into the hoop, game is over, or, ball is dead.
In this game you are competing against the other teams for the win by working cooperatively with your alliance team. FIRST likes this!

[dellagd]

Originally Posted by Eagletron

I think it will be played like The Mayan Ball Game. Played on a rectangular field, with alliance partners. The goal is to work together as a team in order to put a ball through a hoop high off the ground without using your hands. If the ball touches the ground before getting into the hoop, game is over, or, ball is dead.
In this game you are competing against the other teams for the win by working cooperatively with your alliance team. FIRST likes this!

But in that type of game you are almost completely reliant on your alliance partners for all of the match. While I do agree that FIRST likes coopertition, I feel something like that just puts your fate too much in the hands of whatever computer creates the match schedule and your alliance partners.

[tsullivan]

This hint was labeled "Hint #3" and we can assume that the photo of Rick Astley was the first hint, but does anybody know what the second hint was?

[Twest3259]

My thoughts on the significance of the number three in the hints up til now is that one of the game pieces will be Cubes. which leads me to think that the other game pieces if any will be a triangular pyramid, and a ball, corresponding to the FIRST logo, and maybe working off of the mayan game there are three types of goals that you have to put each game piece into to score points.

[Eagletron]

On reading some of the other posts, it may work. There is a ball that climbs until it finally goes into a hoop. This works with placing heavy blocks onto a scale. Each alliance partner can do this and help the team. When the scale reaches it's limit, the ball rolls into the hoop. So, no one is touching the ball, yet, all work together by putting on weights.

[Karthik]

Let's be honest. FIRST game hints can be kind of lame and pointless. I usually avoid them like the plague. However this year I'm intrigued by a couple parts.

1. The ciphertext of the hint consists of the first 52 digits of Pi. Kudos to everyone who figured this out on their own, and also to the GDC for using substitution scheme that looks considerably harder than it actually is to decrypt.

(Of course, consider a different possibility. In cryptography, if you can break a code/cipher really easily, it often has meant that someone has intentionally tried to lead you down the wrong road to distract you.)

2. There's lots of speculation that the first two lines of the decrypted poem refer to the 90's song "Kiss From A Rose" by Seal. I really hope this is true, just because it means that someone on the GDC enjoys 90's pop culture as much as I do. Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMD2TwRvuoU

As mentioned by a few of you, this song was on the Batman Forever soundtrack, which is a fairly underrated album. The roster of artists is pretty darn impressive, spreading the gamut of musical genres. U2, Method Man of the Wu-Tang Clan, Michael Hutchence of INXS, Brandy, Massive Attack, Seal, etc. Kiss From A Rose went on to win multiple Grammys, while Seal went on to bigger and better things, namely marrying Heidi Klum.

As for Batman Forever, I highly suggest that those of you who've grown up on the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, go and check this movie out. It's pretty much the exact opposite of the new Batman movies. It's more of a comedy than an action movie (as suggested by Jim Carrey's presence in the film), and seems downright campy by today's standards.

What does any of this have to do with the actual game hint? Probably nothing at all. Game Hints are usually lame and pointless; I just wanted to had some context to the discussion.

[sur]

Originally Posted by BigJ

Some possible analysis from my boss while I do actual work

Using http://www.visca.com/regexdict/ to look for words matching those patterns gives this:

97 88 E A 97 (^(.).ea\1$): dread, treat
99 E I 97 93 97 (^.ei(.).\1$): nothing

If you don't force that last one to cover an entire word, it gives veining and semeiology.

[Abrakadabra]

Let's get back to this:

Originally Posted by BigJ

Some possible analysis from my boss while I do actual work

31   88 27 41 53, 
62 23 41 41 53 26   41 23 83 97 53 88   97 88 53 31 97   31   26 23 83 83 53 88, 
33 23 41 41 53 26   93 27 64 26 23 83 97   99 53 23 97 93 97

Pair Counts:

By number:
23 = 6
26 = 4
27 = 2
31 = 3
33 = 1
41 = 6
53 = 7
62 = 1
64 = 1
83 = 4
88 = 4
97 = 6
93 = 1
99 = 1

By frequency:
53 = 7    E
23 = 6    I
41 = 6    T
97 = 6
26 = 4
83 = 4
88 = 4
31 = 3
27 = 2
33 = 1
62 = 1
64 = 1
93 = 1
99 = 1

English Frequency list:
E T A O I N S H R D L C U M V F G Y P B V K J X Q Z

53 = E
41 = T
23 = I
31 = A
26 = N

A   88 27 T E, 
62 I T T E N   T I 83 97 E 88   97 88 E A 97   A   N I 83 83 E 88, 
33 I T T E N   93 27 64 N I 83 97   99 E I 97 93 97

Did all of you miss the almost complete decryption at the end of Josh's boss's analysis?

...
53 = E
41 = T
23 = I
31 = A
26 = N

A   88 27 T E, 
62 I T T E N   T I 83 97 E 88   97 88 E A 97   A   N I 83 83 E 88, 
33 I T T E N   93 27 64 N I 83 97   99 E I 97 93 97

This looks very promising!

[AllenGregoryIV]

I find the kit dimensions more interesting.

AndyMark Drive Base Kit:
Size: 6" x 7" x 30"

Why is this not 38" long? It should be at least that big to fit a standard kit bot chassis rail? (I hoping this is just a typo and they didn't shrink the starting size to fit more robots, i.e. 3 alliances on the field)

Also the veteran kit stayed just about the same weight as last year.

[bardd]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

I find the kit dimensions more interesting.



Why is this not 38" long? It should be at least that big to fit a standard kit bot chassis rail? (I hoping this is just a typo and they didn't shrink the starting size to fit more robots, i.e. 3 alliances on the field)

Also the veteran kit stayed just about the same weight as last year.

Interesting... change of chassis rules?

[Conor Ryan]

Yellow Alliance.....

2 vs 2 vs 2.

Round game object.

Maybe a redux of Coopertition FIRST "Never gonna give you up, Never gonna let you down"

Lots of up and down motion

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

Yellow Alliance.....

Just another set of bumpers that needs to be made and maintained...

Not sure if this is anything, but when translated from decimal to ASCII, the output is this:

 , 憞

ៜ ⧍



And it perfectly fits in the translator (no excess lettering or anything).

[MARS_James]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

Yellow Alliance.....

Just going to point out that in Ladder Logic (Which was 1v1v1) the third color was white