2007 VCU Regional

[VanMan]

[blakwyte]

big ups to 2108 for sweeping the tournament as a rookie ... you guys had some amazing ramps and i was definitely putting up the awkward turtle sign when the final buzzer went off 540 and 843 were both scoring machines and excellent drivers ... congrats to all of you and we'll definitely be seeing you in atlanta

wondering: does anyone have any idea where i can find some footage of the final rounds?? kinda interested in seeing how it actually looked, it was all a blur to me from behind that darned plexiglass

[burkey_turkey]

from what i hear, 540 had volunteered to record the matches for soap, but with the commotion of the finals i hope it got done. id like to see not only some vids but some nice still pics of the finals. the last match was incredible, it was truley how the game was meant to be played.

[Rob2713g]

We recorded on Friday and Saturday. We had some issues at the beginning of Friday and missed matches between 11 and 1 (our tape popped out early). We got everything else including awards ceremonies. On Monday, a student is going to convert the footage from VHS to digital. We will then proceed to posting it. I hope it will be up soon.

[VanMan]

Originally Posted by blakwyte

big ups to 2108 for sweeping the tournament as a rookie ... you guys had some amazing ramps and i was definitely putting up the awkward turtle sign when the final buzzer went off 540 and 843 were both scoring machines and excellent drivers ... congrats to all of you and we'll definitely be seeing you in atlanta

wondering: does anyone have any idea where i can find some footage of the final rounds?? kinda interested in seeing how it actually looked, it was all a blur to me from behind that darned plexiglass

Ya I want to see the footage too. Especially the second final match.

[GAMO]

I think one of the reasons why we were able to take it to the win is because we had good team dynamics:

540: Excellent scoring
843: Average scoring, Average defense
2108: Excellent defense + ramps

I was worried in the semi-finals against the 2068 alliance, but after 540 pulled that awesome manoeuvre, I knew we were going to win. The problem with having only a ramp robot, is that if you deploy early in the game, you're pretty much unable to do anything else, so instead of having 3 robots on the field at once, you only have 2.

To be brutally honest, I think that this year's game is a disappointment. I think that during design, they didn't realize how difficult it would be to get ringers onto the rack. From day 1, I thought that going end-game for the 60 bonus points was the way to go, and our team tried to build ramps so that most robots could get onto them. I guess bonus points to us because we tried to design around other people's robots and that we "got" this year's message. Oh well, here's to next year hoping that we have flying game pieces again!

[Priyadarshy]

i hope you are kidding about the game being a disappointment sure the qualificatoin matches werent high scoring but in the tournament we lost to you (2108's alliance) by one ringer and we had an oppurtionity to put on those two but someone on ur alliance played intense defense that was an amazing game and in the finals we saw the best of both worlds ramps and rack

also we would have had a better chance in the 3rd match but our wheels broke in match 2 of the semis when the turtles pinned us to the side haha

[GAMO]

I still think that the game is a disappointment not because of the lack of high scoring, but rather the lack of excitement. Sure the finals were exciting because it was the best of the best, but the qualifying matches were pretty tame and couldn't hold much attention in the crowd. Last year's game was immensely exciting because there was more emphasis on contact and scoring, but then again, I guess I have something for projectiles.

[Bluefire66]

hay how "yall" doing just like to say hay and much much thanks to the akward turtles for choseing us for the finals and having the by far best lifting robot at VCU(just my opinion ) but jut made it home couple of hours ago from VCU (15 hour drive to canda) o and another thanks to team 540 making my heart stop when they raced back to home base at the very last seconds to ensure our victory in i think the semi finals i could be wrong but yea cya you all later!

[burkey_turkey]

just a comment about the soap videos,

http://soap.circuitrunners.com/2007/movies/

thats the link to the videos. its interesting cause theres a folder 'va' thats empty and a folder 'va_ken' that has the VCU matches on it. some matches are missing (including my teams first match) and there isnt a nice GUI yet but the videos are there for download and thats what matters.

missing matches are 6,7,21-26,29-45,and if there wre matches past 61 they arent there either. there arent any tournament/awards vids yet either

[lenergyrlah]

hey great job everyone -- it was my first regional & i totally had a blast!

Thanks especially to team 346 for replacing the cylinder for our ramp release -- I built the ramp myself & it was really sad when the piston got bent. Ya'all totally saved us!

[SURVIVORfan44]

My thoughts about this year's VCU Regional:

The game wasn't nearly as excited as last year's game. This year's game was a lot less defensive and less brutal. I am a volunteer; and this year, I didn't pick up many broken pieces from robots. Last year, I couldn't even pick up the balls because I was so busy picking up pieces of pieces of robots that had been smashed off. I like seeing a less brutal game if it means less excitement. It would hurt to know that you work for so long, only to have your robot be destroyed by another robot playing defense. Last year, I felt like all of the teams were prepared and had very decent robots. This year, I felt like the teams weren't as prepared and the robots were not as impressive as last year's to me.

However, there were so many teams that shocked me. The rookies impressed me the most. 2108 and 2068 come to my mind when I think of the word "rookie". These teams did better than most of the teams at the regional. They did better than some of the teams that are veterans to the competition. They deserve a lot of credit.
There are some other teams that usually do not do so well in previous years that shocked me this year.

It was also nice to see different teams win the awards this year. I sort of felt like the same teams were winning the same awards over and over again so it was very nice to see different teams win for once.

I was more than happy to see that 612 won the Chairman's this year--they earned it.

To the three teams that won-2108, 540, and 843--these teams deserved to win. They were the true underdogs for nearly the entire event. They pulled together and worked with some intense teamwork shown by no other alliance. Not to mention the alliance was led by a rookie team.
In my eyes, any of those alliances could have won easily. It was all about collaboration and those three teams that won had it all.
The three teams that won were very diverse. We have the Canadian team, the veteran team/triplet, and last and certainly not least--the rookie team.
Diversity is a good thing. ;-)

Teams that stick out in my mind:
1033--I'd be afraid to compete against them.
343--very quick, great tube manipulator
612--after they took off the ramp, they became a threat.
1885--very impressive, the ramp along with the arm.
116--fast, quick, and precise. (I picked them to win as soon as I saw their robot on the field)
1610--one of the best autonomous programs, very fast and effective.

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by burkey_turkey

just a comment about the soap videos,

http://soap.circuitrunners.com/2007/movies/

thats the link to the videos. its interesting cause theres a folder 'va' thats empty and a folder 'va_ken' that has the VCU matches on it. some matches are missing (including my teams first match) and there isnt a nice GUI yet but the videos are there for download and thats what matters.

missing matches are 6,7,21-26,29-45,and if there wre matches past 61 they arent there either. there arent any tournament/awards vids yet either

does anyone happen to know why the feed turns upside-down and green during some parts of the videos? was that an error in the live webcast or in the upload?

[geeknerd99]

Looks like an encoding error to me, especially with the audio still intact. Not the first time I've seen upsidedown and green with audio still there.

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by burkey_turkey

missing matches are 6,7,21-26,29-45,and if there wre matches past 61 they arent there either. there arent any tournament/awards vids yet either

We ran 8 matches a team for a total of 88 matches. We ran 68 on Friday and 20 Saturday morning.

Wetzel