Over the past few years I’ve designed my own FRC games as tools to train my students on challenges and design constraints they have yet to experience in FRC, and this year’s game is called Logomotive. It is inspired by 2011’s Logomotion, as evidenced by the name and game pieces. In the past I’ve held small design competitions with these games, but have no intended plans to do so this year unless there is a large demand for it. That being said, feel free to use this game in however way you see fit.
This game was mostly thrown together in a single weekend back in March and has only been reviewed by a handful of people, so it is far from perfect, and not at all refined. That being said I’d love to get feedback on your thoughts for the game, as well as what you like specifically and what you would like to see changed.
Thank you for your time, and if you have any questions, please post them here and I will try to get back to you as soon as I can.
What an awesome game, Andrew!! Should be a great way to train designers and get them thinking about designs that are totally original, no real way to totally copy old games with an entirely new one like this. I really like how elements from old games are subtly present in Logomotive, you’ll notice touches from 2012 game piece distribution, 2016 secret passage, 2017 overflow bin; subtle things like that make this game really interesting to strategize for. I’m really excited to use this game as a challenge for my designers as well as design a robot of my own to play it!
Just sort of wondering after a quick skim of the rules.
I know it says that you cannot have a robot taller than 4" at any point in the match but I did not see a rule against climbing the Scoring Platforms (Assuming that they can handle a robots weight) I could see this rule being used to prevent the other alliance from ever having game pieces to score. However G04 may prevent this.
I was also wondering if there is a rule preventing the robots from being in the wrong loading station
It surprisingly doesn’t take much time - it was a weekend project. Thought of it and modeled it in CAD on Saturday and wrote most of the game manual Sunday. It’s something anyone can do, and it’s a lot of fun!
There really is no intent other than “here is something I made, use it if you’d like, don’t if you don’t”. I used to hold design competitions with these games in the past but after lots of initial interest I’d only get a few submissions every year, so I’ve stopped doing that for the time being. For now it’s just a personal project I do for fun that I put up on CD because, “why not”.
Hi Collin!
Thank you for the kind words regarding the game. You are correct that there is no rule against that action, though the reasoning is because I could not see an incentive for any team to do this. How would the lack of this rule allow one alliance to “prevent the other alliance from from ever having game pieces to score”, as you say? I’m afraid I’m not quite seeing it.
There is no rule as it stands about being in the opposing alliance loading station, just about contacting an opposing alliance robot in their zones, and this was on purpose.
Per rule G16:
Robots may not contact opposing robots in opposing alliance LOADING ZONES or SCORING ZONES.
Violation: Technical Foul
I hope these answer your questions to satisfaction, and thank you for taking the time to review my project.
This is a great resource for teams to use to train rookies and hold a “mock build season” before the actual build season. I’ll see if my team can make some use of this in our pre-season!
When I checked the field CAD, the game elements (pyramid, sphere, cube) seemed to be too large to fit in the holes on the wedges. The pieces are about 24" wide while the holes are only 15".
I have, in the past, taken requests and made games for specific teams to use in their trainings that have not been publicly released. I enjoy doing this so I’m always happy to do more.
Hi Claytown! The game pieces are not intended to be scored in the holes, they’re supposed to be placed onto the ramps themselves. The pieces slide down the ramp (or roll). This is how they leave the scorer’s scoring zone and enter the opposing alliance’s loading zone. My apologies if that wasn’t too clear.
There should be a subforum or designated thread where people can post these off-season design games where they can all be together. Like an “Unofficial Design Challenges” section or something. Max and I from 5254 have developed a few games for off-season usage (mostly for usage in our mock kickoff events) that we thought were pretty cool and would love to share.
Definitely share them, and if you don’t wanna put them on CD, send them to me! I think game design is something a lot of people can approach pretty easily, and the more ideas that are out there the more prepared teams can be for new challenges.
There’s currently a barely-used “FRC Game Design” forum, which I would expect would be a great place for people to post game ideas, including those that are raw, half-baked, or fully-baked.
Frame perimeter does not include bumpers in regards to R02. R08 refers to bumper construction and placement rules (ie. 6" on every corner). There are no fixed robot volumes in this game so therefore bumpers are not included within the chosen frame perimeter volume.
