Bill has this to say about the announcement yesterday:
A number of questions have been posted to the blog where I shared the unexpected change to the Manchester Kickoff. I’m sorry to say I don’t have a lot of definitive answers for you yet, however I’m working with the other departments involved in the event to get details finalized. At this time we will have workshops in Manchester on Friday 9-1pm and the Founder’s reception will be hosted as usual. I still plan to share a full field with teams in attendance at the Manchester screening. Watch this blog for updates.
Ask Bill. Either way, though, I would hope that someone there is tracking some of the questions that CDers are likely to be asking and trying to answer them.
My preferred method is to bombard anyone I know at kickoff with text messages. Usually they’re pretty good at getting the answers within an hour or so of unveil.
A couple of years back, The Blue Alliance posted videos on the Manchester Kickoff field showing the interaction of certain elements. (I want to say Rack 'N Roll, but it’s been a minute.)
If FIRST or some third party were to post those kinds of videos, it would be a Good Thing for those of us whose field elements are cobbled together no matter how closely we followed the drawings. Obviously, I don’t know what the world would want to see because I don’t know the game. The GDC can make their best guesses, but they too are human.
Does anyone know if a field is assembled at FIRST Place at that point in the year? This plus a mechanism to figure out the biggest requests (What do goal kicks with some heat on them look like in Breakaway? How do the goals fill up in Lunacy? How do the 2011 game pieces bounce when chucked into play?) should allow anyone with a Flip camera to give a LOT more teams this level of information.
FIRST HQ does not have sufficient space to set up a full field unobstructed. They do set up partial fields for testing parts of the game. There is one space I think they use to assemble all the fields when they are getting everything in the crates. But, the building having been built in the century before last, there are pillars every 15-20ft. Not a problem if you just want to make sure all the parts are there…
I would expect that there will be a full field at Kickoff. It would probably not have the field electronics however.