Oh yes. It’s also just a coincidence that both spiders and bathrooms are associated with water spouts.
Each team gets a tub of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food. One tote is full of large spiders. The team that opens the tub full of spiders get another tote full of fresh underwear.
I’m going with the introduction of drones and/or VR as the surprise.
Spider in house… burn it to the ground… put it out with water. Water game confirmed.
Am I doing it right guys?
How can you not guess a water game?
After looking at more pictures of spiders than I ever wanted to, I think it’s a Parson spider. Which makes me think Jim Parson, better known as Sheldon on Big Bang theory. Bazinga!
Maybe this year’s game is going to resemble the death match between MONTE and the Kripke Krippler?
It took 2 pages to get to water game. It was my first thought. He already let the cat out of the bag by posting CIMs running under water…
It’s going to be a NOPE game.
Perhaps the 8-bit graphics from the end of the Festival of Champions and spider combine to reference Galaga? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaga
And perhaps the “surprise”, combined with some of the questions from the end-of-season survey that hinted at virtual reality, suggest that there are no physical game pieces this year. Instead you are shooting virtual “lasers” at a horde of virtual bug aliens?
That would actually be augmented reality, not virtual realty. If it was VR, we wouldn’t actually build a robot, just CAD it and program it. We also wouldn’t even have a field, it would all be virtual. AR, on the other hand, implies real-world items, like robots, interacting with virtual items.
The major companies are banking on AR being the next big thing. It’s getting built into all the smartphones and demo’s look pretty cool (Maybe we can actually convince students to measure before they cut if they can do so with a virtual tape measure on their phone!). But I don’t think it’s anywhere near the point where we could use it as part of the competition.
Plus the spectator value of AR is pretty low. You’d see robots driving around not knowing what they’re actually interacting with unless you look up at the screen, at which point the camera would probably be pointing at a different part of the field.
I really meant “virtual” in the sense that they wouldn’t be real lasers or real alien bugs, just some representation of those things. I think FIRST would have a hard time sourcing actual bug aliens to use in the game.
But I agree that in order for it to be spectator-friendly, the everything would need to be visible to the crowd. And to avoid disputes, there would have to be reliable evidence of you actually hitting an alien.
All I can see is an FTA saying “it’s not our fault your augmented reality glasses restarted, you should have shock-mounted them and used PoE.”
Surprises that would be welcome:
-California districts
-FRC / Robomasters crossover
-Elimination of bag and tag
-2018 game [strike]VEX[/strike] FIRST Skyrise
Surprises that would not be welcome:
-Regolith with mandated low friction wheels (without could be interesting…)
-A tote full of spiders
-Suppliers not getting game info until a month before kickoff
-2018 game where elevators, 4-bars, turreted shooters, or swerve do not make sense to use
In the actual blog post words: “From what I’ve read” link to this article:
Interesting.
As always, it was my first thought as well
Phish Food: Frank’s favorite flavor. There’s a Ben & Jerry’s 3 blocks from FIRST HQ. (But I’d direct you to Granite State Candy, where they make their own ice cream…)
In all seriousness, he makes a good point about routine and change (albeit forced) sometimes being good. Speculation of course but expect a significant surprise when the FRC game is revealed next year. Nothing so mundane as no bumpers, no bags, no wheels, or even a water bottle game… Think bigger thoughts.*
How significant? Like finding a spider in your bathroom at night. Veteran teams will be shocked. Rookie teams will nonetheless be able to meet the challenge with some effort.
You see, that’s the burden of the GDC: Make a game that is difficult enough for 1114, and easy enough for 7342 (A 2018 rookie team), while keeping it interesting and understandable for completely random visitors. And if you don’t think thats awfully difficult, then you try it.
Or maybe the very worst news of all: Frank is retiring. :eek:
*On the other hand, likely a RoboRIO, radio, PDB, battery, robot-on-a-floor… You know. Some things are unlikely to change because they work so well.
Last time Frank told us change was coming, we got 2015…so…
FIRST Global had a water game.
FLL and FLL Jr. have water games.
Which means…FRC will have a water game.
Or it’s a golf game. How did I get a golf game from this hint, you ask? The 8-bit logo and CRT shutdown at the end of the FoC hinted at a video game theme. Frank’s spider picture also has a picture of Phish Food ice cream. Megatouches(touchscreen video arcade games) had a golf game with water hazards. When you would hit a ball into the water, an animated gopher would appear and say one of a few humorous phrases, one of which was “Stop feeding the fish.” Older Megatouch machines, including some that had this golf game, used CRT monitors. Older Golden Tee Golf arcade games used CRTs as well. According to the 4-year cycle, 2018 should have a spherical game piece, which could be foam golf balls.
A change in the “Music Routine” could be a breath of fresh air.