Because this is retro style gameplay there might be going to be some objects on the ground that robots will need to pick up. Or can gain by going to a human feed station
Past 2 years they have used balls, they always have patterns showing that they wont use the same objects 3 years in a row.
There can be fruit like you see in pac man, or there can be coins. I think its going to be pucks! First likes to introduce new objects to play around with.
these wont be hard pucks but more so soft and compressible pucks. Since they wont use the normal pucks you see in hockey since those are too hard and can cause loads of damage to both the field and robots because most teams will probably want to use flywheel shooters, or just shooters in general causing those pucks to really fly.
They will use the soft compressible pucks since if a robot goes over them they will inflate back up and they aren’t very expensive to purchase which as we know from last year you will need to buy a lot.
The score is the date for kick off, but also can be a hint that teams will be able to hold large amounts of materials like 2017 or perhaps a limited amount.
since there are always different types of robots for teams that like to focus one set objective, there can be fruit on the field or barrels that teams will have to pick up and place into set objectives. Since as we saw in the image there was a platform that relates to donkey kong which has barrels maybe an end game option?
Another option for an end game is scaling a platform which are stairs, teams will have to climb up stairs for the end game to get to the top of a platform.
Robot designs may be completely up to the teams and not having only two sizes your robot can be. Since as we saw on the right side of the arcade machine there were several years and each robot being different. That can correlate to have multiple configurations, 2017,2016 were shooting robots, 2007 was a placing robot that was tall. So the customizations may be more flexible.
As for alliances, this does show the person being put into the game, so we may have more human player involvement into the game like we did in 2017. Of course we have the standard Drive Coach, Driver, operator, and human player.
These are my thoughts on the game or what I took out of it.
What if… (I know it may seem like a stretch but bear with me!) What if we don’t have to shoot anything this year?
I know this may sound sarcastic but it’s a genuine thought that I had. I have a feeling that after shooting/launcing things for the past 6 years (excluding 2015) that they may (may! who knows if game design crew really wanted to. Their minds will for ever be unknown…) want to switch from the norm again because teams are starting to get shooting down to a science, and adding different kinds of objects to shoot each year just furthers that.
I am definitely imagining that this game will involve going uphill for some reason.
I’d imagine that the “puck” idea will probably make it in too. The concept of picking up discs like that isn’t new, but it hasn’t been used much. It would build off of floor gear pick-ups from this year the most.
My theory (most likely not correct):
Robots will have to travel uphill and/or over obstacles like stairs (or defenses in 2016) to pick up different FIRST logo shaped coins. Robots will then have to dispense them into a slot or scoring zone of some sort to build up points and work toward a RP (Its likely that different pieces would have different values, like maybe a triangle is worth 3 whereas a square is worth 1.) Then, once the first RP is obtained, teams can exchange it for a powerup (possibly like the Supercells from Lunacy) and then they will have to do something with the powerup.
Things not in this prediction that might be in the real game:
Raising a bar or something based off of game pieces scored (it will physically move upward)
Shooting?
I was thinking based on the presence of 2011 Logomotion and 2007 Rank 'n Roll on the arcade cabinet, as well as Logomotion appearing in the recruitment poster, that we might see the return of innertubes, perhaps acting as coins. I could certainly see some yellow innertubes being good representations of coins, especially if they’re a little more elliptical than circular.
I think we will most likely have to build a robot that can climb in some way, as 2016, 2017, 2011, and 2007, all of which were featured on the side of the arcade cabinet, had climbing challenges (if you count robots climbing on top of each other in '07).
The puck idea is interesting. Another alternative for a game piece representing a coin is a track and field discus (maybe a relatively light-weight middle school model - made of rubber). They’re reasonably cheap & quite resilient. Maybe collect coins and climb up & down stairs iteratively to deposit them into a slot?
My son think there may be various Tetris-like shapes to stack.
It’s hard to think of a game without one of the game piece types flying through the air in some fashion. There’s just something fun and cool about it. As a game designer, it seems hard to pass up something or the other catching air (maybe robots? )
And the end game… There has to be building excitement, a risk of failure with consequences, a short duration goal readily achievable in 30 seconds or less with a good design… Maybe that is where the stair climbing could come in. Semi-autonomous mini drones that have to fly up to a platform (symbolizing escaping from the game back to the real world) could be fun.
I cannot find the tweet, but our robots may have to climb stairs. Like 2004.
When I reference the tweet, this was a retweet from FIRSToffical that had a video of an E3 robot climbing stairs and it said, “#gamehint”
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