For anyone at Championships, or watching, you saw the trick of being told that the target light would change colors during the different periods.
He said it was a possibility for next year… anyone think it’ll happen?
Just curious as to what you all think, because personally I know it shocked me when he said it, but it may be an interesting twist on next year now that we’ve used the cameras for one or two years…
Sounds like the rumor season has started. It would put an interesting twist on next year’s game. Would be a great challenge to do.
Yeah even with that Cathode display, I think they might be throwing some new colors at us next year.
Yes normaly I don’t take part in rumor mongering but i’ve now seen at least 3 hints towards the 3 different colour lights next year. The red blue and green. I think there is definitly going to be some different coloured lights, so that there will be alot of fun for the vision system. This is something I’m realy hoping for to add more interesting programing aspects to the competition.
multicolored lights does sound like a good challenge for next year, not to mention the fun of making the robot do the chameleon eyed thing with 2 cameras 
I haven’t heard any of the hints as to different colored lights (I’ve been way too busy with school), but I had a thought.
Although being really cool, it might just make it even harder for some teams to use the camera. Both rookie teams and those who just couldn’t get the camera to work in the past might decide to ditch the thing right from the start of the build season.
My team (second year) was unable to get the camera working, we don’t know why it didn’t work but we will try to figure it out over the summer.
You can download our 2006 robot code from FRC Soft.com
It has the camera code in there to help you learn.
This makes me all too happy…
Now the real question is what and where will these lights be, assuming they are used?
Just a thought to add to this, is maybe different lights will help set up for different things…
Like this year, you could dump low or shoot high… maybe red could aim lower, blue higher… multiple goals worth multiple values of points that you could possibly shoot through. Then based on height of goals and robots, some would be easier blocked than others.
I don’t know, just a thought that different colors could set you up to aim for different tasks… (( which I don’t quite think I portrayed the way I meant )) :o
Here’s the bigger question. Do you ever think they will change the game upon reaching a plateau like Einstein, hidden or not? (ie, suddenly changing it from green to red, blue, and green lights)
They have done stuff similar in the pre-alliance era, where in some games, qualification matches were 1 v 1 v 1, but the eliminations were 1 v 1. Also, the FVC game had a semi-similar type of change. The vex autonomous games and operator controlled games were completely seperate, with even slightly altered scoring systems, and both factored equally into your ranking. But there were no autonomous matches during the eliminations, purely operator controlled.
Personally think these lights could be used for 2 things team identifiers or vision system either which way it will put a mean twist on things, if its for a vision system you have a few options either get a couple of cameras and train each one for each color -OR- get one camera to search for all colors and for the other option your team allies may change during the match who you start your match with may not be who you end your match with another words during the match your allies and opponents will change at a decided interval rather then changing scoring situations (offense defense free for all, defense offense free for all respectively), but hey dave promised a hint at this years nationals and here it is color changing lights which as said before can change who your allies may be or where the scoring will be
How about different bonus goals? There are 2 or 3 goals for each team (or 3 or 4 goals for both teams), and the light randomly turns on above one of these goals, indicating everything scored in it is worth double. To make it even more fun the “bonus goal” could change every 30 seconds.
OR… there are at least 2 goals with an undesignated team color, and the lights above these goals will change to indicate which team they will score for. Imagine having to chase all over the field to score because your goal keeps moving!
Hmm, a fun thought. Imaging if this year each robot had one of those display they could mount somewhere on their robot to allow other robots to lock onto them. Imagine robots locking onto eachother to perform defensive auto actions, fill eachother with balls, have “smart” avoidance systems for autonomous (to tell when they’re about to hit someone, or someone is going to hit them), etc.
That has oh so many uses, the autonomous possibilities (not to mention operator controlled with the shooters this year) are endless!
That could get minorly dangerous and not so graciously professional… considering in this game, robots could’ve then shot balls at each other… not that pushing each other over is much better but still… locking on to other robots could have positive and negatives, depending how it is executed.
I think that the possibility of makeing the game harder as the tournament goes along is a bigger possibility.
For 1/3 the matches, it is easy, than the next 1/3 they add something, than the last 1/3 they add something than for the Finals, they add something, for the final match, they add one last thing. Progressivly getting harder, but with more ways to score and to win.
Oh the possibilities :rolleyes:
Now the question is…
What will Dean do next!?!?
Tune in next kickoff to find out… until then we can only speculate 
I’m so excited for next season now! Who needs post- and pre-seasons? Let’s start the new one now!
I’m definately noticing mixed signals now, rethinking that light trick (( which I will admittingly say I fell for ))… Is he hinting at different light colors? or a game that gets progressively more difficult as you move towards finals? [both which have been speculated but I am restating for that fact that it’s got me curious]
It could turn into a technical nightmare (of snafus), but:
I think it would be great to challenge the autonomous programmers, the drive teams, and the scouts by publishing match lists for qualifying without indicating which teams are on which alliance. You’d find out who your allies and opponents are only on the field after the start of the match, when you see the colored lights come on.
Of course this would also challenge the GDC, since they’d have to design a field with drive team positions that work equally well for either alliance.
I suggested the idea somewhere else about rotating alliances. Meaning, the alliances would be randomly re-assigned half-way through the match. (The number of teams per alliance would always remain constant throughout the match). Scoring might be a large pain in the neck though.
The downside to all this; if you score 10000 points while you are on blue alliance, but are then switched to green, you now have hurt yourself by scoring 10000 points for your opponents. If I were competing I simply wouldn’t score until I was assigned to what I knew would be the alliance I ended on (for example, wait until the last 30 seconds or something).
The random starting alliance might work better, but you would still be forced to fix the alliances for the elimination rounds, or completely overhaul the playoff system.
When I saw Dave announce this change to the rules, I thought to myself one thing: “This can’t be right–it’s that other Dave that’s supposed to do odd things with the game design!”
Then he announced it was a joke. I was relieved–and I was teamless there!
I’m sure FIRST will concoct some interesting way to handle that sort of thing next year. What exactly they do is about as impossible to predict as the game itself.