At our first meeting, the idea was thrown around that we should create a board game to simulate gameplay.
I created the attached board game, and we tested it at our second meeting. There are a couple of obvious shortcomings (e.g. similarity in robots, assumptions about robot functions, game piece scattering and rolling not accounted for, the robots are not moving simultaneously/in real time but instead is a turn-based game, etcetc.), but it definitely helped in identifying important objectives etc.
The diagram is roughly to scale, though it got stretched horizontally when exporting to pdf (I have the original Excel file if someone wants it in an email). We didn’t actually play it as a board game, but instead we projected it on a wall. If played as a board game though, I suggest using coins or dice or beads to simulate game objects.
I’d love to hear what you guys think of it, and what improvements can be made on the game.
See the attached file. There is a picture of us using the game, and the game itself. Gateway Board Game.pdf (194 KB)
I think this is a really neat idea! I’m curious how you would play it though;
4 people (robots), take turns moving until 2 minutes are up? (or 2:20 if you use autonomous mode too)
4 people, certain amount of time each per move (i.e. everyone plays their first second, judge situation, continue to next second)?
Or am I missing something here?
I think this would be great to pull out with my team’s juniors at the times when they get bored or stuck with their building
We didn’t use it much before we decided we had satisfactory answers to our questions about strategy.
What we did: take 5s turns in the same order. Autonomous ends when all players decide they are done with autonomous or when 20s are up, whichever comes first. Teleop is a 2-minute time period, and the gates go up when either of the alliance decides to, regardless of whose turn it was.
What I would suggest: assign each player a number from 1-4, and randomly select it (slips of paper in hats, random number generator, whatever) and play 5s turns. Every player must have played in each 5s period before being able to move on to the next (i.e. 1234-4213-2134-3142 etc.)
This was surprisingly useful. The most important thing is to be realistic; it’s easy to get carried away with a hypothetical simulation like this with "could-be"s and “perhaps” situations.
We wanted to try real time, but that was too chaotic and time consuming. I could see how that could work though, and you could definitely factor in actual driver/coach thinking time during a match. You could say every 10 seconds is 1 second on the board game, and if you miss performing an action during the 10s, too bad. Keep track of moves like you would in a competitive chess game.
I agree that real time would be very chaotic, it would be a lot more realistic but also a lot harder to keep track of. Someone could easily exceed the time section without the others knowing. Maybe a referee would be nominated for a real time game?
I like the idea of randomly selecting turns, it certainly seems fairer than going in the same order each time.
I’m going to print off a copy of this and hopefully try it with my juniors this week sometime
Has anyone ever heard of GameMaker? It seems like a feasible way to create a realtime simulation of a game. I haven’t used it before myself, but it seems like a simple tool that can easily create a very realistic simulation.
