Vex tried to implement real time scoring in NbN and since there is minimal descoring this year it shouldn’t be any harder. The game is also slower paced. Does anyone know if they are going to implement it?
I would hope they do, it would make the game much more exciting to watch.
Which would you prefer - referees paying attention to game object and robot interaction or live scoring for entertainment of the spectators?
@lacsap Ooooorrrrr, we could have another set of people score, like at NBN worlds. If there is a lack of volunteers, then I guess we will be lacking live scoring.
NbN worlds were referees.
That doesn’t mean there can’t be a different set of people.
The implication in the message I was responding to was that people other than the referees were doing the live scoring at Worlds. This is not the case.
Yes, you can have other people to do it… but WHY? We don;t want Emcees making calls that referees are supposed to make, why have some other group do it? What happens when live “scorers” volunteers have different results to the referees?
Exciting? maybe?
However, could have serious implications at tournaments. Quality referee volunteers is a priority for event partners, and teams.
There are cases where the live scorekeepers have different results from the referees… In close matches, the emcees always say “we’ll have to get the official score for that,” and no one is ever foolish enough to think that a narrow win in live scoring overrules the careful count of referees at the end of the match. So nothing happens. We all know it’s imperfect.
If you don’t have the volunteers for it at Worlds, it’s not a big deal. But I think this game might be an easy one to score live, like Skyrise.
At Worlds NbN it was the referee crew live scoring, not another set of volunteers.
This game keep the referees focused on the interactions between alliances and robot interaction with objects.
Look, there is already enough negative comments about quality and preparedness volunteers for judging/refereeing etc. and yet we want to add to it?
It’s not a big issue to me. I just think it would be nice. I don’t think it would be too distracting. Just because they did it that way in NbN doesn’t mean it has to be the same now. But if it was referees scoring, that might not be bad to have their focus on scoring robots. There are a lot of rules with possession and the likes that create tough situations for the legality of scoring.
As someone who was a ref and did live scoring for starstruck, starstruck was awful for live scoring. Not only adding objects specific for each zone, it was too hard also subracting objects. On competetive matches i would give up with live scoring half way through. I dont expect it to be that hard with ITZ though.
The TM live scoring system was atrocious for Starstruck. @nallen01 's FOCS system (used at NZ Nationals) was exponentially better.
How hard could it possibly be to see that a cone is stacked on top of another cone or on a goal? In my opinion, there aren’t really any tough decisions for referees to make this year in terms of scoring… Maybe determining if a mobile goal is in the low point zone or not, but that’s all I can think of. Who cares if they have different results than the referees? Just make it known that the referee’s score is final, and that is pretty much already the case.
There is a fair amount of complexity to this game for referees that may not be apparent to players right now.
After contemplating this for a while, I now think that this game might be easy enough to score to have automated real-time scoring.
2 primary ways I have in mind:
- Camera(s) with the computer programmed to track Mobile Goals and Stacked Cones in the scoring Zones (and Stationary Goals)
- Distance sensors mounted face-down above the scoring Zones and Stationary Goals
Obviously there is more complexity to this than is apparent in this post, but I don’t think it would be that much of a challenge (compared to other games like Starstruck). I may even try to implement a system like this.
I believe there is a program with sand to use for the XBox kinect (like the kinect is above the field and staring down directly), and it projects the height as a color in the specified area using a projector. How about trying to use that to be able to find the position of the mobile goals, as well as finding the height of the cones, then calculating the height to a correct amount of cones?
In short, if New Zealand Nationals has been able to effectively do live scoring for the last three? years, then I don’t see why worlds can’t do it as well.
In FRC, if the live scoring messes up in Finals, you can get the Refs to call a replay because it can be that important to strategy
I don’t understand why this is even a debate. If I’m interpreting the argument correctly, why can’t it just be optional? If you have extra people to be able to live score, then have them. If you don’t, then don’t live score. Using actual hardware and sensors to live score would be atrocious and expensive solution, as we see all the time with FRC field faults and complexity. Lets keep it simple: if it’s possible, just include live scoring as an add-on in TM and allow events to decide if they want to use it. As for the strategy argument of live scoring, I think teams should be smart enough to know that live scoring is simply a way to further entertain the crowd and by no means a legitimate source for real time strategy.
I wouldn’t try to argue for a point by saying FRC does it. They charge like 20x more for everything than vex does