Week 2 Issues/Suggestions

[ahecht]

I figured I'd start a Week 2 thread here. During set-up, I notice a few issues I thought other scorekeepers should be aware of:

* The defaults on the server has the power options set up so that the screen will be turned off after 20 minutes. This can cause a problem if you plan on leaving graphics up during a break. To fix this, go to Control Panel->Power Options and click the link on the left that lets you choose when to turn off the display. This should probably be set to "Never"

* The defaults on the server also has all the Skype sounds enabled, which means that if you have to send a message, the audience will hear it over the PA system. To disable, go to Tools->Options->Sounds->"Mute All Sounds"

* When using the field test, rolling a ball backwards through the goal will subtract 2 points from the score (one for the ball going through and one penalty point). This is the correct behavior during a match, but it can through you off if you're not expecting it while testing the field.

* A couple of times while running test matches, the ball counters on one side of the field stopped working. Going into Field Test and cycling PLC scoring off and on usually brought it back.

[ahecht]

Some other issues from the WPI regional:

* Team 2791 was assigned a yellow card for match 36 after I committed the score, so I had to add in the yellow card in Match Review. However, when that team came up for their next match, they had a green card. I changed it back to yellow before starting the match and it seemed to stick, but it might be worth making a note of carded teams to make sure that the cards stick.

* The above mentioned issue with backwards moving balls decrementing the score by 2 caused us to have to replay a match. The scoring system simply showed that a team had scored 0 balls, when they had seen 4 balls up on the screen earlier in the match, and we had no way to verify that the team had been penalized for pushing balls back through the counter. As I understand it, the penalty was not documented in the rule book either, causing confusion for the teams involved.

* The DOGMA light will blink twice before a penalty is assigned to a team (the penalty seems to be on the third blink). This is not explained anywhere in the manual, and would be a good thing to bring up at the driver's meeting.

* Our Skype connection seemed very flaky, and messages to and from Matt were often delayed significantly (in some cases by hours). Our FTA, Kate Pilotte, had a direct line to Matt, but it might be worth switching to a more reliable chat system in future weeks.

[BobG]

Chesapeake went well with very few issues. Team Update #16 helped tremendously to reduce the penalties we saw in week 1.

FMS crashed twice but we quickly contacted Matt and got restarted. The first time there was 1 second left in the match and the second time there was about 100 seconds left. The Audience Screen had gone down to zero the first time and we counted the match but the second time the Audience Screen continued to count down but two driver stations stopped responding. We replayed the match after restarting FMS. Both crashes were during Qualification Matches.

Another issue was that in the rush to commit the score did not include a hanging bonus so immediately went into Match Review and added it. Although it said it recalculated the standings a team quickly notified us that the match did not show up in their stats on the Pit Display and they lost 23 qualification points with one match played missing. The FTA confirmed that their observation was correct even though the website showed the correct results for the match but not the correct ranking. Matt advised it would clear up when we went back to recalculate the scores after Qualification was over but that did not go over very well with the team since they were shown far down the ranking list. Prior to going back to recalculate, a ranking report was run for the judges (even though they were told it would be incorrect) and the FTA noted that the website immediately updated their ranking as soon as the report was generated. The team that noted the discrepancy ended up ranked number 2.

We had four matches in one Semi-final round. The match that was a tie was replayed but not certain what needs to be done to update the website to show that four matches were played and the original match 15 was a 9-9 tie. Not sure just passing the info along to Matt via Skype is sufficient.

Having a cheat sheet of the most frequent penalty calls was very helpful since the scorekeepers and announcer are next to each other so worked together to get the info to the audience. My hat is off to Duckie for coming up with one she plans to post to this forum.

The AV crew used a different background color for the Audience Screen this week than they did week 1 in DC. We used the default color and there was an ugly green bar when using Video Only since they were using something to block out the green of the team number bubbles on Video with Score. We only used the Video with Score and Match Result. This week they used a hot pink background so we could switch between Video with Score to Video Only and then to Match Results.

[ahecht]

* I forgot to mention the ranking issues we had at WPI. Our last qualification match was not included in the rankings, and this was pointed out to us just as alliance pairing was about to begin. Going into match review, opening up the last match for editing, and hitting save forced FMS to recalculate the rankings and we were able to restart alliance pairing, but the website still hasn't updated to reflect that last match.

*At WPI we also ended up using a Magenta color for the chromakey (#FFFF00FF under Hexadecimal Notation)

[Ricky Q.]

Some other issues from the WPI regional:
* The above mentioned issue with backwards moving balls decrementing the score by 2 caused us to have to replay a match. The scoring system simply showed that a team had scored 0 balls, when they had seen 4 balls up on the screen earlier in the match, and we had no way to verify that the team had been penalized for pushing balls back through the counter. As I understand it, the penalty was not documented in the rule book either, causing confusion for the teams involved.

Matt - Can we get an explanation of why this is in FMS? I cannot find any reference of a penalty in the rules for a ball going backwards through the goal. Seems to be causing some confusion and trouble at events.

[Matt Pilotte]

* Our Skype connection seemed very flaky, and messages to and from Matt were often delayed significantly (in some cases by hours). Our FTA, Kate Pilotte, had a direct line to Matt, but it might be worth switching to a more reliable chat system in future weeks.

I experience this occasionally on my end as well. Closing Skype and logging back in fixes it.

[Matt Pilotte]

FMS crashed twice but we quickly contacted Matt and got restarted. The first time there was 1 second left in the match and the second time there was about 100 seconds left. The Audience Screen had gone down to zero the first time and we counted the match but the second time the Audience Screen continued to count down but two driver stations stopped responding. We replayed the match after restarting FMS. Both crashes were during Qualification Matches.

This is a known bug we are working to solve.

Another issue was that in the rush to commit the score did not include a hanging bonus so immediately went into Match Review and added it. Although it said it recalculated the standings a team quickly notified us that the match did not show up in their stats on the Pit Display and they lost 23 qualification points with one match played missing. The FTA confirmed that their observation was correct even though the website showed the correct results for the match but not the correct ranking. Matt advised it would clear up when we went back to recalculate the scores after Qualification was over but that did not go over very well with the team since they were shown far down the ranking list. Prior to going back to recalculate, a ranking report was run for the judges (even though they were told it would be incorrect) and the FTA noted that the website immediately updated their ranking as soon as the report was generated. The team that noted the discrepancy ended up ranked number 2.

You can run the "Re-Calculate Rankings" option on the same Event Wizard step where you activate the Qual Schedule at any point during the tournament. This will recalculate all rankings and update the web page too.

We had four matches in one Semi-final round. The match that was a tie was replayed but not certain what needs to be done to update the website to show that four matches were played and the original match 15 was a 9-9 tie. Not sure just passing the info along to Matt via Skype is sufficient.

Telling me is sufficient, I update the web pages.

[Matt Pilotte]

Matt - Can we get an explanation of why this is in FMS? I cannot find any reference of a penalty in the rules for a ball going backwards through the goal. Seems to be causing some confusion and trouble at events.

<G16> - HUMAN PLAYERS must place BALLS on the BALL RETURN using the TRIDENT. No other means are permitted for TEAMS to return BALLS to the FIELD. Violation: Two PENALTIES and YELLOW CARD.

The issue is the that FMS decrements the score by 2, instead of assigning 2 penalty points and leaving the score as is. I agree, it would be better if FMS assigned 2 penalties when this occurs, but changing how this works would be a pain with all the trucks out right now as it requires an update to the logic controller program. Not a simple task, and one that is prone to errors.

This functionality is left over from earlier in the game design process when GDC thought it would be best that field assigned penalties come off a team's score in real time. The idea was that that if a team could see how deep in the hole they were, they could work their way out of it. We changed how this works though since it was decided to be confusing to the audience if the score was going up and down.

[ahecht]

<G16> - HUMAN PLAYERS must place BALLS on the BALL RETURN using the TRIDENT. No other means are permitted for TEAMS to return BALLS to the FIELD. Violation: Two PENALTIES and YELLOW CARD.

The issue the teams brought up was with the definition of FIELD:

6.2.1 The FIELD
The playing FIELD for Breakaway is a 27-foot by 54-foot carpeted area, bounded by two ALLIANCE WALLS and a Guardrail System. The FIELD is covered with carpet (S&S Mills Sequoia-20 ”scotch pine green,” “polar express blue,” and “capitol red”). The FIELD includes two BUMPS that divide the FIELD into three regions (the RED ZONE, the MIDFIELD, and the BLUE ZONE). A 2-inch wide white CENTER LINE runs down the center of the FIELD.

By this definition, the goals are not part of the field, and so as long as the ball never broke the plane of the alliance station there should not be a penalty. In fact, section 6.2.5 refers to preventing "BALLS from bouncing back onto the FIELD once they have passed through the opening in the ALLIANCE WALL", implying that the area inside the goal is off the field. I understand the issues with re-programming the field, but perhaps a team update should redefine FIELD to include the GOALs and the BALL COUNTERs or modify G16 to prohibit returning balls to the FIELD, GOALS, or BALL COUNTERS.

[mtomczak]

Matt and the entire scoring team,

First of all, thank you for an excellent year! With the exception of a couple of hiccups, the scoring system was very smooth this year; definitely smoother than last year. It's a real treat to see the system get better consistently, year after year.

I worked scorekeeping with the team at the Pittsburgh regional, and we took some notes on some items that could be improved next year.

• When you change a team number manually (for testing or a substitution), you must remember to click away from the text box to commit the change before pre-starting. It would be great if either the buttons caused the number to try and commit, or the text box changed color while it wasn't committed to remind the user to press return or click away.
• Manual entry of bonus points leaves room for human error in doing the math on suspension / hanging bonuses. It would be great if there were separate fields for these and the math was done by the scorekeeping engine.
• During a match, we accidentally yellow-carded a team and wanted to undo that operation. However, we couldn't go from yellow to green without passing through red, which would have disabled their robot. A way to go from yellow to green to correct mistakes would be welcome.
• While we are in timeout, we cannot go to the reports screen to print reports.

This was, overall, a fun season. I'm looking forward to next year!

Sincerely,
Mark Tomczak
Pittsburgh, PA