RoboGames of 2018

Hello everyone! If you saw my other RoboGames posts, then welcome to another one. Last year I competed in a challenge called Open Lego and built a replica of the original Star Tours attraction. (see RoboGames of 2017). For this year, I decided to go a level higher and compete in Best of Show. It's just like Open Lego except with advanced robots.

The kind of robot I built was an interactive game where you use a joystick to move led lights around on a board. Whenever you pushed down on the joystick you had the power to draw whatever you wanted. I also added a timer and a list of different ways to play in case someone wanted a challenge. I used my portable phone chargers to power up the robot. However, when I put one of the chargers in, I never had to recharge it. And we were there for like 10 hours! I expected to use another phone charger after a couple of hours.

Something I really liked was last time I got a bunch of weird comments about my robot (again see RoboGames of 2017). This time I got a grand total of zero weird comments! All that happened was I would say ''Hello. This is the Matrix Drawing Board.'' I then showed them how to work the game, and then asked if they would like to give it a try. If they said yes, I let them draw whatever they wanted. When they walked away, I'd push the restart button and do it all over again. If no one was coming my way, I'd start drawing something and someone would come over to see what I was doing.

At one point, I did get chance to check out all the other robots people had made for different challenges. There was one robot that I saw on Instagram the other day that plays Chess with you. I also got to see a goat robot made out of stuff like wood, bananas, spoons, lights and a pair of fake teeth. I had a nice conversation with the creator and it turned out he was one of the three judges for Best of Show. I also saw a 30 foot tall tower that lit up in different ways, and a NXT Lego robot that played the ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' theme on a piano. On my second break, I decided to watch some Battle Bots. And I'm so glad I did! Because there were two wedge bots going up against a robot that had a sharp spinning drum. About two minutes in, it looked like one of the wedge bots went up into the air, crashed down, and broke into three big parts.

The last thing I'd like to say is the end results for Best of Show. For some odd reason, the judges split up. So for the first round, I talked to two judges which went well. When the third judge came, I talked too fast and tripped up on my own words, and I was all over the place when explaining that my robot can be for fun, or for brain games. Somehow I turned that simple line into a speech that sounded like I was coming up with stuff the robot could be used for right on the spot. After hours and hours of waiting, we saw the judges in a different spot. And yet somehow they still had paper work. The judges had the score sheet out, so we got to find out what place I came in. Out of 27 people, I got 5th place! That alone is a victory. Beating a robotic-self driving wheel chair is the other half of the victory for me.

My new game, "Blazer: Phantom's Revenge"

Hello everyone! As you can tell by the title, this post will be about a new computer game I made using Scratch Programming for a challenge I was in. Long story short, I didn't win but I got a donut! Anyway, this post isn't all about the challenge I was in. This is just about my game. And the coolest thing (to me at least) is if you scroll down to the end of this screen, or anywhere else you might be on my blog, you can play it. I'll go ahead and tell you how to get to it, and how to use it.

As I said, scroll down to the end of the screen, and you should see a big box that shows the "Start Screen" which says "Blazer: Phantom's Revenge." On the right side in this big box is a symbol that looks like a flag. Click the flag, and the game will start up. The game will tell you to push space (on your keyboard) to begin the adventure. If you want to stop the game there is a symbol right next to the flag that looks like a stop sign. Pushing it will stop the game. There are 3 levels and if you run out of lives, depending where you are in the game, the game will tell you to push 'r', 'a', or 'x' to restart. One last thing I would like to say is that all levels are possible to beat. Another way to play is you can go to this website and play my game from there.  https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/213520902/

Now that you know how to get to the game (hopefully I didn't make it sound complex) let's move on to talking about stuff like the inner workings, and some neat little facts about the game.

I'd like to start with the inner workings because throughout the game you come upon Demi Ghosts, Shape Shifters, Ghost Whisps, Tiki Ghost, and Phantom himself. Out of all of these characters, the one with the most codes, is the character you play, Blazer. I know it's hard to see on this screen shot, but there are two codes to move Blazer, three codes to activate the different "Game Overs," 5 codes to make him disappear when he needs to, and the rest are just for the cut scenes.

However, when it comes to the longest code, the award goes to Phantom because he has the most moves, and is doing them in different order. The award for the hardest character to draw goes to both Blazer and Phantom because I had to draw them in One Note just so I can get them to look right, and then find a way to transfer them over to the Scratch software.   

                               

Below is a screen shot of level 1. Now if you were to look at all of the backgrounds Scratch has to offer, you won't find this. Yes, you will find the buildings and road. However, I had to darken the sky so it was truly a city at night. Now this may not look like an exciting level, but the Demi Ghost does shoot fire, and unless you go all trigger happy, you will see him say, "Come, Death Shield." They also have the power to turn invisible, and re-appear somewhere else. Don't worry. You have the Conspiracy Guitar which is more powerful than most of your enemies.

The only enemy that is hard to beat besides Phantom is Tiki Ghost. It'll take some time to take him out. But as you continue the fight with Tiki Ghost, he will try to mess with your mind. Especially in trying to get Blazer's mind to think he is the villain. In truth, (and he knows it) he's not.

Well, I think I'll end this here. There is so much more to say like the Ghost Whisps power is to shoot lasers for instance. All I'm going to say now, is I hope you get a chance to try out my game. If not, then at least you were interested about this game a little. Why else would you be reading this? 

Adventure thru skiing

Hello again! Me and my family went up to Brian Head in Utah for a ski vacation, and it was great! There are so many stories to tell about our trip, but I'm just going to tell some of the ski stories. For one, it'll make this post a whole lot shorter.

The first couple days, we had nice weather conditions, and the snow wasn't all too bad. However, there wasn't very much deep snow, so you would sometimes have to avoid some small rocks that were still sticking out. One time we got off of a chair lift and started down to where you have access to a good amount of runs, when suddenly I hear this short scraping sound. I knew right away that I hit a rock. Aside from rocks, for the first few days, I would crash when I got off of the chair lift. Not a chair lift like Giant Steps Express, but like the ones for three people only. I would get up, turn real tight and maybe cross my skis or end up on someone's else's skis, and fall.

Moving ahead, we got extra snow on the mountain. We all knew that we had to get up to Brian Head first. The drive was only a few minutes, but me and my siblings wanted to be the first skiers, because there was fresh powder. We ended up first in line, on the far left. I say this because the people on the far left always get scanned first. So we were the first ones to rule the mountain! We did the Giant Steps face run, and kept to the powder. My favorite part was at one point, there would be these annoying bumps, and I would have to try to go around each one. But with the extra snow, they were all covered up! The only problem, was our skis weren't built to go through powder. So I would see my skis disappear, reappear, disappear, reappear. I'm just going to say I did ok. There were some comical crashes.

One time, I was going though the terrain snow park, and decided to go off of a jump and head straight for a snow wall you can go on right after I landed. The plan didn't work. I went off the jump, and I don't know how, but I somehow ended up facing the wrong way, seeing where I've been. I noticed that I was just sitting down on my skis, so I just got up, turned around, and kept going.

And the last ski story I'd like to share, is actually several in one story. There have been times where my brother would race my dad or sister, and I would count down, and try to race. I say try, because no matter what you do, my brother found a way to sit down on his skis and go really fast. One time, I was racing with my siblings, and as soon as I said go and my brother took off, it was just over. The only thing I could do, was try not to lose sight of him.

All in all, this was a great trip! So glad I got to go, and hope there is another adventure waiting for us. Hope you enjoyed reading this!

What RoboGames Is

Hello everyone! If you checked out some of my other posts, you'll see that I talk about RoboGames a lot. However, I always talked about what competition I was in. But never about RoboGames itself. So in this post, I'll be telling you what RoboGames is!

RoboGames is a world wide competition where you compete in different challenges using your robot. There are people from Mexico, China, Turkey, all over the world really.  There are actually two buildings for RoboGames. The main building has all the challenges for something simple like following a black twisting line or something complex like moving though a maze in search of a fire to blow out. You usually find a mix of Lego NXT robots and advanced robots in this building. The other building is where you will only find the advanced robots.

In the main building there are challenges like ''Fire Bot'' (the complex challenge), ''Line Follow'' (the simple challenge), ''Tube Push'', etc. You can find some advanced robots in ''Fire bot'' and ''Sumo." (Sumo: Where robots try to push each other off of an edge) ''Best of Show'' has more advanced robots than Lego robots. ''Best of Show'' is where you can build anything you want. ''Open Lego'' is the same thing, but using Lego parts only. Because of these two challenges, there are rows of tables that you can walk by and see all the different inventions people have made.

In order to get into the other building, you need some kind of a pass. Which is annoying because this building has all of the amazing advanced robots. Just like the main building, there are rows of tables that you can walk by to see a bunch of robots. These robots go into an enclosed arena to fight each other with sharp blades, fire, hammers, or wedges. So whenever a battle comes on, the place gets really loud just because of these Battle Bots. There is another form of ''Battle Bots'' called ''Mech Warfare." That challenge doesn't make very much noise, and the robots are a lot smaller, but two robots fight each other using Airsoft guns. There is one section where people make robots of different kinds. Kind of like "Best of Show'' except maybe a little bit different. I'm not sure how different, I just walk by and think ''Wow.... These robots look so cool!''

So in short, RoboGames is a world wide robotics competition where there are many different challenges with many different things going on and lots of different designs to check out, while in the other ''need a pass to get in'' building, there are robots trying to dissemble each other.

Crossed wires: Robot weirdness

Hello whoever reads these! If you checked out Creations and saw my video about my Arduino robot and how it's built, you probably noticed I said, "video of it moving will come once the building is done, and the program is in." Well, the building is almost done, in a weird way. And the programming is almost done, in a weird way. Let me explain why.

Now the wiring was very tricky for me. But after finding out how my robot teacher did the wiring for his robot, I based my robot off of his. After that, I went into programming, where one wheel moved, then the other. I was to get both wheels moving at the same time. But after messing around with the program, my robot quit working. And to make things even more weird, there was nothing wrong with my program. So, my robot teacher took two wires out, and the robot started working! This confused the both of us of how this was possible. So the next day, my robot teacher took a closer look at my robot, re-did the wiring, but this time, the robot didn't work. I didn't up load any new programs into the robot, so the program is going to be looked at again next meeting. Hopefully, the robot will work so I can get a video of it, and then move onto my next project for RoboGames, Best of Show competition. But until then, I have to figure out why my robot is acting so weird......

The winner for the Disneyland ride poll is...........

In the last poll, I asked which Disneyland ride is better out of the three that were given. (Which were Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain, and Haunted Mansion)
Haunted Mansion didn't get a vote, but the other two did. Which instead of dragging this on forever, I'm just going to say who won. The winner is..................... No one. It came down to a tie. Now I didn't vote, but if I could now, then I would pick....... Um....... Well, it's hard for me. So I'll just randomly pick Thunder Mountain.

Just so you know, I have made another poll, which if you like, you can vote down below. This time, the poll is about projects I would like to work on someday. I have put in a short description of what each of the projects are. If you would like to know a little bit more, you can check out my last post, ''Projects I would like to work on someday.''

Projects I would like to work on (someday)

Greetings, whoever is reading this! Well, it's 2018. Which means that some people are making new goals, and not just field goals.

The goals I'm talking about, is where you decide to do something, like try to write the numbers 2018 in a really cool way. What I do, is come up with an idea, while working on a project, like a comic book, and say, ''You know what would be cool? Is if one day, I (Insert idea).'' Which suddenly, I come upon a problem. I give myself too much stuff I like to work on. So to fix this, I finish one project, so I can work on the other project idea, and then come up with another project idea again.... So here are some projects I would like to work on someday! 

Number 1: I like coming up with stories. One story idea I would like to write, is called ''Ultimate Crossover.'' This is how it goes: ''A character, (not knowing that he is part of a movie) accidently travels to another dimension. (which is a movie or T.V. show) and accidently creates some problems. When he gets back to his home, he soon sees that his, and other dimensions have changed by a lot. Each dimension is halfway into the same timeline. What changed, was that evil now wins over good. So now all of the good characters have to put things back to the way they were. Their weapon, is thinking outside the box.'' The original plan was to use Disney characters. But then there's the whole copyright thing, so I'm making my own characters.

Number 2: Ok, that one was long.... So I'll try to keep this one short. I would like to make a stop action T.V. show called, ''Super Ultra Mega Random Improv Show.'' It's a show where there are different short acts. One can be called, ''Life in the Jungle.'' Or an act could also be called, ''Building Tips from Wacky.'' Sometimes, there will be stories. So one episode can just be about telling a story that I came up with. Like from a comic book.

Number 3: I have a Lego robot, and my robot club is no longer using Lego robots. So I can do anything I want with my robot! So far, I've built two things, but never programmed my robot. But I have one idea that may get me back into programming. I'll build something out of Legos, (Secret Base. Temple. Just whatever comes to mind.) and make it better by making some things move, using the Lego robot motors. (Doors. Traps. Etc.)

Number 4: Someday, after my ''Navigational Stars'' game program, I would like to make another game program called, ''Chaos Kitchen.'' A comical game where crazy stuff happens, and you have to try to control it. Before everything goes into Total Chaos.

Number 5: One more idea I would like to share, is a part two of ''Navigational Stars'' game. The first one is how Cy-Trons (Half human, half robot) exist. I don't know the story for the second one if I do make another one, but it might be that turning point where the Cy-Trons start thinking that they are under mind control, because they are told what to do via programming.  The problem with this idea, what do I work on first!? Navigational Stars 2, or Chaos Kitchen? Excuse me, while I think about this.

Happy new year! (Even though it's been 15 days into the new year........)