Top-Down Stronghold

A 2D top-down version of the 2016 game for the FIRST Robotics Competition.

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Inspiration

Our school has an FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition) team, and a few weeks ago, some people on our team ran into Top-Down Stronghold, a computer simulator for the 2017 FRC game. Even though it was well designed and very fun, we did find some problems with it and we hoped that we could make something better. So we decided to develop Top-Down Stronghold, which was based on the 2016 game, to see how far we could get.

What it does

Top-Down Stronghold lets someone "play" the 2016 FRC game on a computer in 2D. Unlike the real FRC game, Top-Down Stronghold is 1v1, with a red robot and a blue robot. There are two objectives: score grey boulders into a tower at the end of the field and cross obstacles, or defenses, which are laid out across the field. Each boulder scored or defense crossed is worth 5 points, and the person with the most points at the end of the 135-second match wins. In addition, if enough boulders are scored or enough defenses are crossed, the player is awarded with bonus points.

How we built it

We used Processing, a modified distribution of Java that makes it easy to work with shapes and objects, to create the game. Most of our code used Java concepts and syntax. To create the sprites and backgrounds in our game, we used Paint.Net. We also tried to incorporate sounds from the real 2016 FRC game.

Challenges we ran into

We had a lot of trouble getting the sound to work right. We also had trouble modeling robot collision physics in Processing, and figuring out how to not make the robot go through walls and stuff.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are quite proud of our crude, primitive physics engine, most of which we had to write from scratch ourselves. Even though it still has many bugs and does not handle collisions very well, it is still a difficult feat that we managed to accomplish in a limited time.

What we learned

We learned a lot about how to use Processing, and the many difficulties and challenges that come with it.

What's next for Top-Down Stronghold

We look forward to fixing a lot of our bugs and adding more interesting ways to earn points. We also would like to add an endgame screen, which shows a point breakdown of the match.

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