Registration for the Pinnacle Season Opener at KU is now open!
This event is open to any RECF Archive team, both middle and high school, and will have 4 spots to the RECF STEM World Championship. The event will take place in Lawrence, Kansas on the KU Campus on July 31st and August 1st. We’re looking to make this a great event with at least 9 qualification matches per team, custom made banners, Worlds level staff (including head ref), and more! Check out the link below to register:
For questions please reach out to jhawkrobots@gmail.com
Hope to see you there!
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For those not aware, I was the event partner for the first RECF Robotics Competition, the Pinnacle Season Opener at KU. While there, I got to use the new competition control software, see the game played, and talk to multiple RECF employees including the head of the RECF GDC and the developers behind the new software. Overall, it was an extremely positive experience, more so that I even expected.
First up, the new compeition control is actually insane. Legues better than TM. RECF actually did an amazing job on it and this is just the beta. It has all of the old functionality you would expect; however, it is way easier to find things. Saves so much time. Additoinally, the new displays are way easier to setup and swap between making livestreaming so much easier too. Additoinally, the way that it works also makes it signifigantly easier to run on multiple computers, easily saving a large amount of setup time. Not to mention it just looks better and has the options to display a lot more things. We also had 0 issues or disconnects on it all day. Everything worked first try for the entire tournament.
Next up, I think that the RECF GDC is doing an excellent job. I’m not going to say that pinnacle is a perfect game, but I very much got the sense that the RECF GDC is actively working to make it a better game. Based on the discussions I had I think all of the major issues I have with the game right now will be gone in the next major update. And I think that more changes are going to be actively made to make the game better as time goes by. I also have a lot of hope and excitiment for the stuff that they talked about regarding plans for future games and the general methodology used.
Finally, going over the general state of RECF stuff. I think RECF is going to be fine. I’ve seen a lot of fearmonger and stuff, and not going to post exact numbers cause its not public, but I think there shouldn’t be any worry about signing up with RECF cuase they’re going to disapear mid season. I think RECF worlds is going to go just fine (aside from the lawsuit killing them which could happen to vex/grsf too).
Really looking forward to seeing how everything progresses throughout the season as I think they have a lot of real cool things that should be announced publically soon. If anyone has any general questions, I’ll do my best to answer down below.
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Hey Evan, do you plan on hosting season opening events annually every season going forward or any other events of this lvl later in the season?
Also would like to say that I agree with you on the recf competition control looking good and polished.
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I will start of by saying that a year from now is a looooong way away, especially at the rate things are moving. I enjoyed hosting with RECF and am planning to host my regular season event with them this November.
This is actually my 2nd year hosting an end of summer tournament in Kansas (the first being here) and I suspect that I will host another one next year. I do not know any more details beyond that, but if we do something like this again, I will be sure to announce everything earlier in the year.
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So my question, were the robots controlled directly by Competition Control? If so, was it using the new RECF board?
It is great you were able to host a super early event while whole competition control is being built from the ground up. It takes a solid event team to make it happen. Great job!
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I’ll chime in here, we did use field control at the KU season opener and it was using the new board. The board is not yet available for distribution as we need to get some more testing and certifications done, so it is only in the development state at this time.
But the good news, it was successful and as Evan mentioned, there were no issues for the entire duration of the event. It was designed so if there ever is a drop in connection from the computer to the board, it will auto reconnect without any interaction (additionally, the timer is stored on the board so a drop does not cause robots to stop during a match).
Stay tuned for more information.
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