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High-Tech Foosball Mod Project
JakeBullet writes: "Project:
Take a standard foosball table and make it a little bit smarter. 1. The table should be aware of who's playing, the score and the status of the game. 2. Take the data from the game and use it to create a stats engine and player ranking system. 3. Project all relevant information about gameplay onto a flat screen. 4. Spend under $50.
According to the "Official Foosball Rules" that came with my foosball table (which came with the house when we bought it...) spinning is _not_ allowed in tournament games.
As I've never played a 'tournament' I play with spinning allowed, but YMMV.
-Trillian
Director has much better support for third-party "Xtras" (plugins). Yes Lingo is a dirty, nasty language (better now that dot-notation is the norm), but I don't think serial-port interaction could be directly possible in Flash Player.
See: Serial Xtra
S
Probably - ß actually stands for a double s. Thus, Straße can be written Strasse and Fußball can be written Fussball. I'd guess the 'oo' bit is either someone's misspelling based on football, or someone who thought it was 'Füßball' (note umlaut), which without German characters would be written 'Fuessball' and pronounced roughly 'Foosball' (though with a short 'a' - as in 'ran').
PenguiNet: the (shareware) Windows SSH client
First of all spinning is against the rules. It's hard on the table and leads to poor gameplay. Accuracy is much more important than shotspeed. You need to learn a good hard wristflick an then you can shoot the ball fast enough that it doesn't matter. The one problem with trying to implement spin dectecors (other than the mechanical design) is that you can spin to some degree. You cannot spin the rod more than 360 before you make contact and nor after you make contact. This allows you to spin it almost 720 during a shot, however you cannot let go of the rod while doing this. (There is one shot, called the snake shot or wrist rocket that starts with the man on top of the ball on the front side of the rod. Then he flips over and strikes the ball and keeps going a bit.)
It sometimes takes people a bit to learn not to spin, but once they do they are a lot better because of it. If a person is spinning they may get one or two lucky goals, but otherwise they probably can't stop the other player once that player gets the ball. Good players will be able to just pass the ball upfield and then score off of their 3 man rod.
Am I allowed to respond to all the feedback I've gotten? 1. Yes, yes, yes... I know that SQL != MySQL. That was a typo. I worked on multiple projects this semster - some using SQL to talk to Access, others using a MySQL database. I hope all the haters out there can forgive my two-letter typo. :)
2. Yes, yes, yes... there are beter ways to do this than my ASP -> SQL -> XML scheme, but I threw most of the code together while on an Amtrak train from Boston -> NYC. Maybe when the semester kicks off again I'll revisit the code that drives the stats engine and clean it up a bit... but come'on, it works fine now, and hey, that's all that counts in my book.
3. To whoever suggested taking apart the table: You try it. That thing is hot-glued shut and I was not planning on taking a crowbar to our beloved foosball table.
4. And, and of course, to all the "less than $50" people... *of course* it didn't cost less than $50... it uses a flat screen and a dedicated box! The write up I threw together makes reference to spending no more than $50 on *new materials* so I could afford Christmas gifts. Give a kid a break!
Um, I think that's about it. Meet me at the flagpole, 3pm sharp, if you want to discuss any other negative feedback. -- see, that's a joke. //dens
dens@dodgeball.com
ps: Thanks to all the postive feedback - esp the idea for dual-sensors in the goal, the mood of the players (no joke, there is a momentum meter built in which tracks unanswered goals), and to my favorite suggestion, the "boo" button. Ha!