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.

Comments

Spinning

[assaultriflesforfree]

Second post... fantastic. I have a question (poll I guess) for foosball players out there. Spinning or no spinning? Personally, I don't like spinning - especially since it can damage a table - but I've found that depending on where I play, house rules seem to change. What do you think? This leads me to an idea for a neat feature for a high-tech table - a spin detector that doles out appropriate punishment (i.e. not counting points scored from spins, or whatever).

Re:Spinning

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah. When you spin, you lose a lot of control. I've always found that players may start out spinning, but once they've played a few games they stop. You can get a HELL of a shot from a normal flick of the wrist, plus then you're ready to immediately stuff a rebound coming back from your shot. If you spin, you lose contact with the handle and thus you lose control and reaction.

Re:Spinning

[Anonymous Coward]

Any person that has played more than the occasional casual game of foosball knows that spinning is a quick way to lose. The keys to winning are:

• Ball control - By far the most important, as the opponent cannot score if they don't have the ball;
• Shot speed - Important, but not as much as most people think (a well placed angle shot scores the same value point as the burner to that dents the back of the goal);
• Deception - Disguising your shot so that the opponent doesn't see it coming;
• Anticipation - Being able to anticipate the opponent's shot (particularly easy when they are bad at deception);
• Exploiting Weakness - Find a shot in your arsensal that the opponent can't block and you're home free;
• Playing - Like most things in life, the more you do it the better you get at it.

• With spinning, you gain a broken table and a high total in the "L" column (to match the L on your forehead ;-). When I play against "spinners", I know that it's going to be a short, uninteresting game. But watching their frustration when you *always* have the ball is funny. :-)

Re:Spinning

[Gudlyf]

"Well, can you imagine a real life football (soccer, whatever) player spin 2 or 3 times ? I can't ..."

Yeah, and while we're at it, I don't recall ever seeing the forwards connected together with a metal rod, restricting them to left-right movement. Same for the defensemen, too. Therefore, I vote against the foosball players being tethered together like that, because it's not like real life.

Not every table game has to be like real life. You play by the mechanics and rules given to you. What matters is that everyone has fun and nobody else's expense.

Lingo and Serial Port Listining..

[g00z]

First, I found it sorta wierd that he decided to use director as a front end -- Personaly I would have used flash since actionscript is less archaic than lingo is and for doing dynamic vector stuff flash cant be beat. But hey, more power too him.

I am, however, curious as to how he is getting this data (1's and 0's) from the serial port to director? I wasn't aware that lingo had any hardware level control (besides the keybord and mouse) -- unless he's got it wired up so the bx board is actualy simulating a mouse click, but he doesn't say. I find myself wanting more details.

And by the way, the article is a little misleading. $50 for the sensors, breadboard and card reader. Flat screen LCD, foozball table and computer not included. See store for details.

Re:Lingo and Serial Port Listining..

[TheTomcat]

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

Cool, but...

[Harald74]

...can it sense your mood when you're loosing?

Re:Cool, but...

[VikingBerserker]

What if an incentive system were installed, instead? Considering that most foosball tables are found where drinking is involved, what if a nice, cold beer were dispensed to the player who scores each goal?

I figure things would get interesting as the player who took an early lead slows his reaction times due to alcohol, thus leveling the playing field.

And he got *credit* for this project?

[kbs]

I'd be curious to know what the original statement of the project parameters were.

Also, it seems that the encoding on the student card may be the same as what we use; apparently the encoding of the social security number in my student card is the same as the encoding of the social security number at a local supermarket.

The goal problem

[Kajakske]

Well, he doesn't detect goals for 100%, right ?
Couldn't he combine the two systems ?

Like, detect when the ball hits the back plate + when it goes thhrough the vending machine censor. That way, if the ball just rolls in, the vending machine sensor will detect it, when it bounces the plate will detect it, and when they do bot (bounce but roll in anyway) they'll both detect it ...

It might get him over the $50 when adding extra sensors ofcourse ...

What?

[MoThugz]

From the article: In my opinion, the most interesting part of the project is the database that ties everything together. When the user swipes his or her NYU card, Director takes this information and sends it to a ASP script (running on an Windows 2000 box that is tied to an Access database). This ASP script runs a MySQL query through Access and spits back XML that contains information on the player (wins, loss, average points per game, number of games played, etc) . This XML is passed back into Director via getNetText and put into global variables which are then fed to the screen at the appropriate time.

ASP script on a Win2k box, tied to an Access DB, which runs MySQL queries, spitting out XML which is parsed in Director. Does this guy actually realizes what he has written?

Of course it cost less than $50...

[pwagland]

He just happened to have:

1. A large flat screen plasma TV "lieing around"
2. A spare box running W2K
3. Licences for MSQL (it was legal, right?)
4. Licences for macromedia (that control app was made legally, right?)
5. A Foosball table...

If I had all that lying around I am sure that I could of done it for $50 as well.... If not... well the licence for W2K alone would break that budget. And that is the cheapest item on the list!

Not trying to take anything away from the hack, it was very cool, but saying that it cost $50 strikes me as a bit rich....

Cheaper option.

[vilms]

Spend a tenner on a ball. Get some people together. Find some green space. Use jumpers as goalposts. Play football. Ask one player to keep score.
Afterwards, in the bar, assess each other's footballing ability in a haze of lager and spittle.
rinse and repeat.

Not a troll, or an Anti-American post but....

[caluml]

I'd love to know how it came to be called foosball?
Is it to do with the German way of spelling it, with that crazy B letter they have?
I've only ever known it as table football. In fact I couldn't work out what you were talking about at first :)

Re:Umm... security concerns.

[dr_labrat]

You are absolutely righy, and yet I can't help feeling that it doesn't actually matter.
Its a foosball game.

Re:Proprietary technologies

[tps12]

Uh oh. The guys in my frat (don't ask) used to play a form of foosball where if you were shut out then you put your name on the wall of shame, and played with your pants down until you scored a goal.