Robotics · Team project

RoboMaster Competition: Design the Game

Your crew designs one event. The whole school ends up playing it.

Grades 7 to 12
Time The back half of the trimester
Difficulty Intermediate to advanced, team project

The RoboMasters have been sitting in this room for a while and nobody has done anything with them yet. That changes now. You and your crew design, build, and run one event in a real competition using our S1 robots: a course, a battle, a race, whatever you invent. You write the rules, you program the robot, you playtest it, and you referee it live. First your own class plays it. Then the other section plays it. Then the whole school does, at a public event you help run.

What you'll learn

How to design a game that is actually fair: clear scoring, a real way to win, rules that hold up when a stranger plays
How to program a RoboMaster S1 autonomous routine that runs start to finish with nobody touching a controller
How playtesting finds the holes in your own rules before an audience does
How to run a live event: referee a match, keep score, keep everyone safe
Whatever your crew's lead role teaches at real depth: driving, programming, field building, or documentation

What you need

You must have already completed RoboMaster: Navigate the Room, or already know how to drive and code a RoboMaster
A RoboMaster S1, charged and activated by Mr. Krigger
The RoboMaster app in Lab mode. Block coding is the default. Python is there if you want to push further.
Field materials for whatever your game needs. Ask, this lab is a makerspace and materials are cheap.

Safety rules, read before you start

These are non-negotiable. Breaking them on purpose means you lose access to the robots and earn a 0 for the day.

Eye protection whenever a blaster is armed. No exceptions, no matter how short the test.

Never fire at a person's face. Neither the infrared beam nor gel beads go near anyone's eyes on purpose.
Gel beads only inside a space built for them, supervised, with a way to clean up. If your game does not specifically need beads, run it on infrared. Hits still register.
Batteries charge at the charging station. Never swapped mid match without powering the robot down first.
No robot runs with nobody watching it. Autonomous does not mean unsupervised.
Report damage, a burn smell, or an injury right away. You will not be in trouble for reporting something. These are the only RoboMaster units this class has.

Build one game, enter others

You build one game. Your crew designs, builds, and owns exactly one event. It might use a program. It might not. A game like Capture the Flag or Robot Soccer does not need one, and forcing code into a game that does not want it just makes the game worse.

You enter other games too. Between all the games your classmates design, there will be plenty of autonomous ones to enter. Two are guaranteed no matter what anyone builds, because they are already the class you took to get here:

Event	What it is
Precision Return	Loop the room, stop on the mark, autonomous
Figure 8 Grand Prix, auto division	The Navigate the Room figure 8, timed, autonomous

Every crew must enter at least one autonomous event, hands off, with a working program. It can be one of these two, a game another crew designed that happens to have an autonomous part, or one your own crew proposes on top of your own game. These two are a floor, not a menu, so the requirement is always possible to meet.

Your crew and your lead role

High School runs four crews of four. Middle School runs three crews of three. Everyone on a crew participates in everything. On top of that, each student leads one area and is graded on it directly.

Middle School crews of three double up two roles. The crew decides which two combine, and says so in the Game Design Document.

The four roles

Role	What you own	You owe
Pilot	Driving	Every crew member completes a driver run you led · you drive in a live match · you give the safety briefing
Programmer	The code	Your Open Events entry runs hands off · tuned twice, with what changed · every crew member has code of their own that runs
Engineer	Hardware and field	Your game's field sets up in under ten minutes · a written pre match check gets used every time · batteries and beads ready on call
Media and Rules	The document	Rules and penalties hold up in play · a referee script a substitute could run cold · the recap gets published

Need a starting point?

Research first. Look at how other robot competitions run, and see what people build with the RoboMaster S1 at home and in real events. If your crew is stuck, the RoboMaster Idea Catalog has forty sample events across six families, precision driving to crowd events. It is a starting point, not a menu: change one, combine two, or skip the whole list and invent something better. No two crews can build the same game, so the first crew to claim an idea keeps it.

The Game Design Document

One form, every crew, turned in twice: a draft before Stage 1, a final version after Stage 2. Test for whether a field is finished: could a referee who has never met you run your game from this page alone?

The first draft is your proposal. Due Wednesday 7 October. Fill in the template with your crew roster and a first try at all six fields, then add one page on the three real competitions you researched. We try events in the gym on Friday 2 October, so bring your ideas to that class and write down what you changed.

Game name and the one line pitch. What the announcer says, what a spectator sees.
Setup. What you build, roughly how big, what it is made of.
How to play. Robots per side, match length, what starts and stops the clock.
How you score and how you win. Every way to earn a point. How a tie is broken.
Rules and penalties. What is illegal, what it costs, safety rules specific to your game.
Referee script. What the ref says and does, in order, start to finish.

Bonus, not required of anyone

A field diagram drawn to real measurements
Program notes, if your game uses one: what it does, when it runs

How the competition runs

Three stages. Each one is bigger than the last, and each one finds problems your rules could not find on their own.

Stage	When	What happens
1. Inside the class	Oct 13 to Oct 23	Each section plays every crew's game within its own section. Expect to change something.
2. Class against class	Oct 26 to Nov 13	Middle School and High School play each other's games.
3. The whole school	Boo Bash 30 Oct, championship week of Nov 16	Boo Bash is a public demo booth, students design it. The championship is the real event, staff and other classes enter.

Winning a match is worth zero points. Your grade comes from the game you built, the document you wrote, the code you shipped, and the match you ran.

Boo Bash: propose the booth

Boo Bash, Friday 30 October, is a public demo booth at school. It is not one of the three competition stages and not part of your crew's game. Any student or group can propose an idea: a game, a demo, a station, anything that works for a three hour walk-up crowd of families and little kids.

Mr. Krigger approves whatever actually runs. Bring him your idea early. The date does not move.

Base and Stretch

Base · everyone

Join a crew, claim a lead role. Research three real robot competitions. Propose and claim your game. Complete the six required Game Design Document fields. Two playtests outside your crew, with a rule changed. Enter an Open Events autonomous program. Drive in a live match. Write code that runs. Referee two matches you are not in. Run your own game live, finished on time.

Stretch · required for HS, bonus for MS

Name an idea you tried and rejected, and why. Complete one bonus document field. A third playtest at the next stage up. Your program reads a sensor, line, marker, hit, or sound, and uses a loop or variable. Run your game with an outside team in it. Cover a second crew role and say what you did.

What you turn in

Game Design Document, final version, all six required fields
Two playtest logs: date, who played, what broke, what you changed
Your Open Events program, plus a short clip of it running hands off
Proof you drove: a photo or clip from a live match
Reflection (3 to 5 sentences, every student submits their own): what was your role, what did you do, what would you change

Final work is submitted in Schoology. The Game Design Document and playtest logs go in once per crew, the reflection and driving proof go in individually.

Vocabulary

Term	What it means
Autonomous	The robot runs on a program with nobody touching the controls
Driver control	A person is actively steering the robot with a controller
Playtest	Having someone who did not write your rules actually play your game, so you find the problems before an audience does
Vision marker	A printed symbol the robot's camera reads and reacts to
Armor panel	The six sensors on the S1 that detect a hit
HP	Hit points, how much damage a robot can take in a battle game before it is out
Iteration	Writing a rough version of your rules, testing them, then improving them, rather than trying to get them perfect on the first try
Lead role	The one area of the project you personally own and are graded on, separate from what your whole crew does together

When it goes wrong

Our game doesn't use any code.

That is fine. Your crew still enters an Open Events autonomous event, which is where the Programmer role and the individual code requirement live.

We can't find three real competitions to research.

Start with the RoboMaster University League and DJI's own 2019 S1 Challenge. Find a third yourself, it does not have to involve a RoboMaster.

Another crew wants to build the same game as us.

First crew to turn in a claimed proposal keeps the idea. Change yours, or combine two ideas into something new.

Our rules fell apart the first time someone else played.

That is Stage 1 working, not failing. Write down what broke and change it. That change is part of your grade.

The robot won't connect to the app.

Check with Mr. Krigger before troubleshooting further, robots are activated on a teacher account and reconnecting sometimes needs that account.

We're not sure our scoring is actually fair.

Run it past another crew before your final document is due. If two people can read your rule and land on different winners for the same match, it needs a rewrite.