Group meeting and further ideas

We had a meeting in the group study room in the Swanston library to discuss our game. After much discussion, we came up with several new ideas.

Ziyi designed a game that combines football and pool. The rules are similar to pool game rules, but instead of using a cue stick, we kick the 'cue ball' to pocket other balls scattered around the area. After more discussion, we decided to use that idea.

Then, we went to a sports shop above the Reject shop in Bourke Street to browse and choose the ideal ball for our game. (Refer to pics in Artemis' post below.) After that we decided to have another meeting on the next day to buy the material.

Saturday

We had a meeting in the group study room again. Fandi came out with an idea. to modify the game.

The pic above depicts the idea. It's not very clear here but basically we have 2 goal points in opposite corners of a rectangular playing field. There are two players/teams in the respective corners with the goals. The balls in the middle are neutral balls used to score points.

Each team has their own ball - either black or white (or any colour used to represent their team.) With the team ball, the player must hit the neutral balls in the middle and try to score at the goal opposite their corner.

Just imagine that the team ball is the cue ball and the neutral ball are the coloured balls and the goal is the pocket on a pool table. That pretty much sums it all up. The game finishes if it reaches a certain time limit or score - yet to be decided.

Then I had an idea. Each person is given a time limit to skip rope as many times as they can (maybe 20 sec) before they start to kick the ball to dictate the amount of time they have when its their turn to kick and score. But when we thought about it, it was too complicated and seemed to distract from the main objective of the game, so we decided to scrap that idea.

Then, we decided to go to Hardware Express to look for something that can be used to border off the perimeter of the playing field. We looked but there couldn't find chicken wire, and we decided that chicken wire didn't have to necessary properties to enable the player to bounce the ball off properly the wall if they wanted to. We also considered using wooden planks but it was WAY too expensive and cumbersome to lug around. There must be a simpler and cheaper way to make a portable wall. We decided to think about that again later, so we just went back to the sports shop to buy some balls. We chose this ball due to its size and weight.

After we bought balls we went to an empty parking area/back lane to test them. However, we found that trying to kick and aim the cue ball to hit other balls was difficult enough, let alone trying to aim them to score a goal.

The balls were too small, and perhaps football players would have a definite advantage compared to laymen in terms of precision. So we discussed again to modify the game and make it fairer for everyone, and also easier to play as a steep learning curve would discourage people from playing continuously.

I'm the one who took this photo so I'm not in it...then we had another idea. (After going through a few more ideas we decided on this one as it was active and competitive!)

(Steph's note: I will draw up a better and clearer diagram soon, after we test the game tomorrow.)

Basically, we use the cue ball idea again, but have the target ball MUCH bigger so it is easier to hit, but harder to move at the same time due to its mass. We decided to try using a gym ball as the big ball, and try out the balls we bought as well as soccer balls as the cue ball.

The objective of the game is to get the big ball from the starting point to the ending point in the least amount of time and steps.

A minimum of 2 people are required to play this game. They play on the same playing field. Each one is equipped with a pedometer to measure the amount of steps taken while getting the gym ball from the start to finish point.

NOT THAT ONE! THIS ONE! (Steph: Wtf Pedobear!)

Each player is allowed to use his cue ball to either move the big ball to the finishing point as fast as he can OR he can sacrifice precious time to sabotage the opponent by knocking the opponent's ball off course.

If your aim is more precise, you won't have to run as much to get the gym ball to the end. If you miss a lot, you have to run more to retrieve/re-aim your cue ball and rack up more points on the pedometer and risk losing in terms of number of steps.

The player may never kick his or his opponent's gym ball directly. The cue ball must always be used. The player also may not kick his opponent directly.

We're still working out a fair scoring system that takes into account both time and number of steps taken, will update this part later, after we test out our game tomorrow and work out an appropriate ratio.

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Here are some of Fandi's old ideas. He's having a problem with his scanner so he told me to post it for the record.