The release of the new rule book made it necessary to make substantial changes to the GameController as well. The process is not fully finished yet, but the majority of changes is implemented now, so we can today release a pre-version of the final GameController for the 2017 RoboCup. Important: The changes that are still following will NOT change the GameController protocol - the definition of the protocol that we have released now is supposed to be final.
Here is a short summary of the most important changes in the GameController from last year to this year:
- Updated Game Controller to Java 1.8
- Removed support for Protocol Version 7 (V7 can’t be supported anymore because we needed to extend the protocol with free kicks and penalty kicks)
- Updated penalty bytes for Humanoid League
- Moved to Protocol Version 11
- Added Secondary State FREE_KICK
- Added Secondary State PENALTY_KICK
- Added Secondary State Information to the protocol (4 bytes describing details about the secondary state)
- Added Penalty Kick during the Game
- Added Free Kick during the Game
- Added Referee Timeout
- Align Adult League so regular games can be played
What is still missing is mainly the front-end support for the drop-in challenge. This will only affect the UI of the GameController and not any information that is send to the robots. In addition, the internal structure of the GameController might be adapted a little, which will, however, neither affect the UI nor the protocol.
Please note that the GameController is now moved to the official github account of the Technical Committee and can be found here.
I forgot to put this new link into the rule book, so please note that I just updated the rules at github and on the website to include the link to the new GameController.
On GameController github, there is also a wiki page describing the new protocol V11 in detail. Please take a look at that.
If you find bugs in the GameController or have further requests, please add a new issue on github. If you want to discuss the GameController or certain design choices, you are welcome to do so in this category in the forum.
I kindly ask all teams to try out the new version of the GameController and report to us as soon as possible if you have any trouble using the new version.
We are aiming to release the final version of the GameController including the UI for the drop-in challenge mid of April and I’ll send out another email as soon as it is ready.