Programming and footbagging

Zac Jackson · Post by **Zac Jackson** » 07 Dec 2005 13:45

hey me and Kyle Hewitt are doin a programming thing for school and wanted to make a simple program that has to deal with footbagging, but we dont really know what we should do...., maybe something that would benefit other people by using it, I dont know and thats why we want some input from you guys, tell me what you would like to see and what you wouldnt!

David Morawski · Post by **David Morawski** » 07 Dec 2005 21:23

What language?

More importantly..what does the program have to achieve? "A simple program that has to deal with footbagging" is a tad vague.

sampotter · Post by **sampotter** » 07 Dec 2005 22:24

Yeah, what language? Programming is fun, but I've sort of fallen out of it.

Also, the one thing I always wanted to code was a shred 30 calculator that was completely comprehensive and accurate. It wouldn't be too hard to program, but it would be very, very useful.

Some guidelines:

- Input would include the tricks, drops, and beginning surface.
- On input if it doesn't recognize any moves it would ask you for their add value (and I suppose you could expound on that to include components/jobs so that it could function as a move database as well).
- Would recognize pdx, paradox, smp, symp, etc - so no need for multiple entries for symposium whirl or whatever.
- Then the program would simply calculate the score doing all of the dirty work that usually takes two or three people - counting contacts, adds, uniques, etc.

Hope you guys have fun with whatever you end up deciding to do.

Tsiangkun · Post by **Tsiangkun** » 07 Dec 2005 23:51

I wrote that scoring program, it's a really good project suggestion.

It requires some basic problem solving to parse jobs, monitor which leg has the bag, and on what surface during the tricks, and populating data structures to monitor items of your interest based on that.

I enjoyed making one, and it illustrated lots of things people still don't grasp with regards to what is actually unique, and what paradox actually is, and keeping those separate that from what is scored as unique and paradox.

Zac Jackson · Post by **Zac Jackson** » 08 Dec 2005 09:45

im using vb.net so far, i might change my mind, basically all it has to accomplish is it has to be informal, have lots of information, kind of like a data base, but i want to make it more than that, that calc idea sounds kinda kewl, a little harder to make, but none the less kinda kewl.

Tsiangkun · Post by **Tsiangkun** » 08 Dec 2005 13:02

Another good idea would be to build a jobs notation tokenizer and programmatically generate all theoretical moves up to say 10 adds. Expand the jobs language to deal effectively with flying toe stalls, and bag peak time indicators, etc.

Gather the known moves from footbag.org, you will have to scrape the site and parse the html because they won't give SELECT access to the footbag move database tables.

Match the known moves to your list, and update your database info with moves names etc.

It's a little easier than building a shred score calculator, and you end up with a complete move list. Put it in a database, and serve the content over the web in wiki format. You could allow people to edit the information and integrate the changes to keep the database up to date.

We really do need a useable source for a complete move lists, and there is not a collaborative list available to the community. The ability of a shred calculator to work with as little of pain as possible is dependant on the database being as up to date as possible, and being populate with validated data.

Zac Jackson · Post by **Zac Jackson** » 08 Dec 2005 13:24

sounds like a good idea

Tsiangkun · Post by **Tsiangkun** » 08 Dec 2005 13:41

Another idea would be to write a program that takes as input, strings of tricks people are hitting. Just type them in from some videos or something ,using from as many players as possible.

Use the program to make a directed graph between the different tricks. Where every trick is a vertex, and the edges of the graphs are the links between tricks.

What are the most commonly traveled paths ?
Do the least traveled paths correlate with link intensity ?
What is the most common trick:trick combo ?
What is the most common trick,
what are the rarest tricks, etc etc etc

Similarly, you could also analyse the transisitions within the individual moves jobs elements.

Are the most used transitions easier than the least used ? etc etc etc

think VB.Net has library for creating graphs, saving you some work. It could be interesting as a data harvesting exercise.

SandWraith · Post by **SandWraith** » 08 Dec 2005 15:31

Tsiangkun wrote:What are the most commonly traveled paths ?
Do the least traveled paths correlate with link intensity ?
What is the most common trick:trick combo ?
What is the most common trick,
what are the rarest tricks, etc etc etc

Now THAT would be a cool thing to see.

Tsiangkun · Post by **Tsiangkun** » 08 Dec 2005 16:10

One could even make different data sets from videos from like 96, 98, 2000, 02, 04, 06, and compare how the game has changed over time with regards to popular tricks and combos.