Contributor’s Guide#

Introduction#

Hello, and thank you for taking the time to consider contributing to Game Manual 0. Your knowledge and contributions will help many other teams, and improve Game Manual 0 as a universal resource. This document is designed to give a basic overview of contributing to Game Manual 0.

Who can contribute?#

Game Manual 0 welcomes contributions from basically anybody. The majority of this guide was written by accomplished students of FTC® from a wide variety of teams, alongside mentors and alums. Our editorial control is based purely on content, as long as the content is good, it’ll be added to Game Manual 0.

Goals of Game Manual 0#

Before writing, please take the time to familiarize yourself with the goals of Game Manual 0. The primary goals are:

  1. To inform and guide newer teams, participants, and coaches of the FIRST® Tech Challenge and help them achieve their competitive goals.

  2. To act as a living reference for mechanisms, techniques, and community knowledge pertinent to FIRST Tech Challenge.

These goals may seem relatively self-explanatory, but they have several important takeaways.

  • These goals do not necessarily build upon each other. For example, let’s look at the Drivetrains section. If we want to simply guide more rookie teams on a path to become successful, we would discuss the very popular drivetrains that teams may encounter (2WD, 4WD, 6WD, mecanum, X-Drive, and H-Drive) so that teams can quickly get up to speed and choose a competitive drivetrain. However, if the goal is to be a comprehensive reference, we would include every single possible drivetrain ever created for FTC, even if they aren’t very competitive or realistic for newer teams to build (swerve, ball, octocanum, etc).

    • We are seeking to accomplish both goals with a new structure: there will be a “For Rookies” page, that will link to a list of curated pages designed for rookies, while pages outside this list can act as more comprehensive references.

    • Keep the goal of the page and whether it is designed to be kept on the “For Rookies” page in mind while writing, and adjust the content accordingly.

  • Game Manual 0 is a guide from primarily a competitive standpoint. In general our recommendations have the end goal of increasing the points scored by a team while working inside a team’s limitations, and building good technical habits that will be useful in a future career.

  • Game Manual 0 seeks to inform, not tell. Game Manual 0 does not wish to encourage one “meta” design or series of techniques, instead, the guide seeks to present teams with a variety of options, with a pros and cons list of each, and let teams make their own decisions for their own circumstances. If recommendations are given, they must be based on objective, repeatable reasoning. For more information on this, read the Style Guide.

  • Game Manual 0 is generally a high level concept guide. This means that information is given in a way that is applicable to many situations, rather than a series of steps. However, when possible we link to external documentation to plug any knowledge gaps. For example: in the electronics sections, we do not discuss how to exactly wire the robot using the REV control system, instead we link to the REV documentation for exact wiring and discuss general wiring best practices.

Getting Started Contributing#

  1. Read through this document

  2. Read through the Style Guide

  3. Review the Project List and GitHub issues

  4. Check out the Methods of Contributing