TaggerTalk

TagParty Sport Ruination Event

The Ruination event went well.  While we did not have as many new faces as we would have liked, there was a lot of good comments and we should see some business from the event. The games went well, with the team elimination games working out the best in the ruins. With some luck we will be able to hold some more events at this venue. Pictures from the event can be seen by clicking on the thumbnail picture - top left.

Survive the Night inaugural event draws crowd at ‘haunted’ ruins

From The View from Ellicott City

The Patapsco Female Institute Historic Park has been home to many different entities since the 19th century, including boarding school students, convalescents, indigents, a family and possibly ghosts. Paranormal researchers and a medium were at the site Halloween night to do some spirit hunting. And, they were definitely not alone.As part of Survive the Night, an inaugural event aimed at entertaining All Hallows’ Eve crowds and driving traffic to the historic landmark, the Heritage Project of the Howard County Department of Recreation and Parks hosted activities, which took place from 8 p.m. until the witching hour. The program included a scientific paranormal research team seeking evidence of a haunting with cameras and other equipment, a medium that led tour groups around while explaining the history and spiritual status of the property, children’s activities conducted by River Hill High School students (who also did double duty as frightening ghouls who scared unwitting patrons) and laser tag. “It’s different,” said Al Mendez of Catonsville. “Normally, we just go to the mall and trick-or-treat.” For a $10 entrance fee, visitors could play laser tag, run by Tag Party, on the first floor of the stabilized ruins; talk to scientific paranormal researchers from DCMAG, an organization that investigates paranormal activity in the DC metro region; and learn about the history of the institute and run into ghosts with Beverly Litsinger, a medium and president of the Maryland Ghosts and Spirit Association, while tracking spirits with EMF (electromagnetic frequency) detectors. They could also make slime out of glue; play musical chairs to the “Monster Mash,” “Thriller,” and “Ghostbusters”; or toss a frisbee into the mouth of a two-dimensional “monster.” “It gives us energy to try something new,” Heritage Project coordinator Susana Burrell said. “We would like it to be a new tradition.”

– Jennifer Choi

TagParty Sport Website

We have added a TagParty Sport website http://www.tagpartysport.net to the TagParty offering. The new site is set up to launch the new service/product from TagParty, while keeping the TagParty site focussed on the existing business. At a  later date the two sites could be merged, but for now they will be just linked.

FaceBook And TagParty

We have added business pages, for TagParty and TagParty Sport, onto the popular social networking site Facebook.

TagParty FaceBook Page

TagParty Sport FaceBook Page

Event Calendar Plugin Added to Tagger Talk

Checkout the new Event Calendar page. We will use this for special events, with regular TagParty events showing on the calendar on the TagParty. net website.

There are two upcoming events one this month and one in November.

TagParty Sport Inaugural Event

Last night we held our first TagParty Sport event with a 30th birthday party. The event was a surprise party for a paintball fan, held in open space behind the home.  It was a great success with the the complement that “it was as close to the paintball experience as it could get”.

TagParty Sport is a new product for TagParty aimed at the older age group, high school and up, who want to have the fun and excitement of laser tag, but do not want to be seen playing with toys. Unlike paintball a large game of laser tag can be played at, or near, home and everyone can join in without fear of being hurt.

TagParty selected Adventure Sport’s Razer Tagger for the new venture. The Razer has the feel fo a gun, but does not look like one, especially the blue and red units used by TagParty Sport. We also used their flag game boxes with great success as part of the games played.

TagParty Sport will be official launched next year.

Problem Taggers - Rechargable Batteries

We have been experiencing some failures of our taggers during TagParty games, similar to what we saw before the “Magic Drone” mod, but different in that it was persistent in some cases and resting did not cure the behavior. We suspected that we were having battery problems with the Pure Energy RAM XL we used, but the Smart Charger was not showing battery failure and all the cells voltages were showing >1.6V.

Reading the charger manual indicated a possible cell problem that the charger would not detect - high internal impedance. This could be our problem as the voltage would drop under a load, or the cell would not deliver the needed current (V=IR). I emailed my technical contact at Pure Energy asking for a simple impedance test for the RAM XL AA. I got an almost instant answer: “You can indirectly measure the impedance of cells by using a DC Voltmeter in the 10A current range setting. For batteries that have been charged, the short circuit current can be measured for 1 second and the Ampere readout can be used to classify the cells. The higher the current the better the cells. A minimum of 2 Amperes on this type of tests would be required before thinking of replacing the cells. ”

Initial testing showed that we indeed did have cells that were testing below 2 Amperes, and in proportion to give a good correlation to the failure rate we were experiencing. We have now added the test to our battery charging procedure. Initially we have set the pass criteria to twice the recommended level at > 4 Amperes, and for cells 4-5 Amperes we extend the test to 2 seconds and fail units that drop below 4 in that time period.

We will monitor performance and role down the voltage to 2 Amperes, or to where we start seeing failures, over time. Overall the RAM XL’s have been working well for us and are certainly a large cost saving over primary cells, where you can not use standard rechargeable cells .

Some Time to Play

We have managed to play laser tag, as against working a TagParty, a few days this past week. I have played some games using the Adventure Sports Razer with my son Matt and his friend down at the farm. The area we played in is heavily wooded with a stream running along it length and a hill on one side. The games were 2 VS 2/3 and were based on capture the flag, using a game box, or team elimination with one team being hunted by the other. In some games we used the ref tagger to collect scores, but most of the time we used it as a standard tagger so a third person could play. Overall the guys liked the Razer tagger and thoroughly enjoyed the games.

The Razers were all set to “outdoor” mode and the power range was at 60%. While we were getting familiar with the tagger most of the games were played with the tagger set to; lives = 50, damage = 1, armor = 0, semi automatic, unlimited clips, rounds = 15 with a 2 second reload, Respawn = 0, hit delay = 0.5 seconds, game time = 10min.

The range while not measured looks to meet the specifications, but the shaded wooded area did not allow us to see what effect direct sunlight will have on the TSOP based sensors. Where we had a line of sight it was easy to get you scope on target and take a few lives off your opponent while he was thinking paintball or airsoft range. The loud firing sounds and the muzzle flash soon made them aware of your general position, but with the half second hit delay all they could really do is look for cover if you layed down a blanket of fire.

For me the biggest challenge, after years of LTTO, was remembering the head sensors. No poking your head out to see where your opponent(s) is(are), making it easier to move from one position to another. A nice feature is the “warning” message for a near hit. Blasting at someone behind a tree might not result in a hit, but the diffracted/reflected light makes them keep their head down as they get the warning message. You however take a serious hit on your accuracy, and probably is not a good tactic if you are playing with limited ammo. In our scored games accuracy ranged fro a low of 9% to a high of 78%.

The Razer with a stock is a well balanced tagger, but has a few rough edges - literally. In the main these are the protruding bolts on the underside of the main body, nothing a small washer on the inside will not cure. The trigger guard also bits a bit into the index finger, some finger profiling of the handle would help here. Other wise it is a well made and looks to be very durable. The dot scopes provided with the tagger are good, offering a choice of intensity and color (red/green), the guys really liked them.

As for the looks and feel; initial there was a stated preference for something more realistic (from the airsoft player in particular), but in the end everyone said that it  really did not mater as the feel was good and they handled well in play. There was discussion about different styles of taggers for different set-ups, but overall changing the guns looks was less important than being able to change the guns characteristics.

What was apparent from the games was that the taggers could benefit from some minor firmware changes:

• As a field operator  I would like to see the battery life before I initiate a game
• The taggers name as well as team should show before the game start (everyone wanted to know what their tag was for after game scoring). I guess you could label the tagger, but labels do come off easily.
• Preset gun configurations would be useful, probably more than the preset “recon” ranks.
• There needs to be a longer countdown timer available to alow starting from a single briefing spot and getting to the start game positions (for smaller groups with a single ref).
• Scoring needs to be enhanced in the ref tagger. It needs to account for how many hits you took as well as how many hits you made. The LTTO model works well 2 points for every hit made and -1 point for every hit taken except where it is friendly fire this should be at least -2 or even -3 , if tagged out the individual score does not contribute to the team score. You could add 5 points for each flag and deduct 5 for each respawn. Accuracy could also be factored in, but limiting ammo would probably be the best way to factor this into a team game.

Protected: TagParty Tagger

TagParty Van Wrap - Completed

Today we took delivery of the Van and the trailer wraps. Links to pictures below:
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