Completes Phase 5's implementation. Every task is verified at 1v1; the
3v3 phase gate itself has not been run and remains outstanding.
5.6/5.7 disconnects: a ship is never despawned. The slot keeps it and
swaps the controller (--fill-bots gives it a bot, the default leaves it
inert per §1.4), sets `stalled` immediately so the nameplate greys out
rather than waiting ~500ms for the abandoned jitter buffer to starve,
and reserves the slot for 30s keyed by player name so a reconnect gets
the same ship back.
5.7 was a real bug, found by the test rather than by review:
SlotInfo.controller was declared RLShipController, but the takeover
swaps in an AIShipController or the base controller - the narrower type
makes that assignment fail its type check, leaving the field pointing at
the controller set_controller() just queue_free()d. It surfaced as
controller_valid=false on the first run. The per-tick action write is
now also gated on `is RLShipController`, since a disconnected slot's bot
drives itself and overwriting it from a starving buffer would pin it to
the departed player's last input.
§6.4's two rules conflict: reserve for 30s, but abort when the last
human leaves. Applied naively the abort wins instantly in a 1v1 and the
reservation can never be redeemed, making reconnect unreachable exactly
when it matters. Abort now waits for no connections AND no outstanding
reservations.
5.8 spectators: a slotless peer spawns no ship and receives the same
snapshot broadcast. HUDController.spectator_mode keeps the clock, score
and goal celebration and hides only the ship instrument cluster - it
previously push_error'd and bailed, leaving a spectator with a dead HUD.
Camera cycles ships in slot order then the ball. --max-spectators caps
it, counted from the live peer list so a dropped spectator cannot leak a
unit of the cap.
5.9 escape respawn: new GameMode._on_bodies_respawned() virtual;
NetworkedMatch bumps reset_gen through Phase 2's deferred path so the
bump and the respawned pose land in the same broadcast. Single-player
modes are unaffected - the base is a no-op.
5.10 replay log: scripts/replay_log.gd, --replay-log=<path>, storing the
wire bytes verbatim in both directions rather than re-serialising - a
re-encode would launder away precisely the malformed payload being
chased. A live 6s match recorded 1115 records (557 inputs / 558
snapshots) and a stored snapshot decodes back to server_tick=100
match_state=WARMUP bodies=2.
Note for future work: --check-only --script is the only thing that
catches a parse error in networked_match.gd, because the unit runner
never loads it. Two separate breakages passed the full unit suite while
breaking every two-process run. A new class_name also needs --import
before it resolves.
Test surface: --role=host-disconnect (three-process 5.6/5.7 scenario),
--match-length=<s>, --replay-log, --fill-bots/--no-fill-bots,
--max-spectators. The ball-contact scenario now steers at the ball with
closed-loop real input instead of a hand-tuned fixed heading, which 5.3
broke by adding KICKOFF_YAW_JITTER; thrusting while turning took it from
2/3 to 5/5.
Regression: 87 unit tests; free-flight LAN p99 0.094m with 0 hard snaps;
transition gate 0.00%; ball contact 5/5; lifecycle goal cycle and full
match to RESULTS/LOBBY; disconnect+reconnect; two-bot CI.
Lands the non-networked Phase 0 tasks from multiplayer-todo.md (ship/camera/
arena refactors, sim constants, background FPS handling) plus a first pass
at exposing graphics/performance settings (presets, resolution scaling,
vsync, FPS cap, perf overlay) and a GPU profiling harness for the
real-hardware follow-up in task 0.15b.
Extends ShipObservations beyond the old self+1-opponent layout to padded
teammate/opponent arrays (MAX_TEAMMATES=4, MAX_OPPONENTS=5, SIZE=83),
zero-filling slots past the real roster size the same way the old single-
opponent slot was zero-filled when absent.
Slot stability across ticks requires a persistent identity: Ship gains
spawn_index (set once by GameMode.spawn_ship, never reassigned — there's no
despawn path anywhere in this codebase, so a roster is fixed for the whole
episode/match). ai_ship_controller.gd's opponent discovery is rewritten from
"first non-self ship" to classify every other ship by team and sort by
spawn_index; training_mode.gd/ship_ai_controller.gd carry the equivalent
sorted lists through the training path so both agree on slot assignment for
the same roster.
training_mode.gd and match_mode.gd both gain a team_size export (default 1,
so every existing curriculum script and match keeps today's 1v1 behaviour
unchanged). This is plumbing only: no 2v2+ curriculum or reward design, and
no match-mode UI to pick team size, has been done yet. The two checkpoints
in Game/bots/promoted/ are fitted to the old 35-float layout and are not
migrated — expected to go stale until the next training run.
The goal mouths are now a real navigable hole in the end walls, sized to the
ball rather than the ship — a ship's 1x1 cross-section fits through it, and
there's nothing behind the net to stop it. The escape failsafe previously
only existed in TrainingMode (where a physics regression just wastes
training time); now that any ship can genuinely fly out through an open
goal, every mode needs it or a stray ship/ball falls into the void with no
way back short of quitting. Moved up to GameMode as the shared default
_physics_process, removing TrainingMode's now-duplicate copy.
HUDController found its ship via get_first_node_in_group("ship"), a group
that has 2+ members once a match has an AI opponent — it only worked
because the player ship happened to spawn first. spawn_camera_rig now
wires the HUD's ship the same way it already wires the camera rig's
target.
Arenas inherit from a new arena_base.tscn instead of restating ~40 shared
lines each; only sky/ambient/glow/tint/decoration vary, exposed via new
Arena exports since nested Environment properties aren't overridable
through scene inheritance. Bot construction and score-keeping move onto
GameMode, shared by match and spectate modes while preserving their
differing GameSettings-override behavior and the HUD's score-row
duck-typing. HUD instruments share a HudInstrument base for the
smoothing-weight calc and angle-lerp helper. Also dedupes
MAIN_MENU_SCENE_PATH into ScenePaths and documents why DIFFICULTIES
tiers share one checkpoint.
Introduce arena_02 (Nebula) and arena_03 (Asteroid Field) alongside
arena_01, listed in a new ArenaRegistry (scripts/arena_registry.gd) as
the single source of truth for available arenas. Free Play lets the
player pick an arena from the main menu; Match/Spectate each pick one
at random per session; Training keeps its own fixed arena_01.
Nebula gets an RL-style visual treatment: a near-invisible glass
boundary material shared by all arenas, a baked equirect nebula sky
texture, a drifting-dust particle system, and a Blender-modeled
station/debris/planet decoration set. GameMode gains a
_get_arena_scene_path() hook so modes can instantiate their arena in
code instead of hardcoding it in the scene.
GameMode.reset_ball()/reset_ships() teleported to exact, identical spawn
transforms every kickoff. Combined with deterministic bot inference
(action_noise = 0 by default), two ships running the same policy from a
mirror-symmetric state produced mirrored, non-diverging play instead of a
real contest — most visible when both sides use the same exported model.
Adds a small position/yaw jitter (well under anything a player would
notice as "not a real kickoff") so kickoff-style resets stop being
bit-for-bit identical.
Josh Creek