CosmicClash/TODO.md

TODO

Deferred work, in rough priority order. The current architecture (ShipAction/ShipController seam, Arena/GameMode split, code-driven spawning, group-tagged ball/goals) was chosen specifically so these bolt on without rework.

AI opponent (reinforcement learning)

The training pipeline is built — see TRAINING.md (self-play PPO via the vendored godot_rl_agents bridge, JSON policy export, in-game GDScript inference, eval ladder). Remaining:

• Run the generation-5 handling/intercepts/league/teamplay curriculum described in TRAINING.md; promote later checkpoints as medium/hard only after they clear the match and behaviour gates. The orchestrator now requires three independent paired evaluation seeds for each promotion decision; the current Stage 6 league run remains blocked on its recorded regression/telemetry results.
• Extend generation 5's moving aerial-intercept states with wall plays and rebound scenarios after Stage 5 establishes a productive-air-touch baseline. The opt-in wall-play/rebound state generator is now implemented and enabled for the next Stage 6 league command; training evidence is still required.
• Design team-credit rewards and paired 2v2 evaluation before enabling the deferred teamplay stage. team_touch_credit_weight is zero by default and evaluate.py --team-size=2 provides the opt-in paired evaluator; Stage 7 remains disabled pending recorded 2v2 behaviour gates.

Presentation / AAA polish

The largest gap between this and a AAA-feeling product is presentation, not code. Sequenced after the above for pragmatic reasons, but this is the highest impact per hour.

• Audio — authored sound design remains open. A dependency-free procedural AudioManager now provides safe UI/countdown/impact/goal hooks, an engine tone pitched/levelled from local thrust and turbo state, and is wired into kickoff, goal, ball-contact, and menu events; replace the placeholder tones with authored engine/turbo/impact/wall/goal/crowd/music assets after selecting distributable files and mixing them on real hardware.
• Custom font + a real Theme resource for the HUD. ThemeDB.fallback_font at 10-13 px reads as a debug overlay.
• Video settings are implemented; profiling/visual QA remains. video_settings.gd and the settings menu expose graphics presets, AA, vsync, FPS caps, resolution scaling, glow, and brightness, with preset-gated SDFGI/SSIL/SSAO/shadows. The remaining gate is measuring the preset ladder and image quality on low/mid-tier reference hardware in the live editor; no further control wiring is implied by this TODO.

Multiplayer (long term)

The single tracking document is multiplayer-next.md — architecture decisions, implementation evidence, and the current checklist all in one place. Server-authoritative multiplayer, prediction, ENet dedicated hosting, and the Phase 6 exported-server Docker/CI verification are implemented; the remaining gates are captured there.

Phase 7 begins with optional GodotSteam bootstrap and a transport boundary; direct-IP ENet remains fully supported. It also carries the graphics/performance work — the project has never been profiled, and video_settings.gd exposes only AA, glow and brightness while SDFGI, SSIL, SSAO and five shadow-casting lights are on by default and unreachable (see §5.5 there).

Tasks 0.1–0.15, 0.18–0.25, 0.27, 0.29 are done (see the Phase 0 table in multiplayer-next.md for what each one actually changed — several deviated from the original plan for concrete GDScript/Godot reasons recorded inline). Remaining, all blocked on 0.15b (profile, on reference hardware, in the live editor — not done): 0.16 (camera to _process), 0.17/0.17b/0.17c/0.17d (graphics presets, vsync, resolution scaling), 0.26 (bake the arena GI to retire SDFGI — the largest frame-time win available, costs no image quality since the arena is fully static), and 0.28 (physics separate-thread prototype, flagged as the riskiest task in the phase). These need a human at the editor with real hardware to profile and eyeball, not further code changes.

• Possible v0.2 split-screen: spawn one ship_camera_rig + viewport per local player (camera is already outside the ship scene to allow this). Unrelated to online play.