Josh Creek
818f8e89cd
productive_air_touch_fraction sat at exactly 0.0 across nine Stage-5 attempts and 540M timesteps. Two rounds of reward shaping were aimed at it (air_approach_weight, then air_touch_bonus_weight); both worked -- airborne_fraction 0.223->0.258, mean_altitude 2.59->3.25, vertical_thrust_mean 0.004->0.063 -- and the ship now visibly plays the ball in the air. The metric could not see it because it counts only touches with the ball above AIR_TOUCH_HEIGHT (5m), and _place_air_intercept never produced a reachable one. Simulating the spawn distribution against the ship's flight envelope (vertical_thrust 120 / mass 5 = 24 m/s^2 less gravity, drag capping climb near 12 m/s): a ball spawned 6-12m up at 6-11 m/s is above 5m for a median of 0.80s, while the ship spawned 7-13m behind, 3-10m below, and at a dead stop. An ideal interceptor -- point mass, instant attitude, no righting torque, zero reaction delay -- makes that touch in 0.00% of episodes and reaches the ball at all in 0.5%. Retune the drill instead of the reward: ball higher (8-14m) and slower (4-8 m/s), ship closer (4-9m behind), narrower lateral spread, and a 6-14 m/s planar run-up rather than a standing start -- the dead stop was the largest single factor. Ideal interceptor now reaches the ball in ~98% of episodes and above 5m in ~37%, so the 0.005 floor has headroom. AIR_TOUCH_HEIGHT stays 5.0 so the metric remains comparable with earlier generations. Resume from retry2 rather than restarting from Stage 4: that rule guards against a changed reward function invalidating the value function, and the reward function is untouched here -- only the state distribution moved, so the policy that already learned to fly is what should be pointed at a reachable target. Adds a one-shot resume_override to generation5_state.json, consumed on first use.
Cosmic Clash
In "Cosmic Clash," the heart-pounding action takes place in variable gravity environments where vehicles hover just above the ground. In this thrilling spiritual successor to Rocket League, players engage in high-speed, gravity-defying matches set in the far reaches of space. Each pitch is situated in a unique environment or planet, offering breathtaking vistas and challenging terrain. But instead of cars, competitors pilot rocket-powered ships, each equipped with its own set of customisable features and special abilities.
Ships hover just above the ground, defying the laws of physics and adding an extra layer of intensity to the gameplay. With no friction to hold them back, players must master the art of control as they glide effortlessly across the pitch, executing precise manoeuvres and lightning-fast aerial tricks. With precise control and lightning-fast reflexes, players boost, drift, slam and even turn upside down on their way to victory, scoring epic goals against their opponents.
Whether you're soaring through asteroid fields, navigating treacherous alien landscapes, or battling in the depths of cosmic storms, "Cosmic Clash" delivers non-stop action and adrenaline-pumping excitement that's out of this world! Get ready to take your skills to the stars and dominate the galaxy in the ultimate celestial showdown!
Reason for being
Since Epic Games bought Psyonix, Rocket League has never been the same, and rather than releasing an Unreal Engine 5 version of the game, or giving any meaningful updates, instead item trading was removed and 'Rocket Racing' was added to Fortnite. With no one else stepping up to the plate, it falls to the Open Source Community to come up with a spiritual successor, to keep the spirit of the game alive.
Legality
The concept of 'vehicle soccer' cannot be copyrighted, but the original expression of ideas such as the specific code, art, music and narrative of a game can be. So long as all code, assets game design and other elements are made from scratch, this project will remain legal. The use of an alternative game engine, Godot, serves to ensure that this is achieved, as does the move to using space ships instead of cars as the vehicles.
Technical Information
This project is composed of two parts:
- Godot game
- C# backend
Contributing
Eventually there will be contributor guidelines, but for now open a PR and make sure it has been formatted according to the auto-formatting rules.
Gameplay
The core gameplay is still football/soccer but with vehicles, however there are key changes to the format used in Rocket League. The vehicles are now space ships, which hover above the surface of the pitch. This will impact core game mechanics, enabling near-immediate changes in direction (thanks to those spacefaring engines!), the ability to play upside down (which will change the way you interact with the ball in as-yet unknown ways), slamming down at full boost speed, and many more that will be discovered along the way.
Bots
There will be default bots available, trained using reinforcement learning, and it will be possible to train your own using a gym for submission to be included in the game itself. It will NOT be possible to connect bots to the game, and with the community itself ensuring rigorous anti-cheat measures are in place we will aim to keep it that way. Cheaters have no place here.
MVP
The first version of this game will be JUST the game, no server-side functionality at all. It will be a local only game where you can play against bots. Split-screen multiplayer could be added in a version 0.2 if demand is high enough. If there is sufficient interest then the server-side functionality can be added to enable online play, with a system in place to ensure that servers can be paid for (perhaps a cheap monthly subscription model?).
Monetisation
The aim for this project is NOT to monetise it. Rocket League saw terrible changes once the Item Shop was added, and even the costs for crates and keys prevented some members of the community from collecting items and fully enjoying the game. Instead, this game will, if it becomes successful enough to warrant online servers, only use funding to keep itself running, and in the event anyone needs to be employed full time to maintain it with a growing playerbase, to pay them a fair wage for their time. Any additional profit in any given year should be held for maintaining servers in the future should demand fall, or for any future needs of the game such as a large effort to upgrade to a new engine, anti-cheating measures, etc.