Josh Creek
ea756bd5ba
Six rounds of reward shaping (~700M steps) failed to produce upright ground driving. A critical review of the simulation rather than the reward found why: 1. The hull was a 1x1x4 box with inertia (1,1,1) and no restoring torque anywhere, so belly-down and rolled-90 were geometrically identical resting states. "Upright" was not a physically distinguished state at all - the reward was paying for a property the simulation did not have. 2. ~65% of episodes spawned ships via _random_position, which samples Y uniformly over the full 18m volume (mean ~8.7m). The measured airborne_fraction ~0.44 was largely that spawn distribution, and every ground-handling term fades out above 3m, so the shaping being tuned barely ever applied. 3. air_drill_chance 0.20 spawned deliberately unreachable-without-climbing states in the stage meant to teach ground driving, and its own air_touch_fraction (0.0002) shows the drills were never solved. Fixes land in the physics and the task distribution, not the reward: - ship.tscn: hull 1x1x4 -> 1.6x0.6x4 so it has one stable resting face; inertia (1,1,1) -> (7,1,7), physically correct for the hull, making tumbling reluctant while keeping yaw snappy. - ship.gd: new altitude-faded righting torque (spring-damper toward belly-down, faded out by 3m so aerials keep full attitude freedom). This is the grav-plating analogue of Rocket League's auto-righting and helps human pilots land cleanly too. - training_mode.gd: new ground_start_chance branch spawning ships level and resting on the floor with a floor-level ball - the state the handling stage's rewards are actually written for. - generation5.py: ground-start-chance 0.50, air-drill-chance 0.20 -> 0.0. Reward terms are left exactly as they were; they should finally pull in a direction the ship can go.
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.