Guide to v5 beta

[NicEastvillage]

This issue is a WIP description of v5 (beta) and will contain

• Our reasoning for creating v5 and an overview of its architecture
• A list of features completed/reworked/todo/removed in v5 (beta)
• A guide on how to transition from v4 to v5

Architecture of v5

TODO

Features of v5

Legend: ✅=done, 🟨=todo, ✨=new, 🛠=reworked/changed, ⛔=removed

• ✅🛠 First-class Windows & Linux support
  • No current plans for MacOS, as there's no way to run Rocket League without a VM
• ✅🛠 All bots connect to core directly via the sockets spec
  • As a consequence, adding new language support is much easier - if your language can write/read a TCP socket, it's possible! Bonus points if your language is one of the 14 that are currently supported by FlatBuffers
• ✅🛠 Any language can start/stop/manage a match
• ✅🛠 All configs files now use the standard toml format. Example: necto/bot.toml
• ✅ Hiveminds
• ✅ Scripts
• ✅🛠 The bot configuration's python_file has been replaced with run_command and run_command_linux
  • 🟨 On Linux, if run_command_linux isn't specified, v5 will attempt to run run_command under Wine
• ✅✨ Multi-ball support for when there's more/less than 1 ball in a game
• ✅✨ New mutator options
  • Start with one, two, four, or six balls
  • Max 7 goals
  • Beach ball, anniversary ball, or the haunted dropshot ball
  • Curve ball or beach ball curve
  • Reverse gravity
  • Tactical rumble (fyi we still can't read rumble items)
• ✅✨ Freeplay matches. Useful if you want to use the Rocket League's freeplay-exclusive features
• ✅ Rendering
  • 🟨 Rendering can be toggled for individual bots
  • 🟨(maybe ⛔) Keyboard shortcuts to toggle rendering. We plan to have buttons in the GUI instead
  • ✅ ✨ New RenderAnchors. Attach your rendering to the location and rotation of a car or ball plus both an absolute and local offset. No re-rendering is required and it is smooth. Example: video posted on Discord
• ✅ Game state manipulation (aka state setting)
• ✅ Updated ball prediction algorithm for better accuracy in all game modes that use a ball
• ✅✨ Support for Psyonix Beginner bots
• 🟨✨ More customizable Psyonix bots
• ✅✨ Override a bot name/loadout (without editing the bot configuration)
  • Use cases include: Spawning specific Psyonix bots or give Nexto your ingame name to troll friends
• 🟨🛠 Generated loadouts are now created by your bot instead of a separated loadout generator script
• 🟨✨ Hot-swap your bot's loadout. Respawn your bot's car with a different loadout on command without restarting the match or interfering with the other bots
  • Only enabled when state setting is also enabled
• ✅✨ New data in GameTickPacket for every player:
  • Last known player input
  • If the player was the last player to be spectated in the match
  • Player accolades. A list of small awards/events by the player, e.g. EpicSave, Demolition, PoolShot, LowFive, etc. See full list here)
• ✅🛠 Match comms and quick chat have been combined into just MatchComms with an optional quick chat message such that both bots and humans can understand what is meant
  • ⛔ Quick chat messages are no longer restricted to a set of hardcoded options
  • ✅🛠 The team_only filtering finally works. No more spying on enemy chats
• 🟨🛠 RLBot waits for all processes to fully boot before letting the match start
• 🟨 Performance metrics (i.e. missed responses by bots)
• ⛔ Non-standard Tick Rates (standard is 120hz)
• ⛔ DropshotTileInfo (will hopefully return!)

On top of all that, the framework is also simply significantly faster.

Transitioning from v4 to v5

TODO

[VirxEC]

would a wiki page for this be better?

[NicEastvillage]

Initially, this information will be too dynamic for a wiki page, but eventually, it would make sense to move it. In any case, this issue will track the task of creating this info.

[VirxEC]

should architecture be for core, or for how an interface works? I think the latter would be better

[swz-git]

i was thinking both

[VirxEC]

New features in v5:

• First-class Windows & Linux support
  • No current plans for MacOS, as there's no way to run Rocket League without a VM
• Minimal closed-source Bridge.dll, unlike v4 where the entirety of RLBot.exe was closed source
• All bots connect to core directly via the sockets spec
• Adding new language support is much easier - if your language can write/read a TCP socket, it's possible!
  • Bonus points if your language is one of the 14 that are currently supported by FlatBuffers
  • A popular language will likely have a "language interface" (e.x. python-interface or rust-interface) that are relatively minimal libraries on top of the RLBot v5 spec but will greatly simplify the process of creating bots
• Any language can start/stop/manage a match
  • In general, starting a match is much faster
• All configs files now use the standard toml format
  • Example: necto/bot.toml
  • Support for other config formats like YAML and JSON are possible to add in the future
• Hiveminds are an official feature
• Scripts are an official feature
• python_file has been replaced with run_command and run_command_linux
  • In the future, if run_command_linux isn't specified, v5 will attempt to run run_command under Wine
• Multi-ball support for when there's more/less than 1 ball in a game
• New mutator options
  • Start with one, two, four, or six balls
  • Max 7 goals
  • Beach ball, anniversary ball, or the haunted dropshot ball
  • Curve ball or beach ball curve
  • Reverse gravity
  • Tactical rumble (fyi still can't read rumble items)
• New option to load the match in freeplay instead of it being an exhibition match
  • Useful if you just want to mess around and use the Rocket League's freeplay exclusive features
• New RenderAnchors
  • world - Vector3 that is a global coordinate offset reminiscent of what's currently in v4
  • relative - A physics object to treat as (0, 0, 0), position of the point will follow relative to the position and rotation of the physics object each frame without requesting a re-render
  • Can be CarAnchor or BallAnchor - Takes the index of the ball or car in the GameTickPacket that the point should be relative to and local which is another Vector3 that is the offset of the point relative to the rotation of the object
  • world and relative can be combined to do things like render to a point that's 100 units above the specified ball
  • For an example, see this video and the code behind it
• Updated ball prediction algorithm for better accuracy in all game modes that use a ball
• More customizable Psyonix bots (coming very soon but not public yet)
  • Allow spawning Psyonix Beginner
  • Can specify a bot.toml file to customize the following
  • Custom name support
  • If the name matches a Psyonix preset's name, e.x. "Boomer", then that preset will be used
  • Custom loadout support
  • Can specify an accompanying script to the Psyonix bot
  • Scripts gets passed the details of the Psyonix bot in the GameTickPacket
  • Can be used for dynamic, custom Psyonix bot loadout generators
  • Can also be used for anything you want!
• Hot-swap your bot's loadout (coming soon)
  • Only enabled when state setting is also enabled
  • Same message is used for loadout generator support but is only enabled before the match starts
  • Loadout generators are no longer a separate process from your bot
  • Allows respawning your bot's car with a different loading, on command, without restart the match or interfering with the other bots
• New data in GameTickPacket for every player:
  • Last known player input
  • Works for every player on the field, including LAN connected humans
  • No guarantee to how new/old the data is as that's untested. Be the first!
  • If the player was the last player to be spectated in the match
  • Player accolade info (see this list)
• Match comms and quick chat have been combined into just MatchComms
  • Custom quick chat-style display messages
  • Messages contents are sent in binary format, allowing for custom formats that aren't JSON
  • team_only messages are properly filtered! For scripts, team_only messages are only sent to other scripts
• RLBot waits for all processes to fully boot before letting the match start
  • To clarify, the match will be loaded and cars spawned in, but the kickoff will not start

[VirxEC]

Architecture: Google doc that can be copied then edited: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13LW0l7nzc_dbwgT20cGHywx_5vNu4RTc/view?usp=sharing

Svg:

Png:

[NicEastvillage]

Ngl kinda hyped about player accolades. So much meme/custom game mode potential