Follow your dreams and such.

Attached is the "unhinged" cover letter I submitted with my application. Hopefully it's for some laughs and such.

Thanks for any and all interest. It was a "good effort" :)

---

Dear hiring manager at Epic,

I care about efficiency, accessibility, and doing things in a way that embodies the spirit of doing it “right”. I care about making Rocket League fun and enjoyable for everyone. I care that Rocket League is seen as something people want to support, instead of something they think Epic is trying to push onto people.

I have experience with modding the underlying engine and using Wwise to modify sounds and soundbanks. I don’t have as much experience with Adobe ScaleForm and the UDK editor for map making with UE3. I am definitely willing and excited to learn more about those things to make Rocket League a better game. I have ideas to provide accessibility options, color differences, sound customization, giving the player the ability to make playing the game easier, more accessible, and more enjoyable.

BACKGROUND

I’ve been working on Rocket League and have wanted to work on Rocket League for a long long time. I’ve been studying the game and have been kind of obsessed with Rocket League for a long time, at least, 5-ish years, by the amount of time I play and the amount of time I’ve spent modding it.

My journey with modding started with an interest in changing things that annoyed me about the game and learning that modding was possible through the popular avenue: BakkesMod plugins. Knowing that I have the capability to work and tinker on things, with a background and major interest in Computer Science, I dove into trying to change aspects of the game to increase my enjoyment. BakkesMod exposes an API for interfacing with the game, but I wanted to know if there were a way to get more control than was provided by the aging interfaces.

Using search engines and reverse engineering forums, I looked up how reverse engineering worked for Rocket League. UE3, the engine Rocket League is built on, came out in like 2004, so by 2020, there were a lot of resources were available. Unfortunately, it was such a headache since no one was generally forthcoming with this information, and I had no experience modding a game prior. Regardless, I was able to generate my own API library based on information available through community resources.

Even before BakkesMod, I was using Wwise to modify soundbanks to manipulate sounds in game because SOME OF THE SOUNDS ARE KIND OF ANNOYING! (e.g. squeaking wheels on particular hoops maps, the “air resistance” noise while rolling in the air, etc).

I started a giant project called BakkesModPlayground where I tested a bunch of different ideas, including lots of projects and project ideas that I either imagined on my own or have seen on the Rocket League subreddit. Utilizing BakkesMod, and its advised build tools (Visual Studio and its assortment of tools mainly), and a reverse-engineered Rocket League UE3 API, I worked on the following plugins (in alphabetical order)…

• Anonymizer – This used to be a thing in BakkesMod, but it “broke”. I tried working on this myself and made modifications that I was happy with. Someone else in the community made a more robust plugin, and I relied on them. (THE GAME NEEDS AN ELEMENT HIDER! Or “Streamer Mode”! Hiding names, club tags, club names, team names, titles, scores, pings, stats notifications, friends, own name, own title/score/pings, avatars, recent players, party invites, forfeit votes, etc… If chats can be hidden, why not other elements?!)
• Access Enabled – Someone in the modding community pointed out that there’s a flag in the menus that toggle if a playlist card is able to be accessed from within different game modes. I turned that on. I understand that some interface elements aren’t configured correctly to be seen from other areas, but being able to access Tournaments from Free Play is such a nice convenience that I enjoyed being able to access menus from anywhere in the game.
• AutoForfeit – Automatically forfeiting, based on either certain conditions in game (like after a particular score or time threshold, or when your teammate forfeits). It also provided a bind for forfeiting, because making it easier to reach was nice. (I don’t think I would support implementing this into the game, because people need the opportunity cost to reconsider the decision.)
• BakkesModPlayground – Different ideas with protoypes for future plugin ideas tested for the game, like manipulating skeletal properties on some assets.
• Color Blind Color Changer – There used to be interface color customization through BakkesMod, but that broke and wasn’t fixed for a while. It turned out though, through color blind mode, you could change the colors of nameplates, the scoreboard, the boost meter, and stat notifications at the top right. (When nameplates were changed to a certain color, it would even use the alternate angular nameplate! It looked incredible!!! I was so happy I was able to adjust these colors!!! It made the game less bland to look at and made things less homogenized aesthetically, so I could actually see things more clearly. I get that clubs are kind of meant for this, but not everyone is in a club and club matches are only applicable to clubs and not individually. I would love to bring interface customization available for everyone!)
• Controller Overlay – FOR AN ESPORTS GAME, PEOPLE ARE OBSESSED WITH THE CONTROLLER AND INPUT SETTINGS! MAKING THIS INFORMATION ABLE TO BE SEEN IN GAME WAS GREAT BECAUSE THE GAME IS NOT 1:1 WITH CONTROLLER READINGS FROM THE OPERATING SYSTEM!
• Dodge Overlay – SAME THING AS CONTROLLER OVERLAY BUT WITH DODGE INPUTS
• Fix Training Game Speed – There was something in BakkesMod that didn’t work correctly with setting the game speed through the training menu and through BakkesMod (the BakkesMod setting was too aggressive). I wrote a plugin to basically fix that.
• Freeplay Checkpoint – An INCREDIBLE mod made by NitrOP that gave people the ability to create set shots and plays in free play, allowing the ability to rewind to particular states and save them. I worked on it for a bit and offered help in some areas, particularly in registering binds.
• Instant Suite – A very useful plugin that was kind of replaced by the additions of `FastFreeplay` and `PostMatchRequeue` actions. I didn’t work on it myself, but I intended to replace its failing functionality at some point.
• Loadout Logger – It would be nice to easily find out information quickly about the loadouts of the people you’re playing with/against instead of trying to ask them or from trying to ask the subreddit from a replay. (Just make the loadout information available from a replay! If I think someone’s items are cool, I want to know the name of them!)
• Log Goal Replay Time – At some point someone asked for some hard numbers on how long in-match replays and things took, so I wrote a plugin to track that. I’m sure it’s hard-coded with slight variance in the replay director, but I found some reliable numbers.
• Multi-bind – Rocket League doesn’t allow a player to bind multiple keys to one action. Sure you can do it through modifying the “TAInput.ini” file, but instead of that, I wrote a plugin to inject it into the input list to make things easier for the end-sure. (I REALLY WISH THE INTERFACE WOULD ALLOW YOU TO BIND MORE THAN ONE KEY TO AN ACTION! OR TO BIND KEY-COMBOS TO AN ACTION! (or concessions were made for such things).)
• Party Invite Notification – Party notifications were broken at some point, and I had the intention of writing a plugin to mitigate my problem with the issue. I think this has been fixed since.
• Pause Menu Brightness – I wanted to be able to set the brightness on the pause menu, because even though it’s just dimmed, I wanted to make it darker. I never followed through with this idea, and I’m just adding it here.
• Radial Quickchat Wheel – I can’t comfortably fit the four chat options for different chat group binds, since I use many bindings and use them on the DPad. Therefore, I wanted a way to make it so I could just have one button bring up a radial menu that let me select which quick chat options I wanted with the right stick. I got so far as creating an overlay as a proof of concept. I could’ve finished it, but I moved on to other things.
• Readirects Plugin – The first plugin I tried working on. I didn’t get very far, but the point was to automate redirects (like the wallhit plugin) to build up memory for reading bounces off of different surfaces and angles.
• Reverse Camera Plugin – Because the only option is a “Rear Camera” bind and that’s dumb! I want to be able to just turn the camera around, despite being in ball cam or not!
• Science Plugin – I touched up this plugin to add values I was interested in when testing things in game to understand controller/game inputs and the physics system.
• Server Preferrer – I wrote a way to ping servers intended to be joined when a player is joining a game, and if that ping was over a particular value, the player backed out and rejoined the queue. It would be great to see server pings or discriminate against servers where you have a bad connection over a certain ping value. Future goals included black/whitelisting particular servers, but I kind of dropped this idea because of lack of trust in adopting this when considering the TOS.
• What if… - Was a plugin I worked on to provide to others a way to see for themselves like: 1. What if we had a “Reverse Camera” bind?, 2. What if we had a “Flip Cancel” (Pitch Momentum Cancel) bind?, 3. What if we could change the threshold for “flip cancelling” (because the values necessary on the y-input-axis are kind of extreme), 4. What if Directional Air Roll took PRIORITY OVER Free Air Roll? (because the `ToggleRoll` action overrides directional air roll inputs right now.)

ADDITIONAL IDEAS TO ADD VALUE AND WORK ON

1. Input range widgets for the settings menu
2. Remove “multiple selection” from playlist selections and make it all “quick play”
3. Enable the PostMatchRequeue action for casual modes
4. Maybe add ball customization to be sold as a part of people’s loadouts
5. Maybe expand the item shop
6. Add seeing loadouts for other players in replays or in the scoreboard menu. (Maybe linking that to the item shop? Perhaps in a way that allows people to purchase the item they see someone else using from the item shop?)
7. Consolidate and generalize the garage menu so that seeing that many multitude of items and loading them isn’t so overwhelming
8. Propose a “minimal installation mode” for systems that don’t have a lot of resources
9. ANONYMIZER MODE (STREAMER MODE?), or equivalent functionality.
10. EXPAND SOUND CUSTOMIZATION (the standard boost override is a good start!)
11. EXPAND INTERFACE CUSTOMIZATION UNDER THE DIRECTION OF ACCESSIBILITY
12. Make the in-game menus more fun and intuitive to navigate and use. (They’re kind of a mess right now.)
13. UNDERSTAND THE IMPACTS OF `TASystemSettings.ini` ON THE GAME
14. Multiple bindings per action, or opening up the capabilities of `TAInput.ini` modifications to all players on all platforms.
15. CUSTOM GAMEPLAY SERVERS! (like with counter-strike. Think rings maps with timer trackers, leaderboards, or zombie modes…)
16. Expanding knowable information through options on the interface
17. ALLOW CHANGING THE DODGE DEADZONE SHAPE FROM x+y(diamond) to x^2 + y^2 = z^2 (circular)
18. EXPOSE CAMERA SETTINGS / LOADOUTS FOR STREAMERS TO INTEGRATE WITH TOOLS BECAUSE THEY GET ASKED FOR THINGS ALL THE TIME
19. “Fast return to last activity” action/bind. (We have the technology to track where a player is before getting into a match (like custom training on a particular shot or at a specific time in a replay), why not just put them back there after a match?)
20. …

FINALLY

I have lots of thoughts, comments, opinions, questions, concerns, and will continue to play and work on Rocket League related things. I’m likely to work on editing UPK files and packages to manipulate assets within those packages (BECAUSE I REALLY WANT THIS ONE PARTICULAR ITEM TO BE A CERTAIN WAY. IF I COULD DO THAT I WOULD BE SO HAPPY.) I’m probably still going to help people in the Rocket League subreddit with my esoteric knowledge of the game’s inner workings, even trying to offer help when tech issues come up.

I’m sure you’re aware of the EAC related issues with Windows 11. I’d love to help with that, so people have less headaches with just trying to play the game.

If I got a job working on Rocket League for Epic, so I can continue working on and modding the game in ways that would make me happy, that would make me so happy.

Thank you.

reference here: https://cdn.7tv.app/emote/01K91ZKMKBW0EA884967R3MHCM/4x.avif

There's so much speculation right now about the time frame for release of the UE6 version, and after seeing yet another post about it, I felt like posting this:

However you feel about the whole UE6 topic, it shows one thing: Epic had a shift in philosophy regarding RL and it seems like they started understanding the power of the IP they acquired and seem willing to push it. Choosing RL as the UE6 poster child shows this for me.

So in conclusion, I think it's very obvious that hey will absolutely push a s*** ton of advertising as soon as we're nearing the release.
You will have RL (2.0) ads absoluetly everywhere, they will promo it through content creators, showing exclusive gameplay footage, there will be leaked infos of alpha / beta testers, hardware tests on version comparisons all over youtube, cross game promos with forntnite and other partners etc pp.

And also, they kind of have to release it between RLCS seasons, so it will be at the very soonest this September, probably more likely next year.

When it's coming, we will notice.

Over the last few days, I’ve spent more time arguing with my teammates than actually playing. Don’t most of them realize that 2v2 is a team mode? They’re way too quick to call me out for every single mistake, besides them doing the same mistakes aswell. Just tonight alone, my teammates quit playing three times after just one minute of play, just because we got scored on by kickoff or lost a 50/50. Don’t they know that mistakes can happen? c3/gc1 players are so fragile, its just hilarious at this point…

EDIT:
im not getting triggered what my tm8 is saying to me, that I then engage in the conversation. its because he isnt moving anymore. i want him to play again and that we have a normal game.
if he wants to ff, i do too. i wont force him to stay

i don't care about my rank, with that level of greed i'll just quit

There is no such concept as an "alt". If you play on another account you are the problem, you should be banned, and you are ruining this game.

The amount of people I've run into in D3 who are openly admitting being GC whatever and "trolling" or "jsut an alt" is increasing. I had 4 in a row today, grouped up with their mate obviously.

The problem is this - you go "oh I'll just troll and have fun" but then you start losing and you go smurf mode. It happens EVERY TIME! Me and my tm8 get a goal or two up, and bam you're flip reset musty double touching from the ceiling.

You are the problem. If I had any way of banning the lot of you I would do it.

I said what I said and I aint taking it back.

My son barely plays RL and got this fine gentleman in a ball he opened today. I'm over here level zillion and have gotten zero zip zilch Rick and Morty items. What are the odds of getting any of those?

Oooooooooooh Weeeeeeeeeee it's a fine day to ride on top a car.

Finally found someone fun and actually good to play rocket league with but now apparently she's disappeared from my friends list?? Anyone know the cause of this? Her request are off so let her know if anyone knows this person pls

Full honesty, I was going for the flip reset and never saw my tm8. He entered the fourth dimension and made it happen lol

This was his his 4th or 5th goal lmaooo he’s 5. I couldnt get the other ones because I was just staring at the tv trying to pick my jaw up.

ive been playing this game for the past few months. ik im not no og and at 16 youd expect that i would’ve started sooner but no, i start a few months ago and i now have 250 hours, im d2 in duos and GOLD 3 in solos, why? because of stupid ass smurfs i literally asked them to “peak?” the last guy i played not even 5 mins ago says “C1 but im not smurfing j just dont play ranked” WHY IS ROCKET LEAGUE NOT PUTTING THESE GUYS AGAINST EACH OTHER. ive never played a game that i enjoyed alot and quiting after 200+ hours just because of the smurfs but i dont think this game ever deserved to be revived or streamed if they cant fix their ranked and their smurf problem. it’s literally so bad i had 5 back to back smurfs all above d3 in duos or trios, like how are people not getting banned when they are air dribbling in gold… like im in diamond and only air dribble like with 2 touches max, THEY BE STUCK TO BALL AND NOT GETTING BANNED… like i dont see why the smurfs that are like “i just never play solos” dont just get their ranked moved up when they move up in other ranks like duo, if a gold in duos is bronze in solos thats just bs, they should be auto moved to silver so people arent grinding all the way to gc and not playing solos since plat… like its such a bullshit game and this is probably my last time playing and complaining about it. i wish i saw this game in its prime because im sure it wouldve actually been fun.

Rocket League lets us customize almost everything: cars, wheels, nitro boosts, goal explosions, etc. But there's one thing that's never changed: demolitions.

My suggestion is to allow players to customize demolition effects. Instead of the black explosion everyone sees, players could choose different colors or simple animations. This would be purely visual and cosmetic.

Why this might work:

It would be 100% cosmetic (with no gameplay advantage).

It fits perfectly with the current shop system.

It adds more personality to demolitions and crashes.

It would look great on streams and in esports.

There could also be an option to disable or limit these effects in competitive modes to maintain a cleaner experience.

What do you think? What kind of demolition effects would you like to see?

My Rocket League won't connect to EOS. I've already tried everything to fix it. Does anyone happen to know what else I can do, or has anyone else had this same problem?

I mainly play solo duos. I’m not very good at ariels or that sort of thing. I’m pretty good at positioning and don’t give up many easy goals, so I hold my own most the time. Recently was diamond 2, but I’ve gone down a bit. Seems like every game now the second we start losing my teammates go into chat. Type t8? Or where are you? Or whatever it is to place blame on me. Earlier today I had 3 goals and 2 saves in a game. My teammate would giggly all over. Would try to hit the ball and give easy opportunities to the other team. He hit it off the wall it bounced right to their team and they shot and scored. He typed “t8 wtf are you doing?” This made no sense to me but I get it all the time now. I feel like it’s gotten much worse though. Anyone else getting these types of people?

Ever since I started playing, I've been motivated to rank up and improve. I want to become more consistent mechanically and make better decisions in matches. However, based on the results I'm seeing, I've stopped improving. That's frustrating because I believe I can get way better, especially when considering the effort I'm putting in. I spend a lot of time training, reviewing replays, and actively thinking during matches to maximise my improvement.

I try not to compare myself to other players, but I'm also realistic. I know that 6,000 hours is a lot of time to still be in D3. At this point, I think I may need outside help because, relative to the time I've invested, neither my mechanics nor my game sense are where I feel they should be.

When I train, I usually focus on one mechanic for an extended period of time, typically a couple of weeks. I identify a specific mistake I'm making and work on eliminating it. For example, I've recently been trying to improve my shooting. I noticed that I was inconsistent with my turning leading up to the shot, this caused me to overcorrect and I had very  inconsistent shot power and placement as a result. To try and deal with this issue I had to heavily focus on the path I was taking to the ball.

To address this, I have spent time in both freeplay and training packs focusing on how I approached the ball. Initially, my accuracy was poor but I expected consistency to improve over time, but it's been weeks now and so far I haven't made any real progress, despite continuing to train the mechanic regularly.

When reviewing replays, I usually select three games and watch them whilst taking short notes on mistakes. I tend to do this at the start of my sessions because it helps me detach emotionally from the match and prevents me from remembering my thought process at the time. Otherwise, I tend to make excuses for mistakes that shouldn't have happened.

During replay reviews, I don't focus much on mechanical errors. Instead, I ask myself whether I should have attempted a particular mechanic in the first place. If the answer is yes, I move on because everyone makes mistakes. If the answer is no, I make a mental note and try to understand why it was the wrong decision. Maybe it's a mechanic I just can't perform consistently enough yet, or perhaps the defender's positioning presented a better option that I failed to recognise.

Positioning mistakes take up most of my attention because I find them harder to understand. On offence, I often notice that I've left myself in an awkward position where I can neither challenge the ball effectively nor rotate back quickly if possession is lost. I've tried to improve this by learning to read the play better. Of course, replay analysis gives me unlimited time to assess where teammates and opponents are positioned and what they're likely to do next but I don’t have such luxuries in matches.

Defensively, I frequently find myself feeling lost within the play. When reviewing these situations, I try to identify all of the options that were available and determine which one would have been the best choice. One of my biggest problems is that I tend to fall back into old habits. I repeatedly identify the same mistakes, but I struggle to make lasting changes, which often makes it feel like I'm not making meaningful progress. I think this is largely because I am struggling to deal with the pace of play as I find it much easier to defend in 1s.

Before queueing for matches, I usually give myself a few reminders to focus on. Simple things such as  ‘try to stay closer to the play when your teammate has possession.’ or ‘make sure to apply pressure as the first man on defence.’ or ‘use the small boost pads more effectively to maintain pressure.’

I try to actively implement these ideas until I either see evidence of improvement in my replays or feel the difference in my gameplay. In terms of mentality, I believe I'm generally more composed than most of my teammates and opponents, so I don't think that's a major weakness in my game.

Overall, I feel like my gameplay still has a lot of flaws that I'm actively trying to address, but there are times when I feel completely stuck. I don't fully understand why I'm struggling so much despite the amount of effort I'm putting in. I can only hope with enough time and the right approach, I'll eventually break through this plateau and continue improving. If any higher ranked players have ideas for what I can do to improve I’d be forever grateful.

Does anyone else feel like 1v1 ranks are crazy nowadays? My plat 3 ones lobbies are genuinely more mechanical than my champ 1 twos lobbies

edit: I collected most of my hours 2016-2020. Coming back to the game and seeing players casually flip reset in plat is unbelievable. It's crazy how the game has progressed. But also why is it that everytime a plat or a diamond is shown in videos comparing different ranks, they can barely do anything? And since the gap between modes appears is to be high which mode do you refer to when you tell people your rank?

I've been playing for a few months now on high settings and high fps with no problems. Out of nowhere last week it started to feel super laggy while playing. It is usually worse than it looks in this video example. Every other game still runs fine. I've tried everything to fix it. Ive tried minimum settings, updating drivers, reinstalling. Usually the first game I play feels okay but then it gets super laggy like this. I've seen it show 90fps but feel like 10fps. Does anyone know how to fix this?

I play on steam

I know this attempt looked a little goofy, but it shows that Knockout isn’t just rock-paper-scissors.

There are many different ways to grab someone in Knockout. One example is jumping into a grab while upside down, allowing you to hit a car below you.

The game has more depth than most people realize.

Make Knockout ranked!