In 2020, the YouTuber Rocket Sledge hosted the first ever Rocket League Airshow. This competition challenged Rocket League botmakers to make extravagant aerial shows using their bot-making skills for $1000! And in 2021, the Rocket League Airshow returned, and I decided to participate.

However, it took me a bit to come to that decision. In fact, by the time I signed up, there was only a month until the due-date, when I should've had two months. But I decided to do it anyway. The code from the submissions to the previous airshows was made open-source, so I was allowed to look at the code and take some inspiration, as long as I didn't copy entire segments. So I got started learning how to code this thing in Python.

I used some hover code from a previous airshow submission, Awakening, and some airdribble code shared publicly by someone on the RLBot discord. Other than that, everything was my own code. And not only did I have to code all the aerial manuevers, but I also had to film and edit the entire piece to music. Now is probably a good time to mention that my competition were mostly teams of several people, with dedicated video editors and programmers. I was one of two people doing this thing solo.

So, I worked, and I worked. I even decided to make a custom Rocket League map for a part of my airshow, although it was super simple to create. I somehow managed to submit my airshow in time. In the end, there were only three other submissions apart from mine. And in the end, my submission got 3rd/4th, only losing to the two submissions who had teams of people working on them, so I was really pleased! And, bonus, I won $200 for getting 3rd!

You can check out my submission on YouTube, Github, or just check out the entire 2021 Rocket League Airshow. The other submissions were amazing as well!

---