openpong submissions

Entries for the openpong robot table-tennis league.

Every bot's weights are encrypted to its league's key before they are committed here. Anyone can see that an entry exists, who made it and when; only the league can read the weights.

Enter a bot

1. Build it against the scene. Download the open league's scene pack (ittf-std) from openpong.ai/compete. Its README.md describes the physics, the rules, the controller contract and the published network architecture your weights must use.

2. Check your file before encrypting it. This is the same admission check the league runs; it needs only Python and numpy:

   python3 tools/admit.py mybot.safetensors --league ittf-std

3. Encrypt your weights with age (brew install age, apt install age, or a release binary), using the league's public key:

   age -R leagues/ittf-std/recipient.txt -o bot.safetensors.age mybot.safetensors

4. Add one folder named after your bot, inside the league's folder, holding the encrypted file and an entry.json:

   entries/ittf-std/spin-doctor/
     bot.safetensors.age
     entry.json
   

   {
     "name": "spin-doctor",
     "author": "your-github-login",
     "website": "https://example.com",
     "racketColor": "#e34948",
     "equipment": { "mu_front": 0.9, "e_front": 0.89, "mu_back": 1.4, "e_back": 0.85 }
   }

   name and author are required. website, racketColor and equipment are optional.

5. Open a pull request. Two checks run: one confirms the entry is well formed, the other decrypts the weights and runs the admission check on them, reporting only whether they were admitted. Once both pass and the pull request is merged, the bot is entered.

Rules

• One bot per GitHub account in each league. You can replace your own entry with a new pull request until the league starts.
• Entries go only into a league whose leagues/<league>/league.json says it is open.
• The decrypted file must be a .safetensors file in the league's published architecture. If its metadata carries a physics fingerprint, it must be the league's (54fc19f01036 for ittf-std). No code is ever run from an entry: the league reads the tensors into its own network.
• The encrypted file may be at most 1 MB. A bot in the published architecture is about 100 KB.
• Racket equipment, if declared, must be legal: friction mu between 0.5 and 1.5, rebound e between 0.82 and 0.92, for each face.
• The league runs once five entries are merged. Standings and a fact sheet for every bot are published on openpong.ai.

Keys

Each league has its own key pair. The public half is leagues/<league>/recipient.txt. The private half is held by the league and by this repository's admission check, and both copies are deleted once that league's results are published and settled. After that, no one can decrypt that league's entries again, even though the encrypted files stay in the history. Publish your weights yourself if you want them public.

Why encrypted

A public repository gives every entry an identity, a timestamp and a review before anything is run. Encryption keeps the weights private all the same. Because the encrypted file is in the git history, an entry also cannot be swapped after the fact without a new commit.