BallisticNG News

Hey everyone! It's been a while since our last update on the development branch, and it's still going to be a while longer, so we want to give everybody an update on what we've been working on.

Please note that we currently don't have an ETA on when we'll be dropping 1.4 Dev 3, there's still plenty of work to be done.


The majority of work these past few months has been on a roster of 2280 ships. With the help of community members Brobama, Kabelsalat, MrX, Nathancubed and Vista, we've been hard at work giving each team a new ship that better suites the 2280 physics mode!

These ships are only cosmetic changes and do not alter physics stats. We're also not limiting where they can be used. Not only can they be used in 2159 and floorhugger, but you'll also be able to select them in the campaign!

Each ship will have the full livery set, including expansion DLCs and Bling Pack liveries. We'll also be working on new cockpits, although these will be made for an update beyond 1.4 Dev 3. Livery templates will also be made available for modders.

The goal with these ships is to evolve their design and give them a cleaner aethestic, which will be tying into the design of 2280 track environments. We already have a 2280 track in development for release with 1.4, but we'll be showing that off at a later date.

Here's a look at the new ships. We're still in the initial development stages for the Barracuda Model A, B and C, so you'll get to see those once 1.4 Dev 3 is out.




With the new ships added, we needed a way to select them. The easiest option would have been to register them as new ships and display them in an ever growing flat list, but there's issues with the existing content selector menus we want to address and this was the perfect time to revisit them and figure out a better way to handle content selection.

Ships now support variants and tracks now support variant and route entries:

• Ship variants allow us to point the game to a completely different ship prefab. This ship prefab can be any ship, however internally we're just using this to create duplicates of the 2159 ship prefabs and slap different models into them.
  
• Track variants do the same thing as ship variants, but also have a second layer of variants called routes. Routes can also point to any loaded track in the game, but the intended use is for situations like Pines Complex where the track is 3 different courses bundled into one. A track variant in our internal use case is the forward and reverse versions of the track,
  

These additions allow us to compact how many listings there are in the menu. In our most extreme example, Pines Complex has gone from 6 different menu entries to 1, with additional inputs to select the specific version you want to play. This also means we've been able to merge the reverse track category into the standard track category, and cut the track listings in the Extras and expansion DLC categories in half by merging the forward and reverse listings into a single button.

Another improvement with the new menus is how custom ships are now handled. Custom ship categories are actually just a single category that gets broken down into sub-categories. This was reflected directly in the previous menu where you'd navigate to the custom ships category and then have to use different inputs to navigate the sub-categories.

The new menu unfolds those sub-categories so now you can just scroll through them as if they were normal categories. We had already implemented this for the advanced menu, so it made sense to also do that here. This also works nicely with the new category list feature, where you can press the category previous and category next inputs at the same time to bring up a list of categories to hop between.

We'll go into more detail about these new menus once 1.4 Dev 3 is released, but for now here are some screenshots of what they look like:



We may also look at implementing the advanced menu search functionality into these new menus. Doing this will allow us to make the advanced menu completely redundant so we can remove it and just have a single menu with all of the functionality.

• Sideshifting now has a per ship stat and has been reduced in strength significantly
  
• 3D pads are no longer automatically generated in 2280. Tracks will use the tile pads unless 3D pads have been setup.
  
• AI in 2280 have been tweaked to make them more competent
  
• The Model B and Model C categories of tracks have beeen renamed to Drag and Drift so they're in parity with the ship category names
  
• The NX2000 is no longer part of the standard ship leaderboards and is now in the Barracuda leaderboards (which have been renamed to Highend). We'll be doing a global leaderboard reset with the full release of 1.4.
  
• Vonsnake - Always On Target and Xpand - Rush added to the soundtrack. if you have the soundtrack on Steam, these have already been added to it.
  

And a bunch of other stuff that was already pushed out to the development branch a few months ago. If you're on our Discord server then the changelog for that is already available, and we'll include it as part of the 1.4 Dev 3 changelog here on Steam once that build goes out.

The major update to 2280 has begun and we're now ready to push out the first part of the changes.

2280 was originally implemented as a cheat mode for fun which has fallen very far behind in quality compared to the rest of the game, so with 1.4 being our last major feature update we're spending the time to re-implement it. In a future content update we'll start to introduce dedicated content for the mode too.

The physics mode selector is now in the custom race menu. And yes, it'll save your selection between game sessions!

[h2]Playing development builds[/h2]

• Right click BallisticNG in your steam library and go to Properties
  
• Go to the betas tab on the window that opens
  
• From the dropdown select development. If the update doesn't automatically queue for download, restart Steam
  
• Once you have opened the game, the version at the bottom right of the menu will read 1.4-d7

[h2]Notices[/h2]
[h3]Camera option changes[/h3]
We've recently updated the camera options to be per camera mode, instead of the previous physics mode based FOVs and global settings with random specific mode settings sprinkled in.

Every camera mode now has it's own FOV and offsets, and any mode specific options are now organised with the respective modes section in the menu. Because of these changes, the names of old camera settings in the ini file have been updated so everything will be reset to their defaults.

[h2]The 2280 Update[/h2]
[h3]Part 1[/h3]
Part 1, this release, is the initial set of changes to the mode. We've laid the groundwork and have begun setting up ship stats. Let us know what you think!

2280s physics are now mostly separated from 2159, which has given us the opportunity to implement everything in a much cleaner and more modern way. Some parts of the physics like the ships thrust and various track bound related behaviours are still running on the 2159 code to keep that consistent, but pretty much everything else is new.

[h3]Part 2[/h3]
Part 2 will be focused on exposing the new ship stats to the modding tools and separating out game mechanics like weapon absorption to be available everywhere.

The goal is for 2280 to become just a physics mode, with the game mechanics becoming options which let you mix and match whatever you like. This includes being able to do things like have weapon absorption and pitlanes enabled at the same time in any of the three physics modes/

We'll also be working towards 2280 having leaderboards, and for this we'll be setting up 2280 to use the afterburner and pitlanes as the default configuration, like with 2159.

[h2]Changelog (since 1.4-d4)[/h2]
[h3]2280[/h3]

• 2280 is now mostly separated from 2159, and everything that has been separated has been rewritten from scratch
  
• Hovering is now handled with 4 hover points which apply torque for track alignment
  
• Full physics zone support (Kuiper Overturn fixed)
  
• The chase camera has been rewritten and now has several options to customize it
  
• Collisions have been rewritten and now include visual / audio feedback when hitting the track floor
  
• Added 2280 specific stats for various parts of the physics (adding to modding tools in a future update)
  
• Added support for manually defined turn speed, gain and falloff stats (adding to modding tools in a future update)
  
• Added grounded grip multiplier stat (adding to modding tools in a future update)
  
• Restored the 2159 engine sound behaviour
  

[h3]Multiplayer[/h3]

• NgServerSettings.BoostMechanic has been changed from an integer to an enumeration type. None, Afterburner, Turbo, Mixed (case insensitive) are now the valid assignments for both the svrset command and in lua.
  
• Updated example dedicated server lua scripts to reflect the BoostMechanic setting change.
  
• Fixed boost mechanic option not being saved or loaded with lobby presets
  
• Fixed initial connection failing and timing out if a player is using a secret ship that the client doesn't have unlocked
  

[h3]Campaign Editor[/h3]

• Added support for gamemode configuration overrides. If you're writing campaigns by hand in XML, save a campaign from the editor after setting up config data and check the GmConfig section to see how this is setup.
  
• Added support for custom weapon pools. If writing an XML by hand, check the PuBlacklist section after using the in-game editor to see how this is setup.
  
• Options which previously cycled through values on clicking are now provided in a list popup.
  

[h3]Custom Race[/h3]

• Customize Weapons renamed to Custom Weapon Pool, and is now saved per gamemode
  
• The boost mechanic option now supports none (multiplayer parity)
  

[h3]Options[/h3]

• All camera settings are now per camera mode. Previous options for specific camera modes are now listed under the camera modes section.
  
• Field of view settings can now go down to 60
  
• Hidden FOV offsets for specific camera modes have been removed. Defaults for these camera modes reflect what they would have been at default settings previously.
  

[h3]Tracks[/h3]

• Added grounder push zone to the light bridge on Luna Reverse in 2280
  
• Added grounder push zone to the off road hill on Freyr Falls / Freyr Falls Reverse in 2280
  
• Increased gravity on Haze and Haze Reverse in 2280
  
• Increased tension of the track spring on Kuiper Overturn and Kuiper Overturn Reverse in 2280
  
• Fixed light bridge floors on Aciknovae Reverse being marked as a TRM floor
  

[h3]Ships[/h3]

• Applying both airbrakes to fully brake now requires that analogue inputs are held 1/4 way down to prevent accidentally trimming speed.
  

[h3]User Interface[/h3]

• Moved physics mode option from Cheats and Extras into Custom Race
  
• Fixed the Forklift Certified title displaying when the Scorplet hasn't been unlocked yet
  
• Fixed DLC track categories being listed below custom tracks (regression in previous development release)
  

[h3]Stats Overlay (F1 twice)[/h3]

• 2159 stat listings are now replaced by the equivalent 2280 stats when in 2280
  
• Camera stats are now editable (in debug mode)
  
• The cameras current FOV is now shown
  

[h3]Engine[/h3]

• Physics toggler track scripts are now ran before ships are spawned
  

We've kicked off development of 1.4 and to get things started, we've been working on some modding features alongside some general features and improvements!

[h2]Playing development builds[/h2]

• Right click BallisticNG in your steam library and go to Properties
  
• Go to the betas tab on the window that opens
  
• From the dropdown select development. If the update doesn't automatically queue for download, restart Steam
  
• Once you have opened the game, the version at the bottom right of the menu will read 1.4-d4

[h2]Notices[/h2]
[h3]Legacy Layout Creator Depreciated[/h3]
1.4 is depreciating the legacy layout creator. It's still in the game and can still be used to create tracks, but has been tucked away so layout creator 2.0 is the focus.

The legacy layout creator can now be accessed by using the mod_legacylayoutcreator console command. Note that it isn't being removed entirely as this is a feature that's important for backwards compatibility.
[h2]Unity Tools Update[/h2]
If you're making mods, you can now download unity packages for development builds of the game:
https://github.com/Neognosis-Workflow/BallisticNG-Unity-Tools/releases/tag/1.4


All changes to releases towards the current major version will be documented on this release page.



[h2]Ship Lua Scripting[/h2]
The game's Lua implementation has been extended to ships!

These enable you to do anything you can imagine, from setting up additional cosmetics to adding new mechanics and physics! Like with custom track lua scripts, these are sandboxed so they're confined to only doing stuff inside the game.

Download the latest Unity Tools to get started with ship lua scripts.

Documentation:

• Creating Lua Runners
• Ship Functions Reference
• API Reference

[h2]Trkd files[/h2]
Trkd (Track Data) files are a new addition to custom tracks which allows menu data to be provided with the track.

Trkd files are compiled and placed next to your tracks trk file. When present, the game will load everything it needs from the trkd, instead of going through the lengthy caching process.

Trkd's can also be embedded into Wtrk files, and will be automatically added / updated if they're next to the Trk when creating / updating the Wtrk.

It's safe to distribute both Trkd and Wtrks with embedded Trkd files to the current public stable release (1.3.3). Older versions of the game will just ingore the files.

Also note that while Trkd files are not required and the game will continue with the current cache process without them, we highly reccomended you start shipping them with tracks as they offer similar load performance to the old system but without the extremely long load time on the first game launch.

Download the latest Unity Tools to start building Trkd files.

[h2]Reload mod content in-game[/h2]
It's now possible to reload mod content without needing to restart the game!

Use the new mod -> refresh content button on the menu to start the refresh. This will remove mods that have been deleted, register mods that were added and will also handle content being moved between folders.

[h2]Steam Deck / Big Picture keyboard overlays[/h2]
If you're running the game on a Steam Deck or in Big Picture with the Steam overlay enabled, any text input required (setting your name, entering data for custom campaigns, etc) when using a controller will now prefer the relevant Steam based keyboard instead of our internal overlay!



[h2]HUD Scaling[/h2]
BallisticNG now has a HUD scaling option! This setting is particularly useful for use with the Steam Deck or other handheld computers. Scaling ranges from 80-120%, which is setup to accommodate overlap with the vanilla HUD.

Just as a note, we currently don't have plans for menu UI scaling. Several parts of menu UIs are built with the scale they're already at in mind and can't be scaled without breaking.





[h2]Options[/h2]

• Added HUD scaling (graphics -> display -> hud scaling). This ranges from 80-120%, based on the overlap of internal HUDs. Scaling is always disabled in splitscreen.
  
• Added Roll On Thrust Tap (controls -> roll on thrust tap). Enabling this allows you to barrel roll by releasing the thrust input and then quickly pressing it again.
  
• Added option to disable player light colors on DS4 / Dualsense controllers
  

[h2]User Interface[/h2]

• Sliders now support suffix strings at the end of the value readout.
  
• The controls menu now automatically switches the bindings / calibration list to the last touched input device that's assigned to the player, and opens with the players active input device selected.
  
• The survival score readout is now vertically positioned above the speed and shield bars and has digit group separators.
  
• DLC and custom ship / track loading is now a single loading content screen, which is hooked up to a new content loader.
  
• Added mod -> refresh content to the main menu. This will unregister content that no longer exists on disk and then search for newly added files and register them. This doesn't refresh track menu information.
  
  • If starting the game with -nougc, this can be used to load custom content on demand.
    
  • This supports moving content around. Just make sure you refresh content before doing anything else so the game is aware of the new file locations.
    
  • Moving tracks which don't have a trkd file will regenerate the cache as tch files are linked to tracks by absolute file path.
    
  • Newly added content is not alphabetically organized with the rest of content due to sorting being a part of the file discovery and not internal sorting. Everything will be correctly organized after the next game boot.
    
• Removed access to the old layout creator from the menu. It now needs to be accessed from the new mod_legacylayoutcreator command.
  
• Text inputs when using a controller now tries to open the Steam Deck or Steam Big Picture keyboard before falling back to the in-game keyboard.
  
• The update profile interface now has a button to update the profile image, reset the profile image, and has a realtime pilots license preview.
  

[h2]Modding[/h2]

• Implemented trkd files. When present next to a .trk file or embedded into a .wtrk file, these replace the game generated .tch files used for menu frontend data.
  
• Fixed custom tracks files in the root of externally linked paths not being moved into an uncategorized folder
  
• Mod content folders in different locations with conflicting folder names are now correctly merged into categories, instead of the last loaded folder with a name conflict taking exclusive priority.
  

[h2]Steam[/h2]

• Precision run times are now included in Steam Cloud. This applies globally to all branches, this note is just documentation of the change.
  
• Updated to the lastest version of Steamworks (we haven't updated in 7 years!)
  

[h2]Commands[/h2]

• Added mod_legacylayoutcreator. Call from the menu to access the old layout creator.
  
• The following commands have been updated to prompt for an output path using native OS file browsers (they use their previously fixed output paths as the defaults):
  
  • mod_bloomconfig
    
  • mod_flareconfig
    
  • mod_exportshipstats
    

[h2]Lua[/h2]

• Implemented support for lua scripts on ships. These use functions and global variables which are specific to ships, and have the same freedom (with sandbox restrictions) as track lua scripts. Like with track lua scripts, user variables can be defined in Unity and used in the script.
  
• Added Api:IsSplitscreen() and Api:IsVerticalSplitscreen()
  
• Exposed VirtualEnv (virtual environment control), VirtualPaletteSettings (settings for virtual environment palette) and VirtualColors (class holding virtual environment palette data)
  

Hey everyone, here's a small update to address some issues brought up from the GOG side of things.

Your in-game profile is now decoupled from launchers and can be freely changed however you see fit using the new config -> profile button on the main menu.

If launching for the first time with a launcher running, the game will still pull your name and avatar image from there. A reset button in the new profile menu will let you automatically reset it to the launchers account name, or local defaults if you're not running a launcher.

Your avatar image is now cached to User -> Cache -> ProfileImage.png. You can update this image to be whatever you want, and it'll show up on the menu the next time you launch the game. If you run without a launcher, a default image will be cached.

Finally, the multiplayer name text input has been moved to the new profile menu and like with your local name, can also be reset!

We're going to be expanding the new menu with more functionality in the future for 1.4. We've kept the scope of it for this update fairly limited to maintain stability while we begin work on the new update.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Options[/h3]

• Added config -> profile to the main menu. This opens an overlay menu where you can configure your profile.
  
• Moved multiplayer name input field to the new config -> profile overlay.
  

[h3]Engine[/h3]

• The profile name is now a preference entry, which is stored in User/Config/ini/preferences.ini, and is only set from Steam / Galaxy when a profile name isn't available.
  
• The profile image is now loaded from User/Cache/ProfileImage.png. This image file will be written to using a Steam / Galaxy / default profile image if not present.
  
• Fixed issues with processing GOG Galaxy leaderboard entries if the requested entries do not exist
  
• Fixed all preference options, with exception to first startup, not being saved or loaded
  

[h3]User Interface[/h3]

• Tips mentioning the Game -> Assist menu now correctly mention the Game -> Access menu.
  

Every so often a new game surfaces that aims to be a successor to classic, stylish, mid-'90s antigrav racer Wipeout. Released back in 2018, BallisticNG was among the better attempts, managing to capture the speed and a little of the style while hewing close to the chunky polgyonal style of the PlayStation 1-era original.

Fast Forward five years and BallisticNG has been regularly updated since that initial launch, and a new trailer to mark its release on GOG is keen to brag about

Read more