BallisticNG News

1.3 will be updating a few tracks to bring them up to spec with the rest of the roster. The first of these is Metro, which is the focus of this update. We also have some news regarding the game's switch port, which you can find below the beta release information.



Joining the beta

• 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 Beta. If the update doesn't automatically queue for download, restart Steam
  

What is the beta?
For 1.3 we're developing and implementing new modding tools and features, some of which will be part of the upcoming Switch version of the game. We're releasing beta builds for each new feature we add so the community gets to play around with them early.


Metro ended up being a frustrating track to play primarily due to the long, thin tunnels that demanded an almost impossible racing line on higher speed classes. This updates overhauls the tracks scenery to fix that issue and give it a much needed makeover, opening it up more and better integrating into into Vega City.

Thanks to Kabelsalat and Brobama for the super cool Scorpio construction vehicles!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3D4Uv-4iGg




It's been a little bit since we initially revealed that we were developing a Switch version of BallisticNG. We've had time to get the game up and running and figure out what we need to do, and we're ready to give some more details on the port.

• We're targeting 60fps in singleplayer and online with support to up to 8 AI. Online will support 16 players with up to 8 lobby slots being available to AI.
  
• We're currently targeting 30fps in splitscreen, however we are looking for opportunities to further optimise to potentially get it going at 60fps.
  
• The game will run at 1080p when docked. The framerate targets above are for when the console is both undocked and docked.
  
• The game will have a battery saving mode which will cap the FPS to 30 across the board.
  
• Excluding the CRT filter, all retro effects will be available as options.
  
• The upcoming Layout Creator 3 and in-game campaign editor will be part of the port and cross compatible with PC. We'll be looking at services in the future to enable this, probably Mod.IO.
  
• Custom ships and tracks made for PC may potentially be playable on the Switch using the same service for hosting mods made in the internal game tools. There will be numerous llimitations and workflow requirements for this to work though, but we can talk about those at a later date if we get PC mods up and running.
  
• Online will not be cross platform with PC, however if sales provide the budget to get platform agnostic matchmaking servers setup and maintained we will implement it. Remember to tell your friends about the game ;)
  

We have a few tracks, such as Basin, which we need to optimise to hit 60fps on the system. These optimisations will also be on PC and part of the ongoing 1.3 Beta.

Please note that we still do not have a release window. We have a lot to get through with new features, content updates and new content with the Maceno Island expansion, so all we can say at this stage is it'll be a while.

What we're currently working on is getting the fundamental engine changes out of the way first. As this work is being done alongside new content and new tool development it's taking time, however once it's out of the way further progress on the port should be much faster.

The last month of development has been busy as we start to standardise the game across the PC and Switch builds. This beta isn't focused on a single feature, but is instead more general in getting an engine upgrade to Unity 2020.3.5 available to everyone.

If you are making mods do not update Unity on your end. We have not updated the Unity Tools package yet and you will irreversibly break your projects if you upgrade at this time. Stay with Unity 2018.3.8 for the time being.



Joining the beta

• 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 Beta. If the update doesn't automatically queue for download, restart Steam
  

What is the beta?
For 1.3 we're developing and implementing new modding tools and features, some of which will be part of the upcoming Switch version of the game. We're releasing beta builds for each new feature we add so the community gets to play around with them early.



[h3]Engine Upgrade[/h3]
After 3 long years we have finally updated to the latest and greatest version of Unity! We were originally going to only be using the latest versions of Unity for the Switch, but there's plenty of new useful features that we can take advantage of so we decided to upgrade the PC version to it too.

The game is backwards compatible with all content mods developed on the Unity 2018.3.8 based tools so you do not need to upgrade Unity to make mods for this beta. In fact, the Unity Tools for the new version of Unity are not available yet, so don't upgrade until the final 1.3 release or you will break your projects!

Note that certain parts of the Unity API have been removed in this new version of the engine, which could impact code mods that make use of it.

[h3]Moving to asset bundles[/h3]
We've made pretty extensive use of Unity's resource folders for a lot of our on-demand asset loading. On PC this has been fine since the size of it is fairly small and a modern desktop computer can power through its initialisation pretty much instantly.

On the Switch we don't have this luxury however, so across both platforms we're extracting our assets out into Unity Asset Bundles so we can load our asset when we need them.

So far we have moved out ship prefabs, and while they're not part of the resources folder we have also moved out all of the internal tracks too. This gives us faster build times and allows us to better compress the assets to use even less disk space then they did before.

[h3]Fix for a long standing hover issue[/h3]
If you've played BallisticNG long enough you've probably noticed that ships get really shaky at the top of their hover height when they're moving slowly, and when landing at higher speeds while pitching up it can feel like the ship is hitting a solid surface.

This is now fixed! Ship hovering is now in general much smoother and works better across a wider range of track geometry.

[h3]External Mods[/h3]
Mods can now be loaded from any folder on your computer! This is done by creating an external.txt folder in the internal mod folder and pasting a directory path per line. Each directory is treated like the internal directory, so for instance if you point the game to an external tracks folder then the game is going to expect that folder to have sub-folders which will become categories on the menu.

Valid external.txt files are:

User -> Mods -> Tracks -> external.txt
User -> Mods -> Ships -> external.txt
User -> Mods -> Liveries -> external.txt
User -> Mods -> Sounds -> external.txt
User -> Mods -> Ingame Music -> external.txt
User -> Mods -> Menu Music -> external.txt
User -> Mods -> Campaigns -> external.txt

Asset Bundles

• Ship prefabs moved to an asset bundle
  
• Internal tracks moved to an asset bundle
  

User Interface

• Ships for the UI for internal and custom ships using the CSF format now load asynchronously. The interface will no longer lock up when loading resource heavy ships.
  
• Fixed previously viewed custom ship resources not beeing freed in the lobby ship selection turntable when moving to another ship
  

Music

• Rewritten music playlist backend, fixing numerous bugs and simplifying code for future additions
  
• Fixed the pause menu not showing the name of in-scene song overrides
  
• The All Music custom playlist now includes every song loaded from external.txt
  
• Added Vonsnake - In The Depths
  
• Added Atlanticore - Slipstream
  

Physics

• 2159/2280 ship hover damping computation updated to fix numerous movement issues related to ship being at the top of its hover height.
  

Audio

• Fixed voices being much quieter when spatial audio is enabled
  

Ships

• Barracuda S liveries can now be selected in survival
  
• Fixed custom liveries not being applied to duplicate ship entries
  
• Model C stats update
  
  • Reduced steer steer falloff from 1 to 0.7
    
  • Increased steer gain from 1 to 1.22
    
  • Increased steer slide from 1 to 1.2
    
• Protonic Stats Update
  
  • Increased top speed and acceleration to be slightly slower then Scorpio
    
  • Slightly decreased grip from 3.4 to 3.3
    
  • Reduced tilt angle from 35 to 30
    

Engine

• Upgraded from Unity 2018.3.8 to Unity 2020.3.5 to standardise development with the Switch version
  
• The intro FMV is now smooth (fixed from Unity upgrade)
  
• Updated to the latest version of Rewired. The Dualsense controller is now fully supported with feature parity to the Dualshock 4.
  
• The game now uses incremental garbage collection as part of the Unity engine upgrade. We don't generate much garbage data, but any amount that is collected should now have less of an impact on slower hardware.
  
• Implemented render zones, a new rendering feature that can be used for rendering optimisation and other creative purposes. These are not available for modding yet, but will be in a future update.
  
• Added support for loading all custom content from external locations using external.txt. See the dedicated section above for details.
  
• UI inputs are no longer processed when the game window isn't in focus
  

Controls

• Multiple controllers can now be assigned to players. The UI has been split into separate Add/Remove buttons to manually control the assignments.
  

Tracks

• All internal tracks rebaked with the newer 32-bit lightmapper (unity upgrade broke lighting)
  
• Removed an unused tonemapper component from all scenes and custom track camera prefabs
  
• Removed a light from the final tunnel on Atlantica that bloomed out the exit with the new lighting
  
• Removed light from Nova Park that bloomed out track sections under the 2nd park bridge
  
• Added missing lights to ceiling lamps on Nova Park Reverse
  
• Added light for missing flood light source on Thunderhead
  
• Surge now has a different track illum color. Surge reverse has also been given a lighting makeover.
  
• Outer Reaches holopads particle effect update (unity upgrade broke them)
  

Photo Mode

• Fixed no tonemapping options showing on a select few tracks
  

Options

• Added weapons quality option. Setting this to low uses alternative particles with much less overdraw for weapon impacts.
  
• Renamed the tonemapping option to vibrancy boost to better reflect what the option does.
  

Layout Creator 2.0

• Height labels have been updated from Unity's now removed GUIText components to Text Mesh Pro components
  

VR

• SteamVR updated to the latest version
  

Debug Hub
The Debug Hub is a new WIP debug interface to provide tools for modding with expandabiility through code mods. It currently has a logger and will be expanded with more built in tools in the future.

The hub can be opened and closed by pressing F9.

The next modding feature has been implemented so it's time for another beta build. 1.3 Beta 2 is now available with custom livery support!

[h2]About[/h2]

Joining the beta

• 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 Beta. If the update doesn't automatically queue for download, restart Steam
  

What is the beta?
For 1.3 we're developing and implementing new modding tools and features, some of which will be part of the upcoming Switch version of the game. We're releasing beta builds for each new feature we add so the community gets to play around with them early.

[h2]Custom Liveries[/h2]
You can now add your own liveries to any ship in the game by simply placing PNG files in a folder. You're going to want templates to get started, so for the built in ships we've provided PSDs with everything you need included to get going. You can find these in the new Modding -> Livery Templates folder.

This system also works for custom ships created using the Unity Tools, however like the built in ships mod authors will need to provide a template image with a UV layout for people to work off of.

To get started, click this link to read the documentation.

[h2]Campaign Editor fixes[/h2]
In the previous beta there were a few minor issues that have been fixed for this build. Most of these are issues with not limiting character types in text fields which are numbers only but the on-screen keyboard has also been updated to improve navigation and fix an issue where the caret position in text fields wouldn't immediately update.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
Modding Assets

• Added custom livery templates. These can be found in Modding -> Livery Templates
  

Custom Liveries

• Added support for custom liveries. See the documentation for more information.
  

Campaign Editor

• Entering numbers before letters in a custom value name will now remove them when submitting the change
  
• Fixed the data input fields not being assigned a text validation type and allowing invalid data to be entered
  

Ships

• AI now start at the default livery if the players current livery is of an index higher then the AIs ship livery count
  

User Interface

• The on-screen keyboard now has a grid design for better navigation. Vertical navigation wrapping has also been added
  
• The on-screen keyboard now has a minus key
  
• Fixed the caret position not immediately updating if using the on-screen keyboard to navigate text
  

Commands

• Added debug_refreshliveries command to rebuild file path references to custom liveries (see the documentation for more information)
  

Multiplayer

• Livery selections are now handled by name instead of index to accommodate that players may now have different livery setups
  

The Maceno Island expansions first track, Maceno Bay, has been completed! Here's a first look at the upcoming track :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_QYqV_9rAI

[h2]Screenshots[/h2]



1.3 is going to be a major update focusing on new modding tools and features for both the PC and upcoming Switch version of the game. Most additions for the Switch will also be on PC, so we're developing them on PC first to give the community access to try stuff out as it's developed!

This update focuses on the addition of a campaign editor, which can be accessed in the campaigns menu. Campaigns that you build in this new tool are also compatible with past versions of the game.

[h2]Joining the Beta[/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 Beta. If the update doesn't automatically queue for download, restart Steam
  

[h2]Campaign Editor[/h2]
The campaign editor is an in-game tool that lets you build your own campaign lists without needing to know XML. Everything that you can do in XML is available here. Give it a go and let us know what you think!

The campaign editor can be accessed via the campaign menu at the top. Saving a campaign reloads it so you can get straight to playtesting once you've backed out of it!



[h2]1.3 Beta 1 Changelog[/h2]
Internally this build is versioned as 1.3-d5.

Engine

• Most file operations are now handled in platform agnostic code
  
• FIxed the autopilot disengage spinning the ship at insane speeds if disengaging immediately after engaging it
  
• The audio manager and mixer is now always initialised on the first frame of track loading if they're not already. This fixes many sounds in fast play ignoring the audio settings and playing at max volume.
  

Music

• Custom music can now be loaded from any folder on your computer by creating external.txt in the User/Mods/Ingame Music folder and entering a folder path per line. Like the User music folder the game will also scan sub-directories.
  

User Interface

• Ships now have updated descriptions (thanks Kekka & Brobama!)
  
• Fixed big arrow buttons not resetting their internal selection color status when disabled
  
• Gave the campaign menu some visual tweaks.
  
• Precision runs menu updated with the same visual tweaks as the campaign menu
  
• The campaign gamemode description scroll view is no longer scrollable and now auto scrolls over time
  
• Fixed the capital M on the onscreen keyboard being an N
  

Campaign

• Fixed custom values being ignored when loading campaigns
  
• Campaign content is now validated. Any event that has missing content will now show what's missing instead of the event name and will no longer let you try to start it.
  
• Added exception handling to campaign loading. When an exception is thrown the game will now skip the campaign and open the console to show the issue.
  
• Updated the difficulty icons
  

Campaign Editor

• Added a campaign editor. You can find it at the top of the campaigns menu.
  
  • Works off the same XML format that custom campaigns already do. No new features have been added to campaigns, this is simply a UI wrapper around the XML format.
    
  • The UI is designed to be controller friendly. Every option uses the same UI element and all interactions are handled through the submit button.
    
  • When using a keyboard in the input field dialogues you can press return to confirm instead of navigating to the confirm button.
    
  • You can load exiting XML campaigns into the editor. Just note that saving an edited campaign rewrites the file, so any additional data like comments will be lost.
    
  • The editor only uses the current iteration of attributes. Resaving an XML with legacy attributes will use the newer versions instead.
    
  • Leaving the campaign editor reloads all custom campaigns. If you're manually writing XMLs you can go into the editor and back out to reload your work on the fly without having to restart the game.
    

DLC

• All DLCs rebuilt with smaller abbreviated logos for the menu
  

Ships

• Omnicom Steering Speed increased from 1.63 to 1.7 and Grip increased from 5.5 to 5.65
  
• Mtechs Top Speed increased to match G-Teks and Steer Slide increased from 1.23 to 1.5
  
• Large protonic stats tweaks. The new stats make the ship less twitchy so you can let the ship carry its momentum.
  
  • Tilt angle reduced from 50 to 30
    
  • Steer Speed increased from 2.3 to 2.5
    
  • Steer Gain decreased from 1.52 to 1.2
    
  • Steer Falloff decreased from 1.26 to 0.8
    
  • Steer Slide increased from 1 to 3
    
  • Airbrake Drift Falloff decreased from 14 to 3
    
  • Grip increased from 2 to 2.4
    
  • Weight increased from 0.7 to 1.2
    
  • Top speeds now match Gteks
    

VR

• Fixed various generated UIs having their elements placed far away from the viewpoint
  
• Advanced content selectors are now correctly curved on the main menu
  

We've just released a new update that adds a preview for Maceno Bay, the first track coming in the Maceno Island expansion. It will only be available to try today however, so better try it out fast!

The track is available under the new Maceno Island category on the menu.

Have fun :)