BallisticNG News

We're now starting to wrap up the development of 1.3! All small vehicles tracks are now complete and we currently have the campaign for it in testing. It comes in at a total of 67 events!

Don't forget you can also track progress on our roadmap: https://trello.com/b/xf49tYpV/ballisticng-public-roadmap

[h2]Vega Waterway[/h2]
The final small vehicles track! Vega Waterway takes the race back to Vega City with a tight technical circuit that snakes through dense city back streets and drops into a canal where excess water from the nearby river Lyre is drained.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmSaFte4jBU&t=74s



[h2]Aster VB221[/h2]
The VB221 is Asters small vehicle spec ship for use in virtual training scenarios, it matches the Barracuda Model S in all stats and is treated the same way in regards to leaderboards.

We've introduced this ship so you can run Survival on small vehicle tracks with a ship that is designed for the scale. As with everything else, this will also be usable outside of survival as a regular ship and can be used for survival on regular tracks.



[h2]More Liveries[/h2]
The small vehicles and Model B / Model C ships now have more liveries.
A huge thanks to Vista for making and providing these!

There are too many new liveries to showcase here, but here's a handful of them:

Maceno Island
We've got the store page for Maceno Island up, be sure to go wishlist it and check out the new Maceno Island liveries!

The DLC will be coming shortly after 1.3s release and it will be a paid expansion. We haven't set a price yet.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1596120/BallisticNG__Maceno_Island/

1.3 Beta 8
1.3 Beta 8 is now available! We've still got a bunch of content to finish over the next few months before 1.3 is finished, but we've got plenty of new features to test beforehand.

This update doesn't include all of the new bike tracks. We're saving those for the full release.

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.

Unity Tools Notice
While these beta builds ship with Unity 2020.3.5 ready builds of the Unity Tools, they are intended for our internal testing group only. If you want to import the Unity Tools, please make sure you're using Unity 2018.3.8 and import them from the public branch running version 1.2.5 of the game.

Mods built with the 1.3 Beta Unity Tools are not compatible with previous versions of the game and documentation will not be available until the final release of 1.3.

New Ships
Mako and the Aster KA10 are now playable!

Scanline effects now disabled in VR
We've had reports that people were getting motion sick in the menu and in survival mode because of the scanline effect. It's now disabled in VR.

New ship asset mangement system
All internal ships are now built into their own asset bundle files. This allows us to manage internals ships exactly like we have been with custom ships. There's now a slight loading time, but we no longer need to have all of the ships resources loaded into memory, which gives us much more room to cram in more ships and liveries for those ships without worrying about making the game eat more of your system resources.

Redesigned campaign details panel
We have a new campaign details panel! All of the events information is now displayed so you can see exactly what you're about to play.

More options
Custom race and multiplayer now have more options!

For both custom racea and multiplayer you can set custom speed multipliers to go as painstakingly slow or as blisteringly fast as you want. Multiplayer now also has options to control the end of race and return to lobby timers.

We've also added a new graphics option to set the displays refreshrate when using exclusive fullscreen and a new gameplay option that allows Orbitronix and Mako to be part of the game's standard ship roster when spawning AIs.

Game state added for speed runners
We've added an enumeration that speed runners creating LiveSplit Auto Splitter scripts can hook into. NgData.Player.PlayerState is the enumeration and it holds the following states:

• Menu (player is on the main menu)
  
• Pre Race (player is watching the race overview or the countdown hasn't finished yet)
  
• Racing (player is currently racing)
  
• Post Race (the race is finished, the player is looking at the results screen)
  

Bling Pack is now Steamless
Thanks to big changes we've made to our DLC system recently, we finally have a much better solution for the bling pack. The bling pack is now it's own DLC file to validate that you've bought it. As with all other DLC, once you have that file you no longer need to run the game through Steam for any reason.

[h2]Stunt[/h2]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShARRHlbngg

We've added a new high score game mode. In Stunt your goal is to perform as many barrel rolls as you can before completing all laps. The closer you barrel roll to the floor, the higher the score.

Our approach to this mode was to take barrel rolls and turn it into somewhat of a rhythm game, with the timing of the roll playing an important part in a positive feedback loop to sustain long roll chains.

In this mode barrel rolls are bound to a single button press, however you can still perform them normally if you really hate your controller ;)

The mode works as follows:

• Land a barrel roll to earn points and start a chain. Depending on when you barrel roll you'll earn points for regular rolls, good rolls and perfect rolls. Timing is key!
  
• When starting a chain you'll get 10 points for the 2nd roll, then each subsequent roll multiplies the score by the number of rolls in the chain. A chain is ended by letting the timer run out, failing a roll or hitting the track walls.
  
• Your ships shield energy can be exchanged for an uplift boost. An uplift boost accelerates your ship upwards to let you get airtime, while also freezing your chain and adding some additional time to it. This can be used as a tool to gain air where you would otherwise not get it, be timed on big jumps to keep a chain going through falling or just be used as a way to panic extend a chain.
  
  Straight away you have three uplift boosts in your reserve. Your energy recharges slowly over time, but landing good and perfect rolls give large amounts of the energy back immediately.
  
• If you finish the event while in a chain you enter overtime and keep going. As long as your chain is still going you can go indefinitely to rack up huge scores. Regular rolls however do not count towards resetting your chain in overtime.
  

Sticking as close to the track as possible is key as spending too long in the air is wasted chain time. Maintaining close proximity to the track is done by pitching down and braking over crests when going at high speeds. The mode is also playable on all speed classes and supports splitscreen!

Stunt will have leaderboards when 1.3 releases. They're currently disabled in the beta.



Ships

• Added Mako
  
• Added Aster KA10
  
• Added more chase camera sensitivity stats (coming to Unity Tools later)
  
• Added Idle Sway stat (coming to Unity Tools later)
  
• Barrel roll success threshold reduced to 180 degrees (from 200) to match with what's happening visually
  
• Reduced various sensitivity settings of the small vehicle chase cameras to improve their feel
  
• Fixed the Barracuda Model B not having an illum map setup
  

Music

• Added Vonsnake - Mako
  
• Added Vonsnake - Smooth Gliding
  

DLC

• Bling pack ownership is now verified using a content pack data file instead of a past Steam login validation check
  

Engine

• Added option to set the monitor refresh rate when using exclusive fullscreen
  
• Added Terrain Advanced Max shader, expanding Terrain Advanced Plus with illumination and reflection maps. This will be available in a future Unity Tools update
  
• Added gameplay option to allow AI to use the post release ships, disabled by default. Game -> General -> Ai Expanded Roster
  
• Player ship selections are now stored as a reference to a content manager entry instead of separate standalone data
  
• Removed a legacy custom ship load time notice message on track load transitions
  
• Small vehicles now have their own camera setting, set to rear chase by default.
  
• Exposed character input speeds to the F1 stats menu (now has a scroll bar)
  
• Implemented lens flare passthrough. Objects with collisions can now be flagged out with a script to not occlude lens flares for cases such as invisible walls and holographics. This will be available to mods in a future Unity Tools update. Some internal tracks will be updated to support this feature at a later time.
  
• Internal ships are now split into individual files and use the ship bundle manager, originally used for CSF custom ships. This adds a noticeable selection load time but reduces memory overhead as all ship resources are no longer loaded at all times.
  
• Fixed the airbrakes for the other splitscreen player rendering when in the internal view if the mesh renderer isn't attached to the transform object
  
• Ship airbrakes can now be configured to render in the cockpit view (coming to Unity Tools later)
  
• Ship characters can now be configured to use their own material and be rendered in the cockpit view
  
• Fixed soft locks that could occur when alt tabed while a track is loading
  
• Fixed survival continuing to think that a custom ship is being used in survival if using the change ship and track option on the pause menu and changing to the Barracuda Model S
  
• Fixed softlocks when alt tabbing on vanilla track loading
  
• Fixed splitscreen pushing a cheats enabled notification
  
• Fixed weather systems not being setup for player 2 in splitscreen
  
• Disabled log events for flare culling
  

VR

• The scanline effect on virtual skies is now disabled
  

User Interface

• Added a load overlay which pops up when a ship is being loaded
  
• Fixed menu ships disappearing when changing liveries after every 2nd switch
  

Tracks

• Fixed transparency orders on Omega Harbours underwater tunnel
  
• Various tracks given water material tweaks to adjust for UV scrolling fixes
  
• Fixed the survival anti-cheat erroneously kicking in on Hydrome Bed
  
• (Neon Nights) Fixed Metro Reverse using the night texture maps
  
• (Outer Reaches) The Project 9 suspension vehicles now use a double sided material
  

User Interface

• Redesigned the campaign event details panel
  
  
  
  • The interface is now laid out in a 2x2 grid
    
  • Event settings are now displayed in the same format that multiplayer lobby settings are. More settings are now listed.
    
  • If a tournament is selected, the track overview title now shows the track number as it cycles through the tracks
    
• Fixed softlock issue that could sometimes occur when backing out of the game options menu after switching mod tabs
  
• Fixed custom race sliders having their start value being set before the rounding mode is applied
  
• Selector elements now have their arrows faded when there's only a single option
  
• Custom race tournaments no longer have a track limit
  
• The tournament listing scroll view no longer has navigation and can scrolled with the menu scroll input bindings or the mouse
  
• Increased granularity of the audio mixing sliders
  
• The leaderboards menu now cancels previous leaderboard fetch requests before starting new ones
  
• Reorganised the Game -> Camera menu
  

Gamemode

• Added Stunt
  
• Drastically reduced airbrake slip falloff in Survival (1000 to 25). The intention is to make the airbrake response predictable and in-line with the Model S handling outside of the mode. Please let me know if it makes it too difficult to fly in the higher zones.
  

Weapons

• Reduced turbo drop chance weighting by 70%
  

Multiplayer

• Added speed multiplier setting. This stacks with hyper and drag mode
  
• Added setting to control the results screen time
  
• Added setting to control the event finish time
  
• Fixed the speed modifier not being saved into lobby presets
  
• Host handshake packets now pull the hosts ship selection directly from the new content manager reference value instead of running a database search. This should drastically improve host performance when new clients join and lots of custom ships are installed.
  

Campaign

• Fixed spelling mistakes in the base game time trial custom descriptions
  
• (Outer Reaches) Fixed finale drift and drag events allowing small vehicles
  
• Added support for the drag speed modifier
  

Custom Race

• Fixed spelling mistakes in the ai roster preset action dialogs
  
• Added a button to reset cheats
  
• Added speed multiplier setting. This stacks with hyper and drag mode
  

Modding

• Added Mako livery template PSD
  
• Added Aster KA10 livery template PSD
  
• uplift.wav and overtime.wav added for custom soundpacks
  
• The Aster LB221 livery template has been re-exported with no color profile setup. The note txt file explains a better workflow for gimp converted PSDs.
  

It's been a busy month and we have three tracks to showcase today!

Maceno Islands track roster is now complete and we can now move onto the ship liveries and campaign. We also have one more small vehicles track to finish. Once done those tracks will also be getting their own campaign!

After that the bulk of 1.3s work is done. We still have three additional tracks that are coming on top of all of this and we have a major optimization for Basin and some readability improvements for Kuiper Overturn coming too.

Once all of this content is wrapped up it'll be time for us to finish up feature implementations, get the Unity Tools updated with the new engine features, run one final beta and then we'll be good to set a release date and get this monster update out onto the public branch!

Don't forget you can also track progress on our roadmap: https://trello.com/b/xf49tYpV/ballisticng-public-roadmap

[h3]Smooth Gliding[/h3]
A new song has been added to the soundtrack! If you own the soundtrack DLC you'll find Smooth Gliding already in there. You can also stream it here:

https://soundcloud.com/vonsnake/ballisticng-smooth-gliding


[h2]Maceno Peak[/h2]
The sixth and final Maceno Island track! This one sits at the very top of the island and features tight corner series and lots of verticality to test your skills. This is a track you're going to want to pitch down over the hills on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgINhyfTcHs





[h2]Skylight Gardens[/h2]
Running through glass pyramid gardens and a mall complementing them, Skylight Gardens is a tightly packed urban track set in Stockholm that demands a solid racing line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OVGmhyhno4





[h2]Atacama[/h2]
Brobama's back with another track. Atacama is a completely offroad circuit small vehicles track running through Chilean sand dunes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0wW3MBSMgA







[h3]Removed tournament track limit[/h3]
BallisticNG has an artificial limit of 12 tracks for tournaments, with exception to campaigns where you can add as many track as you like.

We've now removed this limit for custom races so you can easily go wild with extremely long tournaments! Multiplayer still has the 12 track limit however as we transfer the tracks display name to tell everybody which tracks to load and it can very quickly pile up into an unreasonable amount of data to send.

[h3]More granular audio mixing options[/h3]
We've updated the audio mixing sliders so they jump in increments of 0.05 instead of 0.1, giving you more fine control over the game's audio balance.

[h3]Game state exposed for speedruns[/h3]
After recieving a feature request, we've implemented an enumation that speed runners can hook into to check the players state to automate LiveSplit with auto splitters.

Once 1.3 is out, NgData.Player.State will provide the following states:

• Menu (player is on the main menu)
  
• Pre Race (player is watching the race overview or the countdown hasn't finished yet)
  
• Racing (player is currently racing)
  
• Post Race (the race is finished, the player is looking at the results screen)
  

Hey everyone. This month we've been focusing on more small vehicle tracks content, which is now getting close to being done.

With Brattelva Circuit finished there is now only 3 small vehicle tracks left to go. We're already working on these last tracks and we're aiming to have stuff to show next month.

We also only have 1 more track to go for Maceno Island: Maceno Peak. The layout for this track is already prototyped. Refinement and then eventually scenery will come once we've made some more progress with the small vehicles tracks.

Don't forget you can also track progress on our roadmap: https://trello.com/b/xf49tYpV/ballisticng-public-roadmap


[h2]Brattelva Circuit[/h2]
Brattelva Circuit is a somewhat technical track running through the Norwegian countryside, built on top of an old river. This secluded area is primarily used as a small wind farm, and with the track came a pub with open crowdstands to watch the races.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcnxOODemGA











[h2]Expanded AI Roster[/h2]
There is now an option to allow post release ships to be included with the vanilla ship roster without needing to setup custom AI rosters in custom race.

Right now this includes Orbitronix and Mako. We've opted not to include the Barracuda Model 0 in this as it doesn't have weapons.

The option is off by default as keeping the vanilla roster to 8 teams is part of the game's original design. When turned on it applies to all aspects of the game (campaign, custom race and multiplayer bots).



[h2]Rebalanced turbo drops[/h2]
Turbos have been unbalanced for a while. Since they were originally for a cheat mode or used in Speed Lap where you're given one every lap, we hadn't really thought too much about their drop rate.

As turbos have been a toggle for custom races for a while now, 1.3 will have the turbo drop rate reduced by 70%. This is still enough to give you one per a 20-40 second lap on average, while before you'd easily be getting 3-4 per lap.

These changes aren't necessarily final and we'll gather some feedback regarding it when we run the final 1.3 beta.

[h2]Fixed alt tab soft locks[/h2]
It's possible to cause a soft lock if you alt tab out during track loading or rapidly spam the pause button, which is a particular problem for stuff like multiplayer where the person who soft locks would have to alt F4 to allow the rest of the lobby to start the race.

This is now fixed for 1.3!

[h2]Splitscreen weather[/h2]
We've had an issue since initial implementation where player 2 wouldn't have their own weather effects, but could still see the weather effects for player 1.

This is now fixed, with both players having their own weather effects that only they can see.

As a side note we also had an issue where playing in splitscreen would trigger the cheats enabled notification, which is also now fixed.

[h2]Multiplayer host performance improvements[/h2]
Whenever somebody connects to a server the host builds a list of ships that everybody is using. For other players this is fine as the host already knows the name of them and can just pass them on, but the host fetching it's own ship requires a database lookup every time. When you start reaching several hundreds of installed ships this can cause very noticeable frame hiccups.

When we first introduced our content database system during early access we had never updated player selections to directly reference it. This is finally addressed, and with a bunch of code updates later the host can finally just pass its ship information on without the costly database lookup.

Hey everyone. We're a little behind posting this one since we were finishing up the content to show off, but here's our 1.3 development progress through May 2022!

Don't forget you can also track progress on our roadmap: https://trello.com/b/xf49tYpV/ballisticng-public-roadmap

[h2]Alto Overseer[/h2]
Alto Overseer is the fifth Maceno Island track. Carving through the islands dormant volcano, this is a dark track with lots of twists and turns. You'll also get a great view of the entire island and its locations in the brief moment of sunlight along the mountains edge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO85HkExeYU









[h2]Aster KA10[/h2]
Aster now has an AG go-kart! Built from similar components used to make the LB221 bike, the KA10 is a fast and somewhat nimble vehicle.









[h2]Extra Stuff[/h2]
We've also been adding more features to custom races and multiplayer.

Speed Multiplier
Both custom races and multiplayer now have a speed multiplier option. It ranges from 0.2x to 2x speed and stacks with the hyper and drag speed options.

This is considered a cheat option and setting it to anything but 1x will disable saving and leaderboard functionality while active.

Custom race now also has a reset cheats option, which lets you disable all of the cheat options in a single button press.

Multiplayer Timers Control
Lobby hosts will now also be able to control the timers for finishing the race once somebody has passed the finish line and how long everybody needs to wait before going back to the lobby on the results screen.

The finish timer can be configured anywhere between 5 seconds to 2 minutes.
The results time can be configured anywhere between 5 seconds to 30 seconds.

Refresh rate in exclusive fullscreen
Based on feedback the game now also has an option to set the refresh rate of the monitor it's being display on if running in exclusive fullscreen. If you're running in a window or in borderless fullscreen this option will be disable and let you know your desktops refresh rate is being used.