Hey everyone, it's that time again!

The final Neon Nights track, Metro, is currently in progress and will be ready for a full showcase in the next dev update.

Neon Nights will be releasing on July 30th, included for free alongside the game's 1.1 update!

Previously we had shown screenshots of Thunderhead, so here it is in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5d-AxP8iz4

Metro is set entirely underground in an older, unused section of Vega City's metro system. The area is being revamped to properly house a traditional AG circuit but is currently being used in a rail line/AG track hybrid for the current AGL season.

The screenshot below shows the start grid in early stages. The track is relying heavily on scenery to build the track layout, everything has been blocked out but because there was this extra step the scenery detailing has only just begun.



New songs are being added to the game! There isn't currently a final count as songs are mostly being added as we go along but here's a couple for you to take a listen to!

Like with the release of 1.0, all new songs being added are being added to the soundtrack DLC for free. You'll find the new MP3s inside the folder when 1.1 releases!

https://soundcloud.com/vonsnake/ballisticng-near-field-friends
https://soundcloud.com/vonsnake/ballisticng-neon-nights
https://soundcloud.com/shiftdelete/the-only-way-is-up
https://soundcloud.com/vonsnake/ballisticng-chills


The rear chase camera (the 2nd camera mode) in 2159 used to just piggyback off of the 2280 rear chase camera. While this camera mode works fine for 2280 there is a huge disconnect between the camera and physics when used in 2159. This new camera mode gives 2159 its own unique chase camera movement which reacts much better to the physics.

The track chase camera (2159's default) has also been given some updates to make it react faster to the track as the ship flies through it. This helps with accentuating the ships movement which makes the camera a bit more satisfying.

You can see the new camera in action below!

Originally an official mod back when the game first implemented custom ships, the Barracuda Model 0 has made it into the game officially!

The Model 0 is the prototype of the Model A. However despite its finished variant, it doesn't share the same performance and is more in line with the other standard teams competing in the AGL.

The ships textures have been re-created from scratch and the ship has been given all of the game's livery sets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SDtOD8-7NA

Floor Hugger is a new physics model that's being introduced with 1.1. This new physics model is a direct extension of 2159, keeping most of it intact but drastically changing how the gravity and hovering function to have you constantly locked to the track.

The airtime physics in this mode have also been changed. Instead of nose diving you fly straight and need to control your trajectory by pitching.

Here's a video of it in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsOMIB-c_tQ

A few tracks have had minor updates to improve their look:

Aciknovae Forward
Aciknovae has had a lighting overhaul, keeping its feel but smoothing out the lighting and brightening up the reactor a little bit.


Nova Split Reverse
Nova Split Reverse has had it's time of day changed and has had its lighting improved, no longer make it look completely flat.


Dover Reverse
Dover Reverse has had a lighting and weather update, making use of the game now writing to Unity's depth texture to implement post processing based fog.


Photo mode has had a massive update, rewriting it from scratch and making use of new engine features to provide more effects and improve existing ones!

The interface now plays a large part in the mode, giving you many options in a controller friendly format that is available straight away (previously you had to use the mouse to open up a window).

When you render a screenshot you are now given a list of resolutions instead of the game using your display resolution. These range from really low resolutions to 4k, and includes various aspect ratios for a variety of uses.

Capturing a screenshot no longer automatically opens the screenshots folder either, there's now a dedicated button for that!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lODQ6Bp7FAI

Those of you who have been playing since the very early days might remember that the drag ships were once playable on every track. Those days are back!

With 1.1 you'll be able to play every track in custom race and online with the drag ships, they've been given their own leaderboards and save files too.

• DLC System
  
  • A means of loading extra official content has been added to the game. Previously Neon Nights was embedded into the game itself but has now been moved out into its own files. This allows the content to be updated independently of the game itself and lets the core game be loaded without any additional content (mostly useful if you're writing code mods and want fast boots for rapid development).
    
    This also future proofs the game for future content and is going to be very important in an upcoming change to the game's update frequency. We'll be talking more about this when 1.1 releases.
• New Launch Arguments
  
  • -nodlc and -nougc have been added to the game's launch arguments. Expanding on what was mentioned above these provide you with a way of loading the game in a completely clean state, so if you're writing code mods you'll no longer need to keep sitting through custom ship and track loading to test changes.
• Weapon Updates
  
  • All projectile weapons have been stabilized so they will always stick to the track on sharp pitch changes, like on magnetic track sections.
    
  • All weapons now have physical colliders, stopping situations where projectiles could fly through walls if moving fast enough to have its trigger jump through the geometry entirely.
    
  • The cannon fire rate is now determined by the ships firepower stat, the weapon now also has 3 different sounds which also change depending on the ships stats.
• Motion Blur
  
  • An option for in-game motion blur has been added! This will always be off by default but can be turned on in the options menu.
    
    We've been sitting on the option for a very long time now. It's been requested on several occasions but it was important to get its implementation right as to not turn the screen into a blurry mess whenever the camera moves.

Hey everyone, it's time for another development update!

5 out of 6 tracks for Neon Nights are now complete. Development of the final track, Metro, will be starting very soon. Once Metro is done the Neon Nights campaign can be created and then it's time for release!

We're currently on track for releasing Neon Nights in July! A more specific release date will be revealed in the next development update.

Previously we had shown screenshots of Basin, so here it is finally in action:

https://youtu.be/HVyspR9yIcE

Unlike the other tracks in Neon Nights, Thunderhead has more of a focus on terrain then it does dense buildings. This short track has you flying by the side of Vega City's industry district.

• Multiplayer
  
  • Added support for up to 16 players. The host can now also decide how many people can join, starting at 2 players and ending at the full 16.
    
  • Added the drag mode option to the lobby settings
    
  • Fixed more issues related to CSF format custom ships softlocking and crashing the game
    
  • Improved the formatting of the lobby settings list. Instead of just using some plain text the settings are now displayed in a nicely formatted list that is categorized like the lobby settings menu.
• Time Trial and Survival events in the campaign can now have platinum medals earned without needing to be in expert mode
  
  • This is something that's been asked a lot and it's finally coming in 1.1!
• Custom Content Loading
  
  • The menu now reports custom ship loading like it does with custom tracks. With CSF format ships being added this process can start taking a while when you build your ships up, so this change helps you see what's going on.
    
  • Custom content is now only loaded when you launch the game, this makes returning to the menu fast and snappy.
    
    
    

Hey everyone! It's time for another development update.

4 out of 6 tracks for Neon Nights are now complete. Thunderhead has its layout finalized with some scenery already done, and Metro's layout is going to be developed very soon!

Previously we showed some screenshots of Route 05, now here it is in action!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plnfIXMT_go

Basin is now complete, here's some screenshots for you. We'll be showing off the track in action next month!

This is the game's biggest track to date and we can't wait to get this one into your hands in the coming months!






BallisticNG 1.1 is going to be introducing a gliding mechanic. Whenever you pitch up and are fairly close to the track floor you will begin gliding, giving you greater control over your decent!

You glide less as you gain speed. There's always some amount of glide but around the speed of the Barracuda Model B ships is when you'll find it begins to really cut out. This aids in keeping the mechanic balanced so you don't end up being airbourne for extremely long periods of time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GIhwSn2l60

Neon Nights is bringing a new set of liveries to the game! These new liveries will first need be unlocked with a 100% gold or platinum run of the Neon Nights campaign. Here's a look at a few ships showing off their sleek new paint jobs!







Custom Campaigns

• Added support for the fallback texture reference. When 1.1 releases you'll be able point your custom campaign to a PNG or JPG file and have that display on the menu instead of an MP4 or WEBM file.
  
• Player and AI ships can now be forced seperatly, you can now also force specific liveries and livery schemes for events.

Lower grip for Toxic and Apex

• One problem BNG has always had is the lower speed classes just being a slow Zen. Nothing other then the top speed changes.
  
  1.1 is introducing lower grip for Toxic and Apex, a 20% and 10% reduction in grip respectively. This change makes the two speed classes much more fun as you'll now be able to drift around corners in a similar nature to how you would at Zen. Care has also been taken with the stat modifiers to ensure that the current world records don't become impossible to beat with these changes.

Hey everyone! It's been just over a month since we announced Neon Nights so here's an update on progress, plus more.

Currently 3 of the 6 tracks are complete. In the last announcement we showed off Relay and Vega Square, today we're showing you the next two tracks and Vega Square in motion.

Here's a look at Vega Square in motion, next month we'll show off Route 05 in motion too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9kty3WKGnc

Route 05 is a remake of what was originally the 0x001 prototype track in BallisticNG 0.5. The original track was retraced in the layout creator and given some minor changes to make it flow better.



Basin weaves through Vega City's central storm drain and all of its underground components. It's the first track in the game to officially use magnetic track sections and is the first to feature two completely separate routes for the forward and reverse variants, effectively making it 2 tracks in 1!

There's going to be a lot to this track. Scenery wise it's the biggest track in the game to date so we're saving more screenshots until next month when it's much more complete.



Upsurge is a new gamemode we're introducing with 1.1. It's a mode that's been requested a lot throughout the game's development and it's now finally here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnFGlHC8yic

BallisticNG 1.1 will be running on Unity 2018.3, upgrading from 2017.2. There are many improvements the latest version of Unity brings which boosts physics performance and provides many new features that makes future development much more streamlined.

DirectX9 support was removed from Unity starting from 2017.3 so BNGs DX9 support has been dropped and replaced with OpenGL. If you're running on capable hardware the game will still continue to use DirectX11.

Finally this also means that mod creators will need to upgrade their Unity installs to 2018.3 - we're using 2018.3.8f1 specifically. The upgrade process is very straight forward and we'll have a short guide to walk you through what you need to do in order to update projects. Don't upgrade your Unity install prematurely however, the tools will not work if you update without first having the 1.1 Unity Tools!

• Customizable steering curves
  
  • Analogue input in BNG has always been linear, which given how fast the ships can turn results in really subtle inputs being next to impossible. By using a curve the game can now remap your input to make steering much less sensitive when the analogue stick is near its resting position. This makes controlling your ship much easier while not sacrificing its maximum steering speed.
    
    The options that will be available to you are the original linear, a sine curve, a quadratic curve, and a cubic curve. The game defaults to sine.
  
  
• Big VR performance gains
  
  • 1.1 will be bringing large VR performance gains across the board. Previously the game was using world spaces canvases to handle menus and the leaderboard overlay, this required Unity to redraw all of the elements fully which tanked performance (especially with lists). The game now renders all interfaces to the HUD visor mesh, when 1.1 drops you'll now find the game maintains the target 90fps on capable hardware.
  
  
• In-game exclusive/borderless fullscreen option
  
  • One of the new improvements in the Unity upgrade is the ability to finally toggle between exclusive and borderless fullscreen while the game is running!
  
  
• Simplified the draw distance option
  
  • It didn't make sense to have the draw distance be a slider with individual number increments as pretty much everyone is going to have it set to either 60 or 200. The option is now just a limited draw distance toggle, with on being 60 units and off now being 1500 units (the far distance clipping plane of the game's camera).
    
    Note that this option doesn't affect performance as it's just an artificial clipping, so no tweakable performance gains are being lost with this change.
  
  
• Fully customizable bloom and light flares for custom tracks
  
  • New in-game console commands have been added which let you configure bloom settings and export/build your own light flares. Once you're done tweaking you can export your bloom settings and flare configs to a file which can then be hooked up in your custom track, breaking you free of prefabs and giving you complete control!
  
  
• Improved Unity Tools workflow, more tools and tiles
  
  • The Unity Tools package is seeing a large update with many new workflow improvements and more assets.
    
    Workflow
    
    • The track wizard now provides you with the option to spawn an example skydome into new tracks and will now also bake default lighting
      
    • You can now right click TRM files to have a new track scene automatically generated and configured for you
      
    • Before a track is built the tools will now run some basic functionality tests and give you feedback on any changes you need to make for your track to properly load and work.
      
    • The Ballistic material component is no longer attached to track meshes
    
    Tools
    
    • A tile database tool has been added. This allows you to very quickly access track tiles with all of their appropriate maps already setup. The database is fully customizable so you can setup your own entries and edit the default ones!
      
    • Scripts to setup your own start and mid trigger transforms has been added. This allows you to work start and mid triggers into tight or extremely large spaces without relying on the game's automatic setup process.
    
    Tiles
    
    • The up to date snowy variant of Harpstones track tiles have been added, along with the Neon Nights and Relay track tiles
      
    • Some missing reflection map tile textures have been added
  
  
• Drastically improved magnetic track physics
  
  • Changes to collisions with the PhysX upgrade for Unity 2018.3 completely broke magnetic track physics. The mag physics have been completely overhauled and drastically improved, just in time for their official use in Neon Nights!
• No more CUE RGB support
  
  • Currently in 1.0.3 BallisticNG supports RGB functions for Corsair keyboards. As we have no plans to maintain this feature or implement support for other manufacturers we've removed RGB support as a whole.
  
  
  And one final thing
  ;)
  
  

We're pleased to unveil BallisticNGs first expansion: Neon Nights!

This first expansion will be free and included inside the game's next major update. There's currently no release date, we want this expansion to be something amazing for you to play through so we're taking our time and will be releasing it when it's ready.

Neon Nights takes place in Vega City, a glowing metropolis that's signed away several of its key locations to the AGL. A move heavily funded by Omnicom that's been met with the praise of AG fans and outrage of the local residents.

6 new tracks are being added with this expansion: 5 standard tracks and a drag track. The standard tracks will be available in both forward and reverse variants with the usual time of day and weather alterations.

Easy
Vega Square: A short circuit situated in the bustling heart of Vega City.
Relay: A repurpose of an old circuit that is yet to see action in the AGL, situated at one of Omnicoms communication relays.

Intermediate
Route 05: Plans for a circuit that never saw fruition were found and fully realized in this familiar circuit that runs along Vega City's 5km highway.
Basin: A long circuit which drops into Vega City's central storm drain.

Hard
Thunderhead: A technical circuit passing through Vega City's industrial district.
Metro: A long circuit interwoven with Vega City's metro system.

Neon Nights will come with two new campaigns: Aftermath and the Neon Nights campaign itself.

Aftermath is built from base game content and covers the tracks not included in the original campaigns (Surge, Zephyr Climb, Atlantica and Relay from this expansion).

These campaigns do not count towards total campaign completion so it's not a requirement that you beat them in addition to the original campaigns to reach rank 50.

Keep an eye out as more announcements showing off tracks will be coming!

Here's some screenshots to get started:

1.0.3 has just released! We have some fixes and other improvements that we wanted to get out while we're working on 1.1. Stay tuned as we'll be unveiling what's to come in the games first content update soon!

If you have uploaded a CSF ship to the workshop you are going to need to update your Unity project with the latest Unity Tools package and re-upload them. Changes to how the game handles CSF ships in this update requires all file names to be unique which originally uploaded workshop CSF files do not have.

If you've downloaded CSF ships from the workshop and they haven't updated then the game won't load them and details will be printed to the game's console.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

If you want the quick rundown of what's new, here are the highlights:

• Survival now has leaderboard support
  
• Improved collision detection and made bottoming out more consistent
  
• Updated several of the games sounds
  
• Model B ships now have animated airbrakes
  
• Fixed several issues related to CSF format custom ships

User Interface

• You can no longer select Model B tracks when playing eliminator

Gamemodes

• Added support for Survival leaderboards
  
• Removed leaderboard support from race based gamemodes

User Interface

• Added a close button to the console
  
• Drastically improved the consoles rendering performance

Ships

• Added animated airbrakes to the Model B Ships
  
• Fixed each Model B ship now having a default livery name
  
• Fixed ghost ships using the vertex wobble offset in the energy wall shader
  
• Fixed some inconsistent behaviours with heavy wall impacts
  
• Fixed distorted UVs around Caliburns right airbrake
  
• Ghost ships now use the ships frontend mesh when available
  
• Scenery walls not aligned with a track sections right vector now allow heavy wall impacts
  
• The collision sparks now inherit the ships impact velocity
  
• Bottoming out is now handled upon collision with the track floor instead of being triggered by a hover threshold. This provides more consistent floor bounce behaviour across all ships
  
• Ships now use continuous collision detection, this prevents ships with sharp wings like the NX from clipping through walls

Tracks

• Fixed the holograms shader ignoring the clipping distance setting

Weapons

• Fixed the plasma bolt spawning in the wrong location for certain CSF format custom ships
  
• The spawn position for the plasma bolt projectile is now determined using the ships mesh length instead of a static offset

Ai

• Fixed the pitch input not being reset to zero when an AI takes control of a player ship
  
• Rewrote the ship-ship collision avoidance to make it more effective by letting AI react to the player ahead of time

Audio

• Fixed the afterburner sound playing multiple times on some inputs and also playing when pressing the input in the pitlane
  
• There is now a delay threshold between playing track impact sounds, sometimes collisions can happen very close together so this prevents sounds from overlapping each other
  
• Update several sounds:
  
  • Wall impacts (now also used for bottoming out)
    
  • Wall scraping
    
  • Start boost
    
  • Start boost fail
    
  • Airbrakes
    
  • Turbo pickup use
    
  • Energy wall bolt fire

Engine

• CSF ship bundles are now fully unloaded when navigating the ship turntable and a lock system is now in place which prevents assets currently being used from being unloaded.
  
• Bottoming out on the track now spawns the collision hit particle effect

Achievements

• The minesweeper achievement is now achievable if you destroy a mine while the mines destroyed stat is above the achievement target.
  
• Custom achievement unlock statuses are no longer forgotten if you disable the mod they belong too.

Multiplayer

• Fixed CSF ships not loading if a player selects a livery that has an index higher then your own local copy of the same ship. The game will now load the default livery if this occurs.

Modding

• Fixed the BallisticNG/CustomShipCull shader not being translated to the in-game version upon custom ship loading
  
• If duplicate files are found in the myships/mytracks folders when categorizing root files the game will now replace the already categorized files with the uncategorized version.

Layout Creator

• Fixed side snapping to a track route traversing in the opposite direction resulting in vertices connecting to the opposite side of the track

Unity Tools

• Updated all video assets to use VP8 encoding, this should fix crashes on Linux once custom tracks have been updated by their authors
  
• When uploading a CSF to the workshop the temp file it generates to upload is now given the workshop ID as a file name

Multi-platform specific

• Linux builds now stores all settings in the game's ini file instead of using Unity's PlayerPrefs system. The game now also manually retrieves the desktops resolution to assign on first launch.

Happy piloting!

BallisticNG 1.0.2 has just released and we're pleased to announce new tools for custom ship creators to play with!

The Unity tools package originally developed for importing custom tracks is now also a tool for importing custom ships. The old in-game ship importer is being depreciated in favour of these Unity based tools which provide you with more options then ever before and makes future expansion much easier!

The old ship importer is being removed in a future update, make sure you upgrade your ships to the new format to continue updating them in the future.

If you're interested in getting started there is full documentation available here: https://ballisticng.gamepedia.com/Import_Ship_Tutorial

The track uploader is going to be depreciated in a future update in favour of a tool inside of Unity itself. The new tool functions the same as the standalone program but is just inside of Unity, meaning only a single codebase is required for full multiplatform support.

To access the new track uploader import the Unity tools update and then navigate to BallisticNG -> Track Workshop Manager from the toolbar.


Engine

• Implemented support for the new custom ship CSF format
  
• The cockpit camera is no longer available if the ship doesn't have a cockpit
  
• The external chase camera fov is now clamped to a maximum of 115 degrees and reacts to velocity changes more slowly
  
• The width and height of track sections are now calculated and referenced to by individual sides. This fixes many potential issues in tracks which don't have symmetrical sections and in other scenarios like route entrances/exits

Ships

• Fixed flares on custom ships with more then 1 engine rendering through walls
  
• Greatly reduced the velocity transfer on rear ship bumps
  
• Duplicate ships in races now use alternative liveries

User Interface

• The ship importer option on the menu now has a legacy notice
  
• Ship descriptions are no longer forced down to lowercase

Modding

• Added a custom ship module system, more information will be coming about this in documentation updates soon.

Layout Creator

• Fixed the virtual floor visualizer persisting if virtual mode was used before entering the layout creator

Unity Tools
Reimport the BallisticUnityTools.unitypackage file for this update.

• Added BallisticNG -> Debugging -> Run Initial Open Wizard
  
• Added BallisticNG -> Track Workshop Manager
  
• Added support for setting up and exporting custom ships
  
• Added the Marina Rush tile textures
  
• Implemented Steamworks for the new workshop functionality

Have fun modding!

We've just released 1.0.1! This small update includes some bug fixes, gameplay tweaks and quality of life changes. Check out the changelog below for the full list of changes.

Enjoy the update and have a great new year!


Campaign

• Increased the Tenrai Ishtar Citadel Time Trial and Nexus Omega Time Trial targets by 3 seconds

Gamemode

• Fixed tournament standings not updating when the player is eliminated on the last race
  
• Fixed the leaderboard overlay being viewable in Survival

Ships

• The engine flare and trail now increase in brightness when the turbo pickup is used and when start boosting

Audio

• Fixed the event complete line being repeated when finishing a Knockout race

Engine

• Fixed the track floor visualizer in virtual environments not being transformed correctly if the track floor is positioned away from the world origin
  
• The video billboards option now works on custom tracks
  
• The game now sets the color of DualShock 4 lights to signify players

Weapons

• Reduced the velocity loss from tremors and removed the engine acceleration decrease
  
• Reduced the frequency of tremors pickups

User Interface

• Added labels to the livery/livery scheme selection boxes on the ship turntable
  
• Fixed the restart and quit buttons on the splitscreen results screen not doing anything
  
• Fixed the current song being changeable when in the pause menu content turntables
  
• Fixed opening the content turntables when the game is paused preventing you from unpausing the game if you back out of them
  
• The gamemode description is now shown on the campaign event details pane
  
• The knockout results screen no longer lists all of the untracked lap times
  
• Track turntable overlays now use the same wireframe render settings as the main menus track turntable
  
• The scroll wheel can now be used in content selection turntables
  
• The tournament standings list now shows the score increase for each team

AI

• Greatly reduced weapon aggression for the higher AI difficulties
  
• Fixed the AI not pitching
  
• The random top speed stat multiplier no longer allows the stat to exceed the ships original top speed
  
• Reduced the rubber banding present in the Elite and Hardcore difficulties

Layout Creator 2.0

• Fixed the editor soft locking when you delete every node in a route at once
  
• Fixed the editor soft locking when entering playmode with a separated route
  
• Fixed UVs being flipped on junction walls
  
• Fixed extra sections being generated at 0, 0, 0 when more than 1 route with no connected exit is present
  
• Track shape interpolation now uses a quadratic easing curve

Tracks

• Fixed the tile on Omega Harbour that wasn't using the reflective floor variant
  
• Fixed the incorrect wall tiles on Nova Split Reverse

Linux/Mac

• Fixed Omega Harbours scenery having the survival windows mesh always enabled using the normal building material

Unity Tools
Reimport the BallisticUnityTools.unitypackage file for this update.

• If a prefab for an imported TRM already exists then reimporting the TRM will no longer recreate the prefab and just update the meshes without breaking scenes. If a valid BNG scene is open then the track atlas and lighting will automatically be re-applied to the track once the re-import has finished.
  
• Fixed some major track data generation issues where wall tiles are generated using floor tile references and the atlas painter was also referencing wall tiles when painting and updating wall uvs.
  
  The wall fix will only apply to newly generated tracks, if you want to update your tracks to the new UVing system a button has been added to the Track Data object which will let you do a one-way upgrade.

Hey everyone, just letting you know that we've just pushed the hotfix for the Linux issue mentioned in the release announcement. This also includes a small patch for the Mac version to address an issue with Surge.

If you're running the Windows version of the game you don't need to worry about the changelog listed below.

• [Linux] Your chosen screen resolution is no longer handled by Unity and is instead managed by the game, this fixes the games resolution needing to be reset on every startup after the first one.
  
• [Linux] Fixed the retro/modern visuals prompt always being presented on every startup
  
• [Mac, Linux] Fixed the track meshes on Surge using the wrong shader

Thank you for your patience, enjoy the game!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn-tQSCXamQ
BallisticNG has left Early Access and 1.0 is now released! It's been a crazy few years and we're finally at the point where BallisticNG can be considered finished. With that said though, this doesn't mean the end of development and there's still plenty to come in the future so be sure to stay tuned for new content to come.

Leaderboards have been reset for the release, this is the last leaderboard reset that we will be doing.

We hope you enjoy the new release, there's a lot of new content for you to dive into and with the updated multiplayer you can now have a lot more fun with friends!

We're now going to take a short break and will be back after the holidays to setup modding tools documentation and a demo.

A bug in Unity is currently forcing the game to run at a resolution of 0x0 when fullscreened, we have a potential full workaround but unfortunately there wasn’t enough time to get it implemented for release. For the time being Steam has been setup to run a bash script which forces the game to run in a window with your primary monitor’s resolution, we’re looking to get a hotfix out for the issue ASAP.

If you’d prefer to stay on 0.9.4 in the meantime a legacy branch has been setup. You can jump onto it by right clicking the game in your Steam library, navigating to Properties -> Betas and selecting the legacy branch from the dropdown. This will be taken down when the issues are resolved.

Here is the massive 1.0 changelog. Not every single change and fix has been marked below because it would be even larger than it already is!

Gamemodes

• Removed Target
  
• The layout creator (both versions) now use its own gamemode with infinite afterburner, turbos every lap and a timer so you can get a feel for how long your track is
  
• Survivals pause menu now ends the session instead of instantly quitting
  
• You now begin with a start boost in Survival
  
• Being eliminated on the last race of a tournament now displays the results as normal instead of disqualifying you
  
• Added respawn enabled option for Race
  
• Weapon warnings no longer play in Eliminator
  
• Respawning in Eliminator now makes you invincible for 3 seconds
  
• Respawning in Survival now drains 5% of your shield energy
  
• Perfect Zone is no longer called out in Survival
  
• All ships now have weapons in Eliminator
  
• The ships grip no longer increases as you progress in Survival

User Interface

• Added a screen to manage C# mods
  
• Added quick page navigation to the custom race menu
  
• Added a weapons toggle option to the tournament options screen
  
• Added a first startup graphics configuration screen
  
• Added a soundpacks testing menu, you can use this to play the built in and custom soundpack sounds back to back for testing
  
• Removed the redundant XP counters from all result screens
  
• Fixed play tab contents not closing when first navigating the menu
  
• Fixed medals not rendering on the survival result screens
  
• Fixed options disappearing on the in-game options menu if you cancel out before the animation finishes playing
  
• Ship stats are now out of 10 and have been re-balanced
  
• Removed the v character from the version string shown on the menu
  
• Gamemodes not playable in splitscreen no longer show up in the custom race menus gamemode list
  
• Countdown displays now show the correct gamemode name
  
• The ship turntable now correctly accepts player 2's inputs
  
• The tournament results screen now shows you the next track in the tournament
  
• The shield bar now flashes green as shield energy is replenished
  
• Result screens in splitscreen now use their own interfaces
  
• Result screens now use a select track option instead of next track, this allows you to select whatever track you want from the track turntable

Audio

• Added custom music playlists. Sub-directories of Custom Music define the playlists and you can then select either the specific folder you want to play music from or keep the 0.9 behaviour and have the game play music from all
  
• Added sequential music playback (enabled by default)
  
• Added a third mix option to the custom music setting, when enabled the game will mix the built in and custom songs
  
• Fixed weapon warnings playing once the player has finished
  
• All voices have been re-recoded by WipeoutZone's HellfireWZ (system voices) and BNGL maintainer Radracer (warning voices). The old voices have been moved into an updated default soundpack!
  
• Weapon warnings now operate on 2 second cooldown
  
• Removed old track intercom voices on a select few tracks that still had them present
  
• Custom menu music can now be added
  
• Custom explosion sounds now apply to mines
  
• Player ships now use 3D audio during the new animated track overview sequences
  
• Reduced the number of sounds that AI ships play and increased the maximum audio voice count to 64
  
• Rain can now only be heared when close to the track floor
  
• Hitting the floor on a magnetic track section no longer plays a collision sound
  
• Ship-ship collisions now use their own sounds (see the new soundpack testing menu for file names)
  
• Added variations of the wall hit sound
  
• The drag ships now have a new engine sound

Ships

• Added stealth liveries, these are unlocked alongside the clean liveries
  
• Added navigation lights
  
• Fixed airbrake scrape hooking
  
• Fixed releasing the airbrake snapping you back to full speed
  
• Fixed an issue with how analogue inputs are managed, before this fix it was possible to quickly move the left analogue stick to stop steering instantly
  
• A ships nose is now pushed up if it's scraping against the track floor below 54 degrees, when the nose is pushed up it also induces slowdown
  
• Increased Scorpios turn gain from 0.98 to 1.1
  
• M-TechP1's steering is no longer total trash
  
• Perfecting all precision runs now unlocks the precision delta for use in custom races. To go with this it now has alternative liveries and its own cockpit
  
• Ships now deal different amounts of damage
  
• Ships now use box colliders to handle collisions between each other
  
• General ship-ship bumping has been replaced with scraping and a speed transfer when you bump into the back of other ships
  
• Plasma impacts now trigger the ships engine to catch fire
  
• Improved handling in 2280 and re-added the invisible wall simulation that 2159 uses

Engine

• Added an intro cinematic
  
• Added -nomods launch switch, useful for launching a multiplayer session without having to manually disable mods and restarting first
  
• Added a legacy reverse camera option, restored from 0.7 with some tweaks to accommodate custom ships
  
• Added an anti-skip system to prevent you from cutting more then a second of the track (disabled by default in existing custom tracks)
  
• Added a new achievement and stats backend, this is entirely local and new achievements/stats can be added through C# mods
  
• Added an attract mode (like older builds). Leave the game on the root of the menu for 30 seconds
  
• Fixed the track introduction option not doing anything
  
• Fixed ships with post-import scaling having blown up shield meshes
  
• Removed the fake 240p option
  
• 3D track pads now apply in 2159 physics. If a track doesn't have pad tiles but has 3d pads the game will now enable the 3d pads for the missing tille types regardless of physics mode.
  
• Projectile explosion particles now have their transform scale reset upon being attached to an object
  
• Speed Pads now also increase the engine thrust
  
• Added realtime player ship reflections
  
• Removed texture filtering option
  
• Weather is no longer interrupted by trigger colliders
  
• Revamped the collision effects, recharge particle effects and weapon effects
  
• Checkpoint time offset calculations can now take into account alternative routes
  
• Engine fires are now loaded ahead of time to save on loading hitches when they are triggered
  
• Ships no longer trigger events from track lasers when eliminated
  
• Ai engine flares are no longer double sided
  
• added uberplasma and horizontal typed cheats, type them on the menu to see what they do in-game

Tracks

• Added illumination lights to Nova Split to improved track visibility
  
• Added a track overview stage before the race begins, tracks that support this feature will show you select locations
  
• Added start grid droids, tracks that support this feature will have the rescue droids fly off from above the ships as the race starts
  
• Added clouds to tracks with rain
  
• Added Surge
  
• Fixed broken UVs on Hydrome Bed
  
• Removed the 2280 pitlane force fields
  
• Removed old track intercom voices on those that still had them present
  
• Remade Arrivon Peak from scratch
  
• Zephyr Ridge; added extrusions to the entrance/exits of each tunnel, replaced the first tunnels crowd stands with a exit looking out into terrain, fixed advertisement billboards z-fighting when retro vertices is enabled
  
• Omega Harbour; updated the aquarium to be real 3d space, the black floor and black building bottoms are now textured, added more builds on the final straight
  
• Aciknovae; updated several upper buildings to have unique designs, fixed uvs in the reactor
  
• Overhauled Utah Projects scenery
  
• All drag tracks now span an additional 10 laps
  
• Virtual environments now have neon windows, advertisement billboards replaced with music visualizers and fog

Pickups

• Fixed mines slowing down ships that are holding a shield which auto-deploys
  
• Fixed the shield being picked up when an autopilot is engaged and vice versa
  
• Removed the transfer beam, it has instead been replaced by the emergency pack
  
• Pickups now use a weighting table to determine pickup balances
  
• The emergency pack now works again and is dropped for all ships with critical shield energy, you can now only pickup one per lap
  
• Projectiles can now handle vertical/upside track sections and scenery floors
  
• The turbo now maxes out the ships acceleration
  
• The energy wall bolt now follows a generated spline along the track
  
• The plasma shot is now affected by gravity
  
• Nerfed plasma so it's no longer a one-shot kill weapon for balancing in multiplayer. It continues to deal large amounts of damage and depending on the ship you're using can still instant kill (Diavolt hitting a Tenrai for instance)
  
• Reduced plasma chargeup time from 1 second to half a second
  
• Plasma now slow ships down
  
• The hunter now uses an animation when it's attacking the ship in first place
  
• Reduced mine slowdown
  
• The distance that energy walls deploy and speed of tremors are now determined by the speed class
  
• Tremors and plasma can now destroy energy walls
  
• The hellstorm now uses reticles to provide visual feedback on what's being targeted
  
• Projectiles are now tinted to the track tile below them
  
• The autopilot shield is now a much fainter blue
  
• Ships no longer take damage from their own tremors

AI

• AI now pull away from other ships with a much lower force
  
• AI navigation has been rewritten, they are now much more capable of navigating tracks and are a lot less prone to scraping their noses
  
• Balanced AI stats. AI in the harder difficulties will now provide a lot more challenge. Their performance always remains the same through the entire race, you'll no longer find the AI giving up on the last lap
  
• Ai now only hold onto the cannon for 15 - 25 seconds and the tremor for 8-12 seconds
  
• AI no longer aim for pitlanes when they're disabled

Campaign

• Added custom campaigns support through the use of XML files
  
• Added practice mode. This puts you on an easy Cassandra race and provides a guide on the game's mechanics in the pause menu
  
• Fixed the Ballistic64 cheat not being disabled when playing a campaign event
  
• Fixed campaign progress being saved when in debug mode
  
• Removed the tutorial events, they have been replaced by the new practice mode
  
• Unlocking content now plays an animation
  
• All campaign events have been rebalanced

Multiplayer

• Added support for custom ships. Custom ships are resolved using their file names, so make sure everybody is using the same names for their ships! (shouldn't be an issue for workshop downloads)
  
• Added UPNP support. If the router supports and has UPNP enabled then the port you set in the host menu will be automatically forwarded for your play session
  
• Added new settings to the lobby settings
  
• Added a kick menu for the host, this can only be used in the lobby for people who are also currently in the lobby
  
• Added tournament support, you can select up to 12 tracks and play them back to back without needing to go back to the lobby
  
• Added an in-game player position list
  
• Fixed the code mods check factoring in disabled mods
  
• Fixed ships resetting to world origin when they have finished a race
  
• Fixed players sat in the lobby counting towards the wait timer when a player has finished the race
  
• Fixed an issue where a coroutine left running after the 30 second wait timer would leave the game in a state where it thought the race was over when starting the next track
  
• Your name can now be changed before joining. If running Steam this will default to your Steam username, otherwise it defaults to Player
  
• Errors preventing online functionality are now shown in an overlay
  
• Server hosts can now define what ship classes can be selected before hosting the lobby
  
• Server hosts can now define which port they want to host on
  
• A connecting overlay is now shown while the game waits for a host to respond, this will time out after 30 seconds
  
• When a client searches for a track sent by the server it will now check the supplied workshop ID before trying to match the scene name
  
• The ship/track turntable screens are now in-lobby overlays
  
• Client countdown delegates are now invoked when the server sends countdown triggers
  
• Networked ships no longer take damage on the client-side, this information is already passed to each client each server tick
  
• The shield activation state for ships are now sent to clients
  
• Reduced the size of nametags by 30% and moved the name above the diamond marker, the text is now also hidden when further away
  
• Optimized netcode so less data is sent per tick (roughly 6.4kbps for the host when running an 8 player lobby)
  
• Ship collisions are now disabled for 5 seconds once the race has begun
  
• Projectile are now synced more accurately
  
• Pausing now activates a slow autopilot

VR

• Added a cockpit visibility rating when selecting ships (non mod content only for the time being)
  
• Fixed the missile reticule not facing the player
  
• Fixed the camera on custom tracks not using a bloom prefab being offset
  
• A separate settings.ini file is now used for VR
  
• UI tooltips are now correctly curved when displayed
  
• Some options that can't be changed are now marked so in the options

Modding Tools

• Newly installed C# mods are no longer compiled and enabled by default, they must first be activated in the manage mods menu. On first launch with no mods activated a warning is now displayed
  
• Added Layout Creator 2.0, a new spline based and much more user friendly layout creator. The old one can still be accessed from the same option!

Unity Tools

• Custom tracks are now exported to a single .trk file that contains shaders for DX9, DX11 and OGL. Please use the updated track uploader tool when uploading tracks exported with the new multi-shader files.
  
• Added support for reflective tile maps, you can assign these in the textures tab with the other tile textures
  
• Updated the light sponge to use proper attenuation for their darkening. The old mode is still available, if you want to maintain the older behaviour in your tracksc then you'll want to manually disable this new option in the inspector per sponge
  
• Added a sphere handle that lets you set the radius of light sponges in the scene view
  
• Added Reverse TRM tools:
  BallisticNG -> Utilities -> Export Reversed Trm
  BallisticNG -> Utilities -> Reverse Trm Transfer Tool
  
• Added Track Atlas Exporter
  BallisticNG -> Utilities -> Export Track Diffuse/Illum Atlas
  
• Updated scene references options
  
  • Added AI Look Ahead, this controls how many sections the AI will look forward when navigating the track
    
  • Added hide checkpoint visuals, enabling this will disable the checkpoint meshes and effects so you can make your own
    
  • Skybox Material, drag a Unity Sky compatible material into this field to use Unity's sky instead of setting up your own sky mesh
    
  • Added Welcome To Intercom field, you can use an audioclip here and it will play when the track launches
    
  • Added a new event sections for countdown triggers, you can use these to build your own countdown visuals
    
  • Added disable anti-skip option, this will completely disable the anti-skip on your track
• Updated the Trm Editor
  
  • Gave the editor UI a facelift
    
  • Added a menu item to access it (BallisticNG -> Utilities -> Trm Editor)
    
  • Individual clicks when defining a track segment are now undoable
    
  • Lines are now drawn between placed vertex nodes
    
  • The output track mesh wireframe is no longer drawn, instead being replaced by a quad wireframe
    
  • Added a new drag mode where you can just drag your mouse across a mesh to draw out the section (this implies you're tracing over a BNG shaped track mesh)
    
  • Removed automatic tool (functionally useless)
    
  • Removed junction tools (functionally useless)
    
  • Heavily optimized the wireframe drawing
• Updated the Track Editor
  
  • Added section move mode
    
  • Updated the section dimension discovery code to the game's version. This is only visual, the game re-calculates these when the track is launched
    
  • Optimized the atlas painter, you should experience less hiccups while painting
    
  • Most edits are now undoable
    
  • You can now control magnetic track sections on a per-tile basis
    
  • Magnetic track tiles are now drawn with a purple tint
• Added new assets
  
  • Replaced the old Arrivon XI based example scene, the startup wizard now also offers you to open the new example scene first
    
  • Added new tiles
    
    • Final Luna
      
    • Arrivon Peak
      
    • Omega Harbour
      
    • Atlantica
      
    • Unused Start Grids
      
    • Maglock
      
    • Virtual (layout creator)
      
    • Laser Panels
      
    • Black Illum (use for any tile not using illum textures if there are some tiles that are)
  • Added Reverse Light Bridge Assets (BallisticNGTools/BallisticNG Assets/Reverse Bridge)
    
  • Added Light Bridge sound (BallisticNG Assets/Audio)
    
  • Added new shaders
    
    • BallisticNG/Survival
      
    • BallisticNG/Survival (Double Sided)
      
    • BallisticNG/Survival Transparent
      
    • BallisticNG/Display
      
    • BallisticNG/Display (Double Sided)
      
    • BallisticNG/Building (Cubemap)
      
    • BallisticNG/Building
      
    • BallisticNG/Building (Reflection Probe)
      
    • BallisticNG/Survival Skybox
      
    • BallisticNG/Cloud
      
    • BallisticNG/Laser
      
    • BallisticNG/Survival Environment Detail
  • Added (BallisticNG Assets/Skies/Clouds/Cloud Cover) mesh and (BallisticNG Assets/Skies/Clouds/Cloud) textures folder and an example clouds material
    
  • Added (BallisticNGTools/SharedAssets/DisplayScanLines.png) and (BallisticNGTools/SharedAssets/SurvivalCube.tga)
    
  • Added (BallisticNGTools/SharedAssets/Laser Emitters) folder, full of laser emitter assets
    
  • Added (BallisticNGTools/BallisticNGAssets/Audio/IntercomVoices.flp). This is the FL Studio project file that's used for the in-game intercom voices
    
  • Updated the billboard texture atlases to the latest versions
• Added new scripts
  
  • Added BallisticNG -> Pre-Race -> Rescue Droids and BallisticNG -> Pre-Race -> Intro Overview components
    
  • Added BallisticNG -> Rendering -> Survival EQ Visualizer component, to aid in the creation of these BallisticNGTools/SharedAssets/SurvivalVisHelperTexture.png has also been added
    
  • Added NasVolume, this can be used to define areas where the anti-skip should be disabled and can be attached to any type of object that has a 3D collider
    
  • Added SurvivalEnabled. Using this will make an object only appear when the virtual environment is being used
    
  • Added SurvivalEnvironmentDetail, use this with the shader of the same name to create neon survival elements like the vanilla neon windows
• Added fast play, this lets you quickly launch the game to playtest your track. You can access it from BallisticNG -> Fast Play