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.


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.

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.

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.

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!


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.

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.

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.

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






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.

• 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

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!



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 :)

BallisticNG 1.2.5 is now available. This update focuses on Model B content and adds one of our biggest community requests: multiplayer bots! We also have news regarding development of a Switch port and the next expansion DLC, so see below for that!

All 4 model B tracks have seen an update. These changes rework the scenery to bring them up to scratch with the rest of the game, adds pitlanes, weapon pads for standard ships and introduces reverse variants. Check them out in the showcase videos below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvUglTaZ-G0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEptS1A7KbQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrfgU1I9T38

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSedjAq0yUs

The Model B ship stats have been tweaked to improve their handling. Beforehand they were extremely twitchy and airbraking was particularly bad as you wouldn't keep much lateral momentum through corners. These changes make the ships more manoeuvrable but also makes them drift longer, making them less twitchy to manage at high speeds.

Light bridges used to be really finicky to play on because they had no walls and often didn't really follow a racing line. For 1.2.5 we've updated all of them with a new design that includes walls and repaths them onto better lines. Here's a showcase video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn2k7BxVgUI

Mulltiplayer now has bots! When you create a new lobby Novice bots will now fill in empty spaces. You can configure the difficulty to any of the difficulties in the game or just turn them off completely. It's important to note that AI don't have rubber banding enabled in multiplayer, so if you're used to the AI being harder because of rubber banding then you're more likely to school them in multiplayer.

Here's some cool bot facts:

• Bots do not take up server slots. If somebody joins when a race with bots is happening, they'll simply just wait in the lobby like before and the bot for their player slot won't be spawned in the next race.
  
• Bots will use whatever ship folder the host's current ship is from, including custom ships.
  
• Bots are ran on the server and treated by everybody but the host as real players.

We've also randomised spawn positions for each player, so your position on the start grid is no longer determined by the players join order.

For this update we've implemented vertical splitscreen. The game will now default to this mode and you can switch between vertical and horizontal using the new option in custom race.

Alongside this addition we've also fixed all of the splitscreen rendering bugs with ships, such as the ship still rendering in internal cam and airbrakes disappearing for the other player when you're in internal/cockpit cameras. UI scaling for splitscreen has also been improved, making the scale between aspect ratios more consistent and less prone to overlap in square ratios.

Finally we've also updated our HUD system to support vertical splitscreen variants, which has allowed us to build vertical splitscreen compatible HUD designs where needed.

For all changes to mod tools, check out the read the docs What's New page:
https://ballisticng-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/unity_tools/whats_new.html

In our 1.2.5 preview announcement we had mentioned having some huge news...


(artwork not final)

We are excited to announce the start of development for BallisticNG NX Edition, a port of BallisticNG to the Switch! Some of the features we've added in this update was in preparation for this ;)

We're developing the port ourselves and will be building it from the same codebase as the PC version so we can keep both versions as consistent as possible. This means future updates for the PC version will be getting lots of hidden changes to make it possible to support the largely different platforms. It's lots of work in the short term, but long term it will be much easier for us to maintain both versions of the game side by side.

This is a long term project and there is a lot to do before it'll be anywhere near done, so currently we don't have a release window and it will be ready when it's ready,

Right now we're getting familiar with the hardware and testing out systems to make sure everything works. We'll have a future announcement where we go more in-depth with what we're working on and what you can expect out of the Switch version.

For now though, yes it will have user generated content!

It's about time we announce the next expansion pack we've been planning for the past couple of months.


The BallisticNG Maceno Island expansion will be bringing the tropical island of Maceno into full focus with 6 new tracks, a new set of liveries and a new campaign. Maceno Bay will finally make its finished appearance alongside another track that has never existed as something playable but as something you have probably seen ;)

As with the Switch port there is no release window so we have plenty of time to pour all we have into both of these new projects. As with Neon Nights and Outer Reaches we will keep you up to date with all of the latest additions as we go.

We'll have another announcement at a later date to further detail the expansion, so stay tuned!

• Model B Tweaks:
  
  • Turn Falloff reduced from 1 to 0.8
    
  • Turn Speed increased from 1.7 to 1.9
    
  • Airbrake Drift Falloff decreased from 14 to 8
• The ships convex environment collider is now generated as a separate object from the visual mesh. (needed change to fix various splitscreen rendering issues)

• All reverse tracks updated with new light bridge designs
  
• Tokyo bowl updated with pitlane, increased width, weapon pads, new scenery and a reverse variant
  
• Relay updated with pitlane, weapon pads, reverse variant and minor scenery tweaks to adjust for the new pitlane
  
• Underpass updated with pitlane, weapon pads, new scenery and a reverse variant
  
• Lujiazui Park updated with pitlane, weapon pads, reverse variant and new scenery
  
• Custom tracks now have a material shader translation applied to the scene skybox if one is present
  
• Fixed grip override for non Model C ships not working on the Model C tracks below Zen class
  
• Fixed Zephyr Climb being next to impossible on Floor Hugger due to jump collision meshes

• Implemented vertical splitscreen, which is now the default mode. The split direction can be changed in the custom race menu.
  
• Engine effects for the other player are now drawn as the AI version
  
• Lens flares now store a visible state per player to fix lens flares always rendering in splitscreen
  
• Fixed airbrakes not rendering for the other player if in internal/cockpit view
  
• Fixed cockpits not rendering
  
• Fixed contrail effects not rendering for the other player if in internal/cockpit view. The cheaper AI contrails are now also used when rendering the other players ship too.

• Implemented bot support
  
• The race complete screen now shows the race finish countdown that players still racing see
  
• Spawn positions are now randomized

• Cursor images are now 32x32 so they're the right size on Linux (Bug in Unity prevents hardware cursor from working on it)
  
• When adjusting the HUD scaler for splitscreen, the difference in aspect ratio in reference to a 16:9 display is now used to better scale elements so they always fit on screen at the same relative scale.
  
• Name tags and health bars are now clipped by their UI canvas to stop overlap happening in vertical splitscreen
  
• Name tags and health bars now work in VR

• Added Step Game option to the render tab, allowing you to advanced the game by a physics frame. Note that you will be kicked out of photomode if you step into the frame where your ship completes the event.

• Exposed the game's audio manager as NgAudio. See the updated read the docs for more information.

• The documentation button now leads to the read the docs page instead of the old, now deleted, wiki page.

Alongside this announcement we have pushed an update that fixes custom music crashes. Right now the virtual music visualization effects don't work but we will be working on getting them working again in a future update.

As a bonus our tilemap building tool is now available on Linux, and we've updated the Windows release to now use OpenGL. If you're making custom tracks you can grab it from the google drive folders here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First and foremost, a much requested feature has been implemented and will be coming with 1.2.5: multiiplayer bots!

Bots are an optional setting for both Direct IP and Steam lobbies which allows the host to decide if they'll be added and set what their difficulty level will be. When enabled the standard roster of ships will fill in empty player slots.

To bridge gaps on the reverse tracks we use light bridges. They've always been really janky in that they've never had walls and some of them didn't flow well with the racing line. 1.2.5 will be addressing this with an updated design that includes walls and better integrates them into the tracks layout. In short, no more threading the needle on reverse tracks!




1.2.5's main focus is following up on 1.2.4 by updating the Model B content and giving it all some much needed love.

Every Model B track is being updated to include a pitlane, weapon pads for normal ships, updated scenery and reverse variants. We're also taking this as an opportunity to address issues with the layouts and make tweaks to the Model B ships to make them feel better to control.

Here's a look at tokyo bowl, the first of the tracks to be updated!
The track has been re-imagined drastically, with the track now being raised off the floor and the center housing vehicle parking and venues to make the most out of the huge area the bowl sits in.






There's also some HUGE news that we will be revealing alongside the 1.2.5 release, so stay tuned ;)

BallisticNG 1.2.4 is now available!

This update focuses on adding Model C specific content the game, with 4 new tracks designed around the Model C ships. All 4 tracks are free and part of the base game. Simply download the update to start playing them!

Note for Linux users:
We will be implementing a separate audio library for custom music in a future update to address crashing. We hope to have this out in the near future.

With 1.2 we updated the Model C ships to bring them up to spec with the other ships. They were in the game but inaccessible without custom tracks until 1.2 where we made them available on every track.

The Model C tracks bring in 4 new tracks designed for these ships. You can even play them with any other ship and they'll all have drifty physics!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eh9M1LgNV4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtZmNXBjDCI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N9_Dx56a68
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCVRMOmYpBI

We've added the ability to lock custom ship liveries behind campaigns. Like with the DLC liveries, if a ship creator decides to do this you will need to gold or platinum an entire campaign to unlock the liveries. This supports both offical and custom campaigns!

More information can be found here: https://ballisticng-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/unity_tools/custom_ships/ingame_prefab/liveries_setup.html

After a suggestion in our discord, we've exposed the attract mode to the custom race menu so you can setup AI only races with ships and a track that you want.

Attract mode is what the game launches when you idle on the title bar of the menu for a little bit. All ships are controlled by AI and you are simply spectating an endless race.

The game now has a controller definition for the new Sony DualSense. The controller would work before but was detected as a generic controller. This added definition does the following:

• Adds default bindings for the controller
  
• Correctly Displays Sony DualSense on the menu instead of Wireless Controller
  
• Displays the Playstation button icon set on the menu. This now also includes the create button, updated options button, mute button and touchpad press.

Rewired currently doesn't support DualSense features so if vibration is important to you then we recommend sticking to Steam's Input wrapper or Ryochan7's DS4Windows fork.

All Unity Tools (custom ships, tracks and HUDs) changes can be viewed here:
https://ballisticng-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/unity_tools/whats_new.html


Credits

• Protonic logo added to Vista's credit listing

Music

• Added Vonsnake - Combined Arms

User Interface

• The red background for beating an event in hard mode now applies whenever the event has a platinum medal, regardless of whether hard mode was actually used or not

Layout Creator

• Fixed tangent rotations being overridden when pasting shape data

Photo Mode

• Fixed ship shadows still being enabled when using the environment only draw mode

Ships

• Added ship to ship scrape particles
  
• Custom ships can now lock liveries behind gold/platinum completions of campaigns
  
• Fixed crashes related to the autopilot
  
• Fixed the left airbrake closing slower then the right airbrake on the Model C ships.

Engine

• Fixed the survival sky shader turning black when the vertical rendering resolution was low enough (menu background, CRt set to low on nova park, etc)

Options

• Added setting for different shield animations (Down, Along and Legacy). The option can be found in the Graphics -> Effects menu
  
• The framelimiter can now go down to 20fps

Commands

• Added ping command. This will return the round trip latency between you and the current multiplayer server.

Campaign

• The Barracuda Challenge is no longer mirrored

Tracks

• Added Pocono Circuit (Model C Category)
  
• Added Meads Pass (Model C Category)
  
• Added Arrivon Falls (Model C Category)
  
• Added Pacheon (Model C Category)
  
• Free tracks package updated with sky shader fix for Nova Park
  
• Fixed the aurora on Harpstone Reverse being affected by the distance clipping retro option

Gamemodes

• Exposed the attract gamemode to the custom race menu
  
• Ships now have god mode in attract mode

Input

• Added controller definitions for the Sony DualSense

Multiplayer

• Pressing menu back or right clicking in the lobby settings menu will now back out and save the settings
  
• Afterburner option has been replaced with the boost mechanic option seen in custom races
  
• The post race leaderboard now sorts entries by total race time instead of what each client and the server reports the positions as. This fixes weird issues where server latency in very tight races would screw up the results listing.

Lua Scripting

• Fixed the raw ShipTriggerInfo data being fed into OnShipEnter/Exit instead of the direct ship reference

This update is a smaller one and focuses on engine changes, new modding tools and modding tool fixes.

We're continuing to investigate issues with custom music. We don't have a time frame on a fix at the moment but we will keep you updated with any advancements on the issue.

Return to Nova Split in this virtual blueprint of the park before it was destroyed. This track makes use of our lightmapper update mentioned below to provide more vibrant lighting.

Nova Park is part of the free tracks expansions. Simply download 1.2.3 to get this track added to the Extras category on the menu.

There's even more free content coming in the near future, so stay tuned!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceklYdgY9fk




For the full Unity Tools changelog, see the what's new section of the documentation website:
https://ballisticng-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/unity_tools/whats_new.html

Getting Started Guide

Lua scripts can now be written for custom tracks! These allow you to build your own procedual animations and create new behaviours, gameplay features and modify stuff like ship physics and AI settings for your tracks.

Scripts are sandboxed and can only access what the game tells them they can access, so are safe to have in tracks.

The hologram on Nova Park is an example of Lua being used to drive an animation!

Recently myself and community member Kabelsalat released two tracks based on layouts we created for each other and this update incorporates the style into the layout creator play mode. This is also the style that was used for Nova Park.

Tracks are here, by the way ;)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2248225033&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2248229262&searchtext=

Two new terrain shaders have been added that take the base established for the Terrain 4 Blend shader and implement vertex color based texture blending.

We have also provided a .blend file with a material inside which will allow you to preview vertex color texture blending as you're painting them in Blender.

Note: These shaders require the new Encode In Tangents options to be setup in a lightmapping options script to work, otherwise lighting will override the vertex colors used for blending. See the documentation website for more details.

Lighting is now 32-bit instead of 8-bit. We haven't updated any internal tracks with this so this change at the moment is entirely for mod creators and Nova Park.

Lighting will continue to be 8-bit until you rebake it on your tracks, after which the track will be upgraded to 32-bit.

So what does this do exactly?
Up until now lighting in BallisticNG has been stored using single bytes per color channel. This provides a whopping 16,777,216 possible colors, but we can go way higher then that.

32-bit stores these colors using 4 bytes per channel instead and it effectively gives you HDR. Where having lots of bright colors would previously blend into white, those colors in the updated lightmapper will bleed into each other and make a brighter blend of themselves. This also affects lit objects like ships too.

Ship cockpits are an exception to this change as letting really bright tiles light them up can bllind you with the canopy enabled, so cockpit lighting remains the same as before.

A github repository for example code mods has been created. Right now this contains an example Grenades weapon (thanks Kabelsalat for the voice line!).

If you'd like a hands on example of writing code mods, here's the link: https://github.com/bigsnake09/ExamplesNG

The compiled and ready to use mod is also provided ;)

Credits

• Vista added to credits for contributing logos for M-Tech and Lance Systems (precision delta). You can check out the new logos in-game along the start grid for Nova Park.

Layout Creator 2

• Now uses VLM 2 for baking lighting when entering play mode
  
• Play mode now uses the new virtual environment visuals from Nova Park

Tracks

• Added Nova Park

User Interface

• Fixed the wrong tooltip showing for the speed measurement option
  
• Fixed the level up overlay not showing when returning from campaign events
  
• Fixed name tags and shield bars rendering on top of other important UI elements

Engine

• Implemented a LUA interpreter for running user scripts on tracks
  
• Lighting colors are now stored in 32-bit, removing the previous headroom for lighting where colors would end up combining into white.
  
• Survival togglers now check for empty meshes before attempting to split vertices for the survival environment

Code Mods

• Added URL to the modding folder that links to a github repo of example mods
  
• Data types from mods can be exposed to the LUA interpreter by attributing a class or struct with [ExposeToLua]
  
• Fixed the wrong directory being fed to mod registers if there are code mods that are disabled
  
• Custom huds can now be registered from pre-loaded HudComponents objects, allowing huds to be stored in and loaded from NGA files
  
• Implemented asset loading API. See the Unity Tools documentation for more information.

Note for custom ships creators:
This update makes big changes to the shield and weapon power stats and how they interact with weapon damages. This results in custom ships now being damage sponges in comparison to the vanilla ships. To make the transition easier for anybody who wants to maintain a balance with the vanilla ships, all of the updated ship stats are now provided in the Unity Tools packages as XML files. The stat prefab system now uses these too!

Bling up your ship and show off with 4 new shiny liveries! This small pack introduces Gold, Iridescent, Platinum and Psychedelic liveries for every standard ship.

If you were previously a donator in the game's Patreon days and already have the gold liveries then these new liveries are available to you at no cost!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/580180/BallisticNG__Bling_Pack/

The Unity Tools have had a few updates, see the documentation for more information: https://ballisticng-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/unity_tools/whats_new.html

We're also pleased to announce the introduction of workflow tools!
We're switching to Blender for our asset development so there's currently plenty of work being done to build tools to aid with the BallisticNG workflow. These tools are being built with the community in mind so they are free to download and to use however you like, even for non BNG related projects.

A URL shortcut is now provided in the modding folder to link you directly to the downloads, or if you just want the link now: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zeO7PK-6nkatEN6sd0rTuJKbU_lzOdTG

Right now these tools primarily consist of utilities to speed up UVing from an atlas texture, similar to what sprytile lets you do, but we'll be adding new stuff as we go.


BallisticNGs combat is a system that hasn't had much attention in recent times. In singleplayer this has been fine as the AI were always at a disadvantage and the game was always balanced around that, but we've seen clear problems with how everything was balanced in multiplayer and this update has been long under consideration.

This update focuses on adjusting combat to standardise the singleplayer and multiplayer experience, make needed changes to ship stat distributions, touch up the AI and give you a whole lot of new gameplay and HUD options.

We've also scrapped the pilot assist and replaced it with separate AI assists. More info this below!

Ship combat stats have been updated to bring the roster much closer together. This means every ship is now a lot more consistent with every other ship and firepower/shields makes much less of a difference then before. You'll still be able to bully a Tenrai using a Diavolt, but it's no longer a difference so great that it makes sense to just stick with Diavolt for that one trait alone.

Weapons have been made weaker so the focus can now be more on the race then on combat. Modes like eliminator and team race are of course still focused on combat and the scoring for these are still the same.

If you're interested in all of the stat changes, see the full changelog below.

The AI has seen a huge backend overhaul that completely rewrites how they navigate the track. This has also allowed us to also introduce new ways to control their difficulty more like how a human players skill differs, instead of just telling the AI to accelerate at certain speed thresholds to simulate difficulty.

We've also introduced rubber banding so the AI can keep pace. The rubber banding has limits so you won't be seeing them shoot down the track at lightning speeds, but you should now feel the pressure in the higher AI difficulties.

If you don't want the rubber banding we've also introduced an option to turn it off in the new assists options menu. This option is completely optional and does not restrict any of the game's functionality if it's turned off.

Finally one thing we've seen in reviews and people doing lets plays is some people not understanding why the AI take off the start grid really fast so when playing in Novice, like at the start of the campaign, the AI start boost is now disabled to better represent the understanding of mechanics that a new player will have.

We've killed the old pilot assist option and instead rewrote it and split it into three separate options, available in the new assists options in the game options menu.

These assists give you a speed handicap, disable online functionality and in some modes such as Survival won't be available.

Steer Assist: An AI will provide a steering assist. This scales with your input, so fully turning will disable the assist so you still have complete control of the ship when you need it.

Pitch Assist: An AI will provide a pitch assist. Like the steering assist this scales with your input so you can maintain manual control.

Airbrake Assist: An AI will provide airbrake tap assists. This doesn't scale to input and the AI will always be providing inputs for this sit it just flips the airbrakes on.

Utah Dam is a new free track that takes you back to Utah Project to race on an alternative circuit that drops you underground into the water processing chambers below. Simply update to 1.2.2 to get this track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq6ZTTblyM8






Music

• Added Xpand - Menu 2 to the OST folder
  
• Added Paused Playback option (enabled by default)
  
• Fixed various issues with custom track music when continuous playback is enabled

Audio

• Custom sounds are now read from their absolute path instead of their relative path (fix for regression of soundpacks not working on MacOS since 1.2)

Tracks

• Added Utah Dam
  
• Fixed survival disable and survival ignore track not working on custom tracks
  
• Fixed the AI not using racing lines on Arrivon Peak
  
• Fixed start line position tracking issues on Luna
  
• Fixed incorrect wall tiles on Tokyo Bowl and Hydrome Bed
  
• Fixed the music visualizer advert replacements scaling their layout with the screen resolution

Ships

• Rebalanced shield and weapons stats. The frontend combat stats are now also accurate.
  
• Reduced wall collision damage by 30%. (survival mode has been accomodated for so damages are still the same)
  
• Ship cannon fire rates are now determined by an option on the ship instead of being automatic
  
• Decreased threshold for ship to ship bounce collisions
  
• Rewrote airbrake drift code to properly respond to analog inputs
  
• Reduced Orbitronix's grip from 10 to 5.75

Weapons

• Removed AI to Player damage reduction multipliers and rebalanced weapons around multiplayer player vs player
  
• Increased minimum integrity threshold for the emergency pack from 10% to 25%
  
• The energy wall is no longer collidable as it plays the fade out animation
  
• The warning for AI missiles is now triggered when the AI picks the missile up
  
  • Fixed tremors flinging ships high on sections marked to allow out of bounds
    
  • Tremor damage now deals 8% first impact damage instead of 0.7 damage per physics tick
    
  • Increased tremor effective height
    
  • Increased tremor slowdown
    
  • Increased tremor distance from 75 sections to 120 sections
    
  • Reduced rocket damage from 35 to 12
    
  • Missiles now ignore gravity if they're flying and have a lock-on
    
  • Reduced missile damage from 30 to 15
    
  • Reduced cannon damage from 0.8 to 0.5
    
  • Decreased difference in cannon type fire rates
    
  • Reduced hunter damage from 30 to 8
    
  • Increased velocity loss from hunter impacts
    
  • Reduced hellstorm damage from 36 to 15
    
  • Reduced plasma damage from 90 to 70
    
  • Reduced tremor pickup weighting from 30 to 12
    
  • Reduced energy wall pickup weighting from 25 to 5
    
  • Reduced slowdown from cannons

Multiplayer

• Fixed mines being spawned with the wrong rotation

Code Mods

• All assemblies are now loaded before executing mod registers, removing the need for ordered loading if sharing data between DLLs

User Interface

• Fixed scaling issues with the custom race menu on ultrawide resolutions
  
• Added handling of an edge case for the resolution selector where Unity might not return a resolution
  
• The AI difficulty is now shown on the campaign event details box
  
• Ship information overlays now scale with distance and are correctly depth sorted

Options

• HUD and Assists sub-menus have been added to the game options menu
  
• Removed pilot assist option from the pause menu
  
• Added thrust toggle option to the controls menu
  
• Added option to toggle the low energy warning voice. Defaults to on
  
• Added option to toggle the critical energy warning voice. Defaults to on
  
• Added option to toggle AI rubber banding. Defaults to on
  
• Added options to enable new steer, pitch and airbrake assists. Defaults to off.
  
• Added option to set the units the speedometer uses. Defaults to metric.
  
• Added option to show the racer position list in singleplayer. Defaults to off
  
• Added option to show all ships on the position bar. Defaults to off
  
• Added option to show shield bars in races. Defaults to off
  
• Added option for the default camera mode when starting in zero-g (Kuiper Overturn). Defaults to rear chase

AI

• Increased minimum shield before pitting from 25% to 50%
  
• Ai now spread themselves apart more at the start of the race
  
• Reworked AI steering to simulate steering the ship instead of forcing their rotation towards where they're heading
  
• AI ships now slow down if they're exceeding the capabilities of the ship they're piloting
  
• Removed Ai grounding force. They will now fly just as high as the player can
  
• Ai now brake if they're about to hit another ship in front of them
  
• Rewrote Ai track navigation to be based on time instead of section offsets
  
• Fixed an issue where AI would use airbrakes and/or slow down on track sections like maglock drops, loops and corkscrews
  
• AI wall avoidance forces now slow the ship down and worsen the AIs racing line for a brief moment
  
• Implemented optional rubber banding

Engine

• Section floor widths are now cached on track startup
  
• A warning is now thrown to the output log when there are racing lines but none are available to be used (for track creators)
  
• Fixed an issue where the position tracking would not correctly track two ships on different routes if their section index was the same
  
• The buffer for custom music playback is now re-used (small performance boost)

Commands

• Added test_damage
  
• Added gm_timescale

Campaign

• Reduced AI speed on the base game 1v1 events
  
• Rebalanced the first half of the base game campaign to introduce experienced and expert difficulties earlier on, akin to the expansion campaigns (novice is now super easy)

Photo mode

• Player ship trails are now swapped over to the AI trail

Outer Reaches

• Fixed the pitlane on Caldera not being marked as a pitlane for the AI