https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx7ruNdS100
Almost a year and a half in development, we're excited to bring you the BallisticNG 1.4 update!
1.4 is all about 2280, redesigned menus, quality of life improvements, more modding tools, and many significant under the hood changes to enable it all. Oh, and the game is now also Steam Deck verified!
A huge thanks to the internal testing group and community who've played the builds and provided feedback throughout the course of this updates development!
1.4 is so big that we can't fit the full changelog into a Steam announcement, so if you'd like to see every little change then you can read that on our website here:
https://neognosis.games/2025/05/01/ballisticng-1-4-is-now-released/
We are now entering the 1.4 support cycle, where we will continue to expand on the 1.4 update with smaller additions and fix any remaining issues that crop up along the way. To see what's coming for 1.4.1 and 1.4.2, check out our roadmap.
Notices
New Inputs
New input binds for variant selection and opening the advanced content selectors have been added in 1.4. If you're using an officially supported controller then these binds will be added automatically, otherwise you'll need to add them manually in the input options menu. Keyboard controls also have these binds added automatically.
Barrel Roll Inputs
The steer wiggle inputs for barrel rolls have been changed to releasing and then quickly re-pressing the thrust input. This can be changed in the Input Options menu, but we've changed the default to thrust tap for ergonomic purposes.
Leaderboards Reset
As we've made category balancing changes for 1.4, the leaderboards have been reset to give everybody a clean slate to work with.
Legacy Layout Creator Depreciated
The legacy layout creator has been depreciated with 1.4. It's still in the game for compatibility but now needs to be accessed through the mod_legacylayoutcreator console command.
Camera Option Changes
Camera settings have been split out so each camera view has it's own unique set of options. Your camera settings will be reset in 1.4 because of these changes.
Moved Preset Locations
Ui preset locations have been changed and the game won't automatically migrate them. If you've been using custom AI rosters then you'll want to move the following:
- User > Config > Ini > Ai Presets, to User > Config > Presets > Ai Rosters
With the fundamental changes to multiplayer settings in 1.4, old lobby presets are no longer compatible.
Dedicated Server Changes
There have been a lot of backend changes to multiplayer to prepare it for future updates and the configuration for dedicated servers has changed.
See the updated example CFG, random lobby lua example script and LUA documentation txt for more details.
BNGL Bundled
BallisticNG now ships with a sample of Radracers BallisticNG legacy project. This contains a large snapshot of tracks and ships from various points in the games development, ported as mods.
These mods need to be installed manually and can be found in the Additional Content folder where the game is installed.
For GOG users, these files can be found in your library on the GOG website as a goodie.
If you already have the full BNGL directly from Radracer or have downloaded BNGL content from the workshop, you already have everything this bundle includes.
Unity Tools
If you're making mods, you can find the changelog and download for the latest Unity Tools here:
https://github.com/Neognosis-Workflow/BallisticNG-Unity-Tools/releases/tag/1.4
The NeoTilemap and NeoModeling Blender addons have also been updated to support the Blender 4 releases.
2280
Let's start with the big one: The 2280 Update.
2280 was originally a port of the physics from one of BallisticNG's predecessor projects; AGR2280. The mode was added as a cheat but gained popularity throughout Early Access and has seen many tweaks over the years. We were even planning on creating dedicated content for it around version 0.8.
It was ultimately left on the backburner so we could focus on 2159 physics and content for it, but with the game now reaching the end of major development, we felt it was time to strip 2280 out and then re-implement it from scratch to meet the original vision of the AGR2280 project. Basically, we've come full circle :)
The core changes:
- 2280 physics and camera has been rewritten from scratch, with only the ships thrust physics being shared with 2159 for speed consistency.
- 2280 now has its own set of ship stats which allow for indepth control of how each ship handles in the mode. If ships aren't given unique 2280 stats, 2159 stats will be interpreted like before.
- 2280 is now a physics mode only. The built in game rule modifiers have been split out and can be toggled for any physics mode.
- 2280 leaderboards have been added and you can now also set local records with it, as it's no longer considered a cheat.
- 3d track pads are no longer used. They'll however still be used if present in custom tracks.
2280 Ships
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H70c0Hk-VTQ
Created in collaboration with several community members, the majority of ships in the game now have 2280 versions! These are selected by using the new the variant select inputs in the ship selector (bumper buttons on a controller by default).
These are purely cosmetic changes and don't impact stats. They do however have different tilt angles and camera positions then the 2159 versions so both variants of a ship have a different feel whilst still performing exactly the same.
Note: 2280 ships do not enable 2280 physics and can be used in any physics mode.
2159 Track Compatibility
The existing tracks are not designed with 2280 in mind, however we wanted to make sure that you still get a decent experience with them when using 2280. We've combed through every track in the game and updated them with 2280 exclusive physics zones to take out the rough edges when playing in 2280.
These physics zones increase gravity and orientate the ship to the track below them as ships are lighter in 2280 and need some assistance. 2280 tracks will be designed around the lighter aspect of the ships.
AGL2280
AGL2280 is a new DLC sized campaign, introducing you to 2280 in a remix of the base games AGL campaign.
We've included a new tutorial / practice event with it's own guide specifically for 2280 to get you up to speed with how the mode works and the mechanics you'll be using throughout the campaign.
Gullfoss Run
The first of several to come, Gullfoss Run is a track that's playable in all physics modes but designed for 2280 first and foremost. A few people might recognize this tracks layout ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymO62XJxsek
User Interface
Redesigned Menus
Every menu in the game has been redesigned both visually and in layout. Everything is now consistent, cleaner and requires less effort to navigate through.
This is an update that has been long coming for one of the game's weakest areas, and we've incorporated a lot of feedback into these menus to make sure it's easier for everybody to get into the game.
The New Layout
Everything is now vertically laid out. The landing screen, the pause menus, content selection... everything.
Horizontal inputs are now reserved for changing options or switching tabs.
Keyboard / Mouse Interactions
The new menus are controller centric in design, but considerations for desktop use are still in place with new ways to access and enter data in a way that's keyboard and mouse friendly.
Hover a mouse over any option value and you'll see a little blip under the first character to signify you can click it for a keyboard/mouse interaction, such as typing in values for a slider or bringing up a fullscreen list for selectors.
The input glyphs you see at the bottom of the screen can also be clicked on to perform the action that input glyph is for.
You can right click to go back in menus, which the game has always had, but we've made sure it's now in every menu and not randomly omitted for any reason!
Option Menus
The option menus have seen a significant overhaul to better organize their contents and make it much simpler to tweak settings and get out. BallisticNG has a lot of options, so we've also added a search function!
Instead of having two separate back and save buttons, you now just back out of the menu and you'll be prompted to save any changes that you had made. The prompt also gives you an option to review every change that you've made.
It's also useful to know what options do, so the right side of the interface is dedicated to an explanation of what the highlighted setting does. We've spent some time writing detailed explanations and suggestions for each option to help you get the game setup the way you'd like.
Steam Deck / Big Picture Keyboard Overlays
When playing on the Steam Deck or in Big Picture with Steam running and the in-game overlay enabled. the game will now use Steam's keyboard instead of the game's internal keyboard when entering text with a controller.
Ui Scaling
Menus and HUDs can now be scaled! This also includes padding adjustments for the menu and horizontal margin scaling for HUDs, allowing you to fine tune how compact everything is on top of its scale.
Hud Design Tweaks
HUDs have seen some design tweaks to bring them in line with the new menu design and to make some elements less intrusive.
Lists of information (scores, campaign awards, etc) are now styled like tables in the new result screens, giving them a clean look with background which help them stand out against bright scenes.
Name tags and shield energy bars have seen a large update, stripping out all unncessary elements and making them much more compact.
There are of course more changes then this, but these are the two largest and most notable changes. The rest are minor aesthetic tweaks to touch things up.
Signed Distance Field Text Rendering
When updating all UIs and HUDs, we also replaced all text components with Unity's TextMeshPro component, which uses SDF rendering to maintain font sharpness regardless of the resolution.
This works well for 4k, but also helps with text legibility if you're playing at low resolutions as well!
The top half of the image above shows the original text component. The bottom half shows TextMeshPro at the same scale.
Content
Ship and Track Variants
Coinciding with the 2280 ships, it's now possible for ships to have multiple prefabs for more customization of a ship beyond just its liveries. Internally we're using this system for model swaps and cosmetic stat changes with the 2280 ships, but mods can do whatever they like with variants.
Tracks not only have variants, but also additional courses. A track variant is treated as the forward/reverse version of a course, and an additional course allows you to select the route to play. This allows us to significantly tidy up the user interface to make it easier to find and select what you want to play. Like with ships we have our own specific use for this system, but mods are free to do whatever they feel like with this!
Mods work with this system by choosing a track or ship to be the main selection, marking variants as hidden on the menu and then referencing those variants in the main ship / track. if the main ship / track is not available then any content marked as hidden will be shown to make sure you can always access it, making sure there aren't any hard dependency requirements.
Reworked Reverse Track Pad Layouts & Maglocks
Starting with Freyr Falls in the Maceno Island DLC, we had started paying more attention to the layout of track pads on reverse tracks to make sure they're in appropriate places and are fun to hit.
Almost every reverse track in the game and its DLCs have received a pad layout update. Note that the number of speed and weapon pads are the same, we've only moved them around.
We've also updated the pad layout for Thunderhead forward as it was a bit chaotic.
While making these changes, we've also replaced the Atlantica Reverse and Luna Reverse maglifts with maglocks. The maglifts were a solution back before maglock physics were properly implemented and we didn't feel like light bridges fit. These were always a bit janky, but had become much more of a problem with the new 2280. These maglocks make these two sections much more playable.
More Modular Custom Race / Multiplayer
Multiplayer settings have been merged into custom race settings to maintain parity between singleplayer and multiplayer automatically. Anything that you set in custom races can now be set in multiplayer, and the interfaces also remain consistent.
Custom race has seen a handful of settings being added. Some come from the split of 2280 mechanics, others are just cool things that have been requested or we think you'll find fun to mess around with.
Added options:
- Track Recovery (rescue droid or instant)
- Shield Recovery Mechanic (none, pitlane, weapon absorb or mixed)
- Weapon Damage Multiplier
- Collision Damage Multiplier
- AI Speed Multiplier
- Speed Pads Toggle
- Weapon Pad Disable Time Multiplier
- Force Weapons Toggle
Changed options:
- Customize Weapons renamed to Custom Weapon Pool
- The boost mechanic option now supports none (parity with multiplayer)
- Difficulty renamed to AI Difficulty
There's now a lot of options and you might have a specific setup that you want to recall at a later date, so:
Presets:
- Save custom weapon pools as a preset
- Save every option in the custom race menu as presets (including custom weapon pools)
- Save tournament track lists as a preset
Additionally, the game now also remembers the tracks you had selected in the previous ran tournament when returning to the tournament menu.
Improved AI Flare Rendering
Ai ship flares have always clipped with ships, which has been mostly okay since the ship designs don't make it completely egregious, but some of the new 2280 ships started to show the cracks in the previous setup.
We've updated the AI flare shader so flares stay on top correctly, and it now provides some additional functionality which has allowed us to setup flares on ships with flame engines too. The AI flare can now also be overridden, which gives custom ship authors some new toys to play with!
Model B Content Updates
We've made some tweaks to the Model B content to further refine it and make it more fun.
- Dropped the extra laps count on Model B tracks to 5 (from 10)
- Adjusted Model B stats to make them less twitchy and smoother to handle in the higher speed
classes
- Removed the slow acceleration from drag mode. Hitting a wall is no longer a guaranteed loss.
Gamemode Updates
Gamemodes have seen updates in 1.4, from tweaks to complete rewrites to eliminate as many bugs as possible.
All
- 2280 is no longer a cheat and can now be used to set local records
- Fixed eliminated and results screen opening when both players are eliminated in splitscreen.
Speed Lap
- Added explanation of what ending a session does when quitting from the pause menu
- Fixed typo in gamemode description
Survival
- Added explanation of what ending a session does when quitting from the pause menu
- The Survival results screen now respects the selected speed measurement option
- The elimination sequence can now be skipped
- Fixed custom ship selections being lost when restarting without selecting new content
- Fixed total time being counted while the ship is eliminated
- Fixed start boost not triggering in 2280
Rush Hour
- Added explanation of what ending a session does when quitting from the pause menu
- Increased global drain rate by 50% (faster pacing)
- The drain rate is now logarithmic instead of linear to prevent clumps of eliminations
- Fixed the mode not ending in splitscreen
- Fixed typo in gamemode description
Knockout
- Rewritten from scratch to fix numerous bugs
Stunt
- Wall collisions no longer break chains
- Increased combo chain time from 2.5 to 3 seconds
- 2280 is now disabled
Time Trial
- Medals are now awarded in custom races depending on the time difference when beating a previous record:
- Setting first record: gold
- Beating previous record by half a second: bronze
- Beating previous record by 1 second: silver
- Beating previous record by 2 seconds: gold
- Bating previous record by 4 seconds: platinum
Upsurge
- Added deploy animation to barriers
- Added shared deployment cooldown to AI to prevent them from creating large clusters of barriers immediately in lower difficulties
- Increased minimum speed pad zone charge amount by 100% (faster pacing).
- Absorbing now only consumes a single zone (allow more granular recovery of health and more strategic use of shields)
- Updated description to better explain mechanics
- Fixed start boost not triggering in 2280
Modding
Category Editor
Manually installing mods provides the luxury of using folders to categorize installed content in the menu. If you're using the Steam workshop however, you haven't had this ability... until now.
On the menu, navigate to Modding -> Categories Editor. In this menu you can create categories for ships and tracks separately and then assign any custom content you want into them. Any changes you make will be applied immediately while the game's running.
Content will be moved out of its original category and into any categories that you've assigned it to.
Note that this tool can only be used for custom ships and tracks. The game's internal content can't be re-organised.
Refresh Content In-Game
It's now possible to install mod content while the game's running!
Use the new Modding-> Refresh Content option on the menu to start the refresh. This will unload mod content that have been deleted, load mods that were added and will also handle content being moved between folders.
Campaign Editor Additions
Campaigns, and the campaign editor, have had some additional features added to them:
- Added support for gamemode configuration overrides
- Added support for custom weapon pools
- Added support for forcing AI and Player ship variants
- Added option to change a campaigns display name
- Added options to copy and paste campaign events
Faster custom track loading
We've made a few optimizations to track section processing and custom track data conversion that has significantly sped up the loading of custom tracks. A typical custom track should now more or less match the load speed of internal tracks.
In our most extreme test case, a track with over 3000 sections has gone from 30+ seconds of load time to just 7, with most of that time now being Unity rendering the cubemaps for reflection probes along the track
Ship Lua Scripting
The game's Lua implementation has been extended to ships! These enable ship creators to extend their ships functionality beyond what the game provides out of the box by adding new mechanics and physics behaviours.
Like with custom track Lua scripts, these are sandboxed and can only interact with what the game allows them to.
Documentation:
Ship Extra Renderers
BallisticNG is setup to work with a single exterior ship mesh that uses a single material, with airbrakes which act as additional animated meshes but must also share that single material.
Extra Renderers is a new system for ship creators that enables additional meshes with any number of materials to be setup, which can be lit using the ships tile light color and be told which camera views to render in.
TRKD Files
Trkd (Track Data) files are a new addition to custom tracks which allows menu data to be provided with the track.
Trkd files are compiled and placed next to your tracks trk file when building the track from Unity. When present next a TRK file, the game will load everything it needs from the trkd, instead of going through the lengthy caching process.
Trkd's can also be embedded into Wtrk files, and will be automatically added / updated if they're next to the Trk when creating / updating the Wtrk.
Misc
Photomode Updates
Photomode has seen some updates to add new features and fix issues:
- You now quit photomode using the menu back input and a quit confirmation has been added
- Added option to display a thirds grid
- Effects are now automatically toggled based on their settings
- The FOV can now be set between 1 and 179 degrees
- Fixed 240p output resolution using the wrong width
- Fixed CRT effect toggle desyncing when exciting move mode
- Fixed the FOV being reset when stepping the game
Improved Input Device Handling
Controller Events
The game now reports controller events! Tying into the Input Improvements mentioned below, the following events are now reported to you at the top of the screen:
- Controller connected
- Controller disconnected
- Controller assigned to a player
- The player navigating the menu has changed
Controller Assignment
Two controllers can now be automatically assigned to players by default. This fixes a conflict issue on the Steam Deck between the built-in controller and any external controllers.
Unassigned controllers will now be automatically assigned to a player when pressing a button on them (this can be disabled in the Input Options menu). Controllers are assigned to the player who currently has menu navigation control.
Finally, splitscreen is now inaccessible until Player Two has a controller assigned. The game will let you pick a controller in the menu before navigating forward, using the same selection interface as the new Input Options menu. If you're working on mods and don't have a controller present, enabling debug mode will bypass this check.
Improved Controller Saves
Controller data is now saved by device ID instead of a hardware ID.
The device ID is a way to uniquely identify a specific controller instead of just bundling everything under the controllers generic hardware ID, which finally allows two controllers of the same type to have unique binds and calibrations saved for them. Note that for Xbox controllers, the XInput player is the unique identifier, so binds and calibrations are stored and recalled in the order that the controllers are plugged in.
More Camera Customization
Every camera view now has its own set of options. This allows you to more greatly fine tune the FOV, camera position, and various other view specific options.
All of the VR cockpit options are now also available outside of VR! Additionally, we've reworked the cockpit view intertia and added a few more customization options.
Changes from 1.4-d69
If you've been playing on the development branch, these are the changes since then:
Ships
- Fixed 2280 wall bounces being able to trigger at incorrect angles
- Removed old autopilot pilot behaviour which prevented the player ship from ever being under a track section (fix autopilot on Luna Reverse maglock)
User Interface
- Updated tips on the welcome screen to reference locations in the new option menus
- Special text inputs on the onscreen keyboard are no longer triggered when typing on a real keyboard
- Fixed UI element focus being lost when saving presets in the custom race settings menu
Options
- HUD Horizontal Margins can now be increased up to 105%
Modding
- Fixed HUD horizontal margins not working on custom huds
Tracks - Base Game
- Disabled affine mapping on virtual trees in Arrivon XI
- Disabled affine mapping on virtual trees in Arrivon Peak
- Disabled affine mapping on virtual trees in Arrivon Falls
- Disabled affine mapping on virtual trees in Ribble Raceway
- Disabled affine mapping on virtual trees in Alice Mountain
- Disabled affine mapping on virtual trees in Forgotten Coast
- Disabled affine mapping on virtual trees in Maria Tide
Custom Race
- Fixed gamemode specific settings not being recalled from disk when switching between gamemodes
As it's harder to be as accurate with an analog stick then it is a mouse, whenever you're selecting nodes the crosshair is turned into a circle where anything that's within its radius will be considered for selection. If there's multiple nodes within the circle, the node closest to the center dot takes priority.
