Hey everyone! It's been a good 2 months since the last devlog and this one comes a bit later then expected due to some hardware issues. Now that's sorted let's dive in:
More Songs
You can now listen to some more of the songs coming for release! Check them out here:
https://soundcloud.com/shiftdelete/by-any-means
https://soundcloud.com/vonsnake/ballisticng-rightside-down
https://soundcloud.com/vonsnake/taurus
Campaign Rebalance
The campaign rebalance that had started a couple months ago is now coming to a close. Time Trial and Survival events have had their criteria updated and the only thing left to do now is balance the rate at which new events are unlocked.
A huge thanks to the internal testers who spent a whole bunch of their time providing data for this, your hard work is much appreciated!
AI Updates
AI have been updated with better difficulties and navigation. Over all the AI is now much more consistent, especially with extreme lap counts and on the higher difficulty levels. As all AI difficulty levels are used in the campaign it's been important to make sure that even Hardcore is beatable.
With the navigation improvements the AI are now much better at avoiding wall collisions that a player can easily avoid, most importantly with ships like the Caliburn. AI can now also enter alternative routes much easier now too, the autopilot has also been updated to use this new navigation and will now much more consistently make it into the pitlane when it detects you need the energy or if you direct it to.
A New Arrivon Peak
Back when Arrivon Peak was introduced in 0.9.3 it was trying too much with several gimmicks that ultimately led to the track being more frustrating then fun. Introducing the new Arrivon Peak - just as tight and challenging but without any of the gimmicks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqq0yXO4h8Y
Texture Updates
Arrivon XI and the speed/weapon pad textures have been given a facelift. Arrivon's track surface is now much more clearly made of wood and has a metal frame, some portions of the track are now made entirely of metal too.
The speed/weapon pad textures have been given more detail, they're now plates bolted onto the track. The shapes have also been given an update to make them a little bit more interesting.
Anti-Skip Progress
The anti-skip system announced in a previous devlog has been under heavy overhauls these past few weeks and as a result became much more refined. The anti-skip now calculates how much time you shaved instead of using a geometrical approach, this makes the system much more adaptable to all sorts of tracks at different speeds.
Upon release all custom tracks will have anti-skip disabled as there are some layouts (such as bngl-0x002 6 on the workshop) which can cause some issues. Track creators will be able to simply recompile their track scenes to enable the anti-skip. The anti-skip can also be disabled using trigger volumes or globally on a per-track basis. Documentation for modders on how exactly the system works and how you can work with or without it will be coming for release.
Multiplayer Progress
Multiplayer has seen major improvements this past month with all of the major known issues from 0.9.4 fixed and many new features and other improvements.
More Settings
Before a host starts a lobby they can now select which ship classes can be chosen by a player. The ship classes available are Standard, Prototype, High-End and Custom.
Once in a lobby the host now has access to more race settings including double damage, no damage and afterburner. More settings will be coming for release. Both the host and players joining can now also decide which port they want to host on!
In-lobby ship/track selections
Thanks to the integration of a new ship/track selection and rendering backend you can now select content inside of the lobby without ever having to go to another screen. More game interfaces are going to be seeing this for release too, most notably the pause menu which currently doesn't rendering track and ship selections.
Tournaments
It is now possible to configure tournaments! You can mix and match vanilla and modded tracks to create a tournament with up to 12 races. With this the message informing people that you don't have a track installed now displays all of the tracks and the name of all of the tracks that you don't have that the host has selected.
Custom Ships
Custom ships can now be used in multiplayer! Ships are chosen by their file name so make sure everybody you're playing with has their ship files named exactly the same. Custom ships are disabled by default and must be enabled by the host before they start the lobby. If you don't have a ship installed that somebody else does then you will see a placeholder ship and you won't be able to collide with them in the race.
The ship shown in this image belongs to KyraTech, you can grab it here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1494036765&searchtext=
Weapons
Weapons have seen some rebalancing, especially the Plasma.
The plasma is no longer a one hit kill weapon, it still deals huge amounts of damage but now deals a massive slowdown to the ship it hits. The charge time has also been halved to accommodate for it no longer one hitting. With the new damage in place a Diavolt can hit a Tenrai and still one hit kill, however vice versa the Tenrai will deal significantly less damage due to its lower firepower and Diavolts superior shielding.
Tremors and Energy Walls are now speed class dependent with the class affecting the Tremors speed and the Energy Walls deploy distance.
The hellstorm now has lockon reticles to show you who you're about to hit instead of it being guesswork.
Unity Tools
Single TRK for all platforms
Tracks for different graphics apis are now compiled under one file, no more seperate DirectX and OpenGL builds! These options will remain available for legacy support but for the release version of the Unity Tools building a track will compile shaders for DX9, DX11 and OGL all into the same file. The track uploader tool has also been updated to reflect this change, you now only need to give the workshop track file a single TRK file.
Fast Play
Fast play is a new feature that allows you to quickly test out your track in-game, perfect for rapidly prototyping new ideas in your scene. All you need to do it point Unity to where the game is installed, select the speed class and team you want to use and start! The game will open in a testing environment. All of your save data with the game in this state will be stored with your Unity project so you can configure settings separately from the game itself.
And that's the bulk of it for the past 2 months, hope you enjoyed reading. Now to get back to it, got a lot to do for the release!