Important Notes:
- DX9 support has been partially dropped, the game now defaults to DX11 and all custom tracks built with the updated unity tools will now target DX11 too. The game will fallback to DX9 if your GPU doesn't support DX11 however.
- 2280's option has been moved, see the secrets menu section for more info!
BallisticNG 0.9.4 is now out! This update comes with a few announcements, so without further ado let’s jump in:
The Final Straight
Version 0.9.4 is the last early access version of the game! It’s been a crazy three years of development and we’re now at the stage where we’re ready to polish what we have and get the game released. We’re incredibly grateful to everybody who has joined the community and supported development throughout these three years, we hope you continue to enjoy the game after it releases!
For this last period of development we’re going to be working with a select few community members in private to fix bugs, balance gameplay and implement final features. We’ll still be reading public channels for suggestions and issue reports as normal, we just won’t be pushing updates on any public channels until the 1.0 release (this includes the beta branch!).
We will be announcing a release date in the next few months with information regarding the post-release plans, so stay tuned for that!
Soundtrack Release
With this update we are pleased to announce the release of the game’s soundtrack! The soundtrack contains 34 tracks with over 120 minutes of music. The soundtrack is currently available on Steam and will be coming to other major stores in the future!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/837830/BallisticNG__Soundtrack/
SteamVR support
BallisticNG now has SteamVR support! Right click the game in your Steam library and use “Launch BallisticNG in Steam VR mode” to play in VR. With exception to splitscreen, the entire game is functional in VR!
This is just the introduction to VR in the game, we’ll be working to further improve its implementation for the full release. If you have any issues, please let us know in the Virtual Reality forum in discussions!
To support VR the game now uses DX11 by default. If your GPU doesn’t support DX11 the game will fallback to DX9 (as mentioned above).
Official Linux Support
For almost the entirety of the game’s existence on Steam, community member Aidan has been very kindly building and maintaining OSX/Linux versions of the game. Today we are pleased to announce that the Linux builds are now stable and officially available through Steam! Official OSX support will be coming later down the line, there are some specific Unity related issues preventing us from setting up and releasing these builds.
Precision Run Tracks and Campaign Unlocks
The precision run tracks are now fully implemented! These short challenges are built to push your skill. There are currently 4 tracks and we plan to add more in the future, as well as adding support for custom precision tracks.
Campaign unlocks have also been changed. With exception to the Barracuda Type S which you still have to unlock, all ships and tracks are now unlocked from the get go. All you need to unlock now are liveries and physic modifier cheats
Secrets Menu
The secrets menu is now functional! Glide and Ballistic64 can now both be activated from here. Additionally 2280 mode has been moved to this menu too. The reason for this is that 2280 is a cheat mode and having it exposed in the menu alongside other options gives off the impression that it is more than this.
Unity Tools
The unity tools has had a small update (reimport the unitypackage file to update). When building for DirectX it now targets DirectX11. If you have any custom tracks with particles or custom shaders you'll want to rebuild your track with the updated tools.
Custom shaders in this case means any shaders you have written yourself or imported from elsewhere, the built in BallisticNG shaders are swapped out at runtime by the game and will not be affected by this change!
0.9.4 Changelog
- Reworked campaign unlocks, the new unlocks are as follows:
- Rank 4: Allt Liveries
- Rank 8: Neon Liveries
- Rank 12: Clean Liveries
- Rank 16: Glide CHeat
- Rank 20: Ballistic64 Cheat
- Rank 24: Barracuda Type S
- Rank 50: Ballistic Gallery
- Barracuda and Caliburn are now locked in the campaign
- Added animated campaign graphics
- Added SteamVR support and a new VR options menu
- Added final precision runs and precision delta ship
- Added no internal camera tilt setting
- Added animated clouds to tracks with rain
- Updated the game's icon
- Updated cockpits for VR, the head positioning has been updated and ship hulls are now visible
- The information panel on the menu is now a news panel
- The game now uses DX11 and falls back to DX9 if the GPU doesn't support it
- The reverse camera no longer tilts with the ship
- The afterburner can no longer be used in pitlanes
- The weapon icon now flashes when changing
- The weapon icon background is no longer drawn when an icon isn't being displayed
- Energy walls now using the TRM geometry to determine their width, eliminating edge cases where they can spawn in massive
- Material queues are now copied when loading custom tracks
- Inputs on the binding screen have been re-arranged to put gameplay specific binds first
- Removed quick race option from the play tab
- The secrets menu is now functional, Glide and Ballistic64 can now be activated from here
- 2280 mode has been moved to the secrets menu
- The 2017 april fools cheat can now be toggled at any time by typing vaporng on the menu
- Fixed precision run menu entries duplicating
- Fixed energy wall bolt trails starting at the world origin when spawned
- FIxed weapon drop sound not playing
- Fixed tremor fire and loop sounds not being played through the SFX channel
- Fixed onshot sounds not being affected by reverb zones
- Fixed misplaced wall tiles on Aciknovae and Arrivon Peak
- Fixed Xpand - Raging and Xpand - Hydronium not playing in the game
- FIxed the next track button not functioning for non-standard tracks
- (Custom Tracks) Fixed BallisticNG/SkyDome shader not having its appropiate in-game version swapped in
- (Soundtrack) Added Shiftdelete - Dream Catcher
- (Soundtrack) Updated Vonsnake - Hyperion
- Improved crowd ambience mixing on Cassandra, Luna and Dover
- Updated airbrake and maglock sounds
- Slightly reduced SFX volumes:
- Wall scrape
- Wall collision
- Projectile fire and explosion
- Mine deploy
- Normalized music volumes
- Some default settings have been changed:
- FoV - now defaults to 80
- Draw Distance - now defaults to 200
- Ship Reflections - now defaults to on
- Music volume - now defaults to 100%