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!
Model B Tracks Remade
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
Model B Ships Tweaked
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 Bridge Updates
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
Multiplayer Bots
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.
Vertical Splitscreen
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.
Mod Tools Update
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
Switch Port
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!
Maceno Island
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!
Full Changelog
Ships
- 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)
Tracks
- 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
Splitscreen
- 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.
Multiplayer
- Implemented bot support
- The race complete screen now shows the race finish countdown that players still racing see
- Spawn positions are now randomized
User Interface
- 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
Photomode
- 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.
Lua
- Exposed the game's audio manager as NgAudio. See the updated read the docs for more information.
Layout Creator
- The documentation button now leads to the read the docs page instead of the old, now deleted, wiki page.