1.3 and Maceno Island Release Dates - Price Increase Disclosure and Update Recap

16 Nov 2022Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

It's almost here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mj_5Dj2hzc
It's been almost two years since we started development on 1.3 and the Maceno Island expansion. A lot has changed in that time and we're almost ready to release it into the wild!

BallisticNG 1.3 will be releasing on November 30th.
Maceno Island will be releasing on December 14th.

1.3 is a major content and feature update with lots to be excited about, such as the new small vehicles content, major campaign update, in-game campaign editor, custom liveries, and much more!

A major part of this update has involved rewrites and changes to a lot of the game's underlying sytems to make it much easier to develop for multiple platforms. This means development for the Switch port will be much smoother once we shift all of our focus over to it.

Price Bump

When 1.3 releases in two weeks we're going to be increasing the price of the game to $15 or your regional equivalent.

This increase has been in consideration for a while so we've given ourselves lots of time to create an update that brings even more value to the base game. We're putting out this announcement ahead of time so potential buyers are aware of our plans.

Why
BallisticNG started as a free game and left early access in 2018 at $8 after a paid transition. We chose a paid business model so we could focus on refining the game to release the 1.0 version, and in the long term it has provided us with a means to provide extended post-launch support. The original price was chosen to stay close to the original monetary accessibility the game had.

We're now about to push the game's 3rd post release update and still have a lot to come in the future (see the roadmap linked below). With four years of non stop post-release development and counting, and our recent on-boarding of community members into content development, it's important for us to keep on top of our bottom line so we can continue to confidently choose where to direct our attention and take our time with quality changes and additions that improve and build upon previous updates.

This new price is one that we believe is fair for players and beneficial to us for the rest of the game's ongoing development. It's been a fun 6 years so far, here's to another 6!

If you'd like to see what's on the table for BallisticNG you can check out our roadmap here: https://trello.com/b/xf49tYpV/ballisticng-public-roadmap

This roadmap is updated whenever we have something new that we will focus on for current and future updates, so be sure to keep an eye on it!

The rundown

If you already own the game this change doesn't impact you.
Starting November 30th 2022 the game will cost $15 for new players.
DLC pricing will not be changed and future DLCs will be priced similarly.
Free feature and content updates will continue as usual.

Update Recap

1.3 has a massive number of changes, so many that we're waiting for the release to highlight them all. Here's a recap of the upcoming content, updated content and some of the major feature additions:

Updated base game campaign

The base game campaign has see a major update in 1.3, with many changed events, some added events and rebalanced time trials.

We've gone through the whole campaign and reconfigured events that wasted lots of time, such as knockout on Aciknovae. Our goal with campaigns is to provide a guided tour of content that works well together and this idea has been much more carefully followed with these changes. Later on in the campaign you will now also get to play on reverse versions of the tracks, something that wasn't in originally as the reverse tracks were last minute additions to the game.

Since release we've also added new gamemodes so we've also added a few extra events that make use of these.

Time trials have had their bronze and silver targets adjusted to scale with lap times instead of being a static offset across the board. This means events like the Omega Harbour trial where the track has longer lap times will now be much more lenient and less of an endurance test.

The Barracuda A events have been cut back drastically. There are now 4 time trials on select tracks instead of one on every track. The Barracuda Challenge has also been given the same treatment, with the track list being cut to focus on a particular set of tracks.

The Barracuda B events have been split out into individual races so they're no longer endurance tournaments. The last two events in this group are veteran challenges which still test your endurance on the forward and reverse versions of the Model B tracks.

Small Vehicle Content

Small Vehicles is a new set of content built around smaller pedestrian sized vehicles running pure races. 1.3 kickstarts this new vehicle class with 8 tracks and a campaign to accompany them. Atacama, Alice Mountain and Forgotten Coast were made by community member Brobama!

We'll also be providing our content templates with the modding tools so people can get started with making their own small vehicle tracks by using the same starting point that we had when developing them. These templates include track tile textures, the holographic wall texture and material, a .blend file with the walls and a layout creator file with the default track width and speed modifier pre-configured.

The small vehicle tracks are part of the base game.

Ribble Raceway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXKQVv4kkv4

Brattelva Circuit

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

Atacama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0wW3MBSMgA

Alice Mountain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO85HkExeYU

Forgotten Coast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJn3O-wDoSg

Skylight Gardens

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OVGmhyhno4

Maria Tide

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJn3O-wDoSg

Vega Waterway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmSaFte4jBU

Updated environments

We've taken what we considered to be some of the weakest tracks from a visual standpoint and made improvements or rebuilt their scenery from scratch to bring them up to standards we see appropriate for 1.3.

Omega Harbour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyYUmoi3Tro

Arrivon XI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS7-QwnD7LQ

Metro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3D4Uv-4iGg

Arrivon Peak

When updating Arrivon Peak with virtual environment scripts we thought the terrain looked pretty ugly, so on top of the survival mode compatability Arrivon Peak has had a minor update to change its terrain to use one of our modern terrain shaders. We've also added in a few extra details.

Kuiper Overturn

We saw a problem with Kuiper Overturn after releasing Outer Reaches; people couldn't navigate it cleanly without lots of practice.

This update is one of the more minor ones, but there's numerous changes all centered around readability. The lighting has been toned down to give the track a much darker and more ambient look. This helps the navigation lines stand out much more, which have also been given new colors that don't clash with existing elements on the track. The navigation lines now also bleed light into the surrounding scenery, helping the tracks path stand out more. Chevrons have also been moved to not only give a clearer indication of where you should go, but also hint at what the inputs you should be pressing are.

We've also added some debris particles!

Basin Optimized

Basin has been a hardware benchmark for us as it's by far one of the least optimized tracks in the game. For 1.3 we've revisited it and optimized it to the standard of all of our most recent tracks.

Visually Basin is exactly the same, except now it'll run much more smoothly on older hardware, and in the future, the Switch!

More Ships

We've rewritten our ship management backend so it's much, much easier for us to implement new ships. We went ham with adding more vehicles for this update.

Some of these are fun extras that are hidden by default and need a cheat code to activate.

Mako

The AGLS new-comer from Maceno Island with a sturdy and agile ship that can hold its own in a firefight.

Acceleration	2 / 10
Top Speed	3 / 10
Handling	7 / 10
Shielding	6 / 10
Firepower	6 / 10

Aster LB221

Aster's flagship vehicle. An AG bike fitted with AGL technologies to ensure the rider is safe while flying at speeds comparable to a regular ship.

Acceleration	10 / 10
Top Speed	2 / 10
Handling	9 / 10
Shielding	1 / 10
Firepower	0 / 10

Aster VB221

A virtual version of the LB221 for use in Barracuda's Pilot Acclimatization Simulators, matching the Barracuda Model S's ship performance for consistency in training scenarios.

Acceleration	9 / 10
Top Speed	10 / 10
Handling	9 / 10
Shielding	9 / 10
Firepower	0 / 10

Aster KA10

An experimental AG go-kart that shares components with the LB221. It has a higher top speed then the LB221 but its extra mass makes it slightly worse then accelerating and steering.

Acceleration	8 / 10
Top Speed	3 / 10
Handling	8 / 10
Shielding	1 / 10
Firepower	0 / 10

Scorplet

Scorpio's Heavy Duty Hydraulic forklift with AG suspension.

Acceleration	1 / 10
Top Speed	2 / 10
Handling	2 / 10
Shielding	1 / 10
Firepower	0 / 10

Omnicom Cd-AG32

A manually controlled Omnicom Camera Droid.

Acceleration	9 / 10
Top Speed	1 / 10
Handling	6 / 10
Shielding	1 / 10
Firepower	0 / 10

M-Tech RD-1

A manually controlled MediTech Rescue Droid.

Acceleration	1 / 10
Top Speed	8 / 10
Handling	5 / 10
Shielding	1 / 10
Firepower	0 / 10

Barracuda MT Mini

A race ship sized Barracuda Martian Transporter, the ship of choice for transportation for those involved in the Outer Reaches project.

Acceleration	2 / 10
Top Speed	6 / 10
Handling	7 / 10
Shielding	10 / 10
Firepower	0 / 10

Wyvern Scc Ares Mk 1

A minature Wyvern Space Cargo Carrier, the main cargo ship being used to carry resources to Mars.

Acceleration	1 / 10
Top Speed	7 / 10
Handling	2 / 10
Shielding	3 / 10
Firepower	0 / 10

More liveries

Not only have the Model B and Model C ships been merged into two single ships with liveries, but thanks to community member Vista they also now have liveries for more teams. Vista has also provided additional team liveries for the small vehicles!

Here's a small sample of the liveries:

Animated Characters

BallisticNG now has support for animated characters! Internally we're using these for the pilots on the small vehicle ships, but of course mods can use them however they see fit.

We're using Unity's mecanim system to drive these so mods get a lot of freedom when determining how to animate.

Improved physics and cameras

We've made massive changes to collisions and subtle changes to the hovering physics!

Collisions have always been a bit janky in BallisticNG because of the way we handle airbrake physics to keep the result of stat inputs consistent across ships. For 1.3 we've made significant improvements to them so you'll no longer find yourself getting stuck to walls when airbraking and will be much less likely to clip straight through them.

Hovering has also seen improvements so gliding at the top of the ships hover height no longer jitters around.

The track chase camera has been rewritten from scratch to make some fundamental changes that makes is feel much more satisfying to use. The 2159/floor hugger rear chase has also seen some big updates, improving its response to the ships physics. Both of these cameras now also have options to revert them back to their pre-1.3 versions, if you prefer them.

Custom Liveries (and the ship viewer)

We've added support for custom liveries! Every ship loaded into the game can have a custom livery made for it if the ship author provides you with a template file to work off of.

The majority of internal ships have template files available for you in the modding folder, and you can use the new ship viewer feature to preview the livery in-game with an instant reload button and several options to adjust rendering settings such as lighting.

In-game campaign editor

The game now has a built in campaign editor so you no longer need to write XMLs to get your custom campaigns going! We've been using this new tool internally for the past year now with the updated base game campaign, maceno island campaign and small vehicles campaign being built with it.

The editor gives you access to all of the same features manually writing the campaigns XML do, and as a bonus campaigns are reloaded when you back out of the editor so you can immediately playtest the changes you've just made! We've integrated the editor as part of the campaigns menu so it fits nicely with everything else.

Engine Upgrade

We've updated to Unity 2020.3. The biggest benefit this provides to everybody is much better frame pacing, exposed profiling tools which we have implemented into our new debug hub for track creators to take advantage of, and lots of little additions which we're taking advantage of to build our own rendering optimisation solutions for the Switch version.