BallisticNG 1.3.3 is right around the corner and we're aiming to get it out next Friday on the 17th. We've been working with GOG and have spent some time getting everything ready for a release over there!
1.3.3 is finishing up our support cycle of the 1.3 update with a new track, an updated Aciknovae and some other various features and improvements, so let's jump straight into what's coming:
Basis Divide
Basis Divide is a new track available in the extras category. It's set at the lowest level of the Aciknovae reactor, where the reactors themselves sit. This served as the starting point for the Aciknovae rework, and the spiral of Aciknovae is a direct bridge between the spaces the tracks occupy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbOmdI5VG4E
Aciknovae Update
Aciknovae has been given a major facelift for this update! An important change in this version is making the reactors building feel much more like a real tangible place with a dense industry surrounding it. Aciknovaes layout has a lot of verticality to it, and the new scenery has been built to tower over you as you go through the lower levels of the circuit.
With this update there's also been some tweaks to the pitlane entrances to make the pitlane less painful to manoeuvre into.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gqg3HU5nGg
Reworked section tracking and route generation system
BallisticNG generates information about track routes ahead of time and uses a system that is aware of where you currently are on the track to optimise figuring out where you might be next.
Previously these systems were designed in such a way that made nested routing impossible, and both have been completely rewritten with this update to open up the game for much crazier track designs.
This is unlikely something we will be taking advantage of internally fully, but this will solve a lot of issue for people making their own tracks!
We've tested the large majority of currently released custom tracks and built the system around misconfigurations we've seen across them, however there will be some scenarios where things might be broken. Backtracking in particular will be an issue for some tracks where route exits aren't configured, however as you want to be moving forwards and not backwards this is not a game breaking issue.
Caliburn Rebalance
Caliburn has been a ship we've wanted to look at rebalancing for a while. It's never been used much, not even by ourselves, and is often frowned upon for use in fair play scenarios.
1.3.3 puts the teams current lore in the past, and dials the ships grip and steering stats back to make it more reasonable to fly.
With these changes, Calliburn can also be used in campaigns and will show up as a regular ship in races if you enable the post-release roster option.
Custom Collision Meshes
1.3.3 adds support for custom convex collision meshes on ships. We've updated Hyperion and NX2000's collision meshes with this to address some long standing collision issues with these two ships.
Custom ships will also be able to take advantage of this feature!
GOG Galaxy Support
We're releasing on GOG soon and we've implemented support for GOG Galaxy achievements and leaderboards!
We've setup the game so if you own it on both Steam and GOG and are running both clients, any times / scores you post to leaderboards will be uploaded to both platforms at the same time, and we have an option that lets you switch between which platform you'd like to view leaderboards from.
BallisticNG is also setup to auto-unlock achievements that are already unlocked in the games internal system, so copying save data between installs or running the game from a single install with both clients open will automatically sync locally unlocked achievements in scenarios where the game writes stat data (on menu loard and after completing a race).
We'd also like to note that while we have not implemented GOG Galaxy multiplayer, both platforms will be receiving the same builds. This means multiplayer via direct IP is store agnostic and you will always be able to play with friends, regardless of where the game is bought.