Ballistic NG - Wipeout fan project

[silverscar]

Dear Devs!

I visited these forums some time ago because of some older wipeout stuff i was searching for... as a hardcore fan of the old PSX games, I am very pleased about your enthusiasm and this project. I was looking forward to the release after Greenlight Publishing and finally played the current version today on Steam; What can I say - it's awesome, this Alpha Version shows high potential! Steering of the vehicles already feels great, you managed to transport & implement the gameplay and "aircraft feeling" from the Wipeout 2097 in an excellent way. Sounds & Music fit perfectly, Graphics of course need some improvement (especially textures) but imho that's secondary at the moment. Ship design & tracks are also looking good. I love the first one, it reminds one so much of Sagarmatha and brings back so many memories

By the way, do you create the music yourself or do you recruit composers? Is it possible to suggest certain tracks or music for the game?

Keep up the good work, Thank you!

[Xpand]

Thanks silvercar! But I must tell you that the textures are like that on purpose. The intent of the graphics is to emulate PS1 low resolution textures too.

The music was made both by me (RBnG), Shem and bigsnake (VonSnake).

[Zynetic]

Really enjoying the V0.4 Steam release! The updates are great and can't wait for the full release.

While I'm here, I had a crash and the pop-up told me to send the report to the devs, so you can check that here (zip file download) if you want.

[bigsnake]

Thanks for uploading that crash report! The reason for the crash was loading custom music, it's a known issue and I'm hoping to have it fixed by the release of the first 0.4 patch

[Zynetic]

Steam Community seems to be having issues so I have no idea how much of my postings got through...

The Survival Update is brilliant by the way, love the new aesthetics. The track beating to the music was a very nice touch.

Anyway:

- Custom Music still has an issue I think, I crashed immediately on the start of a race in 0.4.1 once. (Crash Report)
- Survival seems to be ignoring the custom draw units set. I'm not a big fan of the pop-up effect but it was incredibly obvious despite setting units to 150 (tried changing lower as well, but no difference)
- Pressing down on the pause menu ignores Quit, while pressing up on the pause menu ignores Photo Mode

And a video of Survival for people to see:

[GGeek]

Custom music works for me, but stutters when a song loads for 5 seconds.

Also, the game is plagued with crazy stuttering since the update, forcing me to modify the game's prority from normal to realtime to play smoothly (at least on my config).

[Hybrid Divide]

Haven't had time to test the new update yet, but that Survival mode (Zone?) looks awesome!

[slowriderxcorps]

Alright, got some more data to throw in this direction. I'm really happy to be able to help with this project in the little ways that I can.

* On Marina Rush, the music was muting out entirely around specific areas of the map. However this glitch fixed itself when I selected to Restart from the Pause Menu.
* Speaking of Marina Rush, putting a boost pad right before the entry to the pit lane probably isn't a wise idea.
* On Track 2, I managed to clip through the outside of the sharp right hand corner and fall out of the track (Spectre class). This also happened on the esses near the end.
* Difficulty curve is now very awkward, with the Top 3 racers vanishing far ahead of everyone else after the first lap, and very often not being able to be caught up at all.
* Possibly add an option to allow for a button prompt to advance from the Loading screens, so that the hints written on them can be read (or allow them to be read in a different menu).
* Possibility to only make Ship Stats window appear when ships are highlighted? (also that text on Arial Tetsuo's Auricom stats got a chuckle)
* The left wing of all of the WipEout 1 ships was not rendering on the Ship Select screen.
* Potentially allow for the ability to give ships dual Thruster outputs? (primarily for the WipEout 1 ships but custom designs can also benefit)
* In Photo Mode, there are 1-pixel screen tearing lines that stretch horizontally across the screen.
* Also cause the game to back out to the Pause Menu when exiting Photo Mode.

[bigsnake]

Thanks for the list, will get around to seeing to those soon

If you're running the Steam version of the game then I've just uploaded the first update to the unstable branch. You can switch to it by right clicking the game in your library, going to properties and setting the dropdown in the beta tab to unstable. This branch is going to be kept updated regularly with new features regarding 0.5, going to be integrating a different input manager into the game in the coming weeks too. Nothing gamebreaking should happen on this branch, but if you want to switch to it then be cautious that there will be more bugs then you usually find with releases.

[slowriderxcorps]

Good to know of the unstable branch's presence, I'll see to getting onto testing that out in due time. In the meantime, here's more notes from playing earlier today, primarily while... well, achievement hunting. Or testing, specifically.

* Clipping through the walls and out of bounds is happening the more I notice it. On the sharp right-hander off of a raised section of track near the start of Ackinovae, it's too possible to phase straight through the solid wall to the left.
* The same can be said for Survival Mode, where beyond Zone 30, grinding along the outside of the long, wide corners in Harpstone would often make the ship fall right through without taking any damage.
* Speaking of Survival Mode, I suspect that triggering the Rescue Drone currently does not count as imperfecting the current Zone. It also doesn't cost any Shield Energy.
* Possibly disable weather effects and crowd sounds when playing Survival Mode?
* The AI on Maceno Bay is still noticeably more difficult to defeat than any other track in the primary lineup.
* The new Ishtar Citadel layout is fantastic, though the Start/Finish line might want to be shifted a bit further up alongside the Pit Lane.
* In trying over and over to get some of the specific Elimination achievements, on one restart, the game wasn't playing any ship thruster sounds at all. Pausing and unpausing the game corrected it.
* Also during these, there were several races where the specific craft that required elimination wasn't in the race at all. Possibly the game is putting two of the same team in the race?
* Still considering the possibility of preventing collecting identical pickups in sequence.
* Regarding Missiles, the increased lock-on speed when firing backwards is probably too fast now? Also I don't remember if Missiles could be dumbfired backwards in Fusion or not.
* The Crowd Pleaser achievement did not trigger during the Season 3 race on Maceno Bay. I had managed to get three Eliminations via Plasma and a fourth with the Cannon of all things.
* The Lucky Shot achievement for getting 15 cumulative Plasma kills only appeared at the end of the race, not on the 15th elimination. This could possibly have some unwanted effects should the race be restarted or retired from before it is finished.

[Zynetic]

The Caliburn is one of the ships in every race, so one of the original line-up won't appear.

[Rafeku]

You added a cockpit! Yes! Im Going to take a look in the game tomkrrow to see how its progressing

[slowriderxcorps]

The current Unstable build's doing alright. Aside from some weirdness I thought I saw going on with the first animated billboard in Ackinovae, I didn't see anything significantly out of place compared to before. I still spotted some new things in any case.

* I again managed to get two eliminations during races performed in Tournament Mode, and the achievement for this did not trigger.
* Mirror Mode didn't do anything when I activated it, I went to Tournament Mode with both it enabled and Weapons disabled, wondering if there was a hidden achievement somewhere for that.
* I don't know what the specifics for the AG Bike are, but if it's meant to be a craft that cannot use any weapons, it was able to use them in Tournament Mode.
* There is currently no way to unlock the Barracuda since the Zen Tournament did not unlock for me, though that'll be worked out in due time.

[amplificated]

My DS4 - using ScpToolkit to mimic an Xbox gamepad - was not recognised. Never had a problem with anything else before. I tried all options in the controls menu, neither gamepad setting worked. Keyboard works, but isn't what I'm after

[AGgamer]

Some bugs:
On the XL unfinished, if you fall off the track at the huge drop you can get stuck underneath, never being put back on the track.
The Menu sounds are apparently tied to the Voice volume, not the SFX volume. (Which is weird)
The track introduction ("Welcome to track name here") is tied to the SFX volume, not the Voice volume for some reason. (Again, weird)
The Auto pilot cannot handle the turns on Luna for some reason. It crashes me into the inner wall on half of the corners.

Some complaints:
-Utah project might be the hardest track imo, and it is the second track. fml.
-The voice samples for the "3, 2, 1, Go" countdown are really bad, like the guy sounds so disinterested. The other voice samples are okay, though.
-ALL the pit lanes are just awful besides the one on Maceno Bay. I shouldn't have to fear dying trying to get into the pit lane. That's just stupid. The pit lane is supposed to be a safe place, not a death trap for people who try to get into it. Omega Harbor and Ishtar Citadel's pit lanes are particularly bad.
-Speaking of Ishtar Citadel, I know that it is a wip, but if you won't move the pit lane, at least put an archway, sign, or chevron indicating where the pit lane actually is. Holy hell, I've died going back and forth missing the pit lane entry because I had no idea when I should start turning. (Also I can't see where I'm going on the track, again i know it is a wip, but it's so dark, at least have some better lighting until you can complete it.)
-Prototype 3 has no pit lane. And it needs like five given the turns. Although I guess you won't really care about any critique you get regarding the prototypes since they are not official tracks and are just "prototypes" and all. But still, please consider making this track... not just completely bad.
-The Auto Pilot slows you down so much. Like, god, I'll get around the corner, but hell if I ever catch up.
-Anything other than G-Tek, Scorpio, and Tenrai are like impossible to control on any speed class.
-I've only ever killed anyone with the plasma. All other weapons seem too weak to kill anyone.
-I don't get the stat distributions. Why is Omnicom just straight-up worse than Scorpio? I know Omnicom has higher firepower, but that's it. And again I've never killed anyone without the plasma, so the damage up fire power gives seems worthless.
-Why do all the ships have bad firepower? Only Hyperion and Diavolt have anything decent in firepower. Also, Diavolt has the highest firepower in the game and it is only an 8/10. What??? 8/10 is the higest firepower you can get????? Please rebalance the stats.

Compliments :3
-Omega Harbor looks great!
-Harpstone looks great!
-All the ships look great!!
-The soundtrack is really good, I always am just in awe at people who make music because I have no idea how you can be brilliant enough to come up with melodies and beats and chords and... ohha... just so good.

[slowriderxcorps]

A few more things to tack onto the nuance list.

* Since Caliburn was removed from the AI choice list (and I'm not sure if the ship is playable in any capacity), the advertisements for Caliburn on some tracks (most notably Maceno Bay) will probably need to be swapped out for other teams.
* In regards to the Music, I recall there was a fix to prevent the same song playing twice in a row on the same track. However this currently does not apply to consecutive races, which can both play the same song.
* When opting to Play Again on Tournament Mode after completing a tournament, the game endlessly loops races on Harpstone, with the game continuing to redo races on the track even after completing a further full set of Eight. The game still recognises Tournament Mode as engaged.

[Zynetic]

It might be worth mentioning that the latest version is on Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/473770). The version under "Download Game" is the old 0.4 version, which doesn't have improvements like the new Ishtar Citadel layout, Autopilot not being useless, and the sound bars working properly.

[nu9get]

i just looked at the leaderboards, and was a bit curious about the quick times Matt got, after a small search i found his videos, without detracting his amount of skills, i think this type of shortcuts (expecially on maceno bay, luna and some other tracks), should be removed.

shortcuts are ok tbh, but this is not fair playing, it's just glitching the whole tracks.

it's like the glitched times on WO HD.

[Axatar]

Most obscene cuts similar to this one have been fixed in the newest versions

[slowriderxcorps]

* In regards to the above video, the layout for Maceno Bay has changed significantly since then. In any case, a watermark in the top-right corner of the ingame HUD detailing the current version number might be helpful in regards to video proof of glitches.
* The Cannon needs to have its stunning ability revised. At the moment, other craft hit by it are completely stopped, whereas explosive weaponry doesn't have anywhere near as much effect on speed.

Also I have to thank the person who made the Advanced Techniques quide on Steam. I actually now understand exactly how opposite braking operates. I had heard the term multiple times before but didn't quite figure out exactly how it was used.