Ballistic NG - Wipeout fan project

[GGeek]

Got my hands on 0.3, mostly doing TT, and the general feel is nice. Now, i may be a bit nitpicking at this point, but here's what i found (mostly sound related) :

- When trying to do a race or time trial with checkpoints enabled, the CHK countdown remains at 0 an the checkpoints do not respond (aka no laps registered). Also a single collision with the wall will eliminate you instantly.
- Some sound effects do not play at random occurences (engine can get cutoff when starting a race, restarting solves it but can cause another SFX to not be played, such as the start countdown sounds).
- Voices are still kinda difficult to hear during races (even the alternatives ones)
- Track intro voice for Maceno Bay says the old trackname (i can do the Pre-race intros if needed).

Haven't tested the custom music player yet, will do when i come back from Paris (offline from Friday to Sunday).

[bigsnake]

Thanks for the feedback! Adding it all to the list of stuff to do. The random cutoff of sounds by the way is a bug with Unity, from my own testing it's caused by reverb zones (if you fly through the reverb zone causing it you'll hear the wet output only). I have no idea when they plan to fix it, but it's been a problem for a good few years now

I'm looking for the next version of the game to finally have a proper inputmanager, so that means customizable controls in-game and different configuration sets for controllers with or without analog triggers.

[Aidan]

Just got the new versions and it's nice to see more tracks with environments! (Atlantica is probably my favourite) Here's a list of bugs or weird things I've seen from messing around mainly with TT.

- When finishing a race in 1st person view your ship will be invisible when you see it racing around at the end of the event. (Only tested in TT)
- If there is no mySounds folder in UserData the audio menu will not open. I deleted my UserData folder at some point and was confused as to why I couldn't access the audio menu.
- When I go to select a wipeout ship I can't use the keyboard to select which wipeout version I want (I only have WO3 ships so I have to use the mouse to click on WO3 before being able to use the keyboard / controller again to select a WO3 ship)
- It's not possible to tell which audio option I've got selected when using kb / controller apart from the two enable / disable options.
- Music doesn't seem to play on Atlantica.
- This seems to be linux specific but wipeout and 2097 ships will not appear in the menus. I know the files are in the correct folder as I can move the UserData folder to the windows version and the ships appear. (I'm not sure what the difference between loading wo & 97 ships is to wo3 ships but the latter works fine)

On a slightly unrelated note how do you generate the .vcm files for the lighting? When I built the linux version I copied the lighting folder from the repo but some of the circuits had no lighting as a few of the vcm files in the repo are different to those in the 0.3 Windows release. eg "Luan.vcm" in the repo vs "LUNA.vcm" in the windows release. (I'm very new to unity so I'm probably missing something obvious)

Also how does the custom music work? I've tried putting mp3 files (by themselves and in subfolders) in the custom music folder but nothing seemed to happen. (I also tried enabling ext music, not sure what it stands for but no music played when I did that) I assume I'm putting the files in the right folder but maybe not the right format?

Anyway here's a linux build of 0.3
https://mega.nz/#!kZ8jFAjT!bTxFm8Zko...elgKMrndH0BNZQ

And here's me doing a Halberd time trial on Luna

[bigsnake]

- When finishing a race in 1st person view your ship will be invisible when you see it racing around at the end of the event. (Only tested in TT)

I've already fixed this one

- If there is no mySounds folder in UserData the audio menu will not open. I deleted my UserData folder at some point and was confused as to why I couldn't access the audio menu.

Ah, that will be caused by the game trying to access the folder when it doesn't exist. Thanks for reporting, will get that fixed ASAP.

- This seems to be linux specific but wipeout and 2097 ships will not appear in the menus. I know the files are in the correct folder as I can move the UserData folder to the windows version and the ships appear. (I'm not sure what the difference between loading wo & 97 ships is to wo3 ships but the latter works fine)

That's a strange one, I'm using libraries written by Aybe for loading those files so I wonder if there's something he's written that is specific to Windows. I'll take a look into that and see what I can find.

On a slightly unrelated note how do you generate the .vcm files for the lighting? When I built the linux version I copied the lighting folder from the repo but some of the circuits had no lighting as a few of the vcm files in the repo are different to those in the 0.3 Windows release. eg "Luan.vcm" in the repo vs "LUNA.vcm" in the windows release. (I'm very new to unity so I'm probably missing something obvious)

Also how does the custom music work? I've tried putting mp3 files (by themselves and in subfolders) in the custom music folder but nothing seemed to happen. (I also tried enabling ext music, not sure what it stands for but no music played when I did that) I assume I'm putting the files in the right folder but maybe not the right format?

Anyway here's a linux build of 0.3
https://mega.nz/#!kZ8jFAjT!bTxFm8Zko...elgKMrndH0BNZQ

So to generate the .vcm files go to the scene you want to generate it for and go to BnG -> Track Tools -> Lightmapper and then click bake on the window that pops up. You'll get a progress bar while that happens and it will close when it's done. Custom music also isn't in at the moment, I've set everything up in preparation but I'm going to be integrating it soon (I mentioned it in the changelog). Ext music just stands for External Music, I was a bit limited to characters on the options menu redesign.

Thanks for sharing a Linux build again! Adding it to the release thread now.

[Rafeku]

How in the heck do I use the WO3 ships? I have WO3SE, but what team folders are those? I didn't get it. The instructions are not clear. Also those invisible ships....it's like my "F**** YOU ALL!!!! YOU LITTLE F****!! SUCK IT!"

[bigsnake]

You need to use the OBJ's I shared on on the model extracting thread on the pilots lounge, right now the game doesn't have support for loading the ships from WO3's PBP files. You create a folder in MyShips called WO3 then drag the folders for each team in there.

[Rafeku]

You need to use the OBJ's I shared on on the model extracting thread on the pilots lounge, right now the game doesn't have support for loading the ships from WO3's PBP files. You create a folder in MyShips called WO3 then drag the folders for each team in there.

AAHHHHH.
Okay now I got it, thanks mate... So, how is the AI progress going?

[bigsnake]

It's mostly done, in fixing the problem related to the AI becoming harder at lower framerates I needed to redo all of the settings for the AI which ended up with my adding a few new behaviors and sorting out the overtaking. Going to have a hotfix up soon, just working on a few minors things first.

And done, download here or on the release thread.

[Rafeku]

It's mostly done, in fixing the problem related to the AI becoming harder at lower framerates I needed to redo all of the settings for the AI which ended up with my adding a few new behaviors and sorting out the overtaking. Going to have a hotfix up soon, just working on a few minors things first.

And done, download here or on the release thread.

Downloading. Will edit after playing.

EDIT:
So first I've played on Harpstone to do a warm up. first thing I notice is that the AI gave me problems when I was racing. I thought "Well, this seems an improvement...normally I would just blaze through them" and when I say problems, is that they offered a little resistance. It's okay so far.

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NOTE: I did everything with 60FPS Frame Cap, Max Render Distance with Camdmg, FXAA and Tonemap enabled. If anything here changes something and I don't know, be aware I used those settings! Continuing.

So I went ahead and played that dreaded track: Utah Project (insert suspense music here)
First: G-Tek run on Halberd - Took me 2 tries(to first place). The AI wasn't clustering as much in the first lap, in the second lap they seemed more apart. Times they tried to overtake me.
Second: Tenrai run on Halberd - Took me 3 tries(to first place) First run I didn't get satisfied and restarted, second I died, with the third I made it. I had my share of being cheap shotted.

So far, so good. BUT Spectre began showing the face of bullsh**. Prepare. FOR. THE. RANT!!!!

Third: G-Tek run on Spectre - Took me 4 tries(to first place). Here the AI began to show it's arrogance on me: First lap = a impenetrable wall ahead of you. Normally I try to get ahead of the pack so I don't get problems later, but they catch up faster than you can go in a corner(It doesn't help that I'm using a slow ship, but wait until Tenrai). Also they like to be little pricks throw in rockets when they hit your back, mines when you're closing in, and if you're close enough of another ship when doing a tight corner, they'll ram you like a madman, and get away with. This is bullsh**. This really made me mad. by luck on the 4th try I did not die and get first.

Fourth: Tenrai run on Spectre....ugh - Wooping +12(I stopped counting) tries to FINISH the race(once I did I came out first by seconds of quick reaction). ON the first tries, I tried to go ahead of the pack, but as I said, they go faster than I can do a corner, so this means I'm losing time and speed, meanwhile they still go full speed. So for the first tries it was basically an insta reset, because I couldn't focus on getting my racing line right. The AI just didn't let me.I've hit a rocket in a ship in the first lap, and it just bounced. It gave zero craps about it and kept going. On the next tries I've let the AI go ahead. 1 lap seeing nobody, just a tail fin in the horizon. I've restarted a bunch of times, because of the poor shield of Tenrai, and the AI without further notice attacking me did not help it. on the run that I got it right I notice the ships getting far away from each other, also getting slower. "OMG. He tweaked it. HE TWEAKED IT!!!1!!!1111!" I've just found the first racer in the final lap, which is not very nice. Anyways I could get through him and it a wall, and 2 ships came along. 2. What's this, teleporters have been invented? In a matter of seconds of despair I could overtake the 2, BECAUSE THEY WERE TRAILBLAZING. And then FINALLY got to the finish line with a glorious, but suffered 1st place. No pits. Because that pit lane is horibly designed. The track itself punishes you for not knowing how to use the airbrakes, but it's not all that atrocious, but that pit lane doesn't help getting my shields back. And it's easier to lose one or 2 positions entering in that pit. Strangely enough no one was eliminated in that session.

End of the rant.

At least I could go through Utah in Spectre. Still, it's better than before, it's playable, but it's too hardcore, most of the time by cheapness. I'm missing a warning message before getting myself bombed, so i could at least know I was warned that something was coming. I mean, 40% shields, hit in the backside and rocketed. 25% shields."WHADAFU-" Ded. Not big surprise.
Still my major gripe with this game is the AI(my minor is still the collisions...I can get used to it... I guess). But that was at least a major improvement, because intestead of losing all your work up to to the top, you'll lose AT LEAST 1 or 2 positions if you make a big mistake. Keep up the good work.

To the programming errors shall we?
_Menus glitch up if you press the Back button(or B button) rapidly(It repeats the "Go Back" animation) same goes after selecting an option.
_Ship selection menu get overlapped if you select the WipEout ships menu and go back to a previous menu. Once you go back to ship selection letters are overlapped.
_Ships tend still somehow cluster when you overtake them(the case of Spectre. I've over took one, 10 seconds later I've overtaken the other, made a mistake and 2 ships were ahead of me).

The Plasma bolt sound glitch is fixed couldn't test it. I didn't sniff out more stuff because I'm tired right now, so I'll look further on this stuff later.
Cheers

[bigsnake]

Thanks a bunch for the detailed feedback! Just fixed the menu problems, I also noticed you mentioned the lack of a warning for weapons, I'll get that implemented now. I'm going to start tweaking the AI more over the next few days, if you've got the time then I'll keep the current hotfix update with the latest changes. There's also an update to it right now if you want to try it (same link as before), I've toned the AI down on the first lap so you should get a better chance at getting into first place easy much earlier on in the race.

[Rafeku]

Thanks a bunch for the detailed feedback! Just fixed the menu problems, I also noticed you mentioned the lack of a warning for weapons, I'll get that implemented now. I'm going to start tweaking the AI more over the next few days, if you've got the time then I'll keep the current hotfix update with the latest changes. There's also an update to it right now if you want to try it (same link as before), I've toned the AI down on the first lap so you should get a better chance at getting into first place easy much earlier on in the race.

Okay i'm gonna try it again. But I think you should put a link to the files that have changed, not the whole game again.

One bug I forgot mentioning on my previous post, Auto-Pilot still have issues with those 90 degree turns. I went in the pit on Utah, activated the autopilot but when it was about to exit the the pit, it tried to cut the corner, but failed and kept hitting the wall...I think you should disable the ship collisions when this thing is on...that's at least so this kind of crap doesn't happen. It's annoying when you have an Auto-Pilot but when you need it's extreme cheating bliss, it does slow you down...

and I think I've wrote it worng on the last post, it was supposed to look like this:"Did you fix the plasma bolt sound glitch?" in the end of the post.

Another design choice: You could put a checkered parttern in the final lap. Cuz the words "Final" and "Finish" look alike and with the tracks you don't like you can easily misread the two.

[Xpand]

Okay i'm gonna try it again. But I think you should put a link to the files that have changed, not the whole game again.

It's Unity, you HAVE to release the whole game when you change any internal code.

[bigsnake]

Okay i'm gonna try it again. But I think you should put a link to the files that have changed, not the whole game again.

One bug I forgot mentioning on my previous post, Auto-Pilot still have issues with those 90 degree turns. I went in the pit on Utah, activated the autopilot but when it was about to exit the the pit, it tried to cut the corner, but failed and kept hitting the wall...I think you should disable the ship collisions when this thing is on...that's at least so this kind of crap doesn't happen. It's annoying when you have an Auto-Pilot but when you need it's extreme cheating bliss, it does slow you down...

and I think I've wrote it worng on the last post, it was supposed to look like this:"Did you fix the plasma bolt sound glitch?" in the end of the post.

Another design choice: You could put a checkered parttern in the final lap. Cuz the words "Final" and "Finish" look alike and with the tracks you don't like you can easily misread the two.

Like Xpand just said I gotta ship the whole game even for the smallest changes. I push very regularly to the repo though, so if you wanted to keep up to date with only the individual changes then you can clone that using a git client such as Sourcetree then play the game from inside Unity, pulling only the changes when I make them.

The AI navigation in general is still a bit iffy, you'll notice on Aciknovae that the AI will turn into the corner on the last turn (this is due to the track mesh being a lot lower res then all the other tracks though so the AI look too far ahead). The plasma bolt sound bug is also now fixed

I did originally have a pattern on the countdown display, at the time though it was a botch job and very unoptimized since it used tons of individual panels. I might introduce again in the future though, I just need to make an image and scroll that across instead.

[Rafeku]

It's Unity, you HAVE to release the whole game when you change any internal code.

Calm down man, I didn't know. Don't eat me.pwease.
Well the game is basically 200mb, so it's not a big deal. It's just kind of inconvinient.

EDIT: Forget what I've put here plz don't burn me.

Waiting anxiously for the next release

[bigsnake]

I could create a slack group for talking in real-time, that would provide both private message and global chatrooms to talk in. I would create a skype group but if you get enough people in it then it will just become a mess, when at least with something like Slack it could be an organised mess.

[Rafeku]

Well there's always Discord, Steam, Whatsapp... Though I can only enter on Saturdays and Sundays on >my< computer(the only place I could use those programs), which doesn't mean I can't use other one to test your game. Also I've edited my post. I edited my previous post, because I felt I didn't express myself very well.
Can you give me your skype through PM?

[bigsnake]

Discord is also another good option, I recently started using it so it could also work. Will send you my skype details now

[Rafeku]

Forget what I said about the difficulty. I just suck with faster ships. And was too lucky on the first G-TEK runs. Keep it. I think the game taught me a lesson, but it wasn't too hard either. Sorry again. I should have tested it more, I've just played once... ah crap, hope I didn't make you work for nothing.
I really need to stop with this hype for updates... I want things to go fast... oh crap.. Sorry.

To a better explanation: I went lucky on the runs and assumed it was too easy. I was wrong.
The game is hard, but the AI doesn't feel cheap, now it's mostly my fault. The game feels more like 2097. But harder. Once again sorry for any inconvinience. Also I've added, you on skype, Snake.

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Another thing that came in mind: Those ships needs advertising. They kind look generic without anything in it. ads about the team, logos, a wipeoutzone cameo perhaps.

[bigsnake]

The game is now on Steam Greenlight! The game will remain to be free, but if you'd like to see it get on Steam then give it a vote Link - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=670836448

Forget what I said about the difficulty. I just suck with faster ships. And was too lucky on the first G-TEK runs. Keep it. I think the game taught me a lesson, but it wasn't too hard either. Sorry again. I should have tested it more, I've just played once... ah crap, hope I didn't make you work for nothing.
I really need to stop with this hype for updates... I want things to go fast... oh crap.. Sorry.

To a better explanation: I went lucky on the runs and assumed it was too easy. I was wrong.
The game is hard, but the AI doesn't feel cheap, now it's mostly my fault. The game feels more like 2097. But harder. Once again sorry for any inconvinience. Also I've added, you on skype, Snake.

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Another thing that came in mind: Those ships needs advertising. They kind look generic without anything in it. ads about the team, logos, a wipeoutzone cameo perhaps.

Don't worry about it, BnG's development as of recently has been about relentless tweaking and it's a lot of fun doing it! Also accepted your friend request
Ads on the ships could be something, I don't know though. The style that Xpand has where the liveries don't have sponsors or ads on has already been established. A Wipeoutzone cameo could be good though, something like Draco Cavernae in SSGX where the forum's logo is animated along the side of the track could be cool!

[Rafeku]

The game is now on Steam Greenlight! The game will remain to be free, but if you'd like to see it get on Steam then give it a vote Link - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=670836448



Don't worry about it, BnG's development as of recently has been about relentless tweaking and it's a lot of fun doing it! Also accepted your friend request
Ads on the ships could be something, I don't know though. The style that Xpand has where the liveries don't have sponsors or ads on has already been established. A Wipeoutzone cameo could be good though, something like Draco Cavernae in SSGX where the forum's logo is animated along the side of the track could be cool!

Bear in mind is when I say Ads, I'm saying something like Wip3out. A logo, with possibly the name of the team. IMO the ships feel there's something missing, giving a generic feeling. I mean Scorpio design is a 1:1 copy of goteki.
Anyways, Scorpio and Hyperion stats feel swapped(handling) hyperion handles better than scorpio meanwhile the game says the inverse. G-tek tenrai and diavolt(i think) the stats are right... You could do acheck or change the menu values to match. I know theres something off with theor handling