Ballistic NG - Wipeout fan project

[Thane Corrigan]

@Thane
Yep! Feel free and go ahead posting anything in the Wiki. It'll certainly help.

Sweet. In that case, I'm introducing the British team, Caliburn RA. I'm currently making a really shoddy basic design in Sketchup too.

If the idea gets picked up, hopefully the concept mesh comes across well enough to make something good from it, and I could probably altering/expand on the team backstory some.

[Meg.A.Byte]

I'm currently working on one "old style" based ship. It's not part of any team yet, so if Snake will include it in some existing team is up to him.
9777
It's not finished, some changes of textures are expected in the future. I can change the color scheme, but I like the blue/white.

[Thane Corrigan]

Ok, figured out a way to import the mesh into Blender. I could export it into an .obj for ease, or something else.

9778

Won't lie, it's inspired by some of 2097's model work. Everything's blocky and the vertices are a mess, so it'll need a lot of reworking... especially on the aero wing fixtures, the pylons look a little weak on second thought.

Currently thinking up logo, livery and team colours. I'm thinking a Deep Green/Gold/White theme (traditional British racing colours), unless one of you lovely chaps are interested in making some other suggestions.

[Meg.A.Byte]

Ok, figured out a way to import the mesh into Blender. I could export it into an .obj for ease, or something else.
Won't lie, it's inspired by some of 2097's model work. Everything's blocky and the vertices are a mess, so it'll need a lot of reworking... especially on the aero wing fixtures, the pylons look a little weak on second thought.
Currently thinking up logo, livery and team colours. I'm thinking a Deep Green/Gold/White theme (traditional British racing colours), unless one of you lovely chaps are interested in making some other suggestions.

I can't open the attachment, it says it's broken. I'm even more excited now :D

[Thane Corrigan]

Yeowch, broken link. Uhh... Better use an external image source then.

http://s22.postimg.org/f35nqvrsd/Team_Caliburn.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/f35nqvrsd/)

Yeah, that should work 8)

[AGgamer]

Ballistic NG

History of Negative-Gravity
As tensions between the US and Russia resurfaced after being dormant for decades, the two nations returned to their arms race. Many new kinds of tech were experimented with, most notably Negative-Gravity. Both superpowers developed the new gravity defying devices in secret within their black-ops division. Prototype craft were spotted around the world and mistaken as UFOs. Both sides took this as an opportunity to cover up their mishaps; better the people believe in aliens than in top secret weaponry.

This cover would eventually be blown however. In 2051, the russian government unveiled the new technology to its people, claiming supremacy over the US. In response, the Americans too unveiled their own NG technology. But they did not stop there. They distributed their Tech to Europe and Japan were Nexus and G-Tek would be founded respectively. Furthermore the Americans developed Omnicom, and announced the birth of a new sport: Negative-Gravity Racing. The Negative-Gravity Racing League (NGRL) was founded in Omnicom’s name, the first races scheduled to be held in 2059.

NGRL Team list

Omnicom
Full name- Omnicom Governmental Institution
Country of Origin- USA
Liverty- Purple-white
Ship Model- No model to display(This is a two hulled ship, it is blocky but sleek. It’s two noses are pointed like the 2097 Auricom, and are very close together and are narrow, it is obviously a two-hulled craft, but when viewed from the side it appears to be single-hulled. Perhaps like the HD Assegai if it’s two hulls were closer together.)
History- The founders and owners of the Negative Gravity Racing League (NGRL). They were originally a military black-ops science team for the USA under the name of ‘Project Aura’ until they were reformed into a NG-vehicle manufacturer in 2051 after the surprise reveal on NG technology to the world. They graciously distributed their technology across the world, and founded several other manufacturers in their name, establishing world wide dominance and monopolizing the technology. As the owners of the league, they naturally appear in the first races of 2059.

G-Tek
Full name- Gravity-Technologies
Country of Origin- Japan
Liverty- Red-white
Ship Model- G-Tek (in shape it resembles the 2097 Feisar, in color it resembles AG-Systems)
History- Perhaps the one of the closest-allied teams to Omnicom, G-Teck believes that the NGRL and NG-technology as a whole will lead to friendly competition and the peaceful advancement of all mankind. The theoretical physicist Adam Chivers, the CEO of G-Tek, was who originally proposed the possibility of Negative Gravity, and was hired to assist in its development by Project Aura in 2035. This team would join for the first season of the NGRL in 2059.

Diavolt
Full name- Diavolt Governmental Engineering
Country of Origin- Russia
Liverty- White-Red-Yellow
Ship Model- No model to display(A differently colored HD Qirex)
History- The greatest rival of Omnicom. This Russian team is the reformed black-ops science team of Russia, founded after the United States government announced the NGRL in 2051. Russia would not allow the Americans to keep them out of a new sport, and pushed to have their team permitted to race. However the US thought the competition would increase the tensions between the two superpowers, and denied them entry. This decision came back to bite them as the Russian government was furious at this insulting move. After a long controversy spanning over 8 months, Diavolt was finally allowed to race, and joined for the first races of 2059.

Nexus
Full name- Nexus International Industries
Country of Origin- EU
Liverty- Blue-yellow
Ship Model- NX2000(Reminds many of the prototype Feisar and harimau from Pulse)
History- To say Nexus was honored to join the NGRL for its first races in 2059 would be an understatement. The passion of the EU nations was beyond anything anyone could have expected, multiple car and airplane manufacturers were shut down from the sheer numbers of engineers leaving them in favor of joining Nexus. The team quickly rose to power within the EU, and many smiles were shared between them and Omnicom as they met on the track. However, in 2097 the team became fractured and separated. Most members of Nexus opted to stay, but a large fraction left in favor of Wyvern, crippling the unity the team was so proud of.

Wyvern
Full name- Wyvern Incorporated
Country of Origin- UK
Liverty- Green-black
Ship Model- Wyvern
History- Separating from Nexus over a difference of opinion, Wyvern was thrilled to join the NGRL for it’s second season in 2109. They have a particularly strong rivalry with Nexus, especially within the UK itself, as the nation claims allegiance to both teams. Wyvern believed that Nexus, a team originally founded on the passion and unity of europe, had grown too power and money driven and sought to reignite that passion once again. They succeeded in ending Nexus’ power trip and proceeded to become a major competitor in the NGRL.

Scorpio
Full name- Scorpio Engineering
Country of Origin- Italy
Liverty- Yellow-grey-white
Ship Model- Scorpio
History- In 2120, before Nexus could even lick its wounds at the loss to Wyvern, the team was divided again. Over half of the remaining members left Nexus, and an Italian team under the name of Scorpio was born. Scorpio would seek to join the NGRL for the 2159 league and would aim to put the bleeding team of Nexus to shame. They are closely allied with Wyvern as both teams left Nexus.

Tenrai
Full name- Tenrai Racing Developments
Country of Origin- Australia
Liverty- Azure-white
Ship Model- Protonic AG 4
History- Founded in 2121 by Omnicom after its most powerful ally, Nexus, was reduced to a shadow of its former self, Tenrai allowed the nation of Australia to compete in the NGRL for the first time, their first races scheduled for the third season in 2159.

Barracuda(secret team)
Full name- Barracuda
Country of Origin- Unknown (hidden in Antarctica)
Liverty- Red-navy
Ship Model- No model to display(This is a single hull craft that is ‘fish’ shaped when viewed from above. It’s cockpit is close to the nose. It has three wings on the rear, two standard downward pointed wings and a third one sticking straight up from the middle, resembling a fish’s tail.)
History- Little is known about this mysterious team, they appeared as if from nowhere in 2073 and making their first appearance in the league in 2109. Much of their technology is of unknown origin. Omnicom did not found them, and Diavolt openly denies having part in their formation. What is known is that they are highly elitist, and desire to find ‘perfection.’ They do so by very controversial means: The limbs of their pilots are removed and replaced with advanced cybernetics, for “improved reaction time” and “Less unnecessary blood-flow.” Based on these statements, many believe that Barracuda would use AI to pilot their craft if it weren’t against regulations in the NGRL.

Circuits

Utah Project
Built in 2042 as a NG-tech testing track for the American black-ops division, the circuit was repurposed as an official NGRL circuit in 2052. It is also now openly used by many teams as a testing ground for their craft. However, Diavolt has never requested to use it for this purpose, and Omnicom probably would deny them the privilege even if they asked.

:D How does this look? I put a lot of thought into this. This is my proposal for the backstory of Ballistic NG. I hope you like it!

[bigsnake]

Looks good, I like it! You clearly have put a lot of thought an effort into writing that so very good job :) Only thing I can really point at is to not use my name as a big figure in the game, seems a bit pretentious (original name of the CEO I had made for Gtek was Harry Kiyomi). I'll get to creating all the wiki pages a little later on, most likely by Monday for the reason mentioned at the bottom of this post. If you've got anything else you want to add/change then PM me, that way we can keep the thread a bit cleaner.


Yeowch, broken link. Uhh... Better use an external image source then.

http://s22.postimg.org/f35nqvrsd/Team_Caliburn.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/f35nqvrsd/)

Yeah, that should work 8)

You know for something that's made in sketchup that's impressive, I'm not sure how it holds up today but last time I used it, it was focused on architecture and if you tried to make anything else then you might have well just given up. Since AGGamer has already just created a roster of teams above the team won't be included in the main 8 planned, but there's going to be a large amount of side teams to unlock so it will be very likely it will be added through that :)


I'm currently working on one "old style" based ship. It's not part of any team yet, so if Snake will include it in some existing team is up to him.
9777
It's not finished, some changes of textures are expected in the future. I can change the color scheme, but I like the blue/white.

Do you want to make that the new Hyperion? As a few people have mentioned the current model doesn't really fit the aesthetic of the game since it's more of a Wipeout HD Fury styled ship, so this could be a good opportunity to change that.

So yesterday I open sourced BallisticNG after creating a tile based track system (just like how the original Wipeout games worked). This has been started as a new fresh Unity project and as I'm typing this I'm porting the physics over. It shouldn't be long until everything is back in place, repo is here for those who want to check it out (https://github.com/bigsnake09/BallisticNG). Right now on the repo some tools for changing tile and sections on the track are implemented. As for the track mesh itself, some documentation on what should be done for the tile generation will be up some time in the future. With this I will also be sticking to the PS1 style for the entire game, more information about it will be on my original post with a bunch more information about recent design changes.

[AGSys]

If there are any orthos or even concept art then I'd be willing to help out with modelling ships. Send 'em my way, I'll see what I can do. Like, even as a test to see what I could contribute.

[Xpand]

Here's a closer look at the ones I did:
http://imgur.com/a/YnSlG
In order:
MTech P1
NX2000
Protonic AG4

[JABBERJAW]

Is there pitch control in the game yet? Like the early wipeout games? Can you show the game in action again with a new video?

[bigsnake]

Yeah there's been pitch control similar to the original games for a while now. I've improved the wall collisions since this video, but here's the latest video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7tQmnnI8q8

[Thane Corrigan]

I've been browsing through the youtube channel every few days, and progress is amazing, guy :rock



You know for something that's made in sketchup that's impressive, I'm not sure how it holds up today but last time I used it, it was focused on architecture and if you tried to make anything else then you might have well just given up. Since AGGamer has already just created a roster of teams above the team won't be included in the main 8 planned, but there's going to be a large amount of side teams to unlock so it will be very likely it will be added through that :)


Oh, yeah, Sketchup is my go to for more precise 3d mesh building. The only issue I had was trying to save it in a way that Blender could recognise for model export. Luckily found a pretty handy plug-in that can import an entire .skp Sketch-up scene.
But yeah, I may attempt to clean it up some more if I can figure it out, and then drop a d/l somewhere.
And hey, sure thing. If you think the design's up to scratch, even bonus unlockable team is good running, as small as the contribution might be ^^

Not sure how you're handling bonus team backstory, or if you're fore-going it for the sake of simplicity.
I noticed Wyvern's UK origins, so I'm wondering if I need to reconsider the backstory for this bonus team completely or just ask suggestions on how to adjust it... or it could strengthen an in-nation rivalry between the Wyvern core team and the lowly Caliburn, what with the symbology of dragon vs knight :P
Either way, I admit my stat concept could do with a rethink too to avoid dupes/near-dupes, there's a few low handling/high speed teams already in play.

[JABBERJAW]

Looks really good. Could you do a video of actually pitching back ( without moving) and pitching forward as well? I didn't really see any pitching in the video.

[bigsnake]

Here you go!
The walls are also no longer invisible 90 degree walls, meaning pitching up will now give you a bit more space on the track,


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnJhPw7Manw

[Ace3000]

Once again, I'm really loving the fact that your PS1 era design is that of WipEout 3, my favourite of the PS1 games! :D

[Xpand]

I started Diavolt's ship
http://i.imgur.com/C73vHU2.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/vLXdbhe.jpg
The color scheme isn't final btw.

[Ace3000]

That should be like a 2nd skin or something, it just fits!

[Xpand]

http://i.imgur.com/YpTzYfF.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/pAQvXRH.jpg
Ended up with jungle green camo pattern. Might try snow camo since it's a russian team.

White camo:
http://i.imgur.com/mOGibWN.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/AdRc8MW.jpg

[Meg.A.Byte]

The green one screams Triakis, but I love the second version!

[AGgamer]

I agree with Meg.A.byte! The second one is excellent! :+

[Xpand]

Yeah I like the second one as well. I'm just waiting on bigsnake to speak his mind.

[Thane Corrigan]

Ok, so I'm just about done with the modelling as far as I can see, but I can't figure out applying textures in Blender for the life of me. I'll keep trying but just in case I don't get anywhere soon, I might link it here in a dropbox storage website or something along with some concepts.

[TheXTR09]

Great. My finals are done. Still sh*t scores though, 34% in Calculus and 33% in Chinese. But hey, I had English, Physics and Malay to save me.

Basically, I will be having a lot of free time, I'm going to draw some ship "blueprints" (as I can't model even tho I'd installed Autodesk 3DS 2015 and Blender) and most definitely going to help out AGGamer on the story.

To be honest, the whole outline, the purpose and potential conflicts is just lacking. We don't a reason or we don't have something/someone to care and root for, it needs like, a key event to why there is some action goin' on.
For instance, the first game has Auricom and Qirex in a rather believable Anti-gravity Race mirroring the Space Race in the 60s, also the Fall of F9000, serving as a one-hand reminder of what a cynical ploy the FIA F1 can get, while not necessary will. Thankfully.

I always love a great story, and I just can't help feeling salty becuse of, idk. So I'm leaving one question to start out the storywriting, so we can agree on each other. Good luck!

Why is the league started? What was there that'll worth fighting for?

[J.666]

well 33% in chinese is still impressive l think :p

[AGgamer]

Why is the league started? What was there that'll worth fighting for?

I see what you're saying. But remember, WipEout never had a grand story to tell. Most of the conflict took place outside the races and the races only really serve to make each other look bad. Trust me, I've been messing around with this for a good year (trying to write a fanfic) and there's not really anything in wipEout's lore that suggests whoever wins has a huge effect on the world around them, nor is it very easy to make up a reason that fits. Same thing here, Team Omnicom and Diavolt merely represent the USA and Russia, the real conflict is between the nations themselves and this is going on outside the races.

Anyways, I'll answer your question as best I can. The league was started by Omnicom, the team from the USA. They wanted to spread NG-technology to the USA's allies in the EU and Japan to reinforce them against Russia. The league encourages them to improve and better their technology, it's a competition to see who can make the most advanced speed and weapons tech along side Negative-Gravity. This is one reason why Omnicom didn't want the Russian team Diavolt competing: They are the enemy in this arms race.

Basically, the main conflict is happening outside the races, an arms race. The league is just a way for everyone to 'show-off' what they've accomplished to each other. But if you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them! I'll throw together a new outline as things change. Remember this is just a proposal for what the backstory could be, a basic outline. I think have characters (pilots) would be a great way of adding tension. Problem is I'm bad at naming people.

[TheXTR09]

@AGGamer

So what we have here is Space Race Redux? I like this idea. How about we write this just like a Cold War drama? Espionage for rivaling teams' advancements, sketchy new tech, it'll be like WipEout: Black Ops. :beer

It doesn't need to be grand or rounded, just needs to be enough to feel like a chapter of An Average Day in Earth.

[JABBERJAW]

Looks great!

[Rafeku]

I'm really liking the game, it emulates almost well the classic wipeout.
Just something that I noticed, is that the ship doesn't "float", when you push up the nose, it just falls anyway, and please, remember to put a joystick deadzone. it's too horrible to play with my controller, because the joystick is busted(it's loose).

[dreadofmondays]

AGGamer, do I have you on skype?

[Ace3000]

Introducing Tenrai Racing Developments (http://ballisticng.wikia.com/wiki/Tenrai)!

[Xpand]

Ship model:

http://i.imgur.com/w6I8qnQ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/aaD9srb.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/0uxqqpY.jpg
In game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQw0mi-Nq-8

[bigsnake]

Hey everyone!

So with AGgamer listing a good roster of teams (Hyperion also included) and all the tracks for the game decided I'm going to be closing the game's story side off. I and Dreadofmondays will be taking it from here, thanks to everyone for your submissions as getting the game this far with teams and tracks wouldn't have happened without them! If you have contributed anything up to and beyond this point you will be mentioned in the credits, which is currently a .txt file uploaded with the game.

If you had a team in mind then the next version of the game will feature the ship importer I had made a post about a while ago so you will be able to get your team in the game through that.

BallisticNG's time frame is also now constrained to 2159 only, the base game will come with 8 teams, 16 tracks (8 normal, 8 prototypes) and 4 unlockable ships. Once complete the game's design documentation will be released for everyone to see, for now though I will be working hard to get the first major alpha build released.

[Thane Corrigan]

Update on my proposed contribution - I still can't quite get the hang of this texturing process and it's given me a headache. My inexperience has caused me to hit a brick wall.


I and Dreadofmondays will be taking it from here, thanks to everyone for your submissions as getting the game this far with teams and tracks wouldn't have happened without them! If you have contributed anything up to and beyond this point you will be mentioned in the credits, which is currently a .txt file uploaded with the game.

Reading you loud and clear on that one, Snake.
If you were still interested in that team suggestion I had as one of those bonus teams, I put together the .fbx, a few basic concepts and other things into a folder on my Onedrive...
Y'know, just in case you liked the 3d model concept and wanted to see what you or Xpand could make of it.
Here's the URL link - http://1drv.ms/1NCDtPi (all the files are also inside the .zip, just to save time)

I'm pretty much donating the whole thing. I'll let you take it off my hands, even as far as changing the final team name and stuff, cus I'm getting nowhere with it :p
If not, no biggy. :) Will definitely still be keeping an eye on this project though, all the test videos look great

[dreadofmondays]

sneak peek of new bng circuit
98049805980398069807

[bigsnake]

Update on my proposed contribution - I still can't quite get the hang of this texturing process and it's given me a headache. My inexperience has caused me to hit a brick wall.



Reading you loud and clear on that one, Snake.
If you were still interested in that team suggestion I had as one of those bonus teams, I put together the .fbx, a few basic concepts and other things into a folder on my Onedrive...
Y'know, just in case you liked the 3d model concept and wanted to see what you or Xpand could make of it.
Here's the URL link - http://1drv.ms/1NCDtPi (all the files are also inside the .zip, just to save time)

I'm pretty much donating the whole thing. I'll let you take it off my hands, even as far as changing the final team name and stuff, cus I'm getting nowhere with it :p
If not, no biggy. :) Will definitely still be keeping an eye on this project though, all the test videos look great

Nice stuff! That can definitely be included as a bonus team, I'm still accepting asset contributions so there's no problem with having a few extras :)


sneak peek of new bng circuit
98049805980398069807

That's looking better and better every time you share more images, loving those sewage pipes on that last one.

[Xpand]

Caliburn
http://i.imgur.com/wUHG1Vp.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ofeuwk3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/D7egUu5.jpg

(I only noticed I forgot the spoiler when I was done with the textures. I appologize for that, but in any case the spoiler is a bit redundant as the AG device does the lift/drop work on itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HANpa_OGRtU

[Meg.A.Byte]

Looks great! The colours are pretty refreshing :D
Anyway, as I posted on page 26, I have a ship with no textures. So if anyone wants to just make textures for it (don't worry, UV's are done), it can be used in game. I can basically gave it out. I don't have time to finish that...tons of other work.
I don't want to post it right away, but if you are interested (anyone), just tell me.

[Thane Corrigan]

I only noticed I forgot the spoiler when I was done with the textures. I appologize for that, but in any case the spoiler is a bit redundant as the AG device does the lift/drop work on itself.
That's perfectly alright, I was wondering if it was necessary myself, and I got a little worried it might get in the way of the camera on close-up. The spoiler concept itself was inspired a little by Auricom F5000 and it seemed more of a gimmicky thing to be honest.

Still, I like the changes, and it looks great on the track, the bright colours really stand out. I'm kind of wondering what the stats are now :P it looks quite rear-heavy in handling and slow on the thrust uptake

[Xpand]

Wyvern remake
http://i.imgur.com/VX6Amqv.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/C0wOlWq.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/vBSBkul.jpg

Btw Megabyte, send the model file via PM, please.

[Hybrid Divide]

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I hadn't dropped into this thread before today. And WOW. That's all I have to say. I think I'm even more psyched for this game than Slipstream GX. This just feels more... WipEout-y. :D

I saw a question a few pages back about whether the look should be made to look a bit more like WipEout 3. Has a decision been made? Honestly, I'm divided on it. I really really like the "realistic" look of the WipEout Anniversary demo. That had some serious callbacks to Silverstream. But the newer vids looked so much like a Wip3out beta version, I couldn't help but be impressed as hell. I'll play it either way, of course, but I think my vote goes for the slightly more realistic graphics. They look, to me, like how WO1 would look had the tech been available at the time.

Thoughts?

At any rate, I'll be watching this more closely from now on.

[Meg.A.Byte]

One thing that wasn't discussed before (i think) is the announcer. I'm curious about it. Do you have any plans with it Snake?

[bigsnake]

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I hadn't dropped into this thread before today. And WOW. That's all I have to say. I think I'm even more psyched for this game than Slipstream GX. This just feels more... WipEout-y. :D

I saw a question a few pages back about whether the look should be made to look a bit more like WipEout 3. Has a decision been made? Honestly, I'm divided on it. I really really like the "realistic" look of the WipEout Anniversary demo. That had some serious callbacks to Silverstream. But the newer vids looked so much like a Wip3out beta version, I couldn't help but be impressed as hell. I'll play it either way, of course, but I think my vote goes for the slightly more realistic graphics. They look, to me, like how WO1 would look had the tech been available at the time.

Thoughts?

At any rate, I'll be watching this more closely from now on.

Thank you! Yeah the decision on the Wip3out style of the game has been decided now, it's much more manageable and much quicker to make content plus it looks more authentic :)


One thing that wasn't discussed before (i think) is the announcer. I'm curious about it. Do you have any plans with it Snake?

I do, what I'm wanting to achieve with voices is something similar to Wipeout 2097 (the robotic system voice). If anyone is interested in doing voice work then let me know about that, I have a list of lines to be said. I have already tried to do it myself and I don't have the voice for it. :P It's not a priority right now though.

[bigsnake]

Since the whole game is now stylized like a PS1 game, I've been working on a new aesthetic for the prototype tracks. Here's what I have, minimalist fake wire-frames.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPN9Oeob2VM&feature=youtu.be

[Thane Corrigan]

Oooh, very nice. The minimalist approach is good.

Just some of the colour elements in the environment seem... confusing (not sure what other word to use):
- It's quite hard to identify the track ahead in the video sometimes. Even simply using a darker grey on the track compared to the background to increase the contrast should make it easier on the eyes.
- The speed pads and weapon pads are also quite hard to differentiate from a distance. I think allowing the speed and weapon pads to be separate colours would help a lot there.

I'm liking the orange theme though, makes it very vivid and bold. :+

[Ace3000]

It wasn't much better in wip3out, tbh. I think it should stay like that

EDIT: I'm a dipshit, the background was slightly different to the track. Ugh. -_-

[dreadofmondays]

New track!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNCmUXp-i4Q

This is Aciknovae in almost final condition. I hope I did the original concept justice! :)

[bigsnake]

Here's some more stuff for showing off Acnikovae too :)



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MI-fPQBcJs

https://i.gyazo.com/34368e01dff4142ae4d7f33f743710cf.png

https://i.gyazo.com/d87b7f1ad467dfef7df03d76c7248f14.png

https://i.gyazo.com/c9b1d1a78e95cb21ae519075f0106196.png

https://i.gyazo.com/97c698a6fb8ed5c9e7e781e9678b3e4e.png

https://i.gyazo.com/2ba281046455cb9b9c1edd22cf1b6c43.png

[DIXI200]

Congratulations, great job :+

[AGgamer]

It looks excellent! You should be very proud! The one thing I'd say about it is I intended for it to be a night circuit. Looks very professionally done though! ^_^

[Hybrid Divide]

Wow! Excellent!

[Meg.A.Byte]

I really like this one, especially the trippy tunnel and holographic Earth. Good job!

[Tucknut.net]

Wow, indeed! Great stuff!

[Xpand]

G-tek
http://i.imgur.com/lzDw12H.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/uYjgUXG.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/96f3qEl.jpg

[Hybrid Divide]

Been meaning to ask about weapon announcements. What type will this game have?:
The type that tells you what you picked up? Or the type that warns you what kind of weapon is ahead or behind you?

Or perhaps, an option should be available? Or some way to do both?

In general, I prefer the warning option, as it feels more realistic to me. But at the same time, I LOVED the announcers in 2048 that announced pickups. (Especially AG-Systems!)

Thoughts?

Edit: Also, I really like that G-Tek craft design. Of course, I'm a sucker for designs that resemble the original mono-hull design from the first game.
(Why yes, that may have something to do with why I'm a FEISAR fan. Just maybe. :D)

[JABBERJAW]

Great looking physics!

[bigsnake]

Been meaning to ask about weapon announcements. What type will this game have?:
The type that tells you what you picked up? Or the type that warns you what kind of weapon is ahead or behind you?

Or perhaps, an option should be available? Or some way to do both?

In general, I prefer the warning option, as it feels more realistic to me. But at the same time, I LOVED the announcers in 2048 that announced pickups. (Especially AG-Systems!)

Thoughts?

Edit: Also, I really like that G-Tek craft design. Of course, I'm a sucker for designs that resemble the original mono-hull design from the first game.
(Why yes, that may have something to do with why I'm a FEISAR fan. Just maybe. :D)

I'm a fan of customization so there will most likely be both, I do feel like just having a warning sound when someone near you has a specific weapon is better in that it keeps you on your toes more since you don't know what exactly the danger could be.

While on the topic here's the list of weapons that will be in the game, there's quite a few and I'm going to be using a 3-class system which modifies certain weapons and changes which ones the ship uses so you get a bit of customization for your playstyle. You can also find this list on the trello board linked on the original post.

Offensive
* Rockets
* Missiles
* Mines
* Trip Laser (a re-skinned quake basically)
* Plasma Bolt
* Energy Wall
* Bomb
* Impulse
* Cannons

Defensive
* Shield
* Autopilot
* Emergency Pack (the requirement for getting it will be a bit more specific then WO2097)
* Friction Shield
* Reflector
* Cloak

I'm also going to look at re-introducing barrel rolls from earlier builds of the game but repurposing them for combat, the idea would be you can evade non-lockon weapons if you barrel roll at just the right moment but you will still take a small amount of the damage. I'm not saying that's absolutely going to happen though, if anything I mentioned it to gather feedback on what people think of that idea. Ideally I want to start adding some features that expand further on what Wipeout could have done instead of just making a straight up Wipeout clone with different teams and tracks.

[Thane Corrigan]

One thing that wasn't discussed before (i think) is the announcer. I'm curious about it. Do you have any plans with it Snake?
I do, what I'm wanting to achieve with voices is something similar to Wipeout 2097 (the robotic system voice). If anyone is interested in doing voice work then let me know about that, I have a list of lines to be said. I have already tried to do it myself and I don't have the voice for it. :P It's not a priority right now though.

Oooh, voice acting. I'm not great with post-effects, but voices are totally a thing I could do, I may be interested in attempting this at some point.

[Xpand]

Scorpio
http://i.imgur.com/OA0vH0v.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/wVBXKyg.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/po9BsDb.jpg

[TheXTR09]

http://i.imgur.com/l34egmz.jpg
This is supposed to be a crude sketch of my Velocity Inc. team. Since it's no use now, I figured posting it out here and see how you guys think.

[dreadofmondays]

so idk what happened but i suddenly ended up with all these SWEET-ASS BNG WALLPAPERS
98329833983498359836

These are not 100% true quality and size. I'll make a proper pack later on once i have more.

[Meg.A.Byte]

so idk what happened but i suddenly ended up with all these SWEET-ASS BNG WALLPAPERS

HOLY MOLY! These are so goood. I love it! We needed some of this.
Anyway, I have plans to do some magazine covers for BNG, maybe somewhere at the end of this week (about 6-7 days from now).
Hype is getting real :D

[Xpand]

Hyperion (Originally modelled by Meg.A.Byte)
http://i.imgur.com/48UxUpn.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/KN0aoQT.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/K5eMHFk.jpg

[Meg.A.Byte]

Man, that's just fantastic! It has everything it needs - black/orange/white color palette with carbon fibre. Great job there. I think it's good that you are making textures for every ship because it's consistent in quality and the whole visual aspect.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Oooh, voice acting. I'm not great with post-effects, but voices are totally a thing I could do, I may be interested in attempting this at some point.
How will the voice acting be applied in game? I am picturing Unreal Tournament-style taunts during races, with radio chatter between the pilots.

I also think a team operator during Campaign races would be a nice touch, who'd warn you when somebody was coming up behind you or when somebody got through a mine field that you planted.

- - - -

I had some weapon ideas a while back from one of my own brainstorming projects regarding a "better version" of 2048, so if anyone wants to hear about them, you are welcome to send me a private message.

[bigsnake]

How will the voice acting be applied in game? I am picturing Unreal Tournament-style taunts during races, with radio chatter between the pilots.

I also think a team operator during Campaign races would be a nice touch, who'd warn you when somebody was coming up behind you or when somebody got through a mine field that you planted.

- - - -

I had some weapon ideas a while back from one of my own brainstorming projects regarding a "better version" of 2048, so if anyone wants to hear about them, you are welcome to send me a private message.

It's just going to be one word system voices to tell you what items you pickup and warn you if an AI nearby is targeting you with something, also the countdown at the beginning of the race.

The problem with radio chatter between pilots is that teams wouldn't be communicating with each other, and duplicate teams you'd see on the track are just a limitation of teams to fill up all 12 slots for a race. There's a total of 9 teams, excluding the 4 unlockable prototype ships, the AI are going to be able to choose from so there will be 4 duplicates if you're playing with 12 racers. A team operator is then made completely redundant by the ship being able to warn you of any threats (that's what the system voice is implied to be).

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

I still think hearing your opponents curse you over the radio (with sensor bleeps) when you hit them with a Disruptor would be extremely satisfying :P

[Rovenami]

I still think hearing your opponents curse you over the radio (with sensor bleeps) when you hit them with a Disruptor would be extremely satisfying :P
I was thinking more of like in XGRA where the voiceovers for each pilot vary depending on whether your starting to damage your opponent or if the opponent's shields are critically damaged and/or if it occurs to the pilot.

[Xpand]

NEXUS
http://i.imgur.com/A8lO4Hh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/MT2mZQM.jpg

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

I love that aesthetic, Xpand; clean, high-resolution textures that look straight out of WipEout HD, on low polygon Wip3out- and Pure-esque models. Is it being constructed with Quads, by any chance?

[Xpand]

It's a mix of quads and triangles. But it's exported to triangle mesh anyways, so it doesn't really matter. The ships are all around 100 polys. The textures are high resolution there, but they're reduced to 256x256px for the game so it looks accurately PS1-ish.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Will the high-res textures be released later on as an optional download?

[bigsnake]

I don't see why not, it would break the style of the game a bit when using them but it would be a nice little extra to have. I however don't have the high res textures myself to do that right now though, going to be getting the high res textures once Xpand has finished the last 2 ships.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Hurray!

One more question; how is Speed/Velocity (the latter including direction) being measured in Ballistic NG, KPH or M/S (the latter is the international scientific standard)?

[Thane Corrigan]

2 more entrants to go! So excited to see all the teams ready for action.

To be honest, I'm not sure why m/s would need to be included in a racing game, despite being the SI unit. KM/H (and possibly a toggle to MPH) is much more relatable in everyday conversation anyway.

As for the High-Res, as long as it doesn't impact load times too much (not that it should necessarily), it'd be great to have that available. :o

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

I'm surprised nobody has asked me about my weapon ideas yet. I do feel that some of them could be adapted to Ballistic NG with a bit of work... since mainly they're just reworked versions of the existing weapons in some of the other games.

[Xpand]

2 more entrants to go! So excited to see all the teams ready for action.


Make that 1 to go
Omnicom
http://i.imgur.com/5ASveFn.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/IPHjM5Y.jpg

[dreadofmondays]

two more wallpapers have appeared
again these will have been compressed by the forum, full files are coming later
98399840

[Thane Corrigan]

Make that 1 to go
Omnicom
Oh goodness, Omnicom. That purple! So tasty.

Also gotta say, following my suggestion through the Caliburn concepts, your decision to include carbon-fibre elements to some of the other teams is refreshing.
In-universe, I imagine these teams are aware that a lot of unnecessary metallic parts will be heavy, so they're trying to cut down some of the weight for extra handling, knowing they can rely on the shields to protect those possibly more fragile parts.

[bigsnake]

Hurray!

One more question; how is Speed/Velocity (the latter including direction) being measured in Ballistic NG, KPH or M/S (the latter is the international scientific standard)?

It's KM/H like most racing games, I might add a MP/H option at some point in the future though.


2 more entrants to go! So excited to see all the teams ready for action.

To be honest, I'm not sure why m/s would need to be included in a racing game, despite being the SI unit. KM/H (and possibly a toggle to MPH) is much more relatable in everyday conversation anyway.

As for the High-Res, as long as it doesn't impact load times too much (not that it should necessarily), it'd be great to have that available. :o

Yeah it wouldn't affect load times at all, at least enough to actually be noticeable. Loading times will be no longer then the anniversary build, maybe just a bit longer because it has to load lightmapping from an external file.

I'm looking at another release between Christmas and early January which will feature all of the ships. Once Xpand has finished the last one I just need to balance everything, add a few things to the game and I'll be looking at releasing after that. You'll be able to play on Aciknovae, Luna and 0x001.

[TheXTR09]

http://imgur.com/El1opLK.png
http://imgur.com/FisMtR0.png
There. Not sure how you guys like it.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Some ways you could enhance the retro experience, in the form of optional post processing:
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3786

Making the game look more like it is on a CRT, with the options being toggleable for those who either just don't want it or who are playing on an <actual> CRT.

[Meg.A.Byte]

Some ways you could enhance the retro experience, in the form of optional post processing:
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3786

Making the game look more like it is on a CRT, with the options being toggleable for those who either just don't want it or who are playing on an <actual> CRT.

This look good for sure, I'm wondering how it will look in-game. Snake, you should try it if it's not too complicated.

And one more thing. I know it's early to say, but will there be any trailer, maybe after releasing all teams? I've got an idea that you can make trailer just about the racing league, that might be interesting.

[bigsnake]

This look good for sure, I'm wondering how it will look in-game. Snake, you should try it if it's not too complicated.

And one more thing. I know it's early to say, but will there be any trailer, maybe after releasing all teams? I've got an idea that you can make trailer just about the racing league, that might be interesting.

Yeah I'm implementing graphics options now so I'll get to adding a CRT effect soon :)
I'm planning on a trailer, just need to get the high res textures from Xpand so I can show off the teams in their full glory. Let me know what you've got in mind for a trailer, I plan to make a couple of the course of the game's development.

[bigsnake]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu3QKYy4Hbc

Edit:I forgot to include Diavolt in the video, you can see Diavolt from a link in the video's description.

[vincoof]

The presentation looks nice. A bunch of ships really look very close to their WO counterpart IMHO. Like GTek Prototype which has the shape and color scheme (red/white) of AG-Systems, or Scorpio which has the shape and color scheme (yellow/black) of Goteki 45, just to name a few. I know the game is supposed to be close to WO, but is it intended to be that close? Mind me, it is not an accusation, it is a question ;)

Keep up the good work!

[Xpand]

That's actually on purpose. The GTEK Prototype was based off an old concept drawing (http://threedmaniak.deviantart.com/art/FX-200-AG-Systems-201062357) I had for an FX-200 AG-Systems (Which wasn't even supposed to be an official BNG ship).

[Meg.A.Byte]

Oh god, man! I totally didn't know to this point that these artworks and concepts were made by you! I've got a folder full of inspiration and some of those artworks are your's. It's been over 3 years since I got into research of wipeout ships and making my own but now I know who made a big chunk of my inspiration.
(mindblow!)

[Xpand]

*.* I'm so amazed right now haha Thanks!
I never really thought those were worthy of serving as inspiration. I just made them for fun!

[Hybrid Divide]

@TheXTR09

Personally, I dig everything in that except for the blood. It just looks out of place to me.

Figure out a way to show teeth, or the outline of such. But I feel the blood takes away from the fast and deadly aesthetic you're going for. Still, good work. :)

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu3QKYy4Hbc

Edit:I forgot to include Diavolt in the video, you can see Diavolt from a link in the video's description.

Not only do they have ridiculously high-resolution textures, but those shaders are pretty rad as well... Will we be able to switch between that and PS1-style flat shading in the options?

By the way, what's up with using the Arrow Keys for people who don't have the luxury of using an actual controller? There's a very good reason most PC games since the late 90's use WASD for movement as opposed to the arrow keys.

[Xpand]

By the way, what's up with using the Arrow Keys for people who don't have the luxury of using an actual controller? There's a very good reason most PC games since the late 90's use WASD for movement as opposed to the arrow keys.

Not in racing games they don't. Pretty much all racing games I own (goes up to around 2007) still use arrow keys for the basic accelerate-brake-turn scheme.
The reason WASD (or ESDF in the early FPS days) is used for movement in FPS games is because most people use the right hand to control the mouse. The WASD just stuck with people because the most famous FPS game at the time (Quake) used it. Before Quake most FPS games used a combination of WASD/ESDF and arrow keys.

I don't know/remember what scheme BNG is using tbh, but A-W-D to control the left/right airbrake and accelerate, and the arrow keys for pitching/turning is pretty natural to most of us I think.

[Hybrid Divide]

Been forgetting to ask: How will shield replenishment work in this game?

Pit-Lane of Weapon Absorb?

[dreadofmondays]

Pit lane.


There's a very good reason most PC games since the late 90's use WASD for movement as opposed to the arrow keys.

And what reason is that ?

[Xpand]

Been forgetting to ask: How will shield replenishment work in this game?

Pit-Lane of Weapon Absorb?

From the videos: Pit-lane

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

@Xpand Why not include both?

@Dread The arrow keys are just really unnatural. For instance, there aren't any other keys in easy reach from that position on most keyboards.

Does anybody remember that idea I had back for Slipstream, where there would be an invisible box in the center of the screen, and if you moved your mouse outside of it then your ship would steer or pitch accordingly until you returned the mouse to the center of the screen? One reason that I wanted my idea implemented is that not only would it be a familiar and ergonomic setup for the average PC gamer, but also that it would provide for easy analogue input without needing a gamepad; you could always emulate Digital steering with quicker mouse movements.

[dreadofmondays]

I'm sorry, but I just don't think that's a great idea.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Don't just say it's not a good idea, tell me why it isn't a good idea, and why it can't just be implemented as an option?

The mouse cursor would basically just be taking the place of an analogue stick. You wouldn't have to pick it up and keep moving it over and over and over again, you just move it to one side of the screen and the ship will steer in that direction. Move it to the other side of the screen and the ship will steer in the other direction. Move the cursor to the center of the screen and the ship will stop steering.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Unless you are referring to having both pit lanes and weapon absorbing. You should specify which idea you're replying to.

[bigsnake]

Don't just say it's not a good idea, tell me why it isn't a good idea, and why it can't just be implemented as an option?

The mouse cursor would basically just be taking the place of an analogue stick. You wouldn't have to pick it up and keep moving it over and over and over again, you just move it to one side of the screen and the ship will steer in that direction. Move it to the other side of the screen and the ship will steer in the other direction. Move the cursor to the center of the screen and the ship will stop steering.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Unless you are referring to having both pit lanes and weapon absorbing. You should specify which idea you're replying to.

The reason why it isn't a good idea is the same reason why people who play first person shooters on PC complain about looking using an analog stick except in this case it's the reverse, it's not accurate to control a vehicle with a mouse. Taking the input directly means you have to keep moving the mouse in order to steer and having zones on the screen which control turning is tedious and requires you to be accurate with the mouse in a very short amount of time. Considering anti-gravity racers are generally very fast paced it's more of a stupid gimmick then it is a useful method of input.

Take the six-axis input on Wipeout HD and Wipeout 2048 for instance because this is basically the same. Having your controller/vita not tilted means you don't turn, and to turn you have to tilt your controller/vita (effectively the side of the screen scenario). Not only is there lag from the input but it's also very hard to make quick reactions because you have to physically move your arms. How many people actually use motion controls when playing HD/2048 seriously? With the mouse, you have to move your wrists more to start turning then you would your thumb on a d-pad, analog stick or keyboard keys. Of course in higher resolutions the mouse is also less sensitive, so if you really wanted to use the mouse as a method of input then you'd rather need a high DPI or play the game in a low resolution. This sort of feature is best used on touch-screen devices where you can tap either side of the screen quickly.

For the pit lanes and weapon absorbing they can't really co-exist because absorbing makes pit-lanes completely redundant. Since you can absorb as quickly as you can hit weapon pads all you need to do is hit a few and you're already back at full health. If you make the energy restored too low then the game becomes artificially difficult and if you have pitlanes combined with the absorbing and a low restore rate then you've just provided the player with a really easy way of staying alive so they can get back to the pitlane to heal.

[Thane Corrigan]

If anyone was wondering, I put up the placeholder page for Caliburn on the wiki just now. It's got a little blurb, but very minimal information for now.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

I can see how mouse sensitivity could be a problem, but couldn't it be programmed to scale with screen resolution? You could also have options to adjust the level of precision and the size of the bounding box.

As for pit lanes and absorbing, you could either put a cool down on absorbing weapons, make it so that you can only recover up to X% of your health through absorbing, etc... Thus giving the pit lane some use; when using the absorb function to recover health, you can't absorb-spam, and your health will never go above, say, 65%. In order to restore it to full, you would need a Pit Lane.

[Thane Corrigan]

I'm in no way involved in the coding or building of the physics/UI of this game, but I'm pretty sure I know just a little bit about game design, having played them for many years. A game mechanic needs to be tested not only for its appeal and ease of use in the environment, but also for redundancy based around your original concept and a working prototype.

The idea isn't create an homage to HD. That's what SS-GX was built to be. B-NG's direction is an homage to the original trilogy of Wipeout games.

Here are current facts necessary to know about the game as it stands (as far as I'm aware):
- Barrel rolls are not a feature, removing the 15-point shield drain present in Pure/Pulse/HD/2048. Average shield levels in a race stay higher as a result.
- Instead, Hyperthrust is implemented. This boost is activated at the push of a button, gradually reducing the shield the longer the button is pressed.
- However, this doesn't make the Turbo redundant, as Hyperthrust is slower on the uptake and more costly. The decision of Speed vs Shield management is still valid.
- The path of the pit lane is deliberately designed to recharge a large amount of shield while risking the loss of a race position and taking away from your track times.
- Meanwhile, the instant use Energy-Pack has been brought back - available from the weapon pads as an item while at low shield levels, replenishing a small amount of shield.

If absorbs are an option (even with a cooldown), several things will be unbalanced:
- With a supersaturation of shield recharge methods, average shield levels will stay even higher, making combat prospects less risky and exciting.
- With every item and weapon absorb providing the opportunity of an instant shield recharge, the E-Pack item will be redundant.
- Even with a pitlane, who would risk it to lose a position when they can rely on an absorb? Consequently, as bigsnake said, this makes the pitlanes redundant.

Realistically, in all the Wipeout HD videos you've seen, how often would someone ever bother to absorb above 50%? Most would argue that it would be a waste of a decent weapon, others would absorb without a doubt just to increase the number of barrel rolls they can pull off safely.

Back in 2097 and Wip3out, pitlanes and the chance of an E-pack were all you had, making you rely a lot more on your skills in avoiding weapons and walls to make it to safety. While the option to absorb may be preferable to some people, I for one support being faithful to the original vision of the Wipeout series.

-------------------------------------------

As for mouse control... even if it's not built into the game, there are many programs out on the web that can convert mouse movement directly into a button press input.
Current one I'm using is GlovePIE, it's built to emulate everything from joystick controls to Xbox Kinect inputs.

All you need is a list of the keys and commands, the least amount of patience to code a script, save it and run it, and then you can adjust it for sensitivity.
Like for instance:


UpArrow = delta(Mouse.DirectInputY) > 1
DownArrow = delta(Mouse.DirectInputY) < -1
LeftArrow = delta(Mouse.DirectInputX) < -1
RightArrow = delta(Mouse.DirectInputX) > 1

The code lines for the Up and Down keys are written to provide inverted pitch controls like Wipeout uses, and obviously you can change the 1 to a different number.

I honest wouldn't recommend using a mouse in a racing game, though... if it can be helped at all. I'm not an expert, but it's no joystick. I've tried Flight Simulator with a mouse and I can tell you it's not easy.
But hey, I'll let you know how I get on with Wipeout 3. I'll test it out right now

EDIT: It went terribly. A mouse really isn't the best for precise motion, its too floaty.

[bigsnake]

Just some news on the next release.
So the planned release date is somewhere in January, however I've managed to get everything setup quicker then expected so we could be seeing a Christmas release. I'm at least striving for that, if it's not ready at that point then I won't release until the current planned January date.

All teams are setup and ready to try out, in this release they will all be unlocked but in the future I am going to implement a system to unlock them. As for tracks there will be 4 to try out: Aciknovae, Luna, 0x001 and a secret track that you will see once released. The whole game has been rewritten since the 20th Anniversary release to take advantage of a new tile based track system. From a physics standpoint not too much has changed, it's mostly ship configurations that have been altered. The most noticeable change is the removal of 90 degree invisible walls on the track, meaning you can now pitch up and you'll have a bit more room to slide around on the track. Your total time after completing a race is now saved instead of your best lap, however your best lap will be displayed if no save file for times are found.

[TheXTR09]

Great! 'tis the season where miracles happen. :rock

And look! I made more weird stuff.
What's WipEout if no corporate company supports them?
9885
9886
9887
(Original by Source modder RedRogueXIII (http://css.gamebanana.com/skins/111869). He's pretty much silent for years.)


Get their .psd/.ai files here. (https://mega.nz/#!FQkVUQDS!sKT-4fjVv4P9hqeLzdzpJX2u9ZmiroMjMQ9-9gMVMTs)

[Ace3000]

In 2156 Comic Sans still exists?! Ugh.

All jokes (and tastes in typefaces) aside, I think they're pretty well done.

[TheXTR09]

@Ace3000
It's Comic Neue. I frickin' loved it for some reason. (www.comicneue.com) I should use the Angular version but I think the Standard one fits in more nicely.
In fact, Garamond has lasted for 475 years! (http://blog.nextdayflyers.com/bembo-garamond-bodoni-old-fonts-still-in-use/) Still being used by fashionistas for fanciness.

[bigsnake]

I like the first two, the first image's font is a bit unreadable but the design other then that is good :) 2nd one is my favorite. Thanks for the designs!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QMAaM59FuE
I've just released v0.1 of the game, you can find the download link on the releases thread or here's a direct link (https://github.com/bigsnake09/BallisticNG/releases/download/0.1/BallisticNG.v0.1.zip).
Two of the tracks aren't complete but they're good enough so far to be included in this build. This version of the game is focused on letting you try out the ships, some things are a bit rough around the edges but you shouldn't experience any problems trying to play the game. If you do though, please do report it :)

A new feature I added just before releasing is hypermode, with this enabled it almost doubles the speed of the ships but your times wont be saved. Using Barracuda also disables time saving as it's an OP ship which in the future will have to be unlocked.

[TheXTR09]

Using Barracuda also disables time saving as it's an OP ship which in the future will have to be unlocked.
Barracuda? For Christmas?
And a 0.x beta release?
http://jayhodgkins.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/boltman.jpg?w=978

- - - Updated - - -

And within minutes, I got to try it out. Boy, how damn good this build is.

Ships handles absolutely spot-on, the graphics were wonderful, there's barely any glitches, and it runs silky smooth.
But once I got into the faster classes, the handling can't really keep up with the ship. Whether this is me being a noob or if the handling needs some tweaking, I'm pretty sure it's the former.

And here's one thing that really bugs me off: Collision damage. It's goddamn huge. Head-on on a Tenrai, some 20% of it was lost. Collision damage should be a little less painful. Hell, I died halfway in Aciknovae on Halbred. :eek

The graphics aren't just nice, it's even faithful to the original PSX. "Vibrating" meshes, Minecraft-grade textures and sprites, it's is a one-way trip to Nostalgia Town. Even the little details, like camera-bots aiming at you (and even doubles as the position you're viewing in Replay) and no rain indoors, a detail which many AAA PSX games miss.

There's only one glitch on textures. Behind the starting line billboards there's a texture dump, and somehow a picture of a tree is there too. Iunno, I just like checking out for Easter eggs. :dizzy

And well done, Snake. You impressed me again.

[AGgamer]

This is pretty exciting. But I can't run anything! (My fault, computer isn't compatible) Can someone post a gameplay vid for me to fawn over? Maybe a snapshot of Barracuda? Because I see nothing otherwise.

[TheXTR09]

Barracuda. In all its glory
9888
9889
Even in Toxic, it's faster than the WO2097 Piranha in Phantom. :twisted
I'm not joking.

[bigsnake]

Glad to see you enjoyed it :D

That texture dump you saw is actually the texture for the whole of Aciknovae, environment textures in the game are done through an atlas so only one image has to be used. Ideally those billboards will be mapped properly at some point. I've just released a small update, it overwrites the previous link. I fixed a few spelling errors and fixed the post processing effects, nothing too special but they needed fixing.

[dreadofmondays]

Barracuda? For Christmas?
There's only one glitch on textures. Behind the starting line billboards there's a texture dump, and somehow a picture of a tree is there too. Iunno, I just like checking out for Easter eggs. :dizzy

Yeah, i had a lot of space left over and realised i needed trees, and the tree texture was just so huge it takes up that much texture space just by itself :dizzy

[bigsnake]

Hey everyone, more news!

I've just been taking a bit of a break from development but I'm now back. Dreadofmondays is working on branding and UI designs, those will no doubt be shared at some point soon. I'm currently working on improving the physics and optimizing the game further. Wall collisions have been a bit of a gray area for a while, if you haven't been able to slide over them then you've been lucky. I've fixed that which makes scraping walls a lot less risky and I'm soon going to be working on the hovering to fix a few issues with bottoming out (such as small impacts chucking your ship into the air). Since people have also complained, the next version of the game is going to have a draw distance slider so you're not stuck with a low draw distance if you don't want it.

The main focus for the next version of the game is to polish what already exists, add actual racing, start adding weapons, add more tracks and allow custom ships. There could possibly be the start of implementing the track editor into the game too (it's currently a separate thing). A release date is not being mentioned yet because I just don't know when it will be ready, but a rough deadline I want to meet is within the next 3 months. There might be a small release before then just to introduce the ship editor, we'll see though.

[Varsh]

Just given it a crack and I'm loving the handling already. A slight tighten up but otherwise a really good base you have going. Superb stuff! I haven't played Wipeout in ages so it took a little getting used to the controls again but otherwise it felt almost like I was playing 2097 all over again. :D

[dreadofmondays]

Made this and proud of it B)
9894

[Meg.A.Byte]

@dreadofmondays
I love the style, this is piece of true graphic designer ;)

[bigsnake]

Reporting in just so there isn't a large space of time between now and the next thing.

Right now I'm working on a 3D menu, ship editor and track editor. The 3D menu will take a while because I'm having to program a system that can generate everything in realtime as up to now the menus have all been pre-made using the tools Unity provides which is very tedious if you want to create complicated interfaces. The ship editor already exists but needs to be moved over to the open source version of the project and it's the same story with the track editor but I'm re-creating it from scratch. I created a repository for the track editor (https://github.com/bigsnake09/BnGTrackEditor), it's really bare bones stuff at the moment but I'll be updating it regularly.

[il_mago_di_Doz]

Hi bigsnake, I wanted to say that I am impressed with your work.
May I ask you if you've ever considered developing an ag racing game as a full-time job? I mean with you and a team of other developers doing it for a living.
I would definitely buy a polished game with the physics engines and the ideas you're developing.
Anyway keep it up with the good work!

[bigsnake]

I definitely have, getting into gamedev full time is my future goal and being able to work on an AG racer in a team would be amazing! There's still a lot of potential with AG racers since it's such a niche genre that not many people have messed around with trying new ideas.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Has there been any progress on the CRT emulation code? I'd love to see it, if so.

[il_mago_di_Doz]

I definitely have, getting into gamedev full time is my future goal and being able to work on an AG racer in a team would be amazing! There's still a lot of potential with AG racers since it's such a niche genre that not many people have messed around with trying new ideas.
I'm really glad to hear that!
I wish you all the best :)

[bigsnake]

Has there been any progress on the CRT emulation code? I'd love to see it, if so.
I haven't worked on it yet, it's something I'm going to implement in the future since it will require a bit of work to get it to function.


I'm really glad to hear that!
I wish you all the best :)
Thanks!

I've just released a new version of the game, it's only minor but it fixes a few problems and there's some changes to the physics to make the ships more responsive and tighter. You can download it here (https://github.com/bigsnake09/BallisticNG/releases/download/0.1_1/BallisticNG.v0.1_1.zip) and I've also updated the released thread.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1zTtHJzn5Q

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

I haven't worked on it yet, it's something I'm going to implement in the future since it will require a bit of work to get it to function.

Alright. I'll look forward to it! The HLSL MAME code is open-source, but I haven't seen anybody try to get the shaders working on modern games, since the whole point of MAME is for use in emulated Arcade games. As such, I do expect it to take a long time to implement.

But I'm thinking... You could probably use things like Scanlines on the in-game stuff, and "Vector" effects on the HUD and menus? Maybe not the Pincushion (curve) effect, though.

[mdhay]

I've been working on a HUD design for Bigsnake. Right now it's exclusively the tachometer and shield gauge, but I'd like to get throughts from people watching this thread. https://imgur.com/ECM3u6e

[JFthebestJan]

@mdhay: awesome HUD, knight rider style xD i like it :robot

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

It looks very reminescent of LCARS. (http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Library_Computer_Access_and_Retrieval_System) I love it! It's just begging to have a portion that doubles as a music visualizer.

[mdhay]

It's just begging to have a portion that doubles as a music visualizer.

I'm going to ignore why this was coloured almost the same colour as the body background and skip to saying that no, this is not a good idea.

There is no way that an interface, dynamic or not, would benefit from such a thing. A pilot of an AG craft needs to know about turbine RPM and airspeed more than whether is bangin' toonz aren't dank enough. Not only that, but it's infoxiation; in a racing game this is asking for trouble.

[Ace3000]

Listen to this man, he's majoring in game design

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

I'm going to ignore why this was coloured almost the same colour as the body background and skip to saying that no, this is not a good idea.

There is no way that an interface, dynamic or not, would benefit from such a thing. A pilot of an AG craft needs to know about turbine RPM and airspeed more than whether is bangin' toonz aren't dank enough. Not only that, but it's infoxiation; in a racing game this is asking for trouble.

It was a joke, which is why I colored it different.

[il_mago_di_Doz]

I've been working on a HUD design for Bigsnake. Right now it's exclusively the tachometer and shield gauge, but I'd like to get throughts from people watching this thread. https://imgur.com/ECM3u6e
They're both great, but I prefer the one on the right.
The one on the left has the "Km/h" sign too big: it doesn't contain any information, so it should be written much smaller imho.
It also has that void space under itself that seems a little weird, like if something's missing.

[mdhay]

It was a joke, which is why I colored it different.

Jokes need to be seen to be funny; colouring that almost pure white was going to get in the way of that. Redundant, either way, because there's nothing to suggest it's a joke other than your saying it is after being told it was a bad idea. Given your suggestion of mouse steering, I'm assuming you just don't know what you're talking about and don't like it when nobody falls for it.


Thanks for the feedback, Mago. We've been talking behind the scenes about the HUD long before it was posted, and were leaning towards the one on the right! If In had taken the screenshot from the BNG file instead of my uni work, I would have been able to show you some changes I made!

The void space is actually for the weapon icons when those were made, in an attempt to have a HUD that was completely at the bottom. But that said, it'd look better reversed. Sadly it gets tedious to fix in Photoshop, and In could not be bothered! :P

[il_mago_di_Doz]

The void space is actually for the weapon icons when those were made, in an attempt to have a HUD that was completely at the bottom.
Well, now it makes sense! :)

[Thane Corrigan]

I like the segmented design of the left one, it harkens back to the Wipeout 64 hud (the game is pretty underrated, tbh).

But yeah, in terms of actually conveying information, the right hand one is much more streamlined and less confusing to the eyes. Playing around with the style a little, I'm wondering if it would benefit from small notches along the shield gauge each 10%/25%, but not exactly banding all the way across the shield bar. Some people identify numbers quicker while others identify visuals easier, so reinforcing the shield percentage at certain points down the bar, especially at critical levels, would probably help a lot.

[mdhay]

Kinda funny you should mention the resemblance! http://imgur.com/ExZkodL

Yeah, that's a great point about marking out critical thresholds- right now the red portions are still left over from experiementing for my uni project where I converted the shield gauge into engine RPM. I'll have a crack at it and see how I get on!

Cheers!

[Thane Corrigan]

The wiki has gone a little quiet. Anyways, I've updated a number of things on Caliburn - just the Team Director spiel and a little play around on the stuff in the loading screen team info, but nothing too substantial on the backstory.

The different username is because I completely forgot what my other wikia log-in was.

[TheXTR09]

Wow, game's starting to gain momentum here.

I like the HUD a lot, fits quite nice to Designers Republic's style. Should look good if it can adapt to the teams' liveries.

Holidays' over. I was going to come up with a HUD but nooooo, I was too busy fiddling with CS: Source mods and Wings Of Vi before Doomsday comes. Great.

[mdhay]

Yeah, it is going to have the colours adapt to team liveries.

I put the HUD together because I'm designing some AG craft of my own, that are mostly* accurate from an engineering perspective. I wanted something like this in the glass cockpit, so why not kill two birds with one stone?

*Really stretching it, there, but it's using currently existing technology. Okay, xpand? :D

[il_mago_di_Doz]

This game is becoming more awesome every day; I think that you must experiment and implement your ideas more, it already has enough WipEout-ish feeling :)

[TheXTR09]

I happened to stumble upon these Unity projects while on my school's computer club class.

https://youtu.be/tHIRZ65Qeks

https://youtube.com/watch?v=MxcLA--2v-Y

The one on the bottom actually has it's source code publicly available.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Not so hot on the short render distance, needs more fog if you are going to do that.

Unrelated to issues of render distance;
Is it possible that we might get unlockable low-poly SSGX ships as well as the importable W3O/2097 ships?

[mdhay]

[...]as the importable W3O/2097 ships?

That's a copyright violation, so I highly doubt that'd happen.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

In the past, there was a video uploaded where some tracks would let you play with extra ships, though none of them had any models and data; you were supposed to import them, but the description said that you could use the models and stats of the Wip3out or 2097 ships. The only reason they weren't included with the game was, as you said, Copyright.

The video where I saw this was on Von Snake's channel.

[bigsnake]

The ability to import ships from the original Wipeout games by reading the files from the disk is planned, but no where did I specify that you can import Wip3out ships. The reason is simply because next to nothing is known about Wip3out's data structures so it's unlikely being able to import them in the near future is going to happen.
The video you're talking about is this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k602pXomnY).

[AGgamer]

Can someone please post the stat distributions of the ships and/or the backstories of the teams?

[bigsnake]

The final stats are still to be decided but here's here a document containing the story for the game's world, team lore and stats, copied straight out of the game's design doc https://docs.google.com/document/d/18x271FqlQwJrNNp99OdzvrYF67lAToZUZATak_dbNtk/edit?usp=sharing

All this information will be on the wiki at some point, I would have done it sooner but I've been caught up with college as of recently.

[AGgamer]

The final stats are still to be decided

BALLISTIC NG STAT BALANCE NOW
(speed / thrust / handling / energy / total)(specialty)
Omnicom ( ? / ? / ? / ? / ? ) (no comment)
G-Tek ( 4 / 6 / 8 / 6 / 22 ) (Balanced plus handling, frail poor craft overall)
Diavolt ( 8 / 9 / 3 / 8 / 28 ) (high thrust low handling, good bulk)
Nexus ( 8 / 7 / 3 / 5 / 23 ) (a weaker diavolt)
Wyvern ( 7 / 5 / 7 / 6 / 25 ) (okay at everything, frail)
Scorpio ( 6 / 9 / 6 / 7 / 28 ) (High thrust, average bulk)
Tenrai ( 7 / 7 / 10 / 4 / 28 ) (Exceptionally better than G-tek)
Hyperion ( 6 / 8 / 6 / 5 / 25 ) (a weaker scorpio)

Caliburn ( 8 / 3 / 9 / 5 / 25 ) (The only craft with poor thrust)
Barracuda ( 10 / 10 / 10 / 10 / 40 ) (The overpowered monster because fun)
There is an obsession with poor shields and high thrust in this game. Here is a revised stat distribution:

BALLISTIC NG STAT BALANCE TRUE
(speed / thrust / handling / energy / total)(specialty)(wipeout counterpart)
Omnicom ( 7 / 7 / 7 / 7 / 28 ) (The beginner’s balance)(auricom)
G-Tek ( 4 / 9 / 9 / 6 / 28 ) (thrust, handling)(AGS)
Diavolt ( 8 / 7 / 4 / 9 / 28 ) (speed, bulk)(Qirex)
Nexus ( 9 / 6 / 5 / 7 / 27 ) (speed)(Piranha)
Wyvern ( 8 / 8 / 7 / 5 / 28 ) (speed & thrust, but frail)(EGX)
Scorpio ( 5 / 9 / 6 / 8 / 28 ) (High thrust and bulk)(Goteki)
Tenrai ( 7 / 7 / 9 / 4 / 27 ) (Good speed and high agility, low shields)(Icaras)
Hyperion ( 6 / 5 / 8 / 8 / 27 ) (handling, shield)(Feisar)

Caliburn (8 / 4 / 8 / 7 / 27) (No wipeout counterpart)
Barracuda (10 / 10 / 10 / 10 / 40) (The overpowered monster because fun)

Stats range from 4-9. the total ranges from 27-28. there is a craft with every level of quality for each stat. ie. it is possible to experience speed from 4-10. ie. it’s not like there is no craft with 6 speed. I put a lot of thought into this, I hope it looks good to you :)

[AmigoJack]

Thanks to MAD I've now seen this project and it's truly amazing! I never met someone both being able to deal with Unity and bringing up such a realistic W'O'' clone. Congratulations! Due to the 300+ videos on YouTube and their dates I see this is going on for over one year already - yet I think this is an astounding short time with a huge progress for a spare time/open source game. I instantly felt home when steering thru the tracks (although I'm not that used to the keyboard for W'O'').

The tracks look great, the scenary has fantastic textures and also is more detailled than I would have ever dared to imagine, the craft's behaviour and look are perfectly fitting, the music is well done, and the menu so far is also quite intuitive (I only didn't expect ENTER to do nothing).

If you want suggestions for improvements/ideas I'd be happy to list them, but those are rather cosmetic, not fundamental. So I don't want you to loose focus on the main work and rather come up with this after you're done and feel kinda bored for the first time. ;)

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, let me format that for you:


BALLISTIC NG STAT BALANCE NOW

speed thrust handling energy total specialty
Omnicom ? ? ? ? ? no comment
G-Tek 4 6 8 6 22 Balanced plus handling, frail poor craft overall
Diavolt 8 9 3 8 28 high thrust low handling, good bulk
Nexus 8 7 3 5 23 a weaker diavolt
Wyvern 7 5 7 6 25 okay at everything, frail
Scorpio 6 9 6 7 28 High thrust, average bulk
Tenrai 7 7 10 4 28 Exceptionally better than G-tek
Hyperion 6 8 6 5 25 a weaker scorpio

Caliburn 8 3 9 5 25 The only craft with poor thrust
Barracuda 10 10 10 10 40 The overpowered monster because fun

BALLISTIC NG STAT BALANCE TRUE

speed thrust handling energy total wipeout specialty
Omnicom 7 7 7 7 28 auricom The beginner’s balance
G-Tek 4 9 9 6 28 AG.Sys thrust, handling
Diavolt 8 7 4 9 28 Qirex speed, bulk
Nexus 9 6 5 7 27 Piranha speed
Wyvern 8 8 7 5 28 EG-X speed & thrust, but frail
Scorpio 5 9 6 8 28 Goteki High thrust and bulk
Tenrai 7 7 9 4 27 Icaras Good speed and high agility, low shields
Hyperion 6 5 8 8 27 FEISAR handling, shield

Caliburn 8 4 8 7 27 none
Barracuda 10 10 10 10 40 The overpowered monster because fun

[Thane Corrigan]

Final stats ultimately come down to what feels comfortable and balanced.
The numbers in handling especially are a rough estimate, based on the effect of 3-4 different qualities.
I.e. I thought the analog might be similar to post-fall Assegai, but Caliburn's poor thrust is made up in a little extra hidden turning grip that isn't fully represented in the handling stat and that the other ships don't have, quite similar to Harimau, to be honest.

But I still like the proposed new stat balance, AG. There currently seem to be one or two ships with very close stat line-ups, and a few suffering overall.
I'd be interested in seeing how these new ones feel.

[bigsnake]

Thanks to MAD I've now seen this project and it's truly amazing! I never met someone both being able to deal with Unity and bringing up such a realistic W'O'' clone. Congratulations! Due to the 300+ videos on YouTube and their dates I see this is going on for over one year already - yet I think this is an astounding short time with a huge progress for a spare time/open source game. I instantly felt home when steering thru the tracks (although I'm not that used to the keyboard for W'O'').

The tracks look great, the scenary has fantastic textures and also is more detailled than I would have ever dared to imagine, the craft's behaviour and look are perfectly fitting, the music is well done, and the menu so far is also quite intuitive (I only didn't expect ENTER to do nothing).

If you want suggestions for improvements/ideas I'd be happy to list them, but those are rather cosmetic, not fundamental. So I don't want you to loose focus on the main work and rather come up with this after you're done and feel kinda bored for the first time. ;)

Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it so far :) I wouldn't be nearly as far as I am right now without Dreadofmondays and Xpand, they've both been a huge help with assets and Dreadofmondays has done a fantastic job with the backstory. I'm always open to suggestions and ideas so let me know what you've got in mind!



BALLISTIC NG STAT BALANCE NOW
(speed / thrust / handling / energy / total)(specialty)
Omnicom ( ? / ? / ? / ? / ? ) (no comment)
G-Tek ( 4 / 6 / 8 / 6 / 22 ) (Balanced plus handling, frail poor craft overall)
Diavolt ( 8 / 9 / 3 / 8 / 28 ) (high thrust low handling, good bulk)
Nexus ( 8 / 7 / 3 / 5 / 23 ) (a weaker diavolt)
Wyvern ( 7 / 5 / 7 / 6 / 25 ) (okay at everything, frail)
Scorpio ( 6 / 9 / 6 / 7 / 28 ) (High thrust, average bulk)
Tenrai ( 7 / 7 / 10 / 4 / 28 ) (Exceptionally better than G-tek)
Hyperion ( 6 / 8 / 6 / 5 / 25 ) (a weaker scorpio)

Caliburn ( 8 / 3 / 9 / 5 / 25 ) (The only craft with poor thrust)
Barracuda ( 10 / 10 / 10 / 10 / 40 ) (The overpowered monster because fun)
There is an obsession with poor shields and high thrust in this game. Here is a revised stat distribution:

BALLISTIC NG STAT BALANCE TRUE
(speed / thrust / handling / energy / total)(specialty)(wipeout counterpart)
Omnicom ( 7 / 7 / 7 / 7 / 28 ) (The beginner’s balance)(auricom)
G-Tek ( 4 / 9 / 9 / 6 / 28 ) (thrust, handling)(AGS)
Diavolt ( 8 / 7 / 4 / 9 / 28 ) (speed, bulk)(Qirex)
Nexus ( 9 / 6 / 5 / 7 / 27 ) (speed)(Piranha)
Wyvern ( 8 / 8 / 7 / 5 / 28 ) (speed & thrust, but frail)(EGX)
Scorpio ( 5 / 9 / 6 / 8 / 28 ) (High thrust and bulk)(Goteki)
Tenrai ( 7 / 7 / 9 / 4 / 27 ) (Good speed and high agility, low shields)(Icaras)
Hyperion ( 6 / 5 / 8 / 8 / 27 ) (handling, shield)(Feisar)

Caliburn (8 / 4 / 8 / 7 / 27) (No wipeout counterpart)
Barracuda (10 / 10 / 10 / 10 / 40) (The overpowered monster because fun)

Stats range from 4-9. the total ranges from 27-28. there is a craft with every level of quality for each stat. ie. it is possible to experience speed from 4-10. ie. it’s not like there is no craft with 6 speed. I put a lot of thought into this, I hope it looks good to you :)

I'll have to try that out, the ships do have more of a base for their final stats right now though, it's mostly thrust and top speeds that need to be tweaked the most, I'll probably create a drag strip track to balance those. I've laid out what I have in the table below, let me know any changes you think could be made :)


SpeedThrustHandlingEnergyFirepowerWipeoutFocus


MAIN:


Omnicom56576AuricomBalanced


G-Tek45975FEISARHandling


Diavolt85358QirexFirepower


Nexus96535IcarusSpeed


Wyvern67465AG. SysSpeed/Thrust


Scorpio59684Goteki. 45Thrust/Shielding


Tenrai75842AssegaiSpeed/Handling


Hyperion74556PiranhaSpeed


UNLOCKABLES:


Caliburn621074No EquivalentHandling


Barracuda1010101002097/XL PiranhaEverything except firepower


NX200010101027No EquivalentSpeed/Handling/Thrust/Energy


MTechP1451075No EquivalentHandling


ProtonicAG477183WO1 QirexBeing a heavy ****er



These are all the meaningful values that are given to a ship for anyone who is interested:
Max Speed - Maximum amount of force that is applied to the ship
Acceleration - How fast changes to the ship speed happen

These two values stay the same, having both of them is pretty much redundant at this point:
Power Gain - How fast the engine reaches maximum power
Power Falloff - How fast the engine losses power

Turn Speed - How fast the ship can turn
Turn Gain - How fast the ship starts turning
Turn Falloff - How fast the ship stops turning
Grip - How much drag is applied on the ships lateral axis
Slip Amount - How much the airbrakes reduce the grip
Slip Gain - How fast the airbrakes reduce the grip
Slip Falloff - How fast the ship recovers from airbrake slip

These are global across all ships:
Airbrake Speed - How fast the airbrakes rotate the ship
Airbrake Gain - How fast the airbrakes start rotating the ship
Airbrake Falloff - How fast the airbrakes stop rotating the ship
Airbrake Drag Multiplier - The percentage of the max speed using the airbrakes can slow the ship down
Airbrake Drag Gain - How fast the airbrakes slow the ship down
Airbrake Drag Falloff - How fast the ship recovers from airbrake drag

There are a lot more, but those are the settings that effect the ship the most.

[AmigoJack]

Suggestions:
Menu selection overflow: when the first item is highlighted and I press <UP>, the highlight should go to the bottom item. Same for <DOWN> on bottom item, or <LEFT> on leftmost item, or <RIGHT> on rightmost item. Examples: when selecting the track or the craft I highlight the first track or craft (using the keyboard), but then have to tap <DOWN> several times to reach the "ok" button, whereas one <UP> could go there directly.
In-game console and configuration files: the more a user is able to adjust, the longer the whole software remains future-proof. Examples:
various fine tuning to the graphics, like disable lightning or anything else that might help low end computers, or just increase details for high end computers;
setting the craft's attributes (speed, handling, plasma trail color...);
setting track details (disable rain, enable snow, daylight/night);
modifying the menus (so the user could create his own item that is already a combination of a specific craft+track+class);
modifying HUD setup (reducing/increasing displayed bars/items);
key assignment thru a configuration file as well (so you don't have to care for a GUI setup anymore)... if this could be done thru human readible files everybody would be able to fit the details his needs, i.e. one may want to disable all HUD elements. :P
In-game billboards show custom pictures. Again: works thru a configuration file, where one lists file locations and assigns them to specific billboards, and in which mode (3 pictures alternating, or permanent display in random order thru the track, or...). Picture format virtually doesn't matter - in doubt I could write a tool that'd prepare everything for the game.
Oh, and how do you currently record game videos?

[bigsnake]

Nice ideas!


a) I was originally going to add selection overflow but I forgot about it after trying to figure out how to do it with Unity's built in UI system. I just figured out how I can setup the navigation to do that so I'll be doing that after I finished typing this :)


b) There's not really too much to adjust with graphics other then weather effects, lighting is 100% baked and there aren't any other real-time effects being used other then the toggable post processing effects already implemented, there is going to be a draw distance option in the future though. A console is something I have tried out in the past that I need to re-implement, it's definitely something I want to have because debugging wise it can be useful and it also provides some fun commands to mess about with.


Menu modification is something I plan to semi-implement with the track and ship editors, I plan to have a system like WOPulse and HD so you can build your own mini-campaigns using custom content, it would be in a grid instead of hexagons though. HUD modifications is also something I had mentioned wanting to do quite a while ago, it's likely it'll be a feature much later in development though.

Then finally key configurations is something that will take a bit more work because I'll need to use a custom input manager, Aybe (http://www.wipeoutzone.com/forum/member.php?1556717-aybe) had created one a while ago so I'm most likely going to implement that. Unity's default input manager doesn't allow rebinding at game runtime so I have no control over that right now. There is a config file containing settings though, check the userdata folder created in the game's directory when you launch the game.



c. That's a cool idea, I can't say it would be easily achievable through already existing tracks in the game because all the track textures are bundled into atlases so the environment is rendered in 1-2 sweeps as 1 object. In the track editor though it's something that can absolutely happen, I will probably end up making some form of basic modeling tools to go with the track editor at some point so that can be integrated into that.

And I use OBS Studio (https://obsproject.com/)to record videos, I record then upload the output file straight to Youtube :)

Edit:
I now have a spreadsheet for all of the teams indepth stats, they're really unbalanced right now but I'll be working on that soon. Here's the link to it (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uMM2Z2fPSq6NcfxqkQ1-zCZFzb04yilu52KptjK7A-E/edit?usp=sharing)

[bigsnake]

This should have been one of the first things I did, but the game now has proper race. The AI isn't really to up for the task just yet, but so far in terms of testing everything is going good. Weapons are going to be setup soon too, just want to make the AI better at navigating the track first.

The arcade gamemode will be unlocked on the next build, hopefully with some weapons too!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpjCALXSgG4&feature=youtu.be

[vincoof]

Looks sweeter every day. I like the Wip3out-themed gauges :)

[il_mago_di_Doz]

This is just too good to be true, I really hope you'll develop a huge, original, ag racing game after your experience with Ballistic NG.

[bigsnake]

Looks sweeter every day. I like the Wip3out-themed gauges :)

Thanks! This new HUD has had a lot of positive feedback compared to the previous one :)

More progress on racing, today I've got a few pickups setup and working. AI can use them too, you'll see hell of a lot of mines in this video:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpxKeuAUJ2I&feature=youtu.be

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

These are all the meaningful values that are given to a ship for anyone who is interested:
Max Speed - Maximum amount of force that is applied to the ship
Acceleration - How fast changes to the ship speed happen

These two values stay the same, having both of them is pretty much redundant at this point:
Power Gain - How fast the engine reaches maximum power
Power Falloff - How fast the engine losses power

Turn Speed - How fast the ship can turn
Turn Gain - How fast the ship starts turning
Turn Falloff - How fast the ship stops turning
Grip - How much drag is applied on the ships lateral axis
Slip Amount - How much the airbrakes reduce the grip
Slip Gain - How fast the airbrakes reduce the grip
Slip Falloff - How fast the ship recovers from airbrake slip

These are global across all ships:
Airbrake Speed - How fast the airbrakes rotate the ship
Airbrake Gain - How fast the airbrakes start rotating the ship
Airbrake Falloff - How fast the airbrakes stop rotating the ship
Airbrake Drag Multiplier - The percentage of the max speed using the airbrakes can slow the ship down
Airbrake Drag Gain - How fast the airbrakes slow the ship down
Airbrake Drag Falloff - How fast the ship recovers from airbrake drag

There are a lot more, but those are the settings that effect the ship the most.

I think Mass (how much an impact or weapon slows you down) and Aerodynamics are also pretty important, and I think health should be expanded upon too.

Health/Energy could be split into Shield Conductivity, Shield Output and Shield Tension. Shield Conductivity being how quickly the shields can be restored from Pit Lanes, Energy Drains and E-Paks, Shield Output being just how much health you actually have, and Shield Deflection being how much damage that you actually take from energy weapons (an additional stat, Armor Tension, would determine how much damage you take from projectile and explosive weapons, and from physical impacts)

Aerodynamics could be divided into Stability, meaning how well you can control yourself into the air, Streamlining, which would effect how quickly you Accelerate, Lift being how long you can stay in the air without losing speed, etc. There would also have to be a stat for Braking Force, which could determine how effective a single ship's airbrakes are at helping it steer.

Firepower could also potentially be divided into Damage, Disruption and Deceleration; Disruption being how effective your weapons are at causing a ship to change direction or to shake, Deceleration being how much they slow a ship, and Damage being how much they damage a ship. Again, Mass would counteract Deceleration and Disruption, though heavy ships will usually have the worst handling.

[Thane Corrigan]

That is a heck of a lot of stats to adjust. I would imagine in the background there are currently a few of those stats constant for all teams.

As for the extensive ship physics proposal... Once again this is emulating the PS1 style wipeout. That might be overcomplicating things a little.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Well, Aerodynamics was an actual stat in WipEout 2097/64, and Mass was an actual stat in the original WipEout. Auricom and Qirex were the two heaviest ships in the original WipEout, and Pir-Hana had the most Aerodynamic ship in 2097.

[Ace3000]

Health/Energy could be split into Shield Conductivity, Shield Output and Shield Tension. Shield Conductivity being how quickly the shields can be restored from Pit Lanes, Energy Drains and E-Paks, Shield Output being just how much health you actually have, and Shield Deflection being how much damage that you actually take from energy weapons (an additional stat, Armor Tension, would determine how much damage you take from projectile and explosive weapons, and from physical impacts)

Aerodynamics could be divided into Stability, meaning how well you can control yourself into the air, Streamlining, which would effect how quickly you Accelerate, Lift being how long you can stay in the air without losing speed, etc. There would also have to be a stat for Braking Force, which could determine how effective a single ship's airbrakes are at helping it steer.

Firepower could also potentially be divided into Damage, Disruption and Deceleration; Disruption being how effective your weapons are at causing a ship to change direction or to shake, Deceleration being how much they slow a ship, and Damage being how much they damage a ship. Again, Mass would counteract Deceleration and Disruption, though heavy ships will usually have the worst handling.

Not even WipEout HD had that many stats, so why would a game that's emulating the PS1 have that many?

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Those are all supposed to be behind-the-scenes, and my suggestions for most of them can be taken for a pile of salt. I am serious about having a Mass stat and an Aerodynamics stat, though...

[Thane Corrigan]

Amaroq... I'm sorry, but you're probably overthinking it still.

Simulating shields is able to be done with a single variable and a few constants.
These are arbitrary numbers, but assuming a weapon shot is of consistent damage, a shield of 120 will be more resilient than a shield of 80 in defending against it.
The difference on screen is only caused by the fact the game shows shield as a value of 0-100% for all teams.
If shield recharge is based on this 0-100%, and not the true shield values, then shield recharge rate can be a global constant, since each 1% shield is different between each team.

Impact recovery can be easily handled solely by slowing forward motion to a crawl for a few moments, and relying on each team's Thrust value to get them back to speed. And the aerodynamic effects on the Thrust are largely unnecessary.

You'll find that a lot of seemingly unrelated effects can be simulated using fewer values. A lot of what you're suggesting just seems to sound a lot like an homage to Fusion, which this isn't.

I will say this though. Mass would be great.
Lighter quicker teams could be knocked off course by a massive hunk of metal that isn't as nimble.
But that's an entirely new issue in terms of balancing.

[mdhay]

[...]Aerodynamics could be divided into Stability, meaning how well you can control yourself into the air, Streamlining, which would effect how quickly you Accelerate, Lift being how long you can stay in the air without losing speed, etc. There would also have to be a stat for Braking Force, which could determine how effective a single ship's airbrakes are at helping it steer[...]

Half of this is redundant, and the other half is shown by a ship's design and handling statistic. Don't get me wrong- if you had to pick and choose parts in a similar fashion to Armored Core or similar, it might work, but that is definitely not this game.

[bigsnake]

I think Mass (how much an impact or weapon slows you down) and Aerodynamics are also pretty important, and I think health should be expanded upon too.

Health/Energy could be split into Shield Conductivity, Shield Output and Shield Tension. Shield Conductivity being how quickly the shields can be restored from Pit Lanes, Energy Drains and E-Paks, Shield Output being just how much health you actually have, and Shield Deflection being how much damage that you actually take from energy weapons (an additional stat, Armor Tension, would determine how much damage you take from projectile and explosive weapons, and from physical impacts)

Aerodynamics could be divided into Stability, meaning how well you can control yourself into the air, Streamlining, which would effect how quickly you Accelerate, Lift being how long you can stay in the air without losing speed, etc. There would also have to be a stat for Braking Force, which could determine how effective a single ship's airbrakes are at helping it steer.

Firepower could also potentially be divided into Damage, Disruption and Deceleration; Disruption being how effective your weapons are at causing a ship to change direction or to shake, Deceleration being how much they slow a ship, and Damage being how much they damage a ship. Again, Mass would counteract Deceleration and Disruption, though heavy ships will usually have the worst handling.

Like everyone else is saying, there is no need for loads of settings for a stat that can be controlled with one variable. It could work in certain games, but BnG is not one of them. Right now shields work on a damage multiplier and the max shield all ships have is 100, ship damage multipliers range from 0.5 to 1 at the moment. Aerodynamics by definition is controlled by the majority of the ship settings and as for firepower, a non constant value isn't currently implemented but it will be a damage multiplier much like the shields.


That is a heck of a lot of stats to adjust. I would imagine in the background there are currently a few of those stats constant for all teams.

Yeah the airbrake, hover, gravity and slip settings (with an exception for nexus which needs a bit more falloff because it's drifty) are the same across all teams, it's by design but having those exposed to edit makes it easier to make changes to them without having to go into code to change it :) The hover rebound stats will be changed in the future though, I'm using convex mesh colliders for the ships and the varying sizes of the ships can stop the ship from bottoming out because the ship collides with the floor before the hovering detects the ship is close enough to the floor, I also can't just make it bottom out when the ship collides with the floor otherwise the ship would bounce around all over the place. Nexus and Scorpio are good ships to see the difference with.

[Thane Corrigan]

Ah, that's quite a dilemma! I suppose the widely varying designs for the ships made the sizes all inconsistent? That's a bummer for the collision detection.

Definitely don't want to mess around with the gravity too much though :P
Some jumps may seem a little floaty, but that's how it was back in the day.

[Hybrid Divide]

I really like the new HUD!

[bigsnake]

Ah, that's quite a dilemma! I suppose the widely varying designs for the ships made the sizes all inconsistent? That's a bummer for the collision detection.

Definitely don't want to mess around with the gravity too much though :P
Some jumps may seem a little floaty, but that's how it was back in the day.

Yeah, the inconsistencies in the shape of the ships is what causes it. I'm thinking it's worth having just a box for collision that's the same on all ships which only collides with the floor, then the current collision meshes don't collide with the floor. That will keep the bottoming out consistent while still allowing me to utilize the more precise representation of the ship the convex mesh provides (for instance the checkpoint lasers can be obscured by ships).

And yeah I don't think gravity will be changing from this point on, I feel like it's good as it is now. The idea is that while the ship should bounce around on complex track sections, it should feel like you're gliding.


I really like the new HUD!

Thanks! Nice to see more and more people are liking the new design :)

[Oryx Crake]

I also like the general HUD design though I found it a bit hard to see the weapon icons. maybe colour-coding or, more pronounced graphics for the designs would help? shapewise it's nifty!

[bigsnake]

The weapon icons can be a bit hard to see with some teams. They were originally designed to be blue and they still are so the coloring applied through the HUD doesn't work as intended. Mdhay is currently working on new weapon icons though, what he's shown so far already make a lot more sense then what I've made. In terms of how the weapon icons work, I'm most likely going to add a second diamond inside of the current one that changes color depending on the type of pickup you have.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

I think weapon icons should flash briefly when you pick one up. Just enough to get the player's attention, but then it will stop.

[bigsnake]

The past few days I've been working on getting all sorts of things working, one of the things is allowing Wipeout ships to be read and loaded into the game. Like previously mentioned this will require the original files, the option on the menu will simply not show if you don't because well, there's nothing to load. There will be a readme included with the game telling you what you need to do for BnG to load the ships.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq3DU-cfLcE

Big thanks to Aybe for this as he let me use his PRM and CMP loading classes from WXX Rebirth, I was going to implement this much earlier on but I kept putting it off to focus on original content first. Also in that video is a track Xpand has been working on, it's a remake of the unfinished track from XL!

[TheXTR09]

Just like everyone else, I came here to stop by and say nice HUD bruh. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I felt like I've done nothing to this game. Is voice acting available? Might as well record voices for an lispy, Asian G-Tek coach or a Yorkshire-like Tenrai official. :^)

EXTRA: I'm always open to play-test releases any time.

[GGeek]

I also wondered if voice acting was gonna be a thing. I would be OK to record voices (announcer voice for incoming weapons and shield energy or anything else).

You can find samples that i recorded as an attachment. Feedback is appreciated.

[Hybrid Divide]

WOW! That Forest Track remake and new HUD look AWESOME! Would love to hear Collin Berry's take on them!

I'd love to help out in some fashion, too. I'm no good for programming and such, but if something comes up, let us know!

[TheXTR09]

Really stoic voice you got there, reminds me of 2048's Auricom voice lines.

[GGeek]

If you think it doesn't fit the game, i can try to do a 2097-esque voice :)

[bigsnake]

You've got a really good voice for this :) I think what you've already got is really good, I modulated what you uploaded and it works really well. Only problem is there were a few pops, if you are able to record without any pops then you can easily be the system voice!

All the lines for the game can be found here. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/16qvDRXzKFzdHqA1FFQFt443LHreue6KHyb2bmwCe0M8/edit?usp=sharing)

[GGeek]

Here are some records i just did today.

Feel free to provide feedback !

https://mega.nz/#!g0R0RQII!5uZ35ThEZexQYduN5PYA7h5gtVcUUacOCxgc5F_ qJzk

PS : i had to upload to mega as i had problems to put the samples as attachment (it wouldn't let me do in, even after reducing the archive's size)

[Hybrid Divide]

What do you mean by "modulate" the voice? Did you apply some effect to it to make it sound computer-y?

[bigsnake]

Here are some records i just did today.

Feel free to provide feedback !

https://mega.nz/#!g0R0RQII!5uZ35ThEZexQYduN5PYA7h5gtVcUUacOCxgc5F_ qJzk

PS : i had to upload to mega as i had problems to put the samples as attachment (it wouldn't let me do in, even after reducing the archive's size)

No problem, as long as it's not uploaded to a wait or pay download site it's all good! I think all of the recordings except autopilot are good, you pronounced autopilot a bit weirdly :P

Here's what I've done with the recordings so far, https://db.tt/VVnjmGvq.


What do you mean by "modulate" the voice? Did you apply some effect to it to make it sound computer-y?

Modulation is when you manipulate an audio waveform using another, typically frequency (FM) which is what I've done here. It can generally be used to make things sound more computer-y, though robotic voices usually come from Vocoding. What I've done precisely to the recordings is pitch them down 300 cents and run them through two different channels. The first channel bitcrushes it, applies some delay and EQ's it a bit and the second does some FM (it's much quieter so it's only very subtle).

[GGeek]

yeah, kinda struggled on autopilot (my pronounciation isn't exactly on point ^^).

What you've done sounds fantastic, and is really reminescent of 2097's system voice (at least for me).

Can't wait to play the next build.

[Hybrid Divide]

@bigsnake.

I just had a bit of an idea. Have you thought of making the voices interchangable? So that, eventually, we might have several to pick from? Kinda like how each team in 2048 has their own AI voice, but it'd be something we could set ourselves.

Bonus points for separating ship AI voice (Weapon pickups/warnings, shield status, etc) and announcer voice (3,2,1, GO!, Contender Eliminated, etc.).

Just an idea. :)

[bigsnake]

yeah, kinda struggled on autopilot (my pronounciation isn't exactly on point ^^).

What you've done sounds fantastic, and is really reminescent of 2097's system voice (at least for me).

Can't wait to play the next build.

No problem, they're all very good regardless :) And thanks, that 2097 system voice style was what I was wanting to achieve!


@bigsnake.

I just had a bit of an idea. Have you thought of making the voices interchangable? So that, eventually, we might have several to pick from? Kinda like how each team in 2048 has their own AI voice, but it'd be something we could set ourselves.

Bonus points for separating ship AI voice (Weapon pickups/warnings, shield status, etc) and announcer voice (3,2,1, GO!, Contender Eliminated, etc.).

Just an idea. :)

That's a nice idea. I'll definitely keep that in mind for a future feature, right now though I'm just going to stick with the single voice, especially since I'm getting very close to releasing 0.2 :)

I'm hoping to have 0.2 released by this time next month at the very latest, right now I'm programming the custom ship importer and after that I want to get most of the tracks already in the game in a decent state. The ship importer is going to be as friendly as I can make it, right now I'm focusing on making a file browser so you can easily tell BnG where to find the files and I'm also working on storing all of the ship data (mesh, textures and settings) all in one file so all the data can be conveniently stored and loaded from just 1 file.

[GGeek]

That's a nice idea. I'll definitely keep that in mind for a future feature, right now though I'm just going to stick with the single voice, especially since I'm getting very close to releasing 0.2 :)

After 0.2's release, i could try different voice styles for different teams and such, like 2048 (i can't make all of them though ^^)

[Hybrid Divide]

I suppose I could record some speech at some point and try to record something.

It would be nice, if in 2048, I could have the AG-Systems announcer while piloting a FEISAR. Ah, dreams. :D

[Rovenami]

Maybe I could help out with voice overs for the game.

[Meg.A.Byte]

Guys! BNG has it's own energy drink now!

9945

http://i.imgur.com/S8nf00p.jpg
In case it doesn't work.

[GGeek]

Would buy, need this extra kick to control the Barracuda ^^

Looks good ! Could be an easter egg :)

(PS : I think piloting the Barracuda in spectre is one of the most brutal racing experiences i've ever had. And i mean it in a good way.)

[Hybrid Divide]

Ha! Well done! How did you get the water droplets to look so damn realistic?

[Meg.A.Byte]

Thank you guys. GGeek gave me quite good idea... to make a BNG Energy ad poster.

@Hybrid Divide: Ha, good thing you asked. Yesterday I tried basically 3 different methods to make a droplets on that can.
First was via displacement map - it was looking really nice, but the render time was just awful.
Second was via particles, that was kinda hard to do (well, easy to do, hard to master), because I don't know how to tweak it properly.
And the third (and currenly used) was quite smart solution. I applied Fur material to the can and make it the shortest lenght possible, which created the droplets (like round spheres basically), then I added some randomness to it and lowered the density a lot. After that I just simply changed the material of it to water and voilá.
You think it look realistic? I'm flattered. :hyper Thank you.

[ProminenceF]

Are you planning to stream development of the game, or perhaps early playtests of it? I think that'd be cool.

[GGeek]

He actually posts videos of the progress he makes on his youtube channel.

You can check it out here : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxJ3wVvBXl8qRjRJakSqhvQ

[ProminenceF]

Oh, that's pretty nifty! I still think it'd be cool to have a livestream to interact with him.

[Xpand]

Well I'm making one of the tracks for Ballistic NG right now, I can stream it, although it's going to be really boring for the most part.
www.twitch.tv/xpand122
Offline

[bigsnake]

BallisticNG 0.2 is going to be released soon, I'm looking at a release before Friday.

This is quite a hefty update bringing a new assortment of tracks, new game modes, weapons, revamped in-game interfaces, voices, time-trial ghosts, vastly improved ship handling, an AG Bike and loads of other little things like reduced wall collision damage, the re-introduction of checkpoints, cheats, controller force-feedback, customizable HUD colors and a view distance option.

The ship importer will not make it into this update, but it will be coming in an update in the near future!

[TheXTR09]

@Snake

It's Christmas all over again. Can't wait for the release!

[Fredbob396]

Exciting news! It's amazing how far this project has come since December.

[Hybrid Divide]

BallisticNG 0.2 is going to be released soon, I'm looking at a release before Friday.

This is quite a hefty update bringing a new assortment of tracks, new game modes, weapons, revamped in-game interfaces, voices, time-trial ghosts, vastly improved ship handling, an AG Bike and loads of other little things like reduced wall collision damage, the re-introduction of checkpoints, cheats, controller force-feedback, customizable HUD colors and a view distance option.

The ship importer will not make it into this update, but it will be coming in an update in the near future!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! Well, now I know what I'LL be doing this weekend! :D

[bigsnake]

Just released! Download here (https://github.com/bigsnake09/BallisticNG/releases/download/0.2/BallisticNG.0.2.zip)

The release thread has also been updated as per usual :)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hf9D_E3FjU

[stin]

just watched it and my answer is........simplay wow!!! hopefully l will play this weekend ifl can use my son's pc in his (his fancy computer) . only way to find out.

stevie :)

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

QUOTE=bigsnake;247135]Just released! Download here (https://github.com/bigsnake09/BallisticNG/releases/download/0.2/BallisticNG.0.2.zip)

The release thread has also been updated as per usual :)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hf9D_E3FjU[/QUOTE]

Can't wait to play it.


Guys! BNG has it's own energy drink now!

9945

http://i.imgur.com/S8nf00p.jpg
In case it doesn't work.


Would buy, need this extra kick to control the Barracuda ^^

I prefer NERD (what good is caffeine if you can't focus on anything?), but I would totally give that a try!

EDIT: My stupid phone always takes me to old pages when I ask it to take me to the latest page...

[AGgamer]

I've contacted Vinny, from Vinesauce. He's a popular Twitch streamer and I've offered him the Alpha 0.2 build to play on stream! Hopefully he gives it a look, Vinny is a really fun streamer to watch.

[Aidan]

Love the new release! The tracks and ships are great and it's nice to be able to import the original PS1 ships into the game. I've uploaded a video of a time trial in the wipeout 3 AG systems ship on the halberd speed class.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK4CeJkGOqM

I also built version 0.2 for Linux if anyone wants it, and as you can see in the video it works flawlessly!

https://mega.nz/#!BddUgQDJ!s01vu6to36qB2zAsSpT6xCwvKOFOg66i50Ezy-5_Whg

I can't wait to see more tracks added in the future.

[bigsnake]

Nice run! Also thanks for building that Linux build, I'll add it to the release thread :)

[Fredbob396]

I've been really enjoying this latest release! I have a couple of questions though.

1. How do you select the AG Bike?
2. Will the old Ishtar Citadel layout return in some way?

[nu9get]

is there any chance in the future to play this online against other pilots? :)

[Hybrid Divide]

This needs to be spread far and wide. Been trying to get some kind of mention on IGN, with no luck.

(They've done features on fan games for other franchises often enough...) *grumble*

But getting this out there to a wider audience, in addition to promoting Ballistic NG, will show more people that WipEout isn't dead to everyone. And that is important, indeed.

[Fredbob396]

I think contacting streamers and Youtubers is the best way to raise awareness. If anyone knows any youtubers or streamers who are fans of Wipeout, it'd be worth contacting them.

[bigsnake]

I've been really enjoying this latest release! I have a couple of questions though.

1. How do you select the AG Bike?
2. Will the old Ishtar Citadel layout return in some way?

Type carving on the menu then it will show up in the ship list. I discovered there was a navigation issue after releasing though because I usually just use the mouse on the menu. You rather need to click it or move over it then move up again and it will be selected, I've fixed this for the next release :)

Probably not, the layout had many flaws which is why I scraped it. There will be a track importer in the future though so I could provide it as some sort of template.


is there any chance in the future to play this online against other pilots? :)

Working on this right now! I just got a networked lobby working so basic multiplayer will probably in the next version of the game.

[Meg.A.Byte]

So my feelings of 0.2 are that it's in really good shape, but needs some more polishing in some ways.

As someone stated before me, the wall collisions are pretty unforgiving. And especially for low-armor ships. I was able to destroy myself in first half of fist round.

Next thing is AI, I think they behave quite ok, but the weird thing is the clumping or clustering of all AI ships together, no matter the differents of the ships. And if you get right in the middle of that cluster...boy, it's hell.

I don't exactly know how the speed classes work, but Nexus in Apex is faster than G-Tek on Zen. And if you try G-Tex on Toxic it's super slow, but the other ships are even slower even if they have better performance.

Yea, and how does the Friction shield work?

But overall status and my rating is GREAT! Really, really good job Bigsnake, Xpand and Dreadofmondays. And also others who contributed.

[bigsnake]

Thanks for the feedback :)

I just reduced the wall collision damage some more, I'm going to be doing some stat balancing very soon so that should also help with damage in general. That applies to the speed stuff as well, GTek's top speed in Zen is set to 95 and Nexus in Apex is 90 so yeah, there is quite the unbalance there.

I just tweaked the AI so that they will avoid clumping together. In the future I want to make the AI a little less predictable because at the moment they tend to trail each other, adding some behaviors like overtaking is also something I want to try implementing. The AI by the way use your ship's top speed to balance them out, that's why it was so easy for them to clump together, they were all going the same speed :)

The friction shield shouldn't have been enabled, it doesn't do anything at the moment. I'm actually removing a few of the planned weapons to just keep the pickups that are more useful. I also added cannons and missiles today, going to do trip laser, energy wall and impulse and that will probably be it for the weapons.

Glad you enjoyed it! There's going to be a follow up update soonish to polish everything up, I think I might have just fixed that input problem where the ship is always steering right too. I don't have a setup where that's a problem though so I can't confirm if it is fixed just yet.

Edit:
Next release is going to be the first beta release. I just finished setting up the unlock system for the 3 prototype ships and barracuda and added the tournament gamemode along with the singleplayer tournaments. The singleplayer is being used primarily as the method to unlock the ships. The only thing stopping the game from being a full release at this point is 2 missing tracks, online multiplayer and the general unpolished nature of the game, the modding tools aren't in yet but that's more of a post-release thing.

[Rovenami]

I think contacting streamers and Youtubers is the best way to raise awareness. If anyone knows any youtubers or streamers who are fans of Wipeout, it'd be worth contacting them.

I think Vinny from Vinesauce might be your best option since he likes games like F-Zero and WipEout and is open to requests.

[TheXTR09]

Oy, I made a thing XDDdDR
Full size 1920x1200 (https://i.imgur.com/uhqgXgY.png)
10186
I put DreadOfMonday's design to good use. And I'm glad it looked professional enough.


I was wondering tho, and I asked this a lot of times but, how do you guys think of renaming the game as Re'lapsE" as opposed to Wip'Eout. Like as in an ecstasy wipeout then you'd have a relapse and you felt confused but high idk.

Need some feedback that's all.

[Hybrid Divide]

Honestly, I like Re'LapsE'. (I think the L should be capitalized. lol)

Is it being planned for a Steam release? That'd be cool.

Also, how's the scraping mechanics going? I saw somewhere that the damage had been tweaked, but I've also noticed that it seems to bring you to a stop a bit more than it should, too. Just my thoughts. :)

[GGeek]

Been enjoying 0.2 as well as trying out the github masters (i dowload them and compile it myself). Here's what i hava to say :

-
The AI by the way use your ship's top speed to balance them out I have nothing against that, but by doing so, you end up with some ships not selected at all by the AI. Since we got 8 teams and 8 racers (player included), why not make it so that the whole field is represented (each AI racer a different random craft), just like Wipeout Pure did ?

- I also think that some sounds are quieter than other (pre-race and system voices mainly). I might be a bit nitpicking on that point, but i wanted to point that out.

- Aciknovae still has some issues (spawning waaay to close to the wall in TA, altered AI behavior), but i already reported these on GitHub.


Otherwise, i've really been enjoying the game so far and i can't wait to see the next things that are coming. I'll try to record some alternate voice lines (this time in a 2048 style, i'll do the fx processing), i'll post a preview on my channel once done :)

[bigsnake]

Currently working on the AI, by the next release I'm hoping to have all the quirks you've no doubt seen and sort out the AI clumping together. I've just changed the top speed thing so that the top speed is narrowed towards the players top speed but not exactly the top speed to give it some variation per team.

I'll take a look at balancing the sound volumes for the voices, it's just a matter of re-exporting with a higher volume so that's easy enough :)

Aciknovae is proving to be a problem, the generation of the track data is done automatically and requires a specific mesh setup. Dreadofmondays used Blender to model it opposed to 3DS Max like me and Xpand so I assume there has been some sort of issue regarding differences in how the two export to FBX, all the tile positions and section positions are shifted left and the section indices are scrambled too (if you play with AI you'll notice your position jumps about all the time). I rather need to make a tool to manually fix that all or the track mesh needs to be remade.

Looking forward to hear those 2048 styled lines :) Also by the way if you aren't already, for downloading the source from github I recommend you use Sourcetree, that will let you pull commits without having to download the entire repo every time something new is pushed.

[twenty90seven]

So my feelings of 0.2 are that it's in really good shape, but needs some more polishing in some ways.

As someone stated before me, the wall collisions are pretty unforgiving. And especially for low-armor ships. I was able to destroy myself in first half of fist round.

Next thing is AI, I think they behave quite ok, but the weird thing is the clumping or clustering of all AI ships together, no matter the differents of the ships. And if you get right in the middle of that cluster...boy, it's hell.

I don't exactly know how the speed classes work, but Nexus in Apex is faster than G-Tek on Zen. And if you try G-Tex on Toxic it's super slow, but the other ships are even slower even if they have better performance.

Yea, and how does the Friction shield work?

But overall status and my rating is GREAT! Really, really good job Bigsnake, Xpand and Dreadofmondays. And also others who contributed.

There was an article in Retrogamer (February 2016 edition)about the making of Wipeout 2097, and the guy who programmed it said one of the key changes over Wipeout 1 was to correct the unforgiving wall collisions. The problem was that the ships were triangle in shape and this would push them into the walls, so they introduced the wall scraping for 2097. I think wall scraping is what Wipeout 3 and Wipeout HD lacks. I would love to see it fully implemented in Ballistic NG!

[Ace3000]

Wall scraping was in Wip3out. In fact, it was kinda broken, slightly increasing your speed and pushing you ahead.

[Hybrid Divide]

Yep. Wall scraping was in Wip3out. The scraping in Ballistic NG seems a bit better than WipEout 1, but not quite to the level of 3 yet.

In unrelated bits, has there been any thought to getting some WipEout ZonE signage into the game like there was in SSGX? I think it'd be good to have that in there. :)

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

There was an article in Retrogamer (February 2016 edition)about the making of Wipeout 2097, and the guy who programmed it said one of the key changes over Wipeout 1 was to correct the unforgiving wall collisions. The problem was that the ships were triangle in shape and this would push them into the walls, so they introduced the wall scraping for 2097.

That would probably explain why the wall collisions were "softer" in the Sega Saturn version of the first WipEout; because the Sega Saturn used quadrilaterals instead of triangles, the collision mesh was likely "boxier" than in the PS1 version.


In unrelated bits, has there been any thought to getting some WipEout ZonE signage into the game like there was in SSGX? I think it'd be good to have that in there. :)

That wouldn't be a bad idea, might help to bring more attention to the AG Racing scene from Sony. Maybe some references to R8 and Caged Element wouldn't be a bad idea either.

[Rovenami]

Is it being planned for a Steam release? That'd be cool.
I don't know about that, if it WERE to go onto Steam, he'd probably have to scrap the WipEout-Wip3out ships because....I don't know...copyright.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

The WipEout ships aren't included with the game, they have to be imported separately. Legally, there's nothing to worry about.

[Argo7200]

Making my first post here to say how much I love this project :+ With Wip3out being my favourite of the bunch, being able to play something so similar on PC at 144 FPS is heavenly :g

[Xpand]

That would probably explain why the wall collisions were "softer" in the Sega Saturn version of the first WipEout; because the Sega Saturn used quadrilaterals instead of triangles, the collision mesh was likely "boxier" than in the PS1 version.


Not that at all. Wipeout 1 ships are triangle shaped, meaning their collision model was a triangle, or rather a triangular pyramid, it wasn't about the ships being made of triangles or quads.
Also the SEGA Saturn could render triangles but its hardware was optimized for quads.

[Hybrid Divide]

Making my first post here to say how much I love this project :+ With Wip3out being my favourite of the bunch, being able to play something so similar on PC at 144 FPS is heavenly :g

Welcome to WZ! :D

If you haven't done so already, do be sure to introduce yourself over at the New Pilots thread. In General Discussion, I think?

[GGeek]

Oh, i was wondering, can i use the BallisticNG intro from the 0.2 trailer for BallisticNG related videos ? I'm currently making a vid of the alternate voice that i just recorded and modified.

[bigsnake]

Go for it, here's an MP4 of just that intro (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B84JeAOIeQm9ZGFJdmhFLWlTRFU/view?usp=sharing) :)

[GGeek]

Thanks a lot ! i'll definitely do some time attack runs as well (Some will be done with standard ships, others will be done with either the wipeout ships or the barracuda, which i really enjoy flying around with)

I'll make my alternate voice available along with the demonstration video.

More info on how it all went soon ! :)

- - - Updated - - -

The alternate voice is done !


What i tried to achieve here is to emulate the system voice heard in Wipeout 2048.
This is done through minimal use of audio effects, unlike the standard voice which is heavily
modified to give it a more computer-y sound.

I am pretty happy with how everything turned out. Of course, 100% accurate reproduction of
the OG 2048 voice won't be possible, and kinda silly to achieve.

Here's a lil' preview of the voice :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9Xn_3ZYKP4

Hope you guys like it :)

[Hybrid Divide]

Niiiiice! Well done!

[bigsnake]

Nice work GGeek! I'll get those implemented in the game as alternative voices soon :)

Here's progress on the multiplayer by the way, lobbies are now fully functional. Built game on the right is hosting, the game running in Unity on the left is the client. I need to work on the text component that holds the chat though, on the left you'll see my test message isn't showing which is being caused by the height of the text component not being stretched far enough down to display it.

https://i.gyazo.com/dd89a1fe304cd596f8b45f01bf626f4d.png

[Meg.A.Byte]

One small question. After the release, is the game open for propagation? I mean when the game will be release, can I submit it for showcase or possibly review to the 2nd biggest game e-magazine in Czech Republic? Or do you want the game to be known in AG racing fanbase or similar groups?
And the progress is sick! Great work! Is the multiplayer online?

[Fredbob396]

Quick question about the remake tracks. Will they require a copy of their respective games? If so, how will BallisticNG detect them? I kinda miss Gare d'Europa from 0.1 :(

[bigsnake]

One small question. After the release, is the game open for propagation? I mean when the game will be release, can I submit it for showcase or possibly review to the 2nd biggest game e-magazine in Czech Republic? Or do you want the game to be known in AG racing fanbase or similar groups?
And the progress is sick! Great work! Is the multiplayer online?

Yeah you can submit it to whoever you like :) I've never really spent the time to get the game out there, I'm usually caught up with one thing or another. And the multiplayer will be online! I need to test it over WAN with some friends to make sure it works but I've had the lobby tests working just fine by hosting and joining locally on my PC and over LAN.


Quick question about the remake tracks. Will they require a copy of their respective games? If so, how will BallisticNG detect them? I kinda miss Gare d'Europa from 0.1 :(

The remake tracks have actually been removed, the next release is just going to have original tracks and the unfinished XL track that Xpand worked on. They were originally just going to be in the game without any original data required on the basis that their names were shortened but I've cut them just to avoid all copyright, I would add the ability for the game to read Wipeout tracks but Aybe is already doing that with WXX-Rebirth.

- - - Updated - - -

Progress on multiplayer :)

I've got ships for each player spawning, there's no synchronization of positions and stuff yet but it's a start!

https://i.gyazo.com/85178a6b33409357abe44d34c723ef35.png

[Fredbob396]

The remake tracks have actually been removed, the next release is just going to have original tracks and the unfinished XL track that Xpand worked on. They were originally just going to be in the game without any original data required on the basis that their names were shortened but I've cut them just to avoid all copyright, I would add the ability for the game to read Wipeout tracks but Aybe is already doing that with WXX-Rebirth.


That's unfortunate, but perfectly reasonable. I suppose that just gives me more of a reason to follow the development of WXX-Rebirth :)

[Hybrid Divide]

Damn, I really wanted to play that spiffy remake of Silverstream you showed off way back when. I hope importing tracks is something you'd consider sometime down the road, even if WXX-Rebirth does it, too.

[GGeek]

Good start ! I can try the multiplayer if you want :)

[TheXTR09]

I finally played the latest release for now and still, great work there, Snake! The game plays like - take this as a compliment - racing oversized yachts at 200mph with your eyes closed. No glitches, well optimized, the project's going really great. :clap

I'm still gonna sulk in a corner knowing I can't race in Spectre. :|

[GGeek]

I'm noticing some clear stuttering when playing on my rig, i tried setting the game's priority to high, which reduces stuttering but doesn't completely get rid of it.

Here are my specs

OS : Windows 7 Pro SP1 (64-Bit)
CPU : Intel Core i5-4570 (LGA1150, 4 Cores, 4 Threads) @3.2GHz
Motherboard : Asus B85M-G C2 (LGA1150, mATX)
RAM : 2x4GB Transcend DDR3 1333 MHz CL9
GPU : Gigabyte Geforce GTX 750 Ti OC w/ 2GB GDDR5
HDD : 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM

Nvidia driver version : 359.00

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Try disabling V-Sync or setting it to Adaptive. Also... Only 8 gigabytes of RAM? These aren't the dark ages!


That's unfortunate, but perfectly reasonable. I suppose that just gives me more of a reason to follow the development of WXX-Rebirth :)

If you still want the remake tracks and the HD graphics, you can download the 20th Anniversary build.


Progress on multiplayer :)

I've got ships for each player spawning, there's no synchronization of positions and stuff yet but it's a start.

I actually saw the multiplayer test video. Might I suggest a preliminary system clock synchronization, so that the countdown occurs simultaneously for everyone playing regardless of their latency? Portal 2 does something similar to that in co-op mode.

[GGeek]

Try disabling V-Sync or setting it to Adaptive. Also... Only 8 gigabytes of RAM? These aren't the dark ages!

Well, i'm a poor man ad i'm probably stick with this PC for a few more years, give me a break ^^

I will try disabling V-Sync.

[Xpand]

8GB of RAM is enough to play BnG and many other indie games (BNG only uses up to 300MB of RAM from what I've seen). Try checking if the game is using the nVidia GPU or the internal graphics processor. Also make sure no other CPU intensive programs are being run at the same time as the game, like internet browsers and such.

[TheXTR09]

Everyone said 8GB was barely enough today while I'm stuck with a 4GB, 2007-era budget rig with only 1GB of VRAM. I can barely play Black Ops 2 om Medium graphics. And I made a huge mistake trying to play Advanced Warfare on that clunker.

it's slower than the windows slideshow honest :brickwall

[Xpand]

Low framerate is not necessarily due to too litle RAM, it's mostly related to GPU and CPU. Most games don't use more than 1GB-2GB of RAM anyway during gameplay, the recommended memory amounts have to do with the margin of space the game has to run in, it's very different to have a game that consumes 1GB of RAM running in a 4GB of RAM PC along with Windows and other applications sharing that memory, and the same game running in a 8GB rig. And usually the loading times are the thing that gets more affected by low RAM issues, since the chunks of data being loaded have to be smaller and more controlled, and that takes more time to do than to just load everything onto memory pretty much at once.
Too much RAM is not benefitial either since you end up buying an expensive RAM card just so your rig only uses like half of it.

[TheXTR09]

Yes, I'm very clear of that. I had a friend that complained that he had 12GB of RAM and he can't play NBA 2K14 well.

He had no graphics card. :brickwall

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

There was one instance were RAM was entirely the issue... I once had a laptop with only 512 megabytes of RAM. My dad had the Audacity to put Windows 7 on it, and MechCommander 2, a game from 2001 that ran just fine on Windows 2000 and XP, dropped to a max of 12 FPS... One RAM upgrade later (4 gigabytes), and it was running at 60 FPS again.

Back on the subject of BallisticNG, I am wondering if there is going to be anything resembling Mag Lock implemented on some of the tracks, despite the emulation of Wip3out / 2097's design. While I think appealing to a sense of nostalgia is awesome, I don't see any reason not to borrow ideas and experience from future generations of games, especially if it doesn't adversely affect the atmosphere or the flow of gameplay. Just look at the track designs that were possible in Pulse and 2048 through the Mag Lock system; something like that, crossed with the Wip3out / 2097 physics and art style, would be an awesome combination.

The only potential obstacles that I see would be some not-too-extensive changes to the camera and physics code. Maybe we can put it up to a vote to see if anybody else likes the idea?

[Xpand]

The only potential obstacles that I see would be some not-too-extensive changes to the camera and physics code.

Those are not small obstacles, you're pretty much asking for a modification of quite a large portion of code for a gimmick. Not to mention pretty much all of the track layouts are already designed and modelled.

[Hybrid Divide]

While I never had a problem with Mag-Lock, I do think BNG is better without it. There's PLENTY of room for unique track designs without throwing Mag-Lock into the mix, anyway. :D

[GGeek]

Yeah, the tracks as they are now are already pretty good in terms of flow and feel, i think that adding magstrips would ruin the feel a bit.

Not a focus on crazy track layouts, this isn't Trackmania Turbo :D
(For the record, Trackmania Turbo has a new environment, called Rollercoaser Lagoon, that has blocks that acts as magstrips, allowing you to create tracks where you race upside down, hence the reference)

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Those are not small obstacles, you're pretty much asking for a modification of quite a large portion of code for a gimmick. Not to mention pretty much all of the track layouts are already designed and modelled.

I never actually said they were small obstacles, "not-too-extensive" means that while it does require a lot of work, it probably isn't as much as you make it seem.

Maybe you guys should share the code and recruit help, and put it certain features down to a vote; "would it be worth the coding time?" type of thing.

[Ace3000]

As Adam has mentioned multiple times, the game was intentionally supposed to emulate the PS1's limitations. This means:

No, borrowing modern game technology does not emulate the PS1 limitations. Modern game design is not the point. (Although it does utilise Unity)
Yes, short render distances, jittering polygons and low-res graphics are required, since they are within the PS1 limitations.
Vivid art styles, abstract lighting and shading and clean lines do not work with the PS1 limitations. Yeah, it may make it look like a PS1 game, but that's not the point.
Yes, 128*128 textures are required, since, again, they're within the PS1 limitations.
and Yes, the vertices and blank spaces between the polys are within the PS1 limitations, and so are allowed.


Adam is not trying to make a game look like a PS1 game, he's making it as if it was for the PS1, including all it's shortcomings. I am repeating myself many times over because I honestly don't think you get it. He's not trying to make a second SSGX.

[mdhay]

I had written a long-ish response to this and saved it in notepad, but I don't have access right now to the computer I wrote it on.

If the high horse you're on was any taller, you'd be huffing moon dust.


I didn't say that there wasn't any room, just that throwing away modern ideas just because they weren't present in the previous era is kind of silly.

...Modern ideas that were not in the games that are the direct inspiration behind BallisticNG, a game you seem to believe you're monetarily invested in.


do we really need 128 * 128 textures, or render distances where the road just around the corner doesn't exist, or where a polygon jumps around from pixel to pixel like crazy, followed by glowing white space ants the entire time? (Actually, the wobbly vertices and space ants are kinda cool.)

Deliberate choices, and one he made for his game. It's a challenge to work within limitations like this, and in the case of BallisticNG better than not using them. If that doesn't seem believable, then imagine 2097 with flat, low-res textures but with sharp dynamic lighting/ shadows, reflections and particles. It would look shite.


You should give this article a read.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Blake..._Pixel_Art.php

Pixel art as a concept cannot apply to low-res textures as it used to- one is optimisation and the other is a deliberate aesthetic choice regardless of resolution.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Okay, fine. I'll remove my post if that is what you guys want. I just didn't quite understand all of the factors, and the majority of my posts were woefully ill-informed. Just don't bite my legs off.