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Hybrid Divide
24th March 2016, 09:08 PM
Let's cool down, everyone. Let's keep this thread positive and constructive!

Honestly, Ballistic-NG has me very very psyched. Almost as much as a new official game.

The fact that this is a community driven affair makes it feel special.

To that end, I've emailed IGN a few times in the past, trying to draw some attention to WipEout and its Spiritual Successors (they do, sometimes, cover fan games and the like after all), but have had no luck.

Worth a shot, at any rate.

mdhay
25th March 2016, 02:32 PM
Did you try paying them? ;)

Hybrid Divide
25th March 2016, 03:47 PM
Did you try paying them? ;)

No, silly me. I hadn't even thought of that! lol If I knew for sure that $5 would get some attention turned toward this game, I'd actually consider it.

Meg.A.Byte
27th March 2016, 01:18 PM
I remember that some time ago there was an initiative of creating a BNG styled icons and avatars for this forum. Is this still a thing? Because that would be great.

dreadofmondays
27th March 2016, 02:21 PM
I'll look into it.

Amaroq Dricaldari
30th March 2016, 07:26 AM
As soon as I can get my hands on a Savings/Checking account, I would totally donate to the cause.

bigsnake
31st March 2016, 04:22 AM
This Saturday is going to be the game's 1 year anniversary! I'm going to try and get a new build out for then, there's not much to do but I've been really busy the past 2 weeks so I'm behind where I want to be. I'll see if I can get what I want to include setup before then though it will probably end up with me releasing it later then Saturday,

Rafeku
1st April 2016, 12:30 PM
Just please...remove that WO1 collision model. That kills it for me. Really. It's not cool to scratch a wall and go full-stop. The hit detection is somewhat wrong.

Sausehuhn
2nd April 2016, 04:55 PM
Funnily enough, I just read that the team behind WO2097 also had a hard time getting the collision detection right. They said something about that in the Retrogamer magazine featuring WO2097 (http://www.wipeoutzone.com/forum/showthread.php?10147-Retro-Gamer-covers-wip3out-2097!&p=247247#post247247). Maybe that article helps?

JABBERJAW
3rd April 2016, 03:31 PM
It's not just a touch and stop, you scrape first, similar to 2097. He's not making the newer games, but trying to create the originals. The originals really rewarded perfect laps, as opposed to cramming the wall and still coming out fast. It looks very close to XL right now, which is perfect.

Meg.A.Byte
3rd April 2016, 05:38 PM
You'll probably call me a crybaby, but I'm very unhappy about collisions too. In combination with collision damage I'm not able to finish Harpstone with Nexus on Spectre (2nd fastest type) in most cases. With other ships the damage is not that much of a problem for me. But if you stop on the spot from full speed in sharp turn when you hit the wall in aprox. 20° angle, it's not really pleasant. I'm not asking for the Formula Fusion physics, where you bounce off the walls with no speed penalty, but the current state is too annoying for me.
And the collisions with other ships is something probably well known for you and I don't like it either. In this case it's harder to tweak, but I hope it'll be somewhat different as well.

I think the feel of older WO games is there, but some things are just better to change a little, even when you want to get close to the original.

JABBERJAW
3rd April 2016, 05:47 PM
Well, the energy thing I would think would be easy to fix. 20 degrees would have resulted in a " clunk " in wipeout XL as well. Pitching back gives a a wider area before you scrape. Are you using that technique?

Meg.A.Byte
3rd April 2016, 06:13 PM
Well, the energy thing I would think would be easy to fix. 20 degrees would have resulted in a " clunk " in wipeout XL as well. Pitching back gives a a wider area before you scrape. Are you using that technique?

You mean that if you are get into collision with one or more enemies it will suck your energy rapidly? I don't know how many people here played 0.3 (which isn't officially released) but in that version, the energy is no longer a big problem. The problem is that very often you can get under or sometimes over another ship and at most times there are more ships around you so you will get "trapped" in a clump of ships with no chance to get out of it without the clump getting somewhat dismissed. It's nothing that lasts for long time, I'm talking about 2-5 seconds of constantly bumping to others. I thing the biggest problem is mentioned "clumping" of enemies. But Snake told me that he gonna fix it. It's kinda unreallistic if you think about it considering the wide range of stats.

bigsnake
5th April 2016, 09:14 PM
The wall collisions have been addressed somewhat, they weren't actually working how I intended. When you actually collide (not scrape) it's supposed to take your speed down and decrease your acceleration a bit, what was actually happening is it was just bringing your ship to a complete stop. It wasn't as bad as WO1 because your engine was still pushing you forward so you quickly gained speed again, but for a split second you would not be moving at all.

Currently working on modding tools, looking to have them in somewhat of a usable state by the end of the week. Here's a test of the track importer:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhcESj6RpTA&feature=youtu.be

Hybrid Divide
6th April 2016, 05:31 AM
oh man, that is cool!

aybe
6th April 2016, 07:55 PM
@bigsnake been looking at the track (sorry forgot its name) with animated billboards and so on, truly impressive :clap:clap:clap

bigsnake
6th April 2016, 09:29 PM
Thanks! You're thinking of Aciknovae, those animated billboards were made by Dreadofmondays :)

bigsnake
7th April 2016, 04:07 AM
More progress on the track importer! I got the hard part out of the way as soon as possible, which was packing all of the data for a track scene into a single file then reloading everything back out again. There's also an instant play mode so you can test the track on the fly.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK912lGnBjE

JABBERJAW
7th April 2016, 01:56 PM
Fantastic!

Hybrid Divide
7th April 2016, 04:36 PM
Sweet!

bigsnake
8th April 2016, 09:35 AM
Just uploaded an alpha test of the track importer, here's the link (https://github.com/bigsnake09/BallisticNG/releases/download/0.3tr/BallisticNG.Track.Importer.Alpha.zip). A demo scene of Utah Project setup in the importer is included. Documentation can also be found here (https://github.com/bigsnake09/BallisticNG/wiki/Track-Editor-Home), as of posting it's very basic and I will be writing more for it soon.

And just to resolve any initial confusion, this is only an importer for getting an existing track mesh setup to use in the game, you have to make the track in external software beforehand. It should also be noted that the importer could be unstable in some cases, basic functionality over stability was the focus of uploading this test build, if you run into any issues then let me know :)

aybe
8th April 2016, 06:02 PM
Thanks! You're thinking of Aciknovae, those animated billboards were made by Dreadofmondays :)

Yes this one !

Rafeku
13th April 2016, 04:14 PM
I've been playing the 0.2 and 0.3mod and I'm having a blast :clap. But I'm here just post some issues. PLOX TAEK DEM IN CUNSIDERATIAN PLZ!!!11!!1 :redface:
0.3mod:It has the framerate kind of unstable, the framerate begin to skip for no reason whatsoever, other than that, the AI ships keeps clustering through the track.
I have yet to test the ship and track importer.

0.2: Survival has the Pit lanes and Dual Airbrakes working, you need to disable this, it should'nt happen

"Corkscrewed" parts of the track make the autopilot and the AI ships suffer when going through the track, they hit the ground and and keep rebounding back for eternity.
Ishtar citadel has a...bad placed invisble wall, that part where the ship is supossed to run through that "wall" part of the track. It really annoys me that you can't shortcut that wall.

The tolerancy of the wall riding made the game much easier to handle, altough it's not there yet. When the game registers that you hit the wall, your ship still stops, but the good thing is that the accel of the ships is good, so its not a issue when you hit the wall sideways. You can go back to the track 1 sec after. The problem is that at certains speeds I think it should still reduce the speed, and rebound the ship a bit more, so you don't hit the same place again and again. There are times that when you think you can scrape the wall, you hit it and get stuck, because there's not enough rebound, so you keep hitting that little piece of the wall corner in succession.

This one here is not a issue, but a track design opinion: Pit lanes should be easy to go in and out, since it's something like a safe zone, when you're in despair. It's really annoying having to do a tight manuever to go into the pit. That's something that I complain about WipEout XL and Wip3out. I mean 0x002 has an atrocious pit lane, I lite"rally" have to slide through the track, or brake to turn 90 degrees to go into the pit, manuever the ship again, while accelerating, to go through the pit, turn, and do the same 90 degree turn to go back on the track. I have more chances of dying doing that than recharging my shields...albeit losing too much time.

I know this is made to behave like the classic WipEout's, but I really wanted to have the sideshift, its a usefull move, it could open up some possibilities.

Also, cockpit view. The first person one is good, but I like to see the cockpit to have a reference. It also feels cool 8)

Sorry for the long, post I just hope those problems and this opinion can be taken in consideration in later releases.

JABBERJAW
14th April 2016, 04:13 AM
Side shift would wreck this game, this is supposed to be hard, like the older games, anticipating turns, having to stay off the walls. Side shift destroys what the old games are about

You should play ssgx, that game is excellent as well and is supposed to be like the newer games, with side shift, more lenient wall scraping, etc.

Rafeku
14th April 2016, 11:56 AM
I've played SSGX, but this game didn't have an update in some time, and the ships seemed to not turn well, even with airbrakes(I dunno if it's issue with me). I've played Pulse and SSGX back to back, and SSGX felt weird. Really weird. Also in Pulse the walls feel like they have maglocks on them :P. Well, I like the older WipEouts, the side shift was just a thought, since my favourite is Pure, because it has a the best of the early and later games, it felt and played very well.

JABBERJAW
15th April 2016, 01:17 AM
I think I like Pure the best of the newer games from fusion and forward as well

Rafeku
16th April 2016, 02:07 PM
I've found one issue in the game: You can be eliminated after finishing a race.

Also, what's the point of putting the ship importer...if you can't use the imported ship? the tracks on the latest build are locked, and I can only use the ships, and tracks provided in the cup...

bigsnake
16th April 2016, 04:07 PM
0.3mod:It has the framerate kind of unstable, the framerate begin to skip for no reason whatsoever, other than that, the AI ships keeps clustering through the track.
0.2: Survival has the Pit lanes and Dual Airbrakes working, you need to disable this, it should'nt happen

I'm currently looking at the skipping issue, I managed to replicate the problem on a computer at college so I need to figure out what's causing it. I have spotted some irregular spikes in Unity's profiler too so hopefully I'll have it figured out soon. There's also another issue where some people are getting consistent hang at all times, even on the menu. I've updated the game to the latest version of Unity which I'm hoping will fix that, alongside the long standing input issue where the ship always turns right (I'm still not sure what causes that but it seems to be only in a select few cases).

Also fixed those two issues with survival today :)


The tolerancy of the wall riding made the game much easier to handle, altough it's not there yet. When the game registers that you hit the wall, your ship still stops, but the good thing is that the accel of the ships is good, so its not a issue when you hit the wall sideways. You can go back to the track 1 sec after. The problem is that at certains speeds I think it should still reduce the speed, and rebound the ship a bit more, so you don't hit the same place again and again. There are times that when you think you can scrape the wall, you hit it and get stuck, because there's not enough rebound, so you keep hitting that little piece of the wall corner in succession.

Everything as of 0.3mod is deliberate, like JabberJaw has said on multiple occasions the game is supposed to be hard. Your ship does rebound more depending on how heavy the collision is, but if you hit a wall and can't get off it then it's because you're not steering away from it in time. The rebound as it is is pretty heavy at the moment, if you hit the wall hard enough then your ship will bounce to face far enough into the track for you to recover without repetitively colliding after.

To also briefly expand on what JabberJaw mentioned with the sideshifting, the reason the game doesn't have it and why it won't ever be able to have anything like it integrated falls down to track design. In the newer Wipeout games the tracks are designed in such a way that you need to use sideshifting in the faster speed classes to correct your racing line, in BnG the tracks are designed around timing your steering correctly and using the airbrakes to drift around tighter corners. You can still somewhat sideshift though, in Spectre/Zen if you steer in one direction and airbrake in the other then the two rotations from you airbraking and steering more a less cancel each other out and you'll be left slowly rotating while being pulled to one side.

Another thing I should probably also mention, it hasn't been mentioned in a while but I have had questions about adding barrel roll back in from the earlier builds of the game a few times. The reason BnG doesn't have barrel rolls anymore is because the afterburner has taken on the single function of boosting, the same as Wipeout 3. Barrel rolls act in essentially the same way, you loose some energy and get a boost out of it, except with the afterburner you can do it whenever you like and you get a much larger boost for the same energy loss.


I've found one issue in the game: You can be eliminated after finishing a race.

Also, what's the point of putting the ship importer...if you can't use the imported ship? the tracks on the latest build are locked, and I can only use the ships, and tracks provided in the cup...

That elimination issue will be fixed by the final version of the build, there's a few cases where you can be eliminated when you shouldn't be able to be. For the ship importer, it's available in custom race which you have to unlock gamemodes for by playing the singleplayer, or you can just type iwantitall on the menu to unlock everything. The reason you can't use imported ships in singleplayer is because there's no restrictions on the settings you enter so you can easily just create an overpowered ship to power through everything with ease.

Meg.A.Byte
17th April 2016, 12:22 AM
Man, you should promote and hype your Steam greenlight submission, because I WANT to have BNG on Steam, oh yea.

And more than elimination after finish, I'm more concerned about that bug, when you race again after you click on "Next race" after finishing 1st. That really pisses me off sometimes. Did that happened to anyone?

bigsnake
17th April 2016, 01:50 PM
That greenlight submission is only a concept though, I still gotta pay the greenlight fee :P I probably am going to improve it with 0.3 though, I'll make a bunch of track videos and screenshots to add on there.

I'm going to be looking at the next race button problem today, I have some ideas on what is causing it. and fixed!

Pyro-GX
17th April 2016, 06:15 PM
Am I doing something wrong that the WipEout and 2097 ships ain't showing, or are they disabled at the moment?

bigsnake
17th April 2016, 06:16 PM
You need to provide the data for them, there's a readme provided with the game on what you need to do. The options don't show up if the game doesn't find the files required.

Rafeku
17th April 2016, 07:20 PM
I understand what you're trying to say, about hard. What am I saying is there is something off with the collisions yet y'know? I'm comparing it to WO3(SE) and it's preety faithfull wehn flying around(some tracks), but, I just think there's something >>very off<< with the colisions that's all.(But that was on v0.2, I'm sorry) I couldn't properly race on Stanza, with G-Tek on Halberd, and I race this thing on phantom with at least a ship with 3 of handling(on WO3). I've found myself dual braking most of the time in BNG(Again, that was v0.2)

I guess I can live without sideshift...I'll just miss it :frown:. AILERON ROLLING(Star Fox be da**ed. Because of this dumb guy on the localization team, it was turned into a meme, and a default in gaming) is the bane of my existance in the newer WipEout's. I swear I could break my thumb and the analog stick on the controller when playing Pure and Pulse. It just comes when it wants to. The position of your hand on the stick doesn't let you turn left and right with full precision, and the game just screws with you because of that. Wiggle that thing all you want, unless you put this thing straight horizontally it won't come out, which is atrocious.

Hyperthrust...Can't say I hate it, but I don't like it much either. The idea of using shields to get a boost of speed when needed is a good idea, just the way it was executed that felt broken(at least in Wip3out, you could skip whole chunks of tracks with a ramp and a hyperthrust, but I wanna see how you'll make it work in your tracks, and the game overall, cuz custom content YAY!)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WipE'out" Final, because R-Type "finished" the series, with a glorious last title to end the saga(till they released a PSP strategy game and a 3D Space shooter on the PSN Home JPN...but that's not the case)

Well, This version is much better than the last I've played and the game improved A LOT overall, I loved the new tracks, the 4 best handling ships feel good(I NEED DI HANDLING), Ship Editor...is good ATM, can be improved(is there a way to change the color of the tail fin?), I'm missing the quake, and the game progress is going smoothly, I just wish the game was HD...I really wanted to see the older WipE'out" concept running in with beautifull High Definition graphics..."Beggars can't be choosers", but one could dream. HOWEVER problems still remain:

_As I said in a post before, that version has some performance issues, the frames were skipping...but they're sudenly gone, the game is running smoothly +60fps...weird. Not complaining but weird...
_Utah Project is unberable in Halberd with the current AI. They keep clustering and as I see they're going full auto-pilot, since they seem to be using always the same line, hitting themselves and me to my death rentlessly.The problem is even WORSE when playing on Zen with slower machine, or when you don't nail the track. Hit the wall = You're done, and you won't be seeing the other ships again. They cluster too much, their speed is the same.Specially in Zen. I think the only thing it needs now, besides finishing the other tracks, and fixing some few issues with weaponry(I'll put it below) is to rework the AI and the Auto-Pilot, which are the same, and it's broken.
_Ackinovae has a problem with the AI ships(besides the wrong behavior), which I don't know if it's specifically on Zen, but the ships spawned in the air and dropped down later in the race. Other problem(Probally in Zen too, since I was running on that speed) the ships are now Goku's teleporting. When they get almost to the end of the track, they just cut the whole chunk, but I don't know if that happened just once, or if it keeps happening in that speed class, because it is IMPOSSIBLE to keep up.
_Some items don't have use. Yet. Or I'm using it the wrong way. What's that half shield symbol do? I never got what's being said by the computer, so I don't know what's it's use.
_Sometimes the shield does not engage.
_Weapons/Items can be taken repeatedly if you discard the item you have, if you're about to go over a item pad
_Auto-Pilot struggles to navigate through the track. So does the AI in certain tracks(except on that BLODDY UTA-*shot*)
_Ship importer doesn't like WOHD Ship models(They're extracted from the game intact). The glass just disappears. The texture has no alpha, so does the glass geometry itself. I don't know what's happening. The ship itself looks fine.
_Position counter glitches if you overlap the other racers(I think). I've finished the 1st Season of the single player, all in first place, but in the results it gives me 7th(most of the time). Once it gave me a 5th.(That's why I was pissed before, because I've finished the Season, and nothing did unlock for me. So I couldn't use any of the games features)
_(Done on v0.2, check further versions)XL Track 4 has 2 bugs in the first jump: If you fail the jump, you have a chance of getting stuck beneath the track and don't respawn. The second one, is when you go somewhat farther then the game expects, you fall through the ground and respawn(I dunno if theres a chance of getting stuck).The later happened to me once.
_With camdmg enabled, if you finish a race hitting the wall, the effect will still be present. It resets upon loading another track.
_The ships stay in their "prototype track form" when they race in one of the prototypes. When you go to other track(no prototype one), they're still on the "prototype track form"
_Custom ships glitch(appears as if it was on the editor) and the menus disappear(with the custom ship, I don't know the others) when you pause the game, AFTER you going to any prototype track.
_(Not an issue) LUNA's walls are hard to see without Tonemap. The lights on the track are a nice touch both in aesthetic and functionality, I just wished i could see the walls better.

So yeah.... I think that is most of the problems I've found playing the game. Sorry if I sound too harsh(and for the long post), it is because I'm somewhat perfectionist, when it comes to some stuff...don't burn me:redface:

bigsnake
18th April 2016, 03:54 PM
Thanks for the list of bugs! Quite a few of them are already fixed, will fix the remaining stuff you've listed soon :)

For the ship importer, it only supports 1 mesh and 1 material. You can have submeshes that belong to the 1 supported mesh, but make sure that there is only 1 material being used for all submeshes. For the Wipeout HD ships you need to combine everything into one mesh. For the glass you'll need to edit the texture and UV it on manually, same for the carbon texture for the fury ships. In the final build of 0.3 the ship importer is going to reject the mesh if it has more then 1 mesh.

Rafeku
18th April 2016, 04:41 PM
Thanks for the list of bugs! Quite a few of them are already fixed, will fix the remaining stuff you've listed soon :)

For the ship importer, it only supports 1 mesh and 1 material. You can have submeshes that belong to the 1 supported mesh, but make sure that there is only 1 material being used for all submeshes. For the Wipeout HD ships you need to combine everything into one mesh. For the glass you'll need to edit the texture and UV it on manually, same for the carbon texture for the fury ships. In the final build of 0.3 the ship importer is going to reject the mesh if it has more then 1 mesh.

I can't realocate the UV's on the fury ships, it's all messed up. I could put everything in one texture, but I can't put in one material, it's impossible. In the next version put support for multiple materials please. PLEASE.

Everything is in one mesh already. After you told me that thing with the textures that I've saw the problem. I went to look the belly of the ship and there it was. Looped textures. Thanks for the heads-up. Also...can I post a G-Tek model template for importing? You should have included that to show how the model should be scaled in-game...

bigsnake
18th April 2016, 04:45 PM
Go for it! Going to be providing some templates with the final build but until then that should help anybody who wants to try it out early.

Pyro-GX
18th April 2016, 04:46 PM
You need to provide the data for them, there's a readme provided with the game on what you need to do. The options don't show up if the game doesn't find the files required.

ALLSH/TERRY CMP and PRM in H:\BallisticNG\UserData\MyShips. Ripped straight from 2097 and WipEout platinum edition PS1 disks.

Also, not sure if said already but clicking Controls takes you to the campaign menu

Rafeku
18th April 2016, 05:32 PM
Yeah, you should put in the configuration menu in the next build Snake. I want to hit people with X, not with B button.
Click me! :--
http://s4.postimg.org/4fzhqk6v1/tottallyorgdsg.png (http://www.mediafire.com/download/u71q8ykct2kzfh9/F-Tek.7z)©Republic Designers™ LTD.
F-Tek™ logos and concepts are copyright of Republic Designers™ LTD. All other logos and trademarks also belong to Republic Designers. You'll be sued without further notice, because all designs and concept are, and always will be, our property
Totally original design, do not steal.Or else SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES....which is taking the rest of your life in front of a monitor.


The unauthorised reproduction of all or any part of this product and the unauthorised use of registered trademarks are likely to constitute nothing, this file is open source
Open source harms our capitalist overlords as well as illegitmate developers, publisher, and scammers. If you suspect this file has been copied a hundred plus 1 times, please reconsider your thoughts and realize this file was released for the public

I can't help myself with the piracy joke. also is there a way to resize the image when posting?

EDIT:more bugs
_You should be able to take items while using shield
_AI ships gain an insane boost of speed when doing jumps(seen in Ackinovae).
_AI ships will relenteslly keep hitting anything in front of it, without thought of trying to go around( I've passed through a Scorpio been hit by another ship mutliple times. It felt that scorpio was a nail in a plank...)
_Tampering with the frame rate make ships...faster than it should be. I went with a framerate of 30 to simulate the fps of the ps1 and the ships just got insanely fast. they all of them were keeping up with th Tenrai ship I was using, I had no chance to overtake the others. Once i've hit a wall it was basically over for me, I couldn't catch up. So yeah... the lower, the worse the auto-pilot and AI will be.
_Missiles and Rockets don't disappear upon impact. They can go through walls and hit multiple targets.
_Season 1, 4th track you can't finish first, and upon finishing the track the game gives you quit and restart options. Clicking restart takes you to the next track(that's why I though I've finished the season)
_Ship is invisible upon finishing in 1st person view(plz keep it that way, it's good and surprisingly not nauseating. Hooray the camera is not on the ground)Just plz change the shield effect while in first person...it's distracting

Really, work on the AI. This makes the game frustating.

bigsnake
19th April 2016, 04:25 PM
Just released 0.3! You can download it here (https://github.com/bigsnake09/BallisticNG/releases/download/0.3f/BallisticNG.0.3.beta.1.zip) or as usual it's also on the release thread.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afhVWw0g9Ng

Rafeku, I've provided a link to that template ship on the github wiki page for it, which is also linked to in the modding tools folder in the game. I've also fixed (or at least should have fixed) the problems you've listed before your edit on your latest post, I was testing for a few hours last night and everything seemed in order. The shield thing isn't a bug by the way, it's intentional that you can't pickup anything else while it's active. Will likely have a hotfix up at some point to address the other stuff you've listed, finishing the documentation for the modding tools is now my top priority though so it will probably be a few days.

Rafeku
20th April 2016, 02:21 AM
I'll be taking a look on it tomorrow I'll edit this post when I get my dirty jands on the build. Now I didnt get it yet, but can you program the collision model to when the games register a hit, it reduces to half the current speed? I was watching a 2097 Pirahna run, and when it hit the wall it went from 357km/h to 13#(it was fast). Can try doing that in a build? Thx in advance.

EDIT:
Okay so I got my hands in the game. Not much changed... have you tweaked the AI? At least in Apex they seem to be more calm, Halberd however is the same chore. They're clustering less, but with a lap, they are all togheter. I see that they now try to keep overtaking you, but they're still relentless in corners. I was drifiting with a Scorpio and a Tenrai have blown my left match box :(. He kept hitting my left like it was hammer till I've hit the wall, and the other racers went through; all of them togheter. Bunch of assassins. I feel like I've killed their partners and they want revenge or something. All of'em. I once got hit by 4 rockets at once. AT ONCE. I've had overtaken 2 guys once, and they tried to overtake me. One of them had hit my back, exploded it with rockets(I hate when the AI does this cheap crap), and so did the guy behind in an instant. What's tihs? A CONSPIRACY, I SAY!!!! They're the Illuminati! I'm telling you. That was on Zephyr Ridge. Utah Project also had this problem, so in this case, from the 2: 1) I nailed the track or 2) You've touched in the AI.
Have you tried to make the AI follow a pattern? Random positions, Random ships, they'll follow a pattern to keep up on a certain position, once you overtake them, they'll try to overtake you. Once you get first they'll amp up the pace. I dunno. What breaks the fun of this game to me is the AI. They don't lose speed in corners, so this means if he's closing on you, you're sure to get hit by him and he won't have any consequences, making all your work to the top go to the trash in a matter of seconds. When the ships are hit by weapon, they should have a delay to return gaining speed. Multiple times I've hit ships with missles or rockets, and the worst that happens to them is getting themselves a jump and they're back already in less than a second, the cannon slows them down though. I just don't know by how much, it depends how many shots you can land on it...

Nice touch on the menu presentation, 2097 all the way. I just missed the flying arrows, they're a nice touch on the menu...which is only grey :(
Can you send me a config file with L1(LB) and R1(RB) buttons as airbrakes and, [ ](X) and O(B) inversed? I can't get used to using the triggers as airbrakes, and the [ ] button is more convinient(to me) to fire weapons.

Baby got an atom bomb. K.

_Controller keeps vibrating when you hit a wall and quit th track. Stops vibrating upon loading another track.
_Menu music doesn't loop.
_Auto-pilot still strugles through the track. In Harpstone the A-P kept going back and forth through the tangent and could go out until I've disabled it.
_XL Unfinished track has inverted textures on the signs... Zephyr Ridge and Utah have wrong placed textures on the track walls, do little check on it.
_When you press the fire button multiple times with plasma bolt, the >sound< is played multiple times.
_Custom color hud doesn't display the diamond shaped icon on the side of the time of the lap

GGeek
20th April 2016, 07:53 PM
Got my hands on 0.3, mostly doing TT, and the general feel is nice. Now, i may be a bit nitpicking at this point, but here's what i found (mostly sound related) :

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

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

bigsnake
20th April 2016, 10:47 PM
Thanks for the feedback! Adding it all to the list of stuff to do. The random cutoff of sounds by the way is a bug with Unity, from my own testing it's caused by reverb zones (if you fly through the reverb zone causing it you'll hear the wet output only). I have no idea when they plan to fix it, but it's been a problem for a good few years now :brickwall

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

Aidan
21st April 2016, 12:58 AM
Just got the new versions and it's nice to see more tracks with environments! (Atlantica is probably my favourite) Here's a list of bugs or weird things I've seen from messing around mainly with TT.

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

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

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

Anyway here's a linux build of 0.3
https://mega.nz/#!kZ8jFAjT!bTxFm8Zko3sDqCDjdZ1qMSXCwB6cyelgKMrndH0 BNZQ

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVRIcFt39kc

bigsnake
21st April 2016, 01:27 AM
- When finishing a race in 1st person view your ship will be invisible when you see it racing around at the end of the event. (Only tested in TT)

I've already fixed this one :)



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

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



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

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



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

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

Anyway here's a linux build of 0.3
https://mega.nz/#!kZ8jFAjT!bTxFm8Zko3sDqCDjdZ1qMSXCwB6cyelgKMrndH0 BNZQ



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

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

Rafeku
21st April 2016, 01:50 PM
How in the heck do I use the WO3 ships? I have WO3SE, but what team folders are those? I didn't get it. The instructions are not clear. Also those invisible ships....it's like my "F**** YOU ALL!!!! YOU LITTLE F****!! SUCK IT!"

bigsnake
21st April 2016, 05:13 PM
You need to use the OBJ's I shared on on the model extracting thread on the pilots lounge, right now the game doesn't have support for loading the ships from WO3's PBP files. You create a folder in MyShips called WO3 then drag the folders for each team in there.

Rafeku
21st April 2016, 05:48 PM
You need to use the OBJ's I shared on on the model extracting thread on the pilots lounge, right now the game doesn't have support for loading the ships from WO3's PBP files. You create a folder in MyShips called WO3 then drag the folders for each team in there.

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

bigsnake
21st April 2016, 06:22 PM
It's mostly done, in fixing the problem related to the AI becoming harder at lower framerates I needed to redo all of the settings for the AI which ended up with my adding a few new behaviors and sorting out the overtaking. Going to have a hotfix up soon, just working on a few minors things first.

And done, download here (https://github.com/bigsnake09/BallisticNG/releases/download/0.3_1/BallisticNG.0.3_1.zip) or on the release thread.

Rafeku
21st April 2016, 07:35 PM
It's mostly done, in fixing the problem related to the AI becoming harder at lower framerates I needed to redo all of the settings for the AI which ended up with my adding a few new behaviors and sorting out the overtaking. Going to have a hotfix up soon, just working on a few minors things first.

And done, download here (https://github.com/bigsnake09/BallisticNG/releases/download/0.3_1/BallisticNG.0.3_1.zip) or on the release thread.
Downloading. Will edit after playing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

End of the rant.

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

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

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

bigsnake
21st April 2016, 09:35 PM
Thanks a bunch for the detailed feedback! Just fixed the menu problems, I also noticed you mentioned the lack of a warning for weapons, I'll get that implemented now. I'm going to start tweaking the AI more over the next few days, if you've got the time then I'll keep the current hotfix update with the latest changes. There's also an update to it right now if you want to try it (same link as before), I've toned the AI down on the first lap so you should get a better chance at getting into first place easy much earlier on in the race.

Rafeku
21st April 2016, 09:55 PM
Thanks a bunch for the detailed feedback! Just fixed the menu problems, I also noticed you mentioned the lack of a warning for weapons, I'll get that implemented now. I'm going to start tweaking the AI more over the next few days, if you've got the time then I'll keep the current hotfix update with the latest changes. There's also an update to it right now if you want to try it (same link as before), I've toned the AI down on the first lap so you should get a better chance at getting into first place easy much earlier on in the race.

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

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

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

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

Xpand
21st April 2016, 10:07 PM
Okay i'm gonna try it again. But I think you should put a link to the files that have changed, not the whole game again.

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

bigsnake
21st April 2016, 10:20 PM
Okay i'm gonna try it again. But I think you should put a link to the files that have changed, not the whole game again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rafeku
21st April 2016, 10:31 PM
It's Unity, you HAVE to release the whole game when you change any internal code.

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

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

Waiting anxiously for the next release :sonar

bigsnake
21st April 2016, 10:56 PM
I could create a slack group for talking in real-time, that would provide both private message and global chatrooms to talk in. I would create a skype group but if you get enough people in it then it will just become a mess, when at least with something like Slack it could be an organised mess.

Rafeku
21st April 2016, 11:03 PM
Well there's always Discord (https://discordapp.com/), Steam, Whatsapp... Though I can only enter on Saturdays and Sundays on >my< computer(the only place I could use those programs), which doesn't mean I can't use other one to test your game. Also I've edited my post. I edited my previous post, because I felt I didn't express myself very well.
Can you give me your skype through PM?

bigsnake
21st April 2016, 11:07 PM
Discord is also another good option, I recently started using it so it could also work. Will send you my skype details now :)

Rafeku
21st April 2016, 11:29 PM
Forget what I said about the difficulty. I just suck with faster ships. And was too lucky on the first G-TEK runs. Keep it. I think the game taught me a lesson, but it wasn't too hard either. Sorry again. I should have tested it more, I've just played once... ah crap, hope I didn't make you work for nothing.
I really need to stop with this hype for updates... I want things to go fast... oh crap.. Sorry.

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

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

bigsnake
22nd April 2016, 10:35 PM
The game is now on Steam Greenlight! The game will remain to be free, but if you'd like to see it get on Steam then give it a vote :) Link - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=670836448


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

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

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

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

Rafeku
23rd April 2016, 02:14 AM
The game is now on Steam Greenlight! The game will remain to be free, but if you'd like to see it get on Steam then give it a vote :) Link - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=670836448



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

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

potterman28wxcv
24th April 2016, 12:08 PM
Hello there ! I'm a newcomer to BallisticNG - I'm really glad there's finally a Wipeout 1-esque kind-of-port on PC ;)

However, I'm running into problems getting it to work. I have a Xbox One controller - at first launch, the game didn't seem to recognize it, nothing was happening at all in the menu. So I have restarted the game, and remapped the buttons myself, noticing that while remapping, all the "Joystick axis 0" would change in "Joystick 1 axis 0".

After firing the game a second time, the controls work, however I'm always steering right, both in the menu and in-game, which makes it unplayable.
I have tried switching Xbox One to Xbox 360, and it's the same issue.

Do you have some special tricks to set up to correct this ? I run it on Windows 8.1

Meg.A.Byte
24th April 2016, 01:26 PM
Hi and welcome! bigsnake/vonsnake is currently working on this problem.
Also the problem with steering right. I had the same problem and I found out that it's due to multiple connected controllers/keyboards/mouses. Try to have only one keyboard/mouse plugged in at the same time and also only one controller.
Let me know if it helped.

potterman28wxcv
24th April 2016, 02:04 PM
Hi and welcome! bigsnake/vonsnake is currently working on this problem.
Alright, good news :)



Also the problem with steering right. I had the same problem and I found out that it's due to multiple connected controllers/keyboards/mouses. Try to have only one keyboard/mouse plugged in at the same time and also only one controller.
Let me know if it helped.
I got only one of them connected. One controller, one keyboard, one mouse. And i can't really disconnect my keyboard as it's a laptop ;P

Anyway, staying tuned

Rafeku
24th April 2016, 05:19 PM
_Item pads gets blank, even with item on hold(player and ai)
_I think sometimes the AI gets locked on the overtake pattern(they keep going insanely fast, you just can't catch them even with perfect laps, that's wrong.)

I had that issue of the controller, but it was in my father's PC, where his Xbox 360 controller just didn't want to turn full left.(the analog) it's weird. When I changed to the PS4 one it worked normally....I think it was the controller

Xpand
24th April 2016, 05:23 PM
bigsnake is currently working on those input issues with a new Unity input manager that he found out about. Hopefully it will clear any or every controller problem people migh have.

AGgamer
24th April 2016, 07:18 PM
The Autopilot has a lot of trouble with quick corners on lower speed classes. On Luna it can't make the turn at all, it just hovers in place.

bigsnake
24th April 2016, 11:52 PM
Hello there ! I'm a newcomer to BallisticNG - I'm really glad there's finally a Wipeout 1-esque kind-of-port on PC ;)

However, I'm running into problems getting it to work. I have a Xbox One controller - at first launch, the game didn't seem to recognize it, nothing was happening at all in the menu. So I have restarted the game, and remapped the buttons myself, noticing that while remapping, all the "Joystick axis 0" would change in "Joystick 1 axis 0".

After firing the game a second time, the controls work, however I'm always steering right, both in the menu and in-game, which makes it unplayable.
I have tried switching Xbox One to Xbox 360, and it's the same issue.

Do you have some special tricks to set up to correct this ? I run it on Windows 8.1

Hey there! The problem you're experiencing there has been a problem for some time and the cause of it is still unknown. Like Meg.A.Byte and Xpand have mentioned I've been busy implementing a new input manager today, I've just uploaded an experimental build here (https://github.com/bigsnake09/BallisticNG/releases/download/0.3_2/BallisticNG.0.3_2.zip) if you want to try that out. I haven't been able to reproduce the problem myself so I can't say for certain if this new input manager will fix it, but if you try it out then be sure to let me know how it goes :)

Cipher
25th April 2016, 12:04 AM
That problem is usually caused by not setting up a stick deadzone, the stick is never perfectly centered, sometimes enough to cause undesired input, some games allow you to adjust it as well, because it's different from controller to controller (xbox360 controllers having it more often (we have tons with this issue at our college xD), they are fun if the stick steers a camera though, gives a nice smooth panning motion :D

Setting up a deadzone is as simple as clamping the stick input ;)

If it's not that, welp i tried :p

Cipher

bigsnake
25th April 2016, 12:13 AM
Yeah there's already deadzones implemented (you can actually edit them on the menu), 360 controllers are a bitch for deadzones because of how the stick is loose in the centre. The problem in this case has been that people are turning at full speed to the right unless they steer in the opposite direction otherwise, what I believe it could be is something screwy with the input setting. The way the input works is that all the different possible inputs for both keyboards and controllers are named the same so the input can be read for everything in just one check, what's likely happening there is Unity is getting confused and returning the wrong value for the steering axis. I haven't seen many other Unity games that name axes for multiple input devices the same, so I would assume that is the likely cause.

The new input manager in that experimental build can only read either a controller or keyboard at any given time, not both. It will be interesting to see if that fixes the problem :)

Cipher
25th April 2016, 11:00 AM
Ah i see, that could indeed be, although i'm not certain, as when the keyboard buttons aren't pressed, it shouldn't really overwrite anything :p
But hope it works out! ;-)

Cipher

GGeek
25th April 2016, 03:56 PM
Issue with the Input manager :

- Right Airbrake bind in the no triger config does not work (XBox360 Controller. I dont like to use the triggers so i use bumpers instead. What happens is that when bound the right airbrake actually controls the LEFT airbrake)

Also quick question : Do you think that sounds packs can be extended (i.e. : Custom Race Intros) ? I'd love to hae my on take on Pre-RAce voices without having you to replace the existing ones.

bigsnake
25th April 2016, 04:40 PM
Thanks for reporting, fixed and will be in the next update :)
And yeah I can do that, I'll add that now!

Rafeku
25th April 2016, 05:01 PM
I've played the latest build a bit, but the warnings are not effective, except for mines, because you dont have delay between the warning, and the fire.BECAUSE THEY FIRE AT POINT BLANK MOST OF THE TIME.
The wider pit lanes on those few tracks are a welcome addittion, theyre better to cut through now.
On the input manager, could you make all commands to accept axis and vice-versa? Like GGeek said, I don't like using the triggers to use the airbrakes, so I put on the bumpers. Thing is: Hyperthrust and look back are needed to be put on the triggers, but the mapper just does not accept it because they're not buttons.

potterman28wxcv
25th April 2016, 06:55 PM
Hey there! The problem you're experiencing there has been a problem for some time and the cause of it is still unknown. Like Meg.A.Byte and Xpand have mentioned I've been busy implementing a new input manager today, I've just uploaded an experimental build here (https://github.com/bigsnake09/BallisticNG/releases/download/0.3_2/BallisticNG.0.3_2.zip) if you want to try that out. I haven't been able to reproduce the problem myself so I can't say for certain if this new input manager will fix it, but if you try it out then be sure to let me know how it goes :)

Same issue unfortunately.. I will just follow Hiki's advice and play with the D-Pad

EDIT: Mapping one of the Steer to the D-Pad fixed the issue ! No idea why there are two entries in the first place..
10224

Hellfire_WZ
25th April 2016, 09:29 PM
Greenlight link has been shared on the FB/Twitter pages. Looking good! :)

bigsnake
26th April 2016, 11:18 AM
Awesome stuff, thanks for sharing that!


I've played the latest build a bit, but the warnings are not effective, except for mines, because you dont have delay between the warning, and the fire.BECAUSE THEY FIRE AT POINT BLANK MOST OF THE TIME.
The wider pit lanes on those few tracks are a welcome addittion, theyre better to cut through now.
On the input manager, could you make all commands to accept axis and vice-versa? Like GGeek said, I don't like using the triggers to use the airbrakes, so I put on the bumpers. Thing is: Hyperthrust and look back are needed to be put on the triggers, but the mapper just does not accept it because they're not buttons.

The warning still needs work, it's only a quick implementation at the moment. For the shared axis/button mapping possibly in the future, it will take a lot more work to get working.


Same issue unfortunately.. I will just follow Hiki's advice and play with the D-Pad

EDIT: Mapping one of the Steer to the D-Pad fixed the issue ! No idea why there are two entries in the first place..
10224

That's indeed weird. By the way were you running the new build? I disabled the Unity launcher on that new build because it's no longer required.

Rafeku
26th April 2016, 04:50 PM
And I've found another bug, out of luck: You can absorb weapons while paused(found with missile with a lockon)

potterman28wxcv
26th April 2016, 05:35 PM
That's indeed weird. By the way were you running the new build? I disabled the Unity launcher on that new build because it's no longer required.
I was using the 0.3.2 build that you linked (the experimental one).

bigsnake
27th April 2016, 03:33 PM
I was using the 0.3.2 build that you linked (the experimental one).

Ah okay, good to see you've managed to fix it. Will continue looking at the cause of the problem in the first place and try and get it fixed!

I'm going to be spending this week on the multiplayer again. I'm starting from scratch and I've already got lobbies fully working again. Custom ships will now also be sent automatically between players, there's going to be a hard limit of 5mb per ship. Wipeout HD's ships with full 1024x1024 textures only take up 2mb, so that's plenty of room to work with. From testing ships are sent instantly, this has been tested both locally on my own PC and between me a friend who has a 1mb/s max download speed.

TheXTR09
28th April 2016, 08:39 PM
Finally I got a try at BnG 0.3, and its', well hate to say it, kinda dissapointing. ( ͡° ʖ̯ ͡°)

Don't get me wrong, the game surely improved so many ways, but some very minor bugs are found throughout the game. I'm pretty sure you can't miss these. Maybe it's only me?
* The Quit button on the pause menu doesn't work. :?
* Controls in Settings cannot be changed.

I tried out Season One, and playing on the keyboard is far too sluggish for me and I tend to pinball into walls six to seven times before I can get back on track. I had no problems playing with a controller, so I set off to try out its native controller support on my DualShock 2. It was wonderful. :+ now im no filthy skrub
The bounce off and the angle it's bouncing off to is far too great and I have to replay Wip3out for comparison. G-tek is so slow in races that it's incapable to even race unless Afterburner is used (if that's intentional then ok fam), heck all ships cannot in some way catch up to the top three without Afterburner. And Plasma came up far too often for some reason.

Aside from the problems, I can dare say that this build is the most well-made out of anything I tried. The graphics work well, absolutely no lag and the soundtrack has old-school sick af 😂👌 electronica that I can't even tell that it's from you guys. It's like some avid fans went on reverse-engineering the game and build their own dream team upon it.
Can't love this game any more. 8) :rock

No game is perfect, so I'm here pointing bugs out so you can fix it. Hope this helps.

bigsnake
28th April 2016, 09:11 PM
Haha, sounds like you're playing the 2nd latest test build. Check out the new 0.4 multiplayer test build from the github download page, that fixes the quit button on the menu (and has experimental multiplayer support). The control settings is something I'm probably going to need others help test thoroughly since I'm able to set the controls just fine both on my PC and laptop. If anyone who tries that version runs into it, it would be of great help if you could share the output log in the BallisticNG_Data folder :)

Glad to see you've enjoyed it despite the little quirks! The collisions as they are now are modeled after Wipeout 2097, which a much higher scrape threshold but more punishing heavy collisions. The AI scale to the the ship you're currently using by the way, so if you use Gtek then the AI will also be slow and if you use Nexus then they will also be really fast. The AI have been balanced more since 0.3_2 so it should be easier to maintain first place if you get there.

TheXTR09
29th April 2016, 10:43 AM
@Snake
Yep, got v0.4 a try, but it still doesn't work. so does the controlls. :?

bigsnake
29th April 2016, 01:27 PM
Just fixed the key remapping problem, going to see what's still causing the quit button problem now.

TheXTR09
30th April 2016, 05:36 AM
Forgot one thing: I actually going to list out the minimum requirements for the game.
Pops had a old laptop bought in 2012, and all it had were 2GB of RAM, 2.4GHz Intel i5-450M chipset and a 512MB Nvidia GeForce 310M graphics card. For me to say, seems like any computer can play this game at MAX. Great then. :p

NetSphereEngineer
30th April 2016, 06:31 PM
First thanks a lot for all the trouble to make this beautiful game! Your love for Wipeout seems to be so great that you reproduced the game so well that I almost think you got back in time and stole the devs notes :)

I'm having that always turning controller problem :( Not sure if it helps but I found this:

There is a topic in the Steam forum of this game: Cornerstone: The Song Of Tyrim (http://steamcommunity.com/app/284410/discussions/0/365163686082944170/) and it has this problem and one of the devs says: "We learned the bug is not controller-based, it's OS-based. Windows 7 and 8 is different from Windows 10 and up. I made contact with the My Night Job devs and they were kind enough to compare notes with us. So we'll be incorporating that feedback in next patch. A shout out to them and a thanks to Elefantsu's post for the lead! "

In the news about this other game called: My Night Job (http://steamcommunity.com/games/437100/announcements/detail/964144715073013203) you can see the dev of Cornerstone is asking for help so maybe you guys can all talk a little about it :)

Also if this is a Unity problem it would be good to make it more public so no one have this problem anymore!

bigsnake
12th May 2016, 07:34 PM
Thank you! And thank you for the links, I'll be sure to reach out to some people to see what they know and if I find a fix I'll try and make it known to the Unity community :)

BallisticNG has also just been greenlit! A huge thank you to everyone who voted :) I'm looking to have it come out as an early access title so if everything goes smoothly 0.4 will hopefully be the first steam release!

What to expect from the steam version:
- Multiplayer matchmaking
- Achievements
- Tracked stats
- Online leaderboard
- Trading cards
- Workshop support for mods
- Steam cloud saving

NetSphereEngineer
13th May 2016, 03:27 AM
Congrats on the greenlit!

Multiplayer matchmaking

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/006/077/so_good.jpg

dreadofmondays
13th May 2016, 03:58 AM
Yep, we got greenlit! If any of you guys are on steam, you might consider joining the ballisticNG player group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/BallisticNG_Game
We're hoping to build a bit of a community around the game so get yourselves on that!

Rafeku
13th May 2016, 01:24 PM
Congrats on getting greenlit! I'll be joing there on Sartuday.

Also, I've played 2097(and finished it. Good lord, I've finally unlocked that Piranha ship) to see how the AI behaved during races, since the AI of your game tries to mimic it, I've noticed something: The ships you're racing seems to have the same speed AND limit as the one you're using. So if you're chasing someone at high speed and hit a wall, they'll slow down, so you can still chase. Another thing I noticed(and that's a bad one on 2097) is that you have pre-set positions during the race. If you can keep steadly fast and reach the middle racers, and hit a wall, you'll notice then overtaking you in a cluster(which is ridiculous) and when you look to the position counter you, keep that position for that lap. Lap 1 - 11th, Lap 2 - 7(or 6)th(I don't recall well now), and so forth. One more thing, once I did a perfect lap on sargamatha with AG-Sys and I've got no one on my sights. It's like that you're supposed to hit a wall if you wanna reach/overtake someone.

Another issue I'm having are the S-Curves on your game. In 2097 something that I would normally cut/scrape through, I hit on your game, and it really pisses me off. In 2097 the ship is pushed slightly outwards the wall when you're scraping...more noticeable in straights. It's really very, but very slightly

And the AI in Aciknovae have problems in the last section of the track... you're making them going too close on the wall(so does the auto-pilot -_-)

Take note on those things and see if you can improve this part of the game. That really ruins the experience for me. As for the online part of the game, are you planing to do some sort of Dedi, or it's gonna be P2P exclusively?

Hybrid Divide
13th May 2016, 04:14 PM
Yay! Greenlight! Congratulations, everyone!

bigsnake
13th May 2016, 08:48 PM
Congrats on getting greenlit! I'll be joing there on Sartuday.

Also, I've played 2097(and finished it. Good lord, I've finally unlocked that Piranha ship) to see how the AI behaved during races, since the AI of your game tries to mimic it, I've noticed something: The ships you're racing seems to have the same speed AND limit as the one you're using. So if you're chasing someone at high speed and hit a wall, they'll slow down, so you can still chase. Another thing I noticed(and that's a bad one on 2097) is that you have pre-set positions during the race. If you can keep steadly fast and reach the middle racers, and hit a wall, you'll notice then overtaking you in a cluster(which is ridiculous) and when you look to the position counter you, keep that position for that lap. Lap 1 - 11th, Lap 2 - 7(or 6)th(I don't recall well now), and so forth. One more thing, once I did a perfect lap on sargamatha with AG-Sys and I've got no one on my sights. It's like that you're supposed to hit a wall if you wanna reach/overtake someone.

Another issue I'm having are the S-Curves on your game. In 2097 something that I would normally cut/scrape through, I hit on your game, and it really pisses me off. In 2097 the ship is pushed slightly outwards the wall when you're scraping...more noticeable in straights. It's really very, but very slightly

And the AI in Aciknovae have problems in the last section of the track... you're making them going too close on the wall(so does the auto-pilot -_-)

Take note on those things and see if you can improve this part of the game. That really ruins the experience for me. As for the online part of the game, are you planing to do some sort of Dedi, or it's gonna be P2P exclusively?

Thanks for doing that testing on 2097, I'll start working on something similar. The multiplayer is going to be exclusively P2P for the time being, dedicated servers might be a thing in the future however.

Also I will be giving out some beta testing keys. I'm going to be giving out 10, I've already given 3 out so I have 7 left. Let me know if you'd want to get in on some early steam feature testing. I have to give out these keys over an elongated period of time though, the generation process has to be ran through Valve and they deny the generation request if you request too many.

NetSphereEngineer
13th May 2016, 09:20 PM
I'd love to help in some testing but it's up to you if it's worth to give me a key cause I'm from Brazil and you know my internet sucks :( Don't know if I would be able to help in the online mode testing for example OR it could turn out to be useful to try optimize things for far away players like me :)

Ace3000
14th May 2016, 04:24 AM
There is no key, it's free for everyone. Just use the links in the first post.

bigsnake
14th May 2016, 09:45 AM
I'd love to help in some testing but it's up to you if it's worth to give me a key cause I'm from Brazil and you know my internet sucks :( Don't know if I would be able to help in the online mode testing for example OR it could turn out to be useful to try optimize things for far away players like me :)

That would actually be very helpful in testing the online for syncing and extreme lag cases :)


There is no key, it's free for everyone. Just use the links in the first post.

The game is free but the keys are for pre-release access to the steam version of the game. Before the game is released on steam it should be in the best possible state, which is why I'm giving out beta keys for people who might want to help out on that.

Ace3000
14th May 2016, 11:14 AM
Oh. Whoopsie

NetSphereEngineer
14th May 2016, 08:44 PM
That would actually be very helpful in testing the online for syncing and extreme lag cases :)

If what you want is lag I'm your guy hahahahaha ahhhh :(

Well I'm in the Steam Group of BallisticNG so if you need me as a guinea pig just add me :)

Rafeku
15th May 2016, 03:28 AM
I'll probally have this lag issue too. Experienced player with lag with Halo Custom Edition since 2010. You can find me on the group, can test mostly on weekends.

bigsnake
17th May 2016, 11:06 PM
The multiplayer on the game decided it was just not going to work, which is rather annoying. Not really sure what has caused it as I havn't touched anything related to multiplayer for a few weeks now. Regardless, the multiplayer is going to be delayed past 0.4 so I can redo it again but with Steamworks. It means you will need to be running Steam in order to play multiplayer, but it will support everything on steam (public/private lobbies, matchmaking, friend invites, etc).

I still have a few keys remaining, PM me if you're still interested in beta testing :)

TheXTR09
20th May 2016, 04:45 PM
I volunteer to face lag in the name of a great remake. wow first time saying i wanted lag

I'm on the Steam group as "S A D C A T", it's supposed to be just "Teddy the Espurr" idk

EXTRA:
Having the MP playing on Steamworks is just better imo, much more easier to manage as all you need to do is just open up the game through Steam.


I TRIED THE STEAM BETA:
It worked just like the releases, nothing goes wrong and sure enough it's fun af! :+ Good ****.

But it just gets on my nerves that Nexus can go 400+ km/h while G-Tek is stuck with 280 km/h on Toxic. The speed difference between teams are far too big, G-Tek was absolutely useless against AI, it needs Hyperboost to be viable, like some sort of life support.
Maybe setting up some speed ranges would be good, perhaps 320~380, 400~500 km/h etc. would make each ship more balanced. disclaimer: imo

Shields too need some buffing. I kept on hitting opponents and once they pile up, they'll drain about 20~30% of your shield within seconds. Collision damage on walls too needs some reducing, I don't seem to lose as much health on Wo3, which is the one with the most severe damage.

The game needs some fixing still, but for what it is now, it's great, but not really newb-friendly.

bigsnake
21st May 2016, 09:14 PM
Cheers for the feedback!
The ship speeds are somewhat intentional. They do need some more tweaking, but for the most part the idea is that GTek is slow and Nexus is fast. The AI scale to your ship speed so GTek is fine against the AI. Also with Nexus you have to slow yourself down, so while Nexus will beat a GTek hands down on a straight, the GTek will beat the Nexus when it comes to tight corners that require heavy airbrake usage. The damage right now is also roughly what I want it to be, the colliding with multiple ships problem will be fixed in the future though so you won't get into a situation where you will have loads of ship piling on you and wasting most of your energy.

On another note, the Github repository has been replaced with a placeholder for now. Since the game is going to be on Steam soon and I'm implementing online features, it feels best that I don't have the source for that open to everyone because people can just download it and use it to cheat. It will also let me implement other third party libraries that I pay for which will help improve the quality of the game (for instance I have an input manager that I have paid for that I'm going to implement, which skips Unity so all input issues caused by Unity will be fixed). The game will be back on Github later in the future with all of the online code and any licensed third party libraries stripped out. Aidan, if you still want to do Linux builds then let me know and I'll let you know how you can get on the new repo :)

As part of this, I have also uploaded the latest version of the game (0.4 Preview). From now on non steam versions of the game will be kept as one single download. This latest version also has Steam features disabled. You can download it here (https://github.com/bigsnake09/BallisticNG/releases/download/NonSteam/BallisticNG.Non-Steam.zip) and as usual also on the download thread. Do note that this isn't a full new release.

slowriderxcorps
22nd May 2016, 11:48 PM
Okay! From my limited time with the Steam version so far it seems most everything feels to be in order. I was taking notes in any case, and so I'll leave here what I had jotted down.

* Default positioning of the Key Binder scroll window is at the bottom of the list instead of the top (both computers).
Side note to this, at 1080p every command within the Key Binder fits on the window, no need for scroll bar at all?
* Left Shift was not being recognised by the Key Binder (both computers).
* There is a slight camera shift during the start of races on Aciknovae (most likely when passing the exit to the Pit Lane) (Toxic Class).
* Replay Camera locations on Zephyr Ridge and Makeno Bay are out-of-bounds.
* Auto-Pilot pickup needs heavy modifications to combat the loss in speed when activated and pathfinding issues (Toxic Class).
* Perhaps some alterations to Pickup Logic need to be considered to prevent picking up the same item multiple times in a row.
As well as perhaps slightly increasing the chances of picking up an E-Pack when energy is critical.
* AI Pathfinding on Luna, 0x001 and 0x003 is broken; ships and Auto-Pilot are cutting corners too hard and crashing straight into them (Toxic Class).
* Rain sound effects on Ishtar Citadel are probably too loud.
* The first Boost Jump on Makeno Bay is perhaps too extreme a speed boost for Toxic Class.
* The track icons for Atlantica and Marina Bay are identical.
* When racing in a WipEout ship, cause all AI ships to also fly ships from the same game.
* Add numerical statistics to all the classic WipEout ships
* Still wondering when/if/how the WipEout 3 ships can be implemented.

Zynetic
23rd May 2016, 01:28 AM
I decided to give Ballistic NG a spin and I have to say I'm very pleased with its presentation and implementation. It's a great blast to play, although...

I've been playing through the campaign and I can't help but feel like the AI on Spectre class needs a little bit of toning down (or perhaps in general). I'm currently on the second stage (Utah Project, I believe?) and it's absolutely impossible to keep up with the AI ships. They don't seem to lose any speed when bouncing or taking corners, and even when I play (almost) perfectly, I'm unable to get 1st place. I've tried well over 30 times and I've completely given up trying to clear the campaign because of it. Difficulty is fine but it does seem like the AI isn't fully balanced yet.

Apart from that, I'm stoked for the full Steam release. Definitely my favourite fan-project!

EDIT: Also very pleased to see that Zone makes a return (my absolute favourite mode from the later WipEout games) as Survival, however would like to report that you can just not hold acceleration or hold both airbrakes to come to a stop and still progress. I assume this isn't meant to be the case (and also you assume you know it, but just in case).

GGeek
23rd May 2016, 06:23 AM
@slowriderxcorps : Thanks for reporting these issues. bigsnake is aware of the AI pathfinding issue on Luna (i also discovered it was broken), we will work on it soon.
As for the WipEout 3 ships, bigsnake and Xpand managed to extract the ship models and UV'd them.
You can find the link to download them in this thread : http://www.wipeoutzone.com/forum/showthread.php?8897-Extracting-WipEout-3D-models-(large-images-allowed)
Simply extract the WO3 folder in the MyShips folder and you should be ready to rock.

@Zynetic : I reported the Survival issue to bigsnake. Airbrakes as well as the pitlane are actually disabled but the full throttle control to the user is not intended. A fix will be worked on soon.

bigsnake
23rd May 2016, 01:08 PM
Okay! From my limited time with the Steam version so far it seems most everything feels to be in order. I was taking notes in any case, and so I'll leave here what I had jotted down.

* Default positioning of the Key Binder scroll window is at the bottom of the list instead of the top (both computers).
Side note to this, at 1080p every command within the Key Binder fits on the window, no need for scroll bar at all?
* Left Shift was not being recognised by the Key Binder (both computers).
* There is a slight camera shift during the start of races on Aciknovae (most likely when passing the exit to the Pit Lane) (Toxic Class).
* Replay Camera locations on Zephyr Ridge and Makeno Bay are out-of-bounds.
* Auto-Pilot pickup needs heavy modifications to combat the loss in speed when activated and pathfinding issues (Toxic Class).
* Perhaps some alterations to Pickup Logic need to be considered to prevent picking up the same item multiple times in a row.
As well as perhaps slightly increasing the chances of picking up an E-Pack when energy is critical.
* AI Pathfinding on Luna, 0x001 and 0x003 is broken; ships and Auto-Pilot are cutting corners too hard and crashing straight into them (Toxic Class).
* Rain sound effects on Ishtar Citadel are probably too loud.
* The first Boost Jump on Makeno Bay is perhaps too extreme a speed boost for Toxic Class.
* The track icons for Atlantica and Marina Bay are identical.
* When racing in a WipEout ship, cause all AI ships to also fly ships from the same game.
* Add numerical statistics to all the classic WipEout ships
* Still wondering when/if/how the WipEout 3 ships can be implemented.

Thanks for the list! Most of these issues have been already fixed and will be in the next update on Steam. As GGeek says, for the Wipeout 3 ships right now you need to use the the objs linked (you'll need to post a bit on the forums before being able to access that specific forum though)

aybe
23rd May 2016, 06:44 PM
@bigsnake

FWIW here are some thoughts:

Section/collisions

If there are AI collisions at some places and movement is based on sections that are connected using a spline approach ... wow ... then you might want to consider using Bezier instead. One of the features but also a weakness of spline is that the output will invariably pass through control points; and while it works most of the time, on sudden changes it does change a bit too much than one would expect (i.e. in my cases it's before/after a jump section, there are definitely not enough points for it to behave correctly and add to that the factor that a section position is at center or at beginning of faces making it; at some point the ship will hit the track).

OTOH Bezier curves when evaluated will not pass through control points, but ultimately your level designer should consider adjusting it manually, it's a bit long but once done it will yield much better results. There's an excellent library for that @ https://github.com/jvanverth/essentialmath it addresses both curves and deals with the uneven evaluation of them according their shape + it can or not generate control points for you. This is the repository of the book samples, every chapter has a sample demo you can try to see if that might be useful to you.


Input/menu

In BnG there is a problem such as when you click outside of the menu, navigation breaks unless you click again. I've written an input mapper that I was going to suggest to you but haven't since at the same I've seen your commits using another one ... it is here https://github.com/aybe/InputMapper and in here https://github.com/aybe/InputMapper/blob/master/Assets/InputMapper/InputWizard.cs#L150 you will find the logic that takes care of enforcing an item to always be selected even though your menu loses focus (which fixes all other input methods). The other nice features of it are that it works really well and does not modify the original Unity settings (IMO a good thing), instead it has its own configuration serialized to XML. See the https://github.com/aybe/InputMapper/blob/master/Assets/InputMapper/InputWizardSample.unity for a showcase.

Cheers :D

EDIT: btw the input mapper also emulates an analog keyboard :burger

bigsnake
23rd May 2016, 08:16 PM
Splines aren't used at all. Sections on the track are connected through a reference on them that points to the next section. The AI use this to look a few sections ahead (3 or 4, depends on the track) and then they steer towards it. Using splines for this sort of thing is really inefficient. The AI collisions are caused by them naturally steering near the same location, which is then solved by making a random offset modifier for their location to look at then providing them with behaviors to steer away if they detect another ship, which I'm currently doing by iterating through all the ships on the track and then using the local offsets to figure out if they need to steer away.

For input, thanks for the code there, that will definitely come in useful :) The reason I chose the current input manager was just because of convenience, although now that the game is going to be closed source for a while I'm going to be integrating cInput, which is a library I purchased recently with the intent for using in future project. It completely bypasses Unity's input system which will help get rid of all the bugs, such as the Xbox One controller issue which NetSphereEngineer has confirmed to be an issue relating to Unity and Windows 10.

giscar
24th May 2016, 10:46 AM
I'm in love with this game. Can't wait to try the latest version. I'm going to learn 3D modelling so I can at least try to contribute with some ships or something. If I get something decent I will totally share it.

Axatar
24th May 2016, 11:22 AM
The only problem I have with the game right now is on Zephyr Ridge, when entering the last chicane(left turn) too wide, the camera positions itself behind the wall preventing me from seeing anything up ahead.

Other than that, great game I love it!

slowriderxcorps
24th May 2016, 04:01 PM
Ah, figures that the files would be inside of a thread of suck kind. Not to worry, I'll figure that out in due time, most hopefully with more feedback such as this.

Just came off of another testplay, this time doing Season 2. A few things came up.

* In Zephyr Ridge, I ended up clipping straight through that one extremely tight uphill corner after getting hit by mines and fell out of bounds.
* Maceno Bay had two main things going on with it. First was, again, the boost jump. It was thrusting me so fast that about... 20% of the time I reached the next corner I simply phased straight through the wall and fell out of bounds. Secondly, the AI was significantly harder to beat than every other course in the entire Season. The AI on the whole felt a bit strange. For the most part, they were very tricky to keep up with on Lap One akin to old WipEout, but following that lap, every racer was much easier to keep up with and it wasn't uncommon to dive straight into first before Lap Two was finished.
* And in Omega Harbour, it's still possible for Missiles to acquire locks on racers that are on the track above and/or below where your ship is on the downwards spiral.

aybe
24th May 2016, 04:02 PM
Splines aren't used at all. Sections on the track are connected through a reference on them that points to the next section. The AI use this to look a few sections ahead (3 or 4, depends on the track) and then they steer towards it. Using splines for this sort of thing is really inefficient. The AI collisions are caused by them naturally steering near the same location, which is then solved by making a random offset modifier for their location to look at then providing them with behaviors to steer away if they detect another ship, which I'm currently doing by iterating through all the ships on the track and then using the local offsets to figure out if they need to steer away.

For input, thanks for the code there, that will definitely come in useful :) The reason I chose the current input manager was just because of convenience, although now that the game is going to be closed source for a while I'm going to be integrating cInput, which is a library I purchased recently with the intent for using in future project. It completely bypasses Unity's input system which will help get rid of all the bugs, such as the Xbox One controller issue which NetSphereEngineer has confirmed to be an issue relating to Unity and Windows 10.

Alright :+

Zynetic
28th May 2016, 08:45 PM
Just tried Survival in the unfinished 2097 track and I really like the skin you gave it, although I'm not a big fan of how the speed pads were implemented into it. (Example (http://puu.sh/p8mZU/6ae1a8c388.png), but I assume you know about it). I assume all tracks will eventually get makeovers for Survival? And by any chance, is there going to be a scoring system for Survival similar to HD etc.? I ask because it'd be nice to have a reason to find a line to hit all the pads, rather than just find any line that doesn't hit the walls.

bigsnake
29th May 2016, 05:33 PM
Indeed all the tracks will eventually get a different look, I still need to decide on the style I want to go with though. And yeah Survival in general will be getting a bunch more features in the future, a score system that accounts for more then just time survived included :)

Also BnG 0.4 will be out soon, just waiting for verification from Valve so it can be released on Steam Early Access. While that happens I'm going to be doing some final bug tests, if anybody currently playing on the Steam beta versions find anything else, be sure to let me know ASAP so I can get it fixed before the release, thanks! The Steam version of the game specifically has achievements, stats and leaderboards.

With that almost out, the main focus of 0.5 is going to be completely overhauling the modding tools to provide a much nicer UI and also extend the functionality. Custom Ships are pretty much going to stay the same, they'll just get a nicer UI and I'm going to implement the ability to change the engine and HUD colors. The track editor however is going to be getting much more advanced, allowing you greater control (animations, scripting, etc) and also providing tools to create the track mesh itself inside of the game. Multiplayer is also on the todo list, although it's a more of "done when it's done" type deal at the moment.

bigsnake
31st May 2016, 07:09 PM
BallisticNG 0.4 is out! You can now download it on steam here (http://store.steampowered.com//app/473770) or see the downloads thread for a non-steam download link.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKIL2bTYIu0

psilocybin
31st May 2016, 08:06 PM
I found a way to cheat a bit on Atlantica. If you hit the brakes at the jump and allow yourself to fall through the ground there's a good chance you'll end up on the section of track below (Ideally you want to actually land on the track but if not the wuss wagon will probably put you there), as long as you hit the checkpoint that's to the left of the jump you can still complete a lap.

It's not easy to pull off quickly but with good technique I think it may be possible to achieve impossible lap times at least on the slower classes. As far as a fix goes maybe bring the checkpoint back so it's not so close to the jump although ideally you don't want people falling from the jump to the tunnel below in the first place.

bigsnake
31st May 2016, 08:16 PM
Nice find! Will get that fixed, thanks for reporting :)

Kaede
31st May 2016, 09:15 PM
Thank you for making the dream of the old Wipeout games coming to life again become true ! <3

'Though brutal on the difficulty change (division 1 => division 2 feels like switching from Vector to Rapier, I get "rapied" by the walls :(), this feels and plays great :)

Aidan
31st May 2016, 10:45 PM
I've got a Linux build up of the steam version and I'm planning on starting to build OSX versions within the next few days once I get my dual boot working!

I'll be keeping links to all of the builds on this steam thread.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/473770/discussions/0/357287304441282364/

I'm liking the new menu background a lot. I'm having a few weird issues with gamepads on the menu though, despite setting the menu up / down to the up and down on the d-pad the left and right on the d-pad moves it instead (The controls menu says d-pad up and down should move the menus up and down). I also can't get the left and right menu working at all despite having it set in the controls menu (moving between the two columns of circuits is impossible). I'm not sure if anyone else if having these issues or it's my controller. (dualshock 4)

bigsnake
31st May 2016, 10:54 PM
Thanks for the build! I'll also add it to the release thread.

I'm going to be implementing cInput by the time 0.5 comes out which will really help eliminate all these input problems, will still take a look at fixing that in the meantime though. Which software are you using for your DS4? I've got input working here with a DS4 using DS4Windows, assuming that you're entirely based on Linux I would imagine you'll be using something completely different.

slowriderxcorps
31st May 2016, 11:10 PM
Leaving the good word on the Steam reviews page. I haven't noticed anything out-of-the-ordinary in the latest little look-around, though the new font is worth mentioning. It's pretty good, although when I was looking at the Stats page, the 0's in any given field did kind of look like 8's, that might need a little tweaking about.

Aidan
31st May 2016, 11:12 PM
I'm just using the default linux kernel drivers. I just plug the gamepad in, the game detects it, and for the most part it works fine except for those few strange menu bugs. I just tested an old xbox 360 controller and had the same menu issues so I'm guessing it's some weird Linux problem. Everything is fine in races though and hopefully cInput will solve the remaining problems!

silverscar
31st May 2016, 11:30 PM
Dear Devs!

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

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

Keep up the good work, Thank you! 8)

Xpand
31st May 2016, 11:50 PM
Thanks silvercar! But I must tell you that the textures are like that on purpose. The intent of the graphics is to emulate PS1 low resolution textures too. :)

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

Zynetic
1st June 2016, 01:46 PM
Really enjoying the V0.4 Steam release! The updates are great and can't wait for the full release.

While I'm here, I had a crash and the pop-up told me to send the report to the devs, so you can check that here (http://puu.sh/pcKhG/d14477d519.zip) (zip file download) if you want.

bigsnake
1st June 2016, 02:10 PM
Thanks for uploading that crash report! The reason for the crash was loading custom music, it's a known issue and I'm hoping to have it fixed by the release of the first 0.4 patch :)

Zynetic
2nd June 2016, 10:00 AM
Steam Community seems to be having issues so I have no idea how much of my postings got through...

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

Anyway:

- Custom Music still has an issue I think, I crashed immediately on the start of a race in 0.4.1 once. (Crash Report (http://puu.sh/pdMHE/044c7f506e.zip))
- Survival seems to be ignoring the custom draw units set. I'm not a big fan of the pop-up effect but it was incredibly obvious despite setting units to 150 (tried changing lower as well, but no difference)
- Pressing down on the pause menu ignores Quit, while pressing up on the pause menu ignores Photo Mode

And a video of Survival for people to see:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-zL7uHIH9E

GGeek
2nd June 2016, 11:35 AM
Custom music works for me, but stutters when a song loads for 5 seconds.

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

Hybrid Divide
2nd June 2016, 04:17 PM
Haven't had time to test the new update yet, but that Survival mode (Zone?) looks awesome!

slowriderxcorps
4th June 2016, 11:50 AM
Alright, got some more data to throw in this direction. I'm really happy to be able to help with this project in the little ways that I can.

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

bigsnake
6th June 2016, 04:50 PM
Thanks for the list, will get around to seeing to those soon :)

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

slowriderxcorps
6th June 2016, 06:50 PM
Good to know of the unstable branch's presence, I'll see to getting onto testing that out in due time. In the meantime, here's more notes from playing earlier today, primarily while... well, achievement hunting. Or testing, specifically.

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

Zynetic
6th June 2016, 09:38 PM
The Caliburn is one of the ships in every race, so one of the original line-up won't appear.

Rafeku
7th June 2016, 03:33 AM
You added a cockpit! Yes! Im Going to take a look in the game tomkrrow to see how its progressing

slowriderxcorps
7th June 2016, 06:53 PM
The current Unstable build's doing alright. Aside from some weirdness I thought I saw going on with the first animated billboard in Ackinovae, I didn't see anything significantly out of place compared to before. I still spotted some new things in any case.

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

amplificated
9th June 2016, 01:53 AM
My DS4 - using ScpToolkit to mimic an Xbox gamepad - was not recognised. Never had a problem with anything else before. I tried all options in the controls menu, neither gamepad setting worked. Keyboard works, but isn't what I'm after :(

AGgamer
9th June 2016, 02:41 AM
Some bugs:
On the XL unfinished, if you fall off the track at the huge drop you can get stuck underneath, never being put back on the track.
The Menu sounds are apparently tied to the Voice volume, not the SFX volume. (Which is weird)
The track introduction ("Welcome to track name here") is tied to the SFX volume, not the Voice volume for some reason. (Again, weird)
The Auto pilot cannot handle the turns on Luna for some reason. It crashes me into the inner wall on half of the corners.

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

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

slowriderxcorps
9th June 2016, 03:40 PM
A few more things to tack onto the nuance list.

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

Zynetic
9th June 2016, 09:25 PM
It might be worth mentioning that the latest version is on Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/473770). The version under "Download Game" is the old 0.4 version, which doesn't have improvements like the new Ishtar Citadel layout, Autopilot not being useless, and the sound bars working properly.

nu9get
10th June 2016, 11:14 AM
i just looked at the leaderboards, and was a bit curious about the quick times Matt got, after a small search i found his videos, without detracting his amount of skills, i think this type of shortcuts (expecially on maceno bay, luna and some other tracks), should be removed.

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

it's like the glitched times on WO HD.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WQP4tqVRdw

Axatar
10th June 2016, 11:26 AM
Most obscene cuts similar to this one have been fixed in the newest versions

slowriderxcorps
10th June 2016, 01:07 PM
* In regards to the above video, the layout for Maceno Bay has changed significantly since then. In any case, a watermark in the top-right corner of the ingame HUD detailing the current version number might be helpful in regards to video proof of glitches.
* The Cannon needs to have its stunning ability revised. At the moment, other craft hit by it are completely stopped, whereas explosive weaponry doesn't have anywhere near as much effect on speed.

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

nu9get
10th June 2016, 02:06 PM
Most obscene cuts similar to this one have been fixed in the newest versions

ah ok, thanks letting me know :) are the leaderboards been refreshed\deleted?

GGeek
10th June 2016, 02:22 PM
The leaderboard are going to be refreshed towards the final release, if i'm not mistaken.

JABBERJAW
10th June 2016, 09:15 PM
Love shortcuts, but to a limit. That is more of an f-zero cut than wipeout. Maybe a few checkpoints so that large a cut cannot be done

JFthebestJan
10th June 2016, 09:31 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WQP4tqVRdw

this is very cool xD 3 shortcuts in a single lap, and nothing too fancy either. now add BRs back into the game (as an unlockable feature for completing the game) and the let the fun begin ;)

@jabberjaw: it's like a typical X-Cup shortcut, when most if not all AI ships fail ...

dreadofmondays
11th June 2016, 04:15 AM
Also I have to thank the person who made the Advanced Techniques quide on Steam. I actually now understand exactly how opposite braking operates. I had heard the term multiple times before but didn't quite figure out exactly how it was used.

You are welcome

Rafeku
11th June 2016, 11:18 PM
I'm back.
Physics got gud. Nothing much to say. I played the campaign with g-tek and I've got a smile on my face. "It's Wip3out all over again." Back in the day it felt furutistic. and it still feels futuristic. Ishitar Citadel could be a track set in the sky. The background is really good so does the track texture. Luna felt lacking something after I've saw that renewed track.

Bugs(Steam Unstable Branch)
_If you press look back while in photo mode(thirdperson mode) the ship will disappear. if you press and hold it the ship re-appears. Same happens in first person. but if you do that, the cockpit and ship will be there at the same time(really stupid.)
Other than that...I dont think so.
You should reconsider that cockpit model(and the others that you're planing) in WO3 They didn't obstruct your view. the "cage" on the cockpit makes it hard to see, and the panel could be less centered. Take the F-16 for example or even the WO3 cockpits.

Hoping for the next release. THE HYPE IS ALL OVER ME.

EDIT: For the steam devbranch I think you wanna keep in mind to NOT replace the UserData Folder. I've played the game for several minutes, closed, and it update, and my files were gone. good thing I had the backup

psilocybin
12th June 2016, 08:01 AM
Wasn't there a guide knocking about somewhere for importing the ships from WO/WO2097 into this game? I can't seem to find it anywhere. I have the community ships imported already I just don't know what files I need to get from the old games and what to do with them. Can anyone point me in the right direction if so?

On a related note, does anyone remember the name of that software you use to extract files from playstation games? I think I found it through a post on this forum somewhere, possibly one of the reverse engineering threads. I'm sure it's sitting on one of my hard drives but I can't remember for the life of me what it was called lol.

Zynetic
12th June 2016, 11:23 AM
The guide is located in the BallisticNG folder, I believe it is called _Wipeout Ships.txt (but I don't remember).

To extract files from PlayStation games, you can just put the CD into your disc tray and browse it, I believe. I've had them in .iso format for a while though, so don't quote me on that.

Also most of the obscene shortcuts that I did (I'm Matt) have been patched, though with that being said, there are still quite a lot of them in tracks like 0x002, 0x003, Maceno Bay (still, if you turn left after the checkpoint you go straight to the end), etc. Furthermore, the option of disabling shortcuts in Multiplayer lobbies has been discussed if people feel they would ruin the experience. Personally I'm all for it, shortcuts are fun, interesting and iconic but I don't think they're necessarily more fun or skillful.

Truth is, I suck at these type of games. I am pretty sure without shortcuts I wouldn't be where I am.

psilocybin
12th June 2016, 01:13 PM
To extract files from PlayStation games, you can just put the CD into your disc tray and browse it, I believe. I've had them in .iso format for a while though, so don't quote me on that.

Just found out I was thinking of jPSXdec, I used it once to convert the bgm in parappa the rapper from .xa1 to .wav. Luckily the wavs all still had .xa1 in the filename as a quick google search for that came up with a page on another forum where people were discussing it.

I'd spent a while lurking in the reverse engineering threads in the past so I incorrectly assumed that I had discovered it in there. My apologies.

slowriderxcorps
12th June 2016, 06:35 PM
In regards to the current Unstable build, there's major issues with the custom control binding on controllers. Whenever I tried to bind the Thrust to the A button on my 360 pad (just to make sure), it would automatically reselect the option for that keybind and seek a new input. Similarly, binding something to the B or Start button would cause the game to back out of the Controls menu once pressed.

amplificated
12th June 2016, 08:00 PM
Just dl'd the new update and accessed the unstable branch, and can gladly say my controller can be detected now. I also can confirm the issues in the above post.

In addition, for some reason my DS4 is being treated as Joy2 even though it's the first controller as seen in monitoring software, so I had to reassign all the buttons. (In the previous version I tried, nothing worked when trying to reassign buttons.)

Also, pitch up/down are reversed in your menus.

Lastly, away from control issues, the framerate cap @ 60 by default may not be the greatest idea. Unless you have FreeSync or something, you lose frames. It's much smoother for most people on standard 60hz monitors (probably most people still) to either increase the cap or enable VSync somehow e.g. in radeon settings.

Wanzer
16th June 2016, 11:20 PM
Recently learned about this game Went trough 3 seasons and getting ballistic champion and I have to say music and physics are pretty awesome, especially physics, smooth like butter, and got wipeout written all over it.
In latest unstable my PS2 pad with adapter is being recognised as well which is nice since I was postponing playing till it worked with my pad.

Here is a couple of bugs I caught.
When I tried to assign "thrust" button, it would blink for a moment and went back to "..." like its not binded but, binding "drop pickup" button would exit settings menu and at the same time previously seemingly unbinded button to "thrust" would now appear binded.

Nose pitch up/down being reversed.

There is achievement "Purity of the Race - Complete 50 races with weapons turned off." in my case it stands on 38/50 but seeing how I only did couple time attack races and 3 seasons without turning off weapons (and in fact blasting everyone on the track) I am not sure how I got 38/50 might be bug or I dont understand how it works.

Tremble doesnt work on PS2 pad I use.

I know the aim is to follow psx limitation and Wp3 style but, will you leave modders some freedom to put more complex assets in game, with animated objects on courses and ships with no strict limitations on size, texture resolution or number of polygons?
At least allow animated airbrakes since wip3out has them?

In overall I have to say, its pretty cool game from what I've seen, great job guys.

TheXTR09
19th June 2016, 09:11 AM
Seeing how AGR2280 evolve into BnG just brings a tear into my eye. It's been a year and here we are. How far have we got.

And it also reminded me that I suck at classic WipEout :P

Wanzer
20th June 2016, 05:14 PM
Guys, how about analog input for all controls, I tried to bind thrust to analog but it was still acting like digital.
Even though original wipeout 1-3 had analog thrust (with negcon) it wasnt used very often on consoles even on PS3, on PC tho its a bit of a different story simply because there are many different controllers you can use with it.
I tried to use my flight stick, rudder and throttle quadrant with BNG but throttle quadrant still acting like digital switch, just feels unnatural and limits possible ways of controlling your ship.

Is it possible to make it work like in original Wp? Where if push switch 75% throttle would raise to 75% and would stop there, now thrust climbs steadily to the 100% regardless of how far I push the switch.

Also, is it me or cockpit camera changed to better somewhere between 4.00 and 4.06?
I think previously cockpit camera was tilting with the ship when now horizon stays levelled.

psilocybin
21st June 2016, 01:48 AM
I'd imagine you guys are probably already aware of this but there's a nasty little gap in the level geometry on Maceno Bay at the start of the tunnel that you go into just after the track goes back on itself.

10301


I did also have an issue earlier where restarting the race from the post race menu caused the thrust sounds for the player's ship to go silent (I could still hear nearby AI ships) but I haven't been able to replicate it yet unfortunately.

psilocybin
21st June 2016, 02:19 PM
Still haven't managed to replicate the above but I've just stumbled across something else:

If you press change view whilst the game is paused the view will change once the game is unpaused, kind of annoying if you happen to press it by accident. Similarly, pressing the rear view button whilst the game is paused causes some odd glitches.


Also on Aciknovae if you drive backwards into the wall (See attached screenshot) at full speed with the nose up the wuss wagon will drop you off in front of the last checkpoint and the lap will still count. It is even possible to clear the gap and reach said checkpoint without being picked up. Again, like the last one I found, it's difficult to use as a proper shortcut but there may be something in it if you develop a technique.

10302

Jumping to the right on the final jumps of both 0x002 and 0x003 results in a bit of a shortcut too.


This is all in steam 0.4.6 by the way.

- - - Updated - - -

Just noticed that weapons can still be activated after having been eliminated. Amusingly the autopilot functions as normal allowing you to still finish the race lol, you'll have to pick retry or quit before briefly seeing the results screen though so it probably can't be used as a cheat in the campaign.

amplificated
22nd June 2016, 06:03 AM
Been playing for a little bit. Some observations, other than the obviously very common wall glitches and whatnot where it's easy to fall out of the map:

* The lights in the first tunnel on Aciknovae are too bright. Very hard to see where you're going for people who haven't memorised the track.
* Aciknovae's track separations and the automatic adjustment of your craft's handling - without some deus ex machina excuse like mag strips for one track only - it's just patently an atrocious gameplay decision. Player control NEEDS TO BE 100% a player's own control. There is no other way of looking at this as far as I'm concerned. If the tracks can't be handled without an invisible hand guiding them, redesign them.
* Ishtar: having such a long track have such a difficult and unforgiving corner is the icing on the cake for making it a chore to play on higher speeds. If the corner was at least on a short track, you could rack up attempts quickly.
* Mines are far too common, often littering the entire track at points.
* The AI? It seems overpowered in the opening laps and then goes easymode in the last. Makes weapons entirely useless to use against them, as if they're just a ploy to make life miserable for the player. The only useful pickup is incredibly rare (the e-tank or whatever).
* The AI will often adjust their racing line to knock you about. The constant bumping is unpleasant, especially given 99% of the time they're all in a big clump, the only exception being sometimes a leader or two pull away. You just get screwed over while they, seemingly, are unimpeded.
* There are times where you don't hear one or more of the beeps at the start. Totally upsets my rhythm. I've disabled voice countdown, and depending on your position on the grid e.g. in time trial, on some tracks at least, you can't see the digital timer.
* The game seems to freeze every now and then for a few frames. It can, and has, messed up my race. Playing on 144 fps cap.

Opinions:
* I was playing season 3 and ran into a bit of annoyance on Ishtar. Restarting the track, and being subjected to an unskippable track intro was annoying af. Track intros need to be skippable or outright disable-able in the settings.
* I feel it's very difficult to stabilise the craft. The airbrakes create too much drag and take away too much forward momentum? Also have a lot of difficulty adjusting to survival; the craft for it feels completely different to the rest of the game's (that I've used so far).
* Mainly on Ishtar but some other tracks, I feel like I would be scraping along a wall and then bounce off it despite not making full contact. Also, walls in general are ridiculously bouncy. In conjunction with limited ability to stabilise your craft, one mistake becomes many because you can't easily return to a workable racing line, even at low speeds. Sure, you could correct at low-low speeds, but by then the race is already over.
* It might be an idea to not have the track width the same at every point of it. I.e., have some run-off areas. They exist in the original WO's, and HD.
* Personal opinion... but I think both the vacuum cleaner sound and the engine rev sorta noises the craft makes are no good.

Haven't exactly nailed the game down yet obv., but those are some issues I see with it. There's also plenty of potential in there though! The sensation of going fast is really good, it's a shame for one reason or another I just can't sustain it on anything but the slowest speed tiers :P

Xpand
22nd June 2016, 10:20 AM
There's no automatic adjustment in Aciknovae or any other track for that matter. I think it's just the camera aligning itself with the track section that makes it look like the ship is turning on its own, or maybe the fact that ships tend to jump off ledges due to the physics engine.

EDIT: Checked it in the game itself, it's just the camera readjusting that gives the impression that the ship is moving on its own. It happens in Wipeout3 too, in Manor Top.

Hybrid Divide
22nd June 2016, 04:07 PM
A few things I've noticed, possibly already documented:

In the input manager, pitch up and pitch down need to be reversed. I had to bind my d-pad down to pitch down to pull the nose up.

I had the button binding for pause on my controller stop working in the middle of a season, too. But it worked again when I went back into the menu and re-bound it. (The menu still showed the correct binding the whole time.)

Wall bounce is still not good. But the pit lanes in several tracks have gotten a LOT better since I last played.

amplificated
23rd June 2016, 02:33 AM
@ Xpand

Yeah, booted up WO3 and had a crack at Manor Top and you're right. It's there as well; although to a lesser extent as far as I could tell.

Still, just because WO did it doesn't mean it's perfect. The effect is so jarring, I'd really encourage looking to eradicate it completely.

Xpand
23rd June 2016, 09:33 AM
The camera system is identical, that's why I referred Wipeout 3. It's a quirk of the way the camera uses track points to place itself.

amplificated
25th June 2016, 08:49 AM
Beautiful, thanks for the update!

skipping track intros :+

aybe
28th June 2016, 09:11 PM
The camera system is identical, that's why I referred Wipeout 3. It's a quirk of the way the camera uses track points to place itself.

Would it be possible for you to explain how does BnG camera actually works ? I've been trying to understand its logic (for WXX) but well ... it's kinda hard to figure it out !

Thank you :P

bigsnake
28th June 2016, 09:32 PM
Would it be possible for you to explain how does BnG camera actually works ? I've been trying to understand its logic (for WXX) but well ... it's kinda hard to figure it out !

Thank you :P

Here's the code for it http://pastebin.com/0XgBkbxL. And the configuration - https://i.gyazo.com/a8749bd3a859ee13e769387cd9f67745.png

The concept is that you need to figure out the ships position relative to the center of the track and use that to offset it. The way I approached this at the time is by creating a gameobject that I can use as a transform to use transform.TransformPoint(shipPosition), though you can also achieve this with a bit of maths: Vector3.Scale(Vector3.One, (Quaternion.Inverse(sectionForward) * (shipPosition - sectionPosition))).

aybe
28th June 2016, 11:33 PM
Thanks !

I think I will just copy/paste and get it to work then I'll try to understand the mechanics, if somehow I can't get it to work I'll try to model one out of the literal definition you gave,

I made a few ones but well, it's not as convincing as I expected:

- a cheap one with Vector3.SmoothDamp, simple and effective but damping is global

- a cheaper one, Mathf.Damp for each axis but orientation gets wrong

- a much better but tricky, ConfigurableJoint, lots of control and really convincing but then I concluded there is one external variable that must affect camera in the original game

- first one I did was to use incoming angle, sounded good but it is goes out of control

By the way, have you tried to project the ship transform with world's up like this:



Quaternion rotation;
switch (CamRotationMode)
{
case CameraRotationMode.Ship:
rotation = transform.rotation;
break;
case CameraRotationMode.World:
rotation =
Quaternion.LookRotation(Vector3.ProjectOnPlane(tra nsform.forward, Vector3.up), Vector3.up);
break;
default:
throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException();
}

_shipCamera.transform.rotation
= Quaternion.Slerp(_shipCamera.transform.rotation, rotation, CamRotationRate);


Though it needs further tweaking to not lose sight of ship at times, it gives a very interesting speed effect and ones feels much more the Z axis of a track section.

Okay, I'm back to work ... thank you :P

sl33py
1st July 2016, 10:44 AM
I joined this forum solely to say: although I really like the idea and the graphics and the music, I find this game completely uncontrollable regardless of what options I use, and whether I use keyboard or game pad (with analogue sticks).
The root problem is that whether you use kb or pad, if you press Left or Right for more than about a quarter of a second, it makes the ship turn ridiculously HARD in that direction, as if you'd press one of the shoulder brakes in one of the original Wipeout games (ie. it'll do pretty much a 90 degree turn at lower speeds, way more than usually needed).
I've tried every which way I can come up with, but got no joy. Is there something I can do to manually fiddle with how the steering model works? I'd dearly love to play the game, but it's just WAY too frustrating. I was able to play WO, WO2097 and W3O at the very hard levels but find myself wanting to throw the kb or pad out the window every time I think "just one more try".
The other aspect (and this would be less annoying if not for the first) is that this BNG seems to have the original WO collision model, where it would STOP you nearly completely on impact, vs the slightly more forgiving (and infinitely more fun) WO2097 version, where you could throw sparks on nearly every corner without coming to an abrupt HALT by mistake at the slightest bump or graze with the track wall.
I completely understand this game is FREE. It's just saddening that the control system would mar what is otherwise a fantastic looking/sounding game. The control model was what made WO so fun.
Is there anything I can do to enjoy playing this game? Thanks for any advice in advance!

Meg.A.Byte
1st July 2016, 11:09 AM
If the turning speed is way too fast, have you tried ships with lower handling, or have you tried faster difficulties? I agree that in Toxic, the turning rate is very dramatic, but in faster modes like Spectre, the difference is noticable.

amplificated
1st July 2016, 11:41 AM
I can play the game at the first two speed levels without too many difficulties, but other than that - no way. Given I had to get a top 6 time just to barely beat the AI on one track on the second lowest speed tier, with the crazy overpowered Barracuda, I get the feeling I'm not alone in this.

I agree - the handling is a little weird, and you get punished too hard for mistakes. I think, but I'm not entirely sure, it's in large part because it takes too long for your craft to change directions before it reaches maximum turn speed. Also, I'm convinced there are multiple corners on some tracks that are literally impossible to execute without taking your thumb off the accelerator, and that, to me, isn't really WipEout... and even though this isn't WipEout, it's a habit, and one that I liked. Might be just me not being good enough/not knowing the gameplay well enough; dunno. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I think the airbrake takes away too much forward momentum, but to expand on that: while I wouldn't mind the idea of using the hyperthrust to counter the effect as a gameplay element, there's a problem - the game is so punishing, you need that energy to live! =P - Even after the damage reduction from unavoidable mass ship collisions.

Re: ship turning acceleration & speed: it might be an idea to work on figuring out what you need. I doubt there's a corner in the game which requires the maximum turn speed, for example, so it's kind of a superfluous gameplay element. Likewise, as I've just mentioned, I think it would be beneficial to make those impossible corners possible by allowing your craft to turn as rapidly as necessary.

Since I tried out the Barracuda, I find it strange that you'd make a ship one that's clearly the best by so much. But it's not just that it's the best ship by far, it also handles so differently to e.g. the Tenrai, it's almost a different game.

Also, what's the deal with the handling rating? The Protonic, with a handling of 1, has much more in common with the handling of the Barracuda (10) than the Tenrai ( 8 ) - which in turn has more in common with the Mtech (10). Absolutely NFI what's going on here.

bigsnake
1st July 2016, 03:19 PM
Regarding steering and acceleration, everything is already in place. Steering in lower speed classes will feel more sensitive because you don't have to steer for that long, you're going pretty slowly. For the most part you just have to tap the steering, especially on high handling ships. Also remember that a lot of the ships have a slow steering falloff, so you will continue rotating for a bit once you stop providing input, which can take some time to get used to. In terms of steering speed though, in lower speed classes you will never need to utilize the full speed that you can rotate but when you reach Spectre, even Halberd sometimes, there are a lot of corners that you can fly through utilizing the full rotation of your ship. Harpstone for example, you don't even need to use the airbrakes in Halberd and Spectre, you just need to keep turning into the corner.

The reason you're loosing so speed with the airbrakes is likely because you're relying on them too much. They do slow your ship down pretty quickly but if you're using a higher handling ship then you shouldn't really be getting to the point that you are really starting to come to a hault. For stats, they still need to be worked on and in the next update I've made some tweaks and also included a grip stat to help make smaller differences in handling easier, some ships including Protonic AG4 have been adjusted. Barracuda is also designed as a time-trial ship, hence the massive difference in stats. As of a recent update they also can't pickup weapons. There will be separate leaderboards for Barracuda in the future and it's also planned to have it blacklisted from multiplayer lobbies by default.

AI and wall collisions obviously still need work too as the AI can be a bit unforgiving on some tracks and their use of mines can be a bit unwieldy and sometimes you don't scrape the wall when it looks like you should be able to.

Would also like to mention multiplayer. I am currently waiting on Valve to enable lobbies for the game as for whatever reason free games have lobbies disabled and the only way to enable them is to ask Valve. Once that is done, getting multiplayer implemented through Steamworks will be a focal point for a while, will keep everyone updated with progress on that as it happens.

amplificated
1st July 2016, 04:07 PM
I currently have the #2 time on Zephyr Ridge on Toxic, less than a second off the top spot. The last corner is AFAIK impossible to get through without hitting a wall if you keep holding the accelerator when using the Barracuda.

My complaint isn't that the steering feels sensitive, but in fact the opposite - it takes too long for your craft to shift its weight or however, not sure how to put it.

The airbrakes seem like they give you sideways momentum in the opposite direction of the side you're braking on in addition to slowing you down generally, which seems the opposite of intuition. Have a go of lining yourself up on Ishtar's jump, go straight, hold the right airbrake and you will end up left of the landing, falling off the track. Oh and yeah, that corner leading up to that jump is another of those impossible ones.

Xpand
1st July 2016, 04:17 PM
The airbrakes seem like they give you sideways momentum in the opposite direction of the side you're braking on in addition to slowing you down generally, which seems the opposite of intuition...

Actually, Newton's first law would disagree with you. The airbrakes only add a torque to the ship. Torque itself doesn't affect the ship's linear momentum, what makes the ship move in the same direction is the engine, but since your initial velocity to that new direction is zero, the ship has to accelerate to effectively move in that new direction. This happens a lot in planes, that's why maneuvers like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R32O8z0AQeY) and this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2VUqvg570Y) work.

In any case, the reason the airbrakes do that is due to the game being based on the early wipeout games.

amplificated
1st July 2016, 05:00 PM
Other than the claim about Newton disagreeing with me, I generally agree with you... but you didn't explain why the ship moves in the opposite direction the brakes are being applied to when the initial vector is straight, and I can't see it happening in those videos. In fact, the manoeuvres in both videos appear to have nothing to do with lateral movements of any kind...

For the record, the 1st law IIRC is that an object in motion will tend to stay in motion. So if I'm going straight, why do I go left when I turn right? I'm not following you here.

I haven't played the originals extensively, but I've played them a bit, and I feel a lot more comfortable after a few minutes in them than I do in BNG... and I haven't noticed this phenomenon there. I feel I can swing my craft around in WO3, but in BNG, I just don't have that amount of control in corners.

Xpand
1st July 2016, 05:23 PM
Oh you mean when going straight, I thought you were talking about the drifting when turning.

I think that's just a programming quirk, but in fact it can also be physically explained by Newton's third law, but this will require some drawings to understand better, since it depends on the geometry of the airbrakes.

10330
10331

So, Newton's third law says that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. In this case the force the airbrake exerts on the air particles creates an opposite reaction force on the airbrake, and since that's connected to the ship, the ship feels the deceleration+a sideways push to the side opposite to the airbrake used.

The difference is that in the original Wipeouts using only the airbrakes made the ship turn to the desired direction albeit very slowly, but there was no sideways drift.

amplificated
1st July 2016, 05:41 PM
You're reaching :P

Even if what you're showing in that diagram were the case, the direction the nose is pointing is not straight, the airbrake turns you right (if you're holding right ab) - so that momentum would shift rapidly in the direction you were originally heading, if it even existed at all. I'm not going to claim I'm an aerodynamics expert, and from my understanding it's a ****ing complex field, so I'm assuming none of us are.

I just feel the current setup is unintuitive. Check it out. Ramp on Ishtar.

Xpand
1st July 2016, 05:52 PM
Before the rotation speed starts being noticeable, that's what will happen. How fast the ship starts turning while drifting depends a lot on its mass. So in heavier ships this is what you'll see happenning, pretty obviously. I'm certainly not reaching, I have at least a year's worth of fluid dynamics in my physics engineering degree ;)
In any case, as the ship turns it will still drift sideways to the direction opposite to the airbrake being used. The aerodynamic drag force is very high at very high speeds (increases with the speed squared), so this effect will have the biggest impact just before the ship starts turning. It doesn't mean the force is constant during the use of the airbrake, but the first impulse is enough to send the ship drifting sideways a bit.

Of course, this is just an explanation to what would actually happen IRL. What happens in BNG is just a programming quirk on the physics engine.

amplificated
1st July 2016, 05:55 PM
I forgot to add (tired), but I think you're forgetting that the accelerator is still being held all this time... so the ship is facing e.g. perpendicular to the track, and it's still going the opposite direction.

Xpand
1st July 2016, 06:02 PM
Well yes, we're talking about a jet (thrust) engine, it doesn't have an immediate response to a change in direction, like a car. If you have an object moving, say, left, at a constant speed, and you add a thrust perpendicular to that direction, the object will start accelerating in that perpendicular direction BUT it maintains its momentum to the left regardless, Newton's first law.

amplificated
1st July 2016, 06:03 PM
But we weren't heading left ;)

Xpand
1st July 2016, 06:05 PM
I don't understand what you mean. Plus I already said the ship behaviour in BNG is a programming quirk.

amplificated
1st July 2016, 06:08 PM
Forgive me, it's 4am. Finally lost it I think. GG

And yeah, I always assumed it was a programming quirk. It's just one I don't have a particular fondness for! -_-

aybe
1st July 2016, 06:11 PM
FWIW in regards to keyboard handling I think you should implement a non-linear response such as :

10332

http://easings.net/

If you use a power easing, you could make everyone happy, using an exponent of 1 gives a linear response, greater than 1 a 'slow' response, less than 1 a 'faster' response, so by some 'responsiveness' settings in your keyboard options it could adapt to any user wishes. So basically you transform your keyboard to an analog device which in turns allows to treat all input devices the same in your code.

Basically this is what it would takes in terms of coding :

https://github.com/aybe/InputMapper/blob/master/Assets/InputMapper/Devices/AnalogKeyboardButton.cs
https://github.com/aybe/InputMapper/tree/master/Assets/InputMapper/Maths

sl33py
1st July 2016, 09:49 PM
Regarding steering and acceleration, everything is already in place. Steering in lower speed classes will feel more sensitive because you don't have to steer for that long, you're going pretty slowly. For the most part you just have to tap the steering, especially on high handling ships

That's the whole point though. I AM only tapping the keyboard (or gamepad stick) and yeah, it'll give me very very slight shifts in direction as needed to adjust on straights, but once I get to pretty much any corner, I have to hold the key or direction a LITTLE BIT to make the ship turn purposefully around an obvious corner, and once that happens, it goes WAY too quickly from the 'adjusting turn' to 'trying to make it around a hairpin' type turn, and then I'm bouncing off walls. Nothing like this EVER happened to me while playing the original WO games, and that was always using a digital DPAD! If this doesn't change somehow, or no-one can tell me how to fiddle with it myself, I'll just uninstall the game.

bigsnake
1st July 2016, 10:05 PM
It's something you have to get used to, the turning velocity isn't constant. When you start steering the velocity increases slower then it does when you're reaching your maximum turning speed as the weight of the ship begins pulling it more. This is something that all Wipeout games do, more so the original three. By all means uninstall the game if you think that's going to make me change it for you.

sl33py
1st July 2016, 11:23 PM
I played a little WO2097 to compare and here are the very obvious differences:
1) At ALL speeds, the ship's *initial* reaction to steering input is noticeably slower/softer in 2097 than BNG. It's more constant than in BNG, just slower to react to CHANGES in your input overall. This may seem counter-intuitive, but it actually makes it much easier to control at any speed.
2) When you HAVE steered and got the ship on a particular angle in 2097, the ship HOLDS that angle for noticeably longer before it (more slowly) returns to steering straight than in BNG. THIS is why it's very easy to maintain a quite specific steering angle through most kind of corners using even a digital controller. Using an analog controller simply lets you hold that angle forever if you wish, no need for the micro-adjustments by either letting off the dpad or holding down a bit longer to get more angle. This is the way WO, WO2097 and WOFusion all work (and work very well).
3) Correct physics or not, steering the ship LEFT in 2097 automatically strafes the ship to the RIGHT a little bit (and vice versa). BNG doesn't do this - more accurate to physics yes, but way less controllable and frustrating to play.

I'm amazed you're not willing to address such obvious (negative) differences in the steering model that SCORES of others have raised (even if they couldn't put specific words/descriptions to the quirks), especially when you claim to be recreating the whole feel of the game. The steering model is THE most important part of the game. Everything else is secondary to being able to wrangle a ship 'JUST SO' around a tight corner, or completely avoid steering at all through tight chicanes by careful use of the shoulder brakes alone. I've already uninstalled BNG, because it's clear accuracy to the original and 'fun' are not the main decision-making factors for you (for whatever reason). Such a pity.

bigsnake
2nd July 2016, 12:01 AM
The steering isn't based on Wipeout 2097 though, it's based on Wipeout 3 Special Edition. I know for a fact that the steering is also accurate because I spent hours comparing the handling with both games running simultaneously while giving input to both. Here's an unlisted video I had made a while ago when doing it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKooy9v5BXA), small changes have been made since I recorded that but it's still pretty much the same. The handling in Wipeout 3 is similar to 2097, but it has differences. Wipeout 2097 overall is a lot drifter and the ships do tend to keep torque a lot easier. Wipeout 3 changed this by making the handling tighter, kind of like the jump between the first game and 2097. Regarding point 3, it again falls down to the physics being more akin to Wipeout 3. The ships do slide when you steer, but not as much as the ships in Wipeout 2097 did.

If you are referring to reviews on Steam, it's pretty obvious those people have not played a Wipeout game and did not know what to expect and/or were playing the game using the airbrakes. Those aren't the people BallisticNG is designed for and I'm not trying to create a game that is completely inclusive to different subsets of people on the basis that BnG would have to become a pretty casual game to achieve that. For instance most 10 year olds aren't going to understand why BallisticNG looks and feels the way it does, they weren't around when the PS1 and N64 were the current gen consoles and it's likely they've only heard of games from that era.


it's clear accuracy to the original and 'fun' are not the main decision-making factors for you (for whatever reason). Such a pity.
Not to sound like a pretentious ass because that's not my intention, but you should look at my Youtube channel (you can get to it from the link above). I've been painfully replicating Wipeout physics for a few years now, to the point that I gave up on my first project (http://www.wipeoutzone.com/forum/showthread.php?9411-AGR2280-A-Wipeout-inspired-racing-game) because my dedication to the physics was getting in the way. I have fun playing my own game and I know others do too, fun is subjective but if I wasn't focused on making a fun game then BnG would be dead in the water by now.

BallisticNG has many issues to be fixed but on my watch the handling isn't one. It should also be noted that the game isn't going to handle 100% precisely like Wipeout, I didn't make Wipeout and I don't know the exact calculations that were used in Wipeout. The best I can do is an approximation and find my own ways about trying to re-create how it works.

sl33py
2nd July 2016, 12:26 AM
OK. No worries, I didn't realise you were basing it mostly on W3OSE. I have the PS version kicking around in a box somewhere but to be honest, never noticed the differences between the control/handling models between that and WO2097 vs what I saw/felt with BNG.
I totally understand that those under about 20yo may not understand the control/style/appearance of the game. They're missing out if they never play a WO game :)
I haven't read the steam reviews, was basing my comment on the comments I saw here.
Nah, you don't sound like an arse at all. In fact, I thought I was gonna cop it for how my last post sounded when I re-read it.

I did take into consideration than BNG *is* a different game, from someone who wasn't privy to all the calculations and designs that Psygnosis did back in the day. I just literally can't control the slowest ships around a medium turn in BNG the way I know I should be able to (vs any WO game), and every time i try different methods to figure it out (even silly stuff like pressing right into a right hander til I have the angle I want and then pressing LEFT(!!) to try and nullify the angle from increasing)... it just doesn't work out and I end up bouncing off walls.

Given that you detected such differences between 2097 and W3O, what would be a very cool idea is having the choice to have the control model variable. So there'd be 'default' (as it is now), but also a menu setting you could adjust a setting for how quickly your ship 'keel' would reset back to centre after you've lifted your finger off the button/key which took it in the current direction. A higher value here would make it similar to WO2097 (and tbh, how W3O felt to me too haha).

The really surprising thing to me though, was that I went and bought a gamepad JUST to play this game, assuming that the analog control would let me hold an angle easily (since i couldn't with keys), but it basically had no effect - the stick seems to be interpreted digitally too, with a dead area (as the menus say), but then it's HOT/COLD again, not one of the two models I expect: 1) the angle of the stick determines how quickly your steering angle increases (presumably exponential to angle or similar) or 2) the angle you hold the stick would simply hold the ship at the angle you want until you let it centre, or move it to another angle. Neither was the case though :(

Anyway, I really do appreciate the extreme amount of effort you've put in (I was a developer for 10 years). If this variable handling thing isn't something you'd consider, then I guess BNG just isn't for me (insert sad face here). I'm glad you and others are having a lot of fun with it, I'm very curious how the hell you're controlling it!!!

bigsnake
2nd July 2016, 01:23 AM
Have you tried importing the Wipeout 2097 ships into the game by the way? (there's a txt file included with the game that explains how to do it). That might possibly achieve what you're looking for as I tried to get the handling on those accurate. The same style of handling is still being applied, but I did try to get that same floatiness going on when configuring the settings for them. The latest update I uploaded to Steam earlier should also help out with the rebound caused by colliding with walls also, I reduced the amount you are bounced around so pinballing shouldn't happen now (if it does then it shouldn't be as severe).

If BallisticNG was a less serious project then I would definitely implement the ability to switch between two different handling styles. The problem I've started running into now is that since the game has online features (right now stats and leaderboards), having such a feature would mess up the leaderboards. People would likely be upset if I were to make one of the styles disable leaderboards too.

What gamepad do you have by the way? Input from analog sticks are essentially raw, with just the deadzone being applied. So in other words no smoothing is applied to the input, all of the smoothing is handled inside the physics itself. Steering works on a basis of if the absolute value (positive value only) is higher then the input from the previous frame (again absolute value) then the ships velocity should interpolate using the gain as the speed, otherwise it should interpolate using the falloff as the speed. There is also an exception to this where this behavior should only happen if the ship is still steering in the same direction, otherwise the gain speed is reset to zero and must be interpolated back to the gain speed setting again (gain also resets falloff, falloff resets gain). You should be able to control how much you are steering on the analog stick, I guess you could also reduce the deadzone so you have more room to make small adjustments. I noticed the deadzone was a problem from watching lets plays of the game that started popping up, this was back when the default deadzone was 0.5 for god knows what reason I had for setting it to that.

Testing I've done with gamepads has been with a 360 controller, Dualshock 4 with DS4Windows and a negcon connected through a rockfire bridge. I haven't had an issues with any of these, can't speak for varying devices and operating systems though.

Thanks for the understanding reply, also thanks for the suggestion :) Currently dealing with somebody on Steam reviews who has made it their goal to be a complete pain in the ass, so it's nice to have some well thought out and explained criticisms.

sl33py
2nd July 2016, 03:49 AM
Not yet RE 2097 ships. Wasn't aware of them! I'm actually newish to Steam (bit of an old school gamer), so still learning how to stay in the loop for some things (and tbh I haven't read this whole thread, just read random pages to get the gist).

I've done some physics and maths in my time. Are you at liberty to elaborate on the interpolation algorithm a bit more? What is the current algorithm for how slowly the steering angle returns to the centrepoint? That's the area that seems worth focusing on, at least in the start - it's the most obvious difference between what I know and BNG. With all the WO games, it's been a matter of 'hold the direction til you've mostly got the angle you need then adjust with light taps on that same direction to keep it from 're-centreing', then either let it return as you exit the corner or repeat for whatever corner is coming up'. ATM for BNG, it feels like 'steer as you need into the corner, but if you EVER hold the direction too long, you'll need to steer back the other way (the re-centreing thing doesn't seem to work like any variant of WO I've played does), and then by the time you try to do that, you're playing pinball lol

Reinstalling to check out the 2097 stuff and see if it makes any difference. If it does it'll be very interesting, because in a 'world' such as that you've created, I would have thought the same physics/control engine should apply! This is a different kettle of fish to how the 'easy to steer' and 'hard to steer' ships in the other games worked, this is more fundamental (I tried a few diff ships and speeds in BNG already).

I'm interested in providing input if it's genuinely welcome!

Wanzer
2nd July 2016, 03:59 AM
I always thought that a wipeout fan made game would look beautiful but would never be able to reproduce the physics accurately.
I was very surprised to see it is the exact opposite.
Those people in reviews complaining about clunky gameplay and controls never tried wipeout so they really have no idea how accurate this is and that this "clunky" gameplay is exactly what allows for a ship to navigate the course with surprising agility once you master airbrakes and learn the course.

Then there are chose who just dislike artistic choice made for the game.
Lowpoly and Polygon/Texture twitching wasnt really an aesthetic choice, neither it was everyone's favourite feature back in 90's, even less now.
I guess its all comes to what people would expect from a perfect wipeout game, PC allows high degree of customization limiting choice of gameplay mechanic and visual fidelity without a sound explanation does not sit well with all.

Few impressions for latest version.

Cannot exit ship importer, the cross does nothing.
Still flying out of the track at Macena Bay at the start of the tunnel.
It would be nice if all ships would be displayed as a list (Pic and name) so I can just click on the one I want without clicking arrows to roll the list.
Noticed better wall grinding but in turn started to bottom out much more frequently, quite noticeable on luna, not sure whether its me or what.

Very nice cockpits, still too hard to ride them because ground tilts with the view creating very distracting effect.
Notice how in this vid view is always levelled up with the horizon, that what every cockpit view needs. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUjCH43-9qM)
Another thing, I was seeing mentions of camera auto aligning with the track, is it possible to make cockpit camera look toward centre of the track? (maybe some distance ahead).
Basically to make it look into a turn and follow it trough, freetrack support would be nice even if it would probably be life threatening to try and use it at zen speed.


FWIW in regards to keyboard handling I think you should implement a non-linear response such as :
At the moment I can barely make some turn at higher speeds, to rotate ship in time you have to start turning/breaking very hard into the corner long before the actual corner.
If you introduce additional delay I think the game could become straight unplayable for kb users who use this feature, taking fast consecutive turns at higher speed would be all but impossible.

I think much better solution would be mouse control, like in LFS where mouse away from the centre is how hard you turn. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnedA6Z43qk)
In the above video white line at the bottom of the screen is the turning range and red dot is position of the wheel/mouse.

Another solution for kb players on laptop with no mouse would be button combination turning, for example:
[A]/[D] turns at 100% speed.
[Q]/[E] turns at 50% rate.
[Shift+A]/[Shift+D] would be for very fine turns or just changing side of the track.

bigsnake
2nd July 2016, 04:06 AM
Not yet RE 2097 ships. Wasn't aware of them! I'm actually newish to Steam (bit of an old school gamer), so still learning how to stay in the loop for some things (and tbh I haven't read this whole thread, just read random pages to get the gist).

I've done some physics and maths in my time. Are you at liberty to elaborate on the interpolation algorithm a bit more? What is the current algorithm for how slowly the steering angle returns to the centrepoint? That's the area that seems worth focusing on, at least in the start - it's the most obvious difference between what I know and BNG. With all the WO games, it's been a matter of 'hold the direction til you've mostly got the angle you need then adjust with light taps on that same direction to keep it from 're-centreing', then either let it return as you exit the corner or repeat for whatever corner is coming up'. ATM for BNG, it feels like 'steer as you need into the corner, but if you EVER hold the direction too long, you'll need to steer back the other way (the re-centreing thing doesn't seem to work like any variant of WO I've played does), and then by the time you try to do that, you're playing pinball lol

Reinstalling to check out the 2097 stuff and see if it makes any difference. If it does it'll be very interesting, because in a 'world' such as that you've created, I would have thought the same physics/control engine should apply! This is a different kettle of fish to how the 'easy to steer' and 'hard to steer' ships in the other games worked, this is more fundamental (I tried a few diff ships and speeds in BNG already).

I'm interested in providing input if it's genuinely welcome!

The interpolation is based on the Lerp and MoveTowards functions built into Unity's math library. I can't tell you how the MoveTowards function works, but the Lerp is a basic a + (b + a) * clamp01(t). There is however also a multiplier applied to the velocity gain/falloffs that uses a normalized value made from the product of the max steering speed and current steering speed, a clamp is applied to this to stop it from being 0. To make the steering less responsive earlier in the steering, I just need to change the min clamp. If both values of the clamp are the same then changes in velocity will be constant.

I always welcome input! I can't guarantee it will always end up being used, but if you have ideas then I'm at least open to them.



Few impressions for latest version.

Cannot exit ship importer, the cross does nothing.
Still flying out of the track at Macena Bay at the start of the tunnel.
It would be nice if all ships would be displayed as a list (Pic and name) so I can just click on the one I want without clicking arrows to roll the list.
Noticed better wall grinding but in turn started to bottom out much more frequently, quite noticeable on luna, not sure whether its me or what.

Very nice cockpits, still too hard to ride them because ground tilts with the view creating very distracting effect.
Notice how in this vid view is always levelled up with the horizon, that what every cockpit view needs. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUjCH43-9qM)
Another thing, I was seeing mentions of camera auto aligning with the track, is it possible to make cockpit camera look toward centre of the track? (maybe some distance ahead).
Basically to make it look into a turn and follow it trough, freetrack support would be nice even if it would probably be life threatening to try and use it at zen speed.

Is that exit button consistant or does it only happen at times? Nobody seems to have had issues with it yet so that's weird.
For Maceno Bay I take it you mean the tunnel after the hairpin right?
I'll look at adding the list for the ships back as a legacy feature, I ended up changing it after a conversion with DreadofMondays about the UI, which sparked the whole UI redesign in the latest version. Also turns out there are some quirks with the tweak to bottoming out in that update, they've already been fixed so those will appear in the next version.

I'll get an option implemented to make the cockpit camera look near the centre of the track also, I can see that being useful :)

Wanzer
2nd July 2016, 04:50 AM
Is that exit button consistant or does it only happen at times? Nobody seems to have had issues with it yet so that's weird.

Ok I think I figured it out.
UI tries to adapt to resolution and most likely was tested on your machine that have different resolution than I do, I am running 1280x1024 as a result "help" and "exit" buttons get covered up by "reimport ship mesh" button when UI tries to resize to 5:4 screen ratio.
This is screenshot of how ship importer looks on my PC. (http://www.filedropper.com/ballisticng2016-07-0206-38-25-84)


I'll get an option implemented to make the cockpit camera look near the centre of the track also, I can see that being useful :)

Also, eye line being levelled with horizon at all time when in cockpit view is very important, ships in BNG constantly tilting while turning and doing so violently when bumping into walls or AI ships, without horizon staying level its very disorienting.

sl33py
2nd July 2016, 05:21 AM
The interpolation is based on the Lerp and MoveTowards functions built into Unity's math library. I can't tell you how the MoveTowards function works, but the Lerp is a basic a + (b + a) * clamp01(t). There is however also a multiplier applied to the velocity gain/falloffs that uses a normalized value made from the product of the max steering speed and current steering speed, a clamp is applied to this to stop it from being 0. To make the steering less responsive earlier in the steering, I just need to change the min clamp. If both values of the clamp are the same then changes in velocity will be constant.

I always welcome input! I can't guarantee it will always end up being used, but if you have ideas then I'm at least open to them.

Ok. Unfamiliar with that particular library but understand the ideas.

Yep, totally agree the maximum speed at which the steering angle increases should be limited by the ship's forward speed. But I believe whatever that algorithm is doing results (at all speeds, I experimented too) in too sudden an increase at a particular point. It's fine for the first 1/5 of a second that you press, but beyond that time the steering seems to increase exponentially.

I did play a lot of W3O, just not as much as 2097 and to be honest if there was a difference in control feel between those two, it was in the vicinity of 2-3%. Not what I'm seeing in BNG which feels like a massive difference (just considering the steering in isolation).

Harpstone @ Toxic class should be an absolute piece of cake - on a similar track in any WO game, ie. the 'learner track', I'd be able to take buttery smooth lines through the corners, but for every second corner in BNG I'm finding that the once I get the right steering, an extra few milliseconds on the key and suddenly I'm very nearly facing the wall and having to over-correct.

I'm really curious: Could you please graph the change in steering angle speed (ie. the steering acceleration) as a function of how long the Left or Right button has been held? I'd bet the farm there's a point around 200ms where it jumps up noticeably faster than before, and THAT is what I'd dearly love to see reduced.

bigsnake
2nd July 2016, 02:54 PM
You'll be surprised man. Here's the results of plotting the steering speed. First one is Gtek, second one is Nexus.

https://i.gyazo.com/8dabdb897dcb4887254f5a69bea401b8.png

https://i.gyazo.com/e31bda956ab5ee9f29a36d5e2ba88226.png

sl33py
3rd July 2016, 01:17 AM
Well I'll be jiggered - guess I lost the farm! :P

Ok. The next aspect that was on my list that I've noticed feels quite different to WO is the steering re-centring: I come to a corner and steer to a certain angle, decide that's enough, let off the key/pad for a moment (as I would in WO) to let that angle 'sit' for a moment, expecting to have to tap it again to maintain it in another moment or so if it's a sharp corner). But it drops offto centre quicker than I'd expect, and I find myself steering earlier than in a WO game to put the ship back on course. In the earlier wipeouts, I found it easy to steer a corner by tapping the key/pad in a direction a few individual times until the angle is right and then just leaving it, but due to the above, it this doesn't work quite as well because of the fast re-centring. Hence I have to hold it instead and then I get soon out of shape.

This would probably need to be 'suck it and see', but I'm curious how it would feel for that angle to centre a bit slower than it currently does.

Even if only for my own curiosity, are you able to make a custom build, changing only one variable (like this) for people to experiment? Or some other way you/I/we can play with this?

bigsnake
3rd July 2016, 01:38 AM
Again the falloff of the ships steering velocity is because the ship handling is designed after Wipeout 3. If you want to play around with ship stats then you can use the ship importer that exposes to you the most important settings for configuring the handling of a ship.

[APG] Darkmega.exe
5th July 2016, 07:40 AM
Hey, Just wondering what ships are "close" to their wipeout counterpart (if one exists, of course!)

Ace3000
5th July 2016, 08:44 AM
I can tell you that Tenrai's is close to a Wip3out Assegai, but apart from that... I'm not sure.

slowriderxcorps
5th July 2016, 01:46 PM
Some good progress going on in places here. I had somehow been sitting on a few notes that I don't think I have mentioned up to this point, so I'm not sure if some of these are applicable to the current build. However the bottom two were just added to it.

* Using the Unlock All option does not unlock the AG Bike and the unknown craft below it in the menu (menu positioning is no longer a factor in the current build, but the game still displays the name of the locked craft. Intentional?).
* There is no mentioning of the AG Bike in the Stats Page. (also in regards to the Stats Page, I am unsure as to the definition of a Green Race)
* The Best Times for each track may need to be altered to account for the different speed classes. Possible proposal of an alternative means of tracking and displaying Best Times, including individual tracks, speed classes and craft.
* For Survival Mode, possibly alter the Start Line billboard to display different information such as Zone Number or Name. Currently it displays GO! and Survival - Zen.
* Remove the collision hitbox on any craft that has just been eliminated, or give them no mass so as to not knock the remaining craft off course?

* Add some option to only cause one set of controls to appear for various options instead of both Keyboard and Controller inputs. Alternatively, change the way Controller inputs are displayed in game as they are currently extremely long.
* In the current version, I encountered a critical glitch that prevented me from returning to the Main Menu from the Track Select, it keeps endlessly cycling back to Ship Selection. I was unable to recreate the glitch, but was able to escape it by activating the Tutorial. I am not sure how I triggered it, but I was comparing the stats of the normal ships to the WipEout 3 ships at the time, alt-tabbing out of the game to check a text file.
* The Icaras in the WipEout 3 Ships list is misnamed with a U instead of an A. The spelling of Piranha/Pirhana in the same menu is at your discretion.

Xpand
5th July 2016, 01:51 PM
The AG bike is technically a cheat, not an unlockable vehicle so it isn't treated as one. You activate it by typing "carving" in the main menu.
The unknown craft are the Wipeout ships. Those are only available if you provide the PRM and CMP files within the Wipeout 1 (ALLSH.PRM/CMP) and/or Wipeout 2097(TERRY.PRM/CMP) discs.

Wanzer
7th July 2016, 07:34 AM
I like how ships are much more agile, now Diavolte actually fitting the corners.
I am still bottoming out a lot tho, especially on tracks with many changes in elevation like Macena Bay, I found that even small slopes make me bottom out.
This bug also still exists (http://www.wipeoutzone.com/forum/showthread.php?9936-Ballistic-NG-Wipeout-fan-project&p=248206#post248206).

twenty90seven
7th July 2016, 12:05 PM
Spinning weapon reticules...remember in Wipeout 2097 when the missile locks on and the diamond reticule spins around at the back of the competitor's ship? This also features in the Wipeout 2097 intro video. Just a small detail but I have always thought it looked cool and would be nice to see implemented in BNG.

Wanzer
7th July 2016, 01:48 PM
One thing I always missed in wipeout games was replay, could we get that cherry?
There are already ghosts which are basically a replay and cameras set on the tracks, would be cool if we could like in first driver set up cameras for every replay and save the result.

slowriderxcorps
7th July 2016, 04:05 PM
Chiming in with a couple more additions to the considerations list, even if one of them is rather clear if it wasn't already.

* I love the additions of the Ship Descriptions, however at the moment it seems that the text is too long to fit into the allocated screen space, so the text gets cut off before the end of the description. In addition, there are definitely some typos and incorrect words amongst the descriptions that are there. I'm not sure if Descriptions can be implemented for the WipEout ships but that would be a nice touch if it were possible.
* Since they are now a thing, Ship Descriptions for Workshop ships would be the next logical addition, as well as some means of displaying the stats for them.
* Speaking of custom ships, I still feel that trying to implement the exact numbers for each ship to be rather challenging, as there isn't any real guide as to what contributes to a 1 or a 10 in any given stat. Either some kind of textual indication in the Importer as to what these intended boundaries are, or an alternative, Simple menu where you simply punch in the desired stats out of 100 would be very helpful.
* Since it was moved to the end of the track list, I'm not sure as to whether Utah Project deserves to be the last track, especially compared to Omega Harbour which has a name that literally screams 'final'. I agree that for the second track in the game it's pretty rough, but it's more around the difficulty level of Ishtar Citadel.
* Regarding the Shield and Auto-Pilot, perhaps the way the audio cues for the deactivation of these items could be tweaked to be more in line with that of Wip3out. In that game, the Shield, Reflector, Cloak and Auto-Pilot would say 'disengaging' about one second before it would actually deactivate.

amplificated
8th July 2016, 04:41 AM
* Regarding the Shield and Auto-Pilot, perhaps the way the audio cues for the deactivation of these items could be tweaked to be more in line with that of Wip3out. In that game, the Shield, Reflector, Cloak and Auto-Pilot would say 'disengaging' about one second before it would actually deactivate.

Personally I vastly prefer the way these are handled in BNG compared to e.g. WO3. Having a simple timer is entirely unambiguous, whereas in WO3 I could never understand exactly when my pickup was going to run out. I would never rely on them because I didn't trust them at all, and would usually cancel them before they put me in a worse situation than I started in.

slowriderxcorps
9th July 2016, 02:13 PM
I just came across a video on my subscriber feed that brought up some points that might be worth exploring, mostly regarding track design. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6VjDmeeBQY)

Wanzer
9th July 2016, 07:10 PM
The guy is pretty bad at it the game though, I think his criticism would be better if he would learned to fly easiest course of the game (which is harpstone) without crashing at toxic speed class.
Some good points were made, although without anything specific, not to mention that elitism is actually part of wipeout series.
I mean the game is made for wipeout fans who already have lots of experience and want more, there are things however that can be very tricky for less experienced person.

Some of the corner sets can completely break pace of the game if you make a mistake, in part thanks to buggy collision.
Example of such layouts are, two last corners in tunnel at zephyr ridge.
Chicanes in a tunnel with turbo pad that throw you at the wall if your racing line is even a bit off at Omega Harbour.

It often feels like courses are ought to get you by doing something completely unexpected, placement of boost pads is an example of such device. They are often placed right in front of a very tight corners or even in the middle of the chicane hurling you at the walls which makes navigating those corners even more difficult for anyone but people who spend long time mastering the course.
Especially tricky with heavy ships that sometimes just cant change direction in time after a boost in the middle of the chicane.

Long winded corners with track surface tilted like the one at Omega Harbour is rather difficult with heavy ships due to buggy collision detection.
I think collision calculation takes angle of a wall under consideration and since the corner is not smooth but rather edgy/angular, your ship just gets launched toward opposite side of the track if you even slightly touch the walls because wall surface is always under a large angle in relation to your ship.

Then there are smaller things like starting line right before a tight corner Macena Bay and Omega Harbour is an example.
Heavier ships cant use boost start because they wont make the next turn which is right after the starting line.
Technically a good balance device to give an edge to slower more manoeuvrable ships which can actually take this turn right after a boost start but not sure whether a fully conscious decision.

Now, all of the above can be mastered with actually getting good, what really breaks fun for me is wall bouncing.
Wall bouncing need to be looked at, as for now it can often not only break completely pace of the race but launch you like a flipper ball between walls.
I think this bounciness needs to be reviewed because it affects every course in the game and really break the flow of the race.

[APG] Darkmega.exe
12th July 2016, 10:22 AM
Can we get the difficulties of said ships posted on the game? like for example g-tek (easy)? like it used to be on WipEout 2097, the difficulties of said crafts would appear when you we're selecting it.

Also, Glcore is bugged. and DirectX doesn't perform very well here. (i'm blaming my **** computer though.), Macena bay is a nightmare to run on this computer, i struggled on apex speed with g-tek to get first place.

Axatar
12th July 2016, 11:18 AM
G-tek, Mptech1, Tenrai for beginners
Hyperion,Omnicom,Wyvern,Scorpio for Intermediate
Diavolt,Nexus and Barracuda for skilled players

[APG] Darkmega.exe
12th July 2016, 11:26 AM
Thanks.

Rafeku
12th July 2016, 12:03 PM
I wonder what happened to Ishtar citadel, the old version was gold, nothing to complain. Once you got the hang of it, you were in for a treat. This iteration is horrible to play, what happened? Dark, blind corners, I can't predict cleary what's to come. It's something that I can't say:"I missed the trackline"; here I just don't understand what's going on.

Found a little bug: If you finish your race pushing the ship up, it will remain up when the ai gains control. It feels really silly. the pitch is wrong, but ship controls as normal, when the AI takes over.

[APG] Darkmega.exe
12th July 2016, 12:33 PM
here's an image showing how bugged is glcore at the moment. this is the main menu.

10353

Please fix.

(you can try it yourself by adding -force-glcore into your launch options)

Xpand
12th July 2016, 01:13 PM
It's not possible to fix. That's a Unity engine problem. Your graphics card might not support the used OpenGL version either. Use this http://www.realtech-vr.com/glview/ to see what version of OpenGL is supported by your card.

[APG] Darkmega.exe
12th July 2016, 01:44 PM
according to GLview, i'm using openGL version 4.0, not sure if it's supported or not.

Xpand
12th July 2016, 05:43 PM
Hmm strange. But this is a Unity problem. It has to do with it failing to display the shaders (that's why it's all pink). Like the objects are there, they're just being rendered with the same pink color due to shader failure. There's nothing one can do about it aside from telling the Unity team to look into it.

Rovenami
12th July 2016, 05:54 PM
While I was racing in Maceno Bay I discovered a floating palm tree
10354

Wanzer
12th July 2016, 06:27 PM
Thank you for working on BNG guys, PC missed a game like this.
Now to the business, I know some of this stuff gonna be improved one way or the other but just in case.

Force wall is a nice addition but it differs from W3O, first of all, Force Wall in W3O followed the track as a red orb for a set distance and the wall itself blinked letting you trough.
In BNG force wall flies straight and stops you just as AI ships, also it is invisible until wall appears (in W3O it was a red orb flying above the course till the wall appeared, this way you knew where the wall will be)

I would like to see wall bouncing to be somewhat weakened, by bouncing I mean actual rebound from a wall.
In W3O if regardless of how hard you hit a wall, you'd be just slowed down, in BNG hitting a wall at large speeds always mean being propelled somewhere uncontrollably and very often I would find myself rotated 90° nose into the opposite wall.

I would be nice to have some list of requirements appear somewhere in game, like how many medals till unlocking the next ship and with what ships those medals need to be earned with.
If I use W3O ships does it still count?

Good job on the cockpits, cant wait for a camera suited for cockpit view.
As for generic cockpit model, the one used for all custom ships, could you guy remove this eye level bar, its covering most of the track in front of me.

Xpand
12th July 2016, 07:41 PM
You'll be able to make your own cockpits for custom ships. The default cockpit model for custom ships will be no cockpit at all.

I don't know what you mean by "camera suited for cockpit view".

Wanzer
12th July 2016, 08:30 PM
"camera suited for cockpit view" its something I proposed some time ago in this thread and Snake mentioned he would like to include at least partial functionality.
Camera suited for cockpit use is a camera that automatically levels up with horizon and follows racetrack.

This is an example of a camera that always keep horizon level (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isgOZfHWb-I) (bike sim is a good demo of such camera since bikes tilt a lot just like ships in BNG).
In BNG ships tilt a lot and since camera is strapped stiff inside a cockpit, it creates strong disorienting effect when the horizon tilts with it, I think such horizon levelled camera is a must for every game with a cockpit but even more so in BNG where ships tilt more than 45° all the time.

Another improvement I proposed was a camera that would follow centreline of the track looking some distance ahead, regardless of the position of the ship.
In BNG ships spend most of the time pointing sideways so, when you drift trough the corner and your ship pointing towards inner wall, such camera would look sideways, following center of the track, trough the corner and into the next.

Currently camera always pointing along longitudinal axis of the ship which is often somewhere in general direction of a wall which makes cockpit not all that functional.
And I know that part is also doable because there is already a camera that aligning with the track depending on the position of the ship regarding centre of the track.

Due to its nature, BNG its not a typical racing game where camera could be sitting idly behind the windshield doing nothing, not when ships tilt left and right, up and down all the time and if that is not enough, they also spend lots of time sideways.

Xpand
12th July 2016, 08:43 PM
Ah okay, yeah those are good suggestions.

[APG] Darkmega.exe
13th July 2016, 06:12 AM
Thanks for the info xpand.

Wanzer
13th July 2016, 10:14 AM
Would like to take back my input on wall bouncing.
From what I see, wall bouncing is actually not bad, it doesnt stop you too much neither throw you opposite of the track by itself.
Some collisions still rotate me 90° nose in opposite wall and what causing it is steering input during the collision.

For example, I am in the middle of the left hand turn, I am turning left and heavy ships drifts to the outside and touches right hand wall.
If I am still turning left during contact with the wall, ship will rotate much more violently in the direction I am turning.
If I let go of controls or turn in direction of the wall during contact, ship will stay on course after the bump.

Technically this can be beneficial, if you cant make a tight corner and hit the wall, this additional turning force will turn your ship harder and you wont stuck on this wall.
However, if this happens in a shallow corner, this additional force will be too much and will bounce you to the opposite wall.

[APG] Darkmega.exe
15th July 2016, 07:45 AM
Can i get updated about glcore? (when it gets fixed by the unity team, obviously)

thanks in advance.

Wanzer
18th July 2016, 08:23 AM
A suggestion for ship importer, it would be nice to have orthographic view and if controls included buttons for top, side, front, rear views, think 3D view in blender.
Plus option to mirror changes on each side since placement of contrails and engine flames is mostly symmetric.

Wanzer
22nd July 2016, 01:05 PM
Love new cockpit and 3d person cam, flying Tenrai feels now like flying a futuristic bike.
Also love course redesign and new course Macena Reef, reminds me of a course from rollcage II, shame we cant fly on walls and ceilings.

First bug report as well, Harpstone expert use leadeboard times of a regular harpstone.

Another bug I found, pictures disappeared somewhere from track selection screen.

Wanzer
28th July 2016, 01:19 PM
Found a bug in ship importer, for some reason I can import ship named Turbobee.obj but wont see Turbobee.msh unless I turn on msh filter.
Sometimes cant turn off new fps counter, cant reproduce it at will though.
Was experimenting with something and for some reason very simple blender sphere brings my fps to a 2 frames, something to do with shading maybe?

Few suggestions as well.
Now, to save a ship settings you have to click on "save & close" in settings manager and then additionally on save button at the top left corner.
Its a bit misleading, since save & exit doesn't actually save your settings.

I think many modders would appreciate ability to adjust physics live in game without having to jump back and forth between ship importer and a course, constantly saving and re-loading.

I would like to see an option for "back-face culling" in game, I am having stable 75 fps at all times unless in splitscreen or for some odd reason on zephyr ridge where it still 75 but somehow very jerky, I think such option could bring some improvement.

Question to devs:
I am trying to make a ship that reacts instantly to steering input however, no matter how I set up turn speed, turn gain and turn falloff, there is still something else going on.
The ship doesnt turn instantly or stop turning after I let go of a stick.
How those values working? Are they interpolated, multiplied, percentage of a whole or something?
Are those values capped at some point, I think I went as high as 1000000 without it reverting back but without achieving desired result.
I managed to dig out some older post by Snake I think, where he talks about ship settings and what they do, it still applies right?


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

bigsnake
28th July 2016, 05:45 PM
Found a bug in ship importer, for some reason I can import ship named Turbobee.obj but wont see Turbobee.msh unless I turn on msh filter.
The game only supports .obj, you should be able to see the file in the file browser but you won't be able to read it


Sometimes cant turn off new fps counter, cant reproduce it at will though.
I've fixed this, the issue was being caused by the performance counter being created everytime you went back to the menu.


Was experimenting with something and for some reason very simple blender sphere brings my fps to a 2 frames, something to do with shading maybe?
How many polys does it have? The only shading in the game is baked per-vertex lighting for the tracks, which would be applied at the polygon fill level so it basically has no impact on performance at all.


Few suggestions as well.
Now, to save a ship settings you have to click on "save & close" in settings manager and then additionally on save button at the top left corner.
Its a bit misleading, since save & exit doesn't actually save your settings.

I think many modders would appreciate ability to adjust physics live in game without having to jump back and forth between ship importer and a course, constantly saving and re-loading.
I can get behind that, having some sort of test track with real-time adjustable controls could be very useful!



Question to devs:
I am trying to make a ship that reacts instantly to steering input however, no matter how I set up turn speed, turn gain and turn falloff, there is still something else going on.
The ship doesnt turn instantly or stop turning after I let go of a stick.
How those values working? Are they interpolated, multiplied, percentage of a whole or something?
Are those values capped at some point, I think I went as high as 1000000 without it reverting back but without achieving desired result.

Steering uses linear interpolation with a normalized multiplier for the interpolation speed. If we look at steering of a range of -1 to 1, near the centre (0) the ship when starting to steering is much slower then it will be near -1/1 and will loose speed much quicker near the centre. The normalization causes the effect to scale with the gain/falloff so you can't have a ship that instantly starts and stops steering.

Wanzer
28th July 2016, 06:18 PM
The game only supports .obj, you should be able to see the file in the file browser but you won't be able to read it
Sorry I meant to say shp, I can port obj and it will be converted to shp but for some reason I cant see shp unless I turn filters, sometimes I cant even see turbobee.obj and only see turbobee.mtl but, same model just named turbobe.obj works normally.
Weird stuff.

How many polys does it have? The only shading in the game is baked per-vertex lighting for the tracks
Totally forgot the game doesnt have anything above pre-vertex lightning, if it had I wouldnt have to bake occlusion to the texture myself.
Dont get the wrong idea I certainly like that it doesnt, simply because it offers some very unique possibilities for a modder when it comes to texturing.
As to the sphere, your usual blender sphere, 482 verts, 512 faces, 960 tris, 512 texture nothing out of the ordinary and certainly not even close to level of complexity of the ships i already ported in game so its not like my PC cant handle a ball.

having some sort of test track with real-time adjustable controls could be very useful!
Wanted to propose a test track as well but didnt wanted to come of as gibmedat:redface: especially its something I could do myself later having the track editor.
That said it would be good if controls could be used outside of a test track, simply because modders would adjust their ship using already existing ships on already existing tracks as comparison.
Well, if you decide to make a test track for modders a good feature would be large surface with some holographic pointers for orientation that will not interrupt testing process.

What about backface culling I remember Unity was having some problem with it, is it still not possible to use that option without visual bugs.

Wanzer
30th July 2016, 05:01 PM
I have a few suggestions, nothing major but maybe you'll see something you like.

I think it would be nice to develop few sets of physics and gameplay mechanics from some later Wipeout games, easily switchable from the menu.
I am sure the moment the game will become open source again, there will be plethora of physics mods that might fragment online scene in already niche game.
I am talking MP and leaderboards mainly, current physics feels great but its trying to simulate W3O and later game provided many improvements.
People pick what they like best and official leaderboards and servers will see much thinner crowd.
Because of that I think it would be good to develop few set of physics and gameplay mechanics, players could use as a standardized solution among themselves in SP and online.

It feels like your ship top speed is the only AI difficulty scaling factor in arcade and championship modes, because of that game is often either too hard or too easy.
Some kind of a system based on performance points taking into consideration acceleration, max speed and steering capabilities of the ship would be better.
Another nice addition would be an option to create and save sets of ship you can chose to race against.
As well as ability to change difficulty level without going back to options menu, maybe difficulty select window on the "select speed class" screen (to avoid too much clicking).

I would like to see thrust analog input, with negcon you could hover throttle depending on how strong the button is pressed.
It was something used for starts mostly but for me it is more about accessory compatibility, I'd like to plug in my throttle quadrant and joystick and try to play with it but with thrust being digital its impossible, its kind of a gimmick but worth trying.

Wall bouncing and bottoming out could use a look over, currently ships are still too happy to bottom out on slightest bumps and contact with a wall on too many occasions rotates you 90°if you dont let got of a controls upon impact.

Is it possible to import cockpits in game at the moment? Asking because I cant really figure a way to do it.

Well thats all I can think of now, I also have to say at first this flat lightning seemed like a limitation but, the more I play with it the more I am amazed how much it can benefit a modder.
Since there is no dynamic lightning to illuminate every polygon, you can put whatever you want on texture and it will look exactly the same in game.
I am still experimenting with texture shading and painting and most of the time its another "You can do that!" moment, maybe it come from me still learning but the way I see it, this lack of dynamic lightning is actually a good thing.

Wanzer
2nd August 2016, 09:34 PM
Hate to be the one constantly posting but here it is https://s31.postimg.org/4m3pgzwiv/Ballistic_NG_2016_08_02_23_11_44_52.jpg (https://postimg.org/image/4m3pgzwiv/)
Leaderboards are not displaying correctly.

On the bright side, Cassandra looks awesome.

Another bug I found, for some reason many weapon pads just wont give me weapons anymore also, when I pick up this particular weapon https://s32.postimg.org/6itl66sdt/Ballistic_NG_2016_08_03_00_35_46_80.jpg (https://postimg.org/image/6itl66sdt/)
Announcer will not say its name and if I attempt to use it it will just disappear.

PureSpeed7
2nd August 2016, 09:57 PM
My thoughts: The game is amazing! It's great to see the wipeout spirit living on in this game. Though i have one suggestion. The Omnicom ship looks bad*ss but my one problem with it is that the Scorpio ship is basically a better version of it. Overall, its 30 stat points better, and the only advantages Omnicom has over it are 20 points in firepower and 15 points in grip. So that's just a user suggestion, i just want your thoughts on it. Keep up the good work!!:p

Edit:

Also, maybe Ballistic NG avatars?? :)

Wanzer
3rd August 2016, 11:22 PM
I am starting to get afraid I'll get a missile up my thruster for posting here constantly however, after last patch W3O ships disappeared.
Please tell me they'll be ok and its just a bug.

Xpand
3rd August 2016, 11:25 PM
They started being read from the actual game files

Wanzer
3rd August 2016, 11:37 PM
Thanks for explanation xpand, found new ship import readme and it all become clear.

However, the ships are mirrored, most noticeable with Assegai which has cockpit on the wrong side and Feisar and Goteki 45 have signs mirrored, also, is it me or the handling changed a bit.
Could you share list of handling characteristics of W3O crafts you guys developed?

aybe
4th August 2016, 01:07 AM
Missile launched :P

Be patient, this feature is only a few hours old. :)

Whatever might be wrong with my library, bigsnake will get in touch and I will look at it.

(a rough guess is that we're simply using different directions for axes)

bigsnake
4th August 2016, 01:57 AM
The flipping issue is entirely my issue, the problem is that when the game read the .obj files the ships were flipped on the X axis. This is not a problem when reading the files through WXX's libraries and I had forgotten to remove the flip :)

Going to have a new update out tomorrow that fixes this, in this update will also be a new ship settings list that you can toggle by pressing F1 twice. It displays the majority of stats for the current ship, as well as some realtime information too.

Wanzer
4th August 2016, 08:28 AM
Missile launched :P
My thrusters are ready :lol


Be patient, this feature is only a few hours old. :)
No need to tell me to be patient, I know fully well how long it takes and I think at present pace the game developing amazingly fast as it is.

@snake yay for check stats feature.
Please consdier this suggestion I made earlier, currently matching contrails is a bit of a chore, not to mention once grab point disappear behind the ship its all blind clicking to get that one again.

A suggestion for ship importer, it would be nice to have orthographic view and if controls included buttons for top, side, front, rear views, think 3D view in blender.
Plus option to mirror changes on each side since placement of contrails and engine flames is mostly symmetric.

Wanzer
4th August 2016, 04:05 PM
First issue got solved with another patch, however, I lost all my medals, unlocked ships and signs above says enter name.

Also, did we get some kind of texture filter in the last two updates?
Asking because noticed some Hi Res skins got hit hard, Hyperion HD for example, some other HD skins are blurred too much, in some cases texture seams now have white outlines, Nerd Coopas ships got somewhat blurred, not much tho (generally all lowres styling textures got some sort of a blur which kinda change low texture looks) other ships got sort of texture shimmering when moving or even white outlines. and bilboards are now having something over them that looks like a bicubic filter in an emulator.

bigsnake
4th August 2016, 04:31 PM
A friend of mine has just had that issue with the game messing up his profile, I haven't been able to recreate the issue though so I'll need to see if others have the issues to try and determine what the issue could be.
Edit: This could have been caused if you ran the game before the hotfix that fixed a major screw up in Unity's build process where all the game's resources were missing. If so, go to your userdata folder and open up LastUser.txt then enter the exact name of the profile you were using (this will be your steam name ).

Nothing has been changed with texture filtering, the game has been updated to run on Unity 5.4 but that wouldn't cause anything of the likes. Everything on my end here looks correct, both inside the Unity editor and in the built game.

Wanzer
4th August 2016, 05:32 PM
Thanks bigsnake, that fixed the issue with my missing profile, as to the texture filtering issue.
If you say nothing changed then your probably right and I must be going senile although I could have sworn those ships looked better couple of days ago shp1 (https://s32.postimg.org/p6fudiqeb/Ballistic_NG_2016_08_04_18_43_56_57.jpg) shp2 (https://s32.postimg.org/zf3q5lp2b/Ballistic_NG_2016_08_04_18_39_01_87.jpg) I have no idea what the heck happened.
I might have misremembered how billboards looked but I am certain ship skin was much clearer and I didnt had those white outlines and white texture seams.

Few other things you might look at.
Leaderboards look like this (https://s31.postimg.org/4m3pgzwix/Ballistic_NG_2016_08_02_23_11_44_52.jpg)
Loading sign twitches trying to center as more dots appear (although its something you probably already working on:lol )

Apart from that, I am very much liking new Aciknovae with big cat, I am very surprised how well you guys captured W3O spirit, Aciknovae, Luna, Cassandra feel like courses straight from W3O, with cassandra having this awesome feel to it, every lap I cant help but regret its so short, especially on zen.

aybe
4th August 2016, 06:59 PM
BnG greatly improved since last time I gave it a try (~3 weeks)

Good job !

:+ :+ :+

Wanzer
5th August 2016, 12:10 AM
I guess I am soon will have to include apologies for every post I make but I found a bug.
While W3O ships got flipped back to correct axis, now ships from first Wipeout are mirrored, I could guess same goes for Wipeout 2097 but since those dont have any signs its hard to tell.
Also preview thumbnails for those ships is taken from the front and not from the top like for all other ships.

[APG] Darkmega.exe
6th August 2016, 02:56 PM
so, i tried to import the WO3SP Ships while following the tutorial, i've put the files on myships folder and nothing appears. (A small note: i'm using an ISO file, since this computer doesn't have a CD Drive to read the files on.) what am i doing wrong?
On annother note: yes, it's :pirate .(i've found special editions before on some websites, but they cost a bit too much... and they are hard to find)

Speaking of which, the drag ship file is ends in S0Y or SOY?

EDIT: I forgot to rename them. i should read the instructions more carefully...

[APG] Darkmega.exe
7th August 2016, 08:24 PM
Annother thing, how can i port wipeout 2097/XL's Sounds to BallisticNG? can somebody provide me a guide for it?

Axatar
8th August 2016, 09:46 AM
Darkmega.exe;248515']Annother thing, how can i port wipeout 2097/XL's Sounds to BallisticNG? can somebody provide me a guide for it?

check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmIhLBKCHro

[APG] Darkmega.exe
10th August 2016, 12:36 PM
Hey the WipEout 2097 sounds are preety great! i just wished that we could remove the default Announcer with the soundpack. like blank sounds for him saying "Autopilot." and "Final Lap." For exemple. also we need a replacement for the "Warning." sound as well. it's kinda annoying tbh, i would prefer the 2097 style warings, saying what item is being used by a nearby Contender

- - - Updated - - -

On annother note: Can you use MP3 Files for custom songs? or just wavs? And can i get the a list of the original sound files? (for replacing for others ofc!)

UPDATE: just figured it out. about all of the things that i said on the previous messages. thanks anyway

shotfan
7th October 2016, 05:08 PM
I was not sure whether to post my inquiry here or make a new thread, but I decided I do not need a new topic for this question:

I very want to play this game, but my GPU is too old for this, as it does not support DirectX9 (yes, it is VERY old). I plan to get a new one, on a low price, just enough to get Ballistic NG to run. Will GeForce 6200 suffice?
Other specs:
P4 2.40 GHz
1 GB RAM

Will such a computer be able to run Ballistic NG? And what kind of a performance I can expect? (I would be satisfied with steady 30 FPS)

bigsnake
7th October 2016, 06:34 PM
You'd probably want 2GB of RAM just to be safe, but you should be okay with those specs. The pentium 4 would be the biggest concern since it's a single-core CPU, it would really be the only bottleneck when running BnG.

shotfan
7th October 2016, 07:00 PM
Thanks for the quick assessment! I will order this card then. I will contribute some more to the thread/subforum when I finally get BNG to run ;)

Hybrid Divide
8th October 2016, 09:10 PM
I noticed yesterday that while racing on the first prototype track, if you use autopilot in the pit lane, you always slip the left wall as you exit the pit lane. Happens every time.

Thought you guys might want to know.

chboing
20th October 2016, 07:28 PM
can't believe i just learn today about the existence of Ballistic NG. Looks like an amazing game ! currently downloading, can't wait to try
Didn't took the time to read the whole thread, is there a VR mode or is it something we can hope to see in this game too ?