Ballistic NG - Wipeout fan project

[bigsnake]

Just uploaded an alpha test of the track importer, here's the link. A demo scene of Utah Project setup in the importer is included. Documentation can also be found here, 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]

Thanks! You're thinking of Aciknovae, those animated billboards were made by Dreadofmondays

Yes this one !

[Rafeku]

I've been playing the 0.2 and 0.3mod and I'm having a blast . But I'm here just post some issues. PLOX TAEK DEM IN CUNSIDERATIAN PLZ!!!11!!1
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

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

[JABBERJAW]

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]

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 . 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]

I think I like Pure the best of the newer games from fusion and forward as well

[Rafeku]

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]

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]

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]

That greenlight submission is only a concept though, I still gotta pay the greenlight fee 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]

Am I doing something wrong that the WipEout and 2097 ships ain't showing, or are they disabled at the moment?

[bigsnake]

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]

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 . 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!)

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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

[bigsnake]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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!
©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]

Just released 0.3! You can download it here or as usual it's also on the release thread.



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]

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