Ballistic NG - Wipeout fan project

[aybe]

FWIW in regards to keyboard handling I think you should implement a non-linear response such as :

2016-07-01 19_58_24-Easing Functions Cheat Sheet.png

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/...boardButton.cs
https://github.com/aybe/InputMapper/...utMapper/Maths

[sl33py]

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]

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]

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]

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, 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 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]

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]

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]

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]

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.
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.
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]

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.
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]

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.

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]

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]

You'll be surprised man. Here's the results of plotting the steering speed. First one is Gtek, second one is Nexus.

[sl33py]

Well I'll be jiggered - guess I lost the farm!

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]

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]

Hey, Just wondering what ships are "close" to their wipeout counterpart (if one exists, of course!)

[Ace3000]

I can tell you that Tenrai's is close to a Wip3out Assegai, but apart from that... I'm not sure.

[slowriderxcorps]

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]

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]

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.