Custom Track Tools - Looking for early testers

[bigsnake]

Hey everyone!

0.7 is slowly creeping up and I'm looking for people who would have an interest in trying out the new custom track tools ahead of time. This is both for feedback to improve the tools for their official release and to get the tools into the hands of people who would have a field day making custom tracks as soon as possible. For this I've created a new beta branch on Steam that is now being updated alongside our Development Branch (which is exclusive for people who donate $1/m or more on Patreon). If you're interested then leave a reply! Only a few people are going to be accepted and the offer for this is closing on March 31st. Once 0.7 is released the beta branch will be deleted and you'll be given access to the Development Branch for free as a thank you for helping out.

You'l get a PM if you're accepted :)

Information regarding the tools
The tools are compiled into a Unity Project, all of the tools used to setup the official tracks are included though they have been drastically improved from what are used internally by us. You'll need Unity 5.6 to use the tools (currently in release candidate stages and should be officially released by the end of the month). Documentation is already up, which you can find here - http://ballisticng.wikia.com/wiki/Ballistic_Unity_Tools

Provided with the game is a program that allows you to upload custom tracks to the Steam Workshop. This is working right now and will allow anybody making tracks early to upload their work ahead of the 0.7 release.

Thanks!

[Hot Violet]

Hey dude, I realise I'm late to the party but I have a quick(ish) question.

How noob friendly is the editor? I've little to no experience with these sorts of things but I'd love to try my hand at making some F-Zero MV courses. Obviously, compared to WipeOut style tracks they are pretty simplistic. Is that something you think a noob could achieve with the editor?

[Xpand]

I'm going to answer in two parts due to the two main features of track making for BNG.

The track-creator inside the game is used to create the racing circuit itself (no scenery). It's not hard to use, but it's also not based on preset "blocks" that you place around. There's a defined method for building tracks correctly that requires a bit of learning and trial and error. Think of it as drawing your track with a pencil on paper, but with controls over track width, tilt, etc.
There's a bit of documentation you can use to learn the basic controls.


The Unity Tools are what's used to make a distributable custom track. You feed the track files from the track creator (*.TRM) (and possibly scenery made in 3rd party software) into it and export them as a custom track. They require begginer's level of Unity3D knowledge. If you want to make scenery for your track you will need to know how to use a 3D CAD (computer aided design) such as Blender3D (free) and an image editor such as Photoshop or GIMP (free), as Unity3D's purpose is not to make 3D assets nor textures. That is another set of skills you'll need to learn, although we will provide video tutorials on how to make a simple track from scratch (track-creator included), going through scenery model and texturing, sometime in the future.


For an absolute noob in all these aspects, the best one can expect in a reasonable timeframe is just making the track circuit with the track creator and using Unity to export it to a custom track to be distributed on the steam workshop. No scenery whatsoever as that is the most time consuming and most skill demanding part of track making.

[Hot Violet]

Cheers for the helpful answer.

I think I will give it a try once it hits the public build. Afterall, there is very little scenery in the Mode 7 style F-Zero games so missing it out shouldn't impact the experience too much... I hope. :)