Ballistic NG - Wipeout fan project

[Jonny]

I guess there is enough place for a lot of ships.
Is this the opportunity to see the AAGRC-C-E-P 1.5t flying? Pls

[bigsnake]

Yeah there's enough space for anything honestly, I'm not really wanting to limit how many ships (and tracks for that matter) can be in the game. Ideally I only want a set number by default in the game, but extra ships can always be provided with Unity Asset Bundles and modding

[Chill]

Well I'm liking the fact that this track feels like it ventures out into Mother Nature a bit more than what Studio Liverpool has done with Wipeout.. As well as the darkness.. Things I've missed since older Wipeouts.. I think Wip3out did so well due to the George Lucas dark atmosphere vibe it had going for it, I really miss that as well.. I just hope Sony brings it back in the future, most likely with all the virtual reality stuff..

[Ace3000]

Only just realized that it's a thread on the forum, gonna go check it all out soon. Can't say the story is my top priority just yet but getting a foothold of something basic is defiantly better then starting with nothing

If it makes your life easier (since the thread is 76 pages long), you can read the info you need on the FTA Wiki (yeah, we have one of those, thanks Jonny! )

[bigsnake]

Oh sweet, that'll make life much easier, thanks !

Well I'm liking the fact that this track feels like it ventures out into Mother Nature a bit more than what Studio Liverpool has done with Wipeout.. As well as the darkness.. Things I've missed since older Wipeouts.. I think Wip3out did so well due to the George Lucas dark atmosphere vibe it had going for it, I really miss that as well.. I just hope Sony brings it back in the future, most likely with all the virtual reality stuff..

Wipeout with VR would be damn cool, my brother has an oculus rift so if I can get it off him for a short while then I could implement a full cockpit view with virtual reality support into this. But yeah hopefully one day Sony will bring back Wipeout, I don't want to keep my hopes too high with that though because it most likely won't happen.

[bigsnake]

Physics Test 3
This test is setup as a time trial, once you've finished your last lap the ship will be handed over to AI and your results will be displayed on screen. I've also added speed pads and a developer settings menu. All of the ship settings I have access too are in the menu, read the readme for everything you need to know.
Download - https://db.tt/MSN7mJjp

[JABBERJAW]

sweet stuff here. I will test it later tonight again. I love all the options you are allowing us to see.

Grip force: is this how much the ship grips the track? or how it leaves the track surface over bumps?

[bigsnake]

How much the ship grips to the track. The grip force controls drag (or air resistance) and then the slip settings are for controlling how the airbrakes drag the ship around, lowering the turn falloff and airbrake falloff will also make the ship slip for longer. If you combine a low grip with higher slip values then the ship will slide around and swing out more.

Update: added another slip variable for overall slip control and allowed slip values to be zero so the ship can grip perfectly to the track.

[JFthebestJan]

since this is a PC project, what about implementing force feedback racing wheel support? i always dreamt of flying through wipeout with a wheel. would make the feeling of actually flying the ship much more enjoyable i can say this, cause i played F-Zero X with my wheel on an emulator, it's truly amazing!!!!!

another thing i would like to suggest is a really long track like the Nordschleife/Isle of Man, with ultra hard corner combos.

[AGgamer]

After looking at it a little bit, I don't see why this would be illegal if the Super Smash Brothers Brawl mod "Project M" can get away with it. Since Project M runs on a moddified brawl engine, it's quote "sort of legal" because its a "mod." Creator of a Skyrim mod wouldn't be sued by Bethesda would he? Since this is a modification of WipEout HD Fury's engine (from my understanding, it is at least a replication of it) it should fall under the area of "sort of legal" as well. Change the name from "wipeout" to something that doesn't reference wipeout and hey presto, it's in the same boat as Project M.

I'm not saying that I know for sure, I'm just trying to offer some insight. If Project M gets away with calling Mario and Pikachu "Mario" and "Pikachu" then why can't this project get away with calling Feisar and Qirex "Feisar" and "Qirex". You know?

[bigsnake]

since this is a PC project, what about implementing force feedback racing wheel support? i always dreamt of flying through wipeout with a wheel. would make the feeling of actually flying the ship much more enjoyable i can say this, cause i played F-Zero X with my wheel on an emulator, it's truly amazing!!!!!

another thing i would like to suggest is a really long track like the Nordschleife/Isle of Man, with ultra hard corner combos.

I think racing wheels should work with Unity's default input without any problem (you'd have to try binding the steering on the Unity launcher), vibration is something I can implement easily with a third party plugin. I'll check out some plugins for extending controller I/O and see what I can do. Also yeah a long track is something I want to try out, it would be great for really pushing endurance (especially with 5 laps).

After looking at it a little bit, I don't see why this would be illegal if the Super Smash Brothers Brawl mod "Project M" can get away with it. Since Project M runs on a moddified brawl engine, it's quote "sort of legal" because its a "mod." Creator of a Skyrim mod wouldn't be sued by Bethesda would he? Since this is a modification of WipEout HD Fury's engine (from my understanding, it is at least a replication of it) it should fall under the area of "sort of legal" as well. Change the name from "wipeout" to something that doesn't reference wipeout and hey presto, it's in the same boat as Project M.

I'm not saying that I know for sure, I'm just trying to offer some insight. If Project M gets away with calling Mario and Pikachu "Mario" and "Pikachu" then why can't this project get away with calling Feisar and Qirex "Feisar" and "Qirex". You know?

The only problem is that we don't know how Sony stands on copyright with fan projects. Nintendo seem to be very wishy washy with how they treat fan projects, some projects are allowed but some aren't, it's strange how they work. The only reason I'd assume Project M is allowed is because it requires Brawl before you can play it, that means Nintendo can make a profit from it. Skyrim mods are obviously fine because Bethesda encourage modding, which is why Skyrim got a mod SDK. Unless I'm able to contact someone in the legal department at Sony it's safer to just keep it as a game that inspires from the original Wipeouts, I also don't necessarily want to begin finding out how to contact Sony about it either because then that would put a spotlight on the project for a while.

[Xpand]

Intelectual property for Wipeout is still copyrighted though, stuff like team names might be the most problematic since it's what basically bridges the gap between two AG racing games.
SSGX was supposed to be a remake of the first WO game, but we had to leave that idea behind when we contacted Sony and were told to give up on the idea of using their intelectual property.

[bigsnake]

Indeed, names are the most problematic. I'm not sure how the more minor names would stand (like the speed classes for example), I'm still going to be renaming certain things just to remain safe. That answers the question to what would Sony think though so thanks Xpand, I guess Sony just don't like the idea of fan projects.

Also I've got the game setup for races, here's a demo of that. I'm interested to see how performance changes with this, I've already done a bunch of optimizations and CPU time has been decreased quite a bit although garbage collection every now and then spikes (it shouldn't have a noticeable effect on performance, but I'm still looking at sorting it out). The AI aren't the most intelligent right now but this serves as a good early stress test.

Update
Currently working on the tool for importing and setting up custom ships, It'll be part of the next update and have a user friendly interface. Gonna keep this post updated with screenshots of the progress.

XML file that has been saved from the game (getting settings to be read and wrote):

[AGSys]

Bloody hell, the one thing that really caught my attention with this is the atmosphere. It's so reminiscent of the classic trilogy it, brings back so many feels. Nostalgia is like a drug for me so this is just pure awesome. Great work man!

[bigsnake]

Thanks man, glad you like it!

I've got one last physics test, it has a classic Wipeout camera (press C, by default) and some minor tweaks to hovering.
Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B84...ew?usp=sharing

[bigsnake]

Just a quick update: Meg.A.Byte kindly contributed his Hyperion ship model, download a test build with it here!


Notes

• Physics have been heavily tweaked to feel like more like Wipeout 3. The hovering is a mix between the older Wipeout's and Wipeout HD, being fairly bouncy but stable. For the handling, most of your turning should come from just turning with slight taps of the airbrakes. Using the airbrakes will quickly swing you out into the walls. The pitching right now remains fairly useless, I'll be focusing on the pitching soon.
• Added boost thrusters that activate when you start accelerating or hit a speed pad.

I'm also considering adding barrel rolls into the game, it gives being airborne a purpose. Sideshifting will not make its way in though as those will essentially break the game at this point.

I'm also back at college after a 2 week break so development will slow down a bit.

[TheXTR09]

Dang, the ship looks sick! This should fit AGR's utopian world well.
And go ahead adding barrel rolls and side shifts. What you've done is a great hybird of a PurE/Wip3out physics. But still I prefer the gravity in later games.

[JABBERJAW]

The older games allow for you to be in the air a lot, just by pressing back off little bumps. The air time in the older games was for landing softer to keep your speed up, and small track shortcuts. It was also used for softer scraping around turns. If barrel rolls were added to the older games, it could be a barrel roll around the entire track. I think that once you get the pitch control in, you will hopefully not want to do that. Think about the gravity in XL class and wo three, when you are pitching back, you kinda fly at times, especially in the pal versions

On a side note, I am happy you are keeping side shifting out, as that would completely wreck the feel if you are trying to mimick the older versions.

[bigsnake]

Barrel rolls are in, if they end up messing around with the balance of the game at a later point then I can always disable them.

I'm working on the pitching now, I'll keep this post updated with changes and additions I make:

Physics:

• Lowered gravity setting from 210 to 180
• The ship now only has 80% of its full grip when airborne now
• Removed airborne angular drag resistance
• Added barrel rolls
  
  The following are changes based on feedback from Jabberjaw via PM
• Pitching now affects your top speed (about a 65km/h difference on D class, less in higher speed classes as drag means that more force has to be applied at higher speeds)
• Pitching now more greatly affects the hover damping (how fast the ship levels out to the target hover height)
• Pitching down decreases drag and makes walls slow the ship down slightly less, pitching up increases drag and makes walls slow the ship down slightly more

Other:

• HUD now moves about, vibrates and zooms/changes opacity based on ship movement and the ships condition.
• Added ship boosting wind trails
• Added start boosting (around a 1 second time frame to start thrusting to boost)
• Added turbo pickup

Bug Fixes:

• Ship collider rotation fix (it was being created at a 45 degree angle for some reason, it messed with wall collisions and hovering near walls)
• Random wall knockback that flew the ship into the air (this was rare)

[PureSpeed7]

I'd love to see some creative track designs, Anulpha pass just can't be compared to alca vexus.