It's time for the first content related devlog and in this one we'll be focusing primarily on new weapon effects, an update to Utah Project and custom campaigns.

Weapon Effects
Weapons have had some visual updates! Projectiles now have flares and use a trail mesh instead of particles. This makes them look more sollid in gameplay and makes them look much nicer to take screenshots of in photo mode.







Utah Project
Utah Project has had a scenery overhaul to bring it up to level with other tracks in the game. The environment has been redone entirely from scratch, with brand new textures and much more city. The general building design has stayed somewhat the same and the small dam originally seen now spans across the entire length of the track and towers over everything.









Custom Campaigns
It's now possible to load in custom campaigns. For the time being the campaigns are defined by hand in XML files, building an interface to make this easier is on the agenda. The game also supports streaming a video file from disk for the animated graphic you see down the right hand side of the campaign list.

Custom campaigns support custom tracks, ships and gamemodes! The only limitation is that you cannot force a specific custom ship, only allow the player to select one.

When you create a custom campaign the game will integrate it into the campaign menu as if it was an official set of events. It will have its own progression so you can build a list of events that unlock as you earn medals.



Other Stuff
This is a list of other major development changes. A lot of the smaller changes have been left out for simplicity.

• Added a new screen to manage C# mods
  
• Added custom music playlists - you can organise your music by folders and choose to play everything or only play music in a specific folder
  
• Removed texture filtering option. This has been long overdue, on release the game will always use point filtering unless a track author decides otherwise
  
• 3D track pads can now be used in 2159 physics. If you have a custom track with no pad tiles of a certain type the game will now enable manually placed 3D pads in place of them
  
• Quitting in survival now ends the session instead of quitting back to the menu straight away (campaign awards are also counted when doing this)
  
• You now start survival with a boost
  
• VR now uses a separate settings.ini file so you can change graphics, audio and gameplay settings independently between VR and non VR sessions
  
• Speed pads now also increase engine thrust, making a more permanent and noticeable speed increase (especially in higher speed classes)
  
• The menu can now load custom music. Supports up to 4 instrument layers
  
• The unlock screen now uses animations, see here: https://twitter.com/BallisticNG/status/992110160423407616