Hey everyone! If you've released tracks for BallisticNG then you'll want to read this as it's about compatibility with older custom tracks when 1.1 releases. The purpose of this announcement is to give creators an early heads up so 1.1 doesn't suddenly break your content. First and foremost, if you've released a track that was:

• Built using the BNG 1.0 or 1.0.3 Unity Tools
• A 0.9.4 track with a DX11 buiid
• Released before 0.9.4 but exclusively uses BNG shaders and doesn't incorporate any stock Unity shaders

then you have nothing to worry about and your tracks will work as they always have when 1.1 releases!

What's going on?

As BallisticNG is moving forward with newer versions of Unity we've unfortunately had to say goodbye to DX9, which impacts compatibility with older custom tracks. Check out the first 1.1/Neon Nights dev update for more info: https://steamcommunity.com/games/473770/announcements/detail/1799657041070338356 Older DX9 only tracks will continue to function and be playable, but any materials that use stock Unity shaders will show up pink. From our testing the vast majority of the to be affected tracks are missing either sky strips or particles - more of an annoyance then something game breaking.

I have an older track, what should I do?

Not much! If you haven't already, update your Unity Tools to the latest from 1.0.3 (make a backup of your project first, just in case). When you're setup with the latest version all you need to do is build your track as you normally would and then update your WTRK file if you've published to the workshop. And that's it, your older track is now future proof! You'll want to test your track after building it for the first time with updated tools. While you shouldn't run into any issues, you can never be too careful.

Why only stock Unity shaders?

When BallisticNG loads a custom track it has a list of shader names that it references to swap out the Unity Tools version with the in-game version. We set this up as a pre-caution to negate the issues that any potential graphics API compatibility issues like this could have We can't do the same for Unity shaders as only the shaders we use in the game are actually put into the built version, so if somebody is using a more obscure Unity shader (or their own) in their track then BNG doesn't actually have it available and it has to be provided by the track itself instead. Hopefully this heads up is useful and gives you enough time to update your tracks if need be. 1.1 will be the only update in the foreseeable future that will lower compatibility with older content, apologies for the inconvenience. Happy modding!

[ 2019-06-02 07:54:26 CET ] [ Original post ]