Improved B1/B2 main weapon, ship descriptions, and many optimizations(v1.31.1.0)

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.31.1.0) This includes a significant improvement to the B1/B2 ship primary weapon, making it more effective in long range combat. The “Burst Shot” still has a high damage close range spread of bullets, but the center bullet now continues moving across the rest of the gameplay area, allowing it to hit long range enemies. However, the long range bullet is less effective than from other ships, moving slower and doing less damage over time. This is better than having no long range component at all and keeps the ship balance and intended gameplay style intact. This especially makes bosses more fun to play against. Previously, the only long range attack option was to rapidly tap the Fire2 button, which can be tiresome.

This update also includes descriptions for each ship in the single player ship selection screen. This helps show the play style of each ship to help newer players decide which is the most fun.

A big part of this update is optimizations across many areas of the game engine. On the GPU side, this includes vertex processing speed improvements across the board and lighting optimizations. On the CPU side, a significant chunk of rendering calculations have been offloaded from the rendering thread to the update thread, better balancing the multithreading workload. Combined, these optimizations have up to a 20% performance improvement depending on the situation and hardware used.

For more details, check out the full release notes for v1.31.1.0 below:

• Updated the "Burst Shot" main weapon for the B1 and B2 ships to be more viable for long range
  -Now, the center bullet for each burst shot no longer disappears, allowing it to hit long range targets
  --This is especially useful for bosses
  -Previously, the only long range option was the low charge Fire2 shot, but that required rapidly tapping the Fire2 button
  --This is still available now, just as a secondary option
  -However, the B1/B2 ships still aren't as effective long range as other ships
  --Long range bullet DPS is lower than other ships by about 25%
  --Long range bullets travel slower, making it more difficult to hit fast moving targets
  --This is to balance out the very high short range damage they have
  
• Added a short description for each ship for the single player ship selection screen
  -Helps newer players get an idea of the type of gameplay each ship has
  
• Optimized vertex throughput on the GPU side for all shaders in the game
  -Results in a 10-20% performance boost in all situations
  
• Optimized lighting calculations for all Normal Mapped and Vertex Lit objects in the game
  -Boosts performance by up to 5-10% when many lit objects are on screen
  
• Built a new set of 2 light shaders to greatly improve performance in some situations
  -Previously, a set of shaders were built for when 1 light or 3 lights are active, and used 3 light calculations when only 2 were active
  -Now, when only 2 lights are active, the shader workload is reduced by 33% per object rendered
  -For reference, the 3 types of lights used are:
  --Camera light (always on)
  --Hyper mode glow light
  --Beam light
  
• Optimized the shader management system to eliminate unnecessary shader setup in some situations
  
• Offloaded many CPU-side rendering calculations from the render thread to the update thread to better balance the workload
  -Results in up to a 10% performance gain when many enemies and bullets are on screen
  -Client side rendering performance for online multiplayer increases by up to 15% when many objects are on screen
  
• Fixed a shader bug that would occasionally render item drop models incorrectly for some systems
  
• Fixed a few rare graphic glitches in enemies and the home world terrain for some systems