Greatly improved minimum and average particle performance (v1.32.4.0)
A new update has been released for BlastZone 2. (v1.32.4.0) This update improves performance in a few aspects of the particle system and fixes bugs.
The biggest improvement in this update is a big performance boost when hitting the foreground particle cap. This dramatically improves the minimum particle update rate when the whole screen is filled with particles. This applies to all particle detail levels except for VeryHigh, as that doesn’t have a particle count cap. The amount of performance gain has a wide range and depends on the rate of new particles being spawned while the cap is reached. This ranges anywhere from about a 10% boost, all the way up to a 800% boost for extreme test case scenarios. In common gameplay scenarios, the boost is around 50-60% in specific cases, which is still quite substantial. Please note this only affects the asynchronous update rate of particle movement and has no effect on the framerate of the rest of the game.
Player ship booster particle rendering has been optimized to run many times faster, improving overall performance by 5-10% at all times during gameplay. This was done by combining all booster particles into a single draw call. It was the last remaining particle effect lacking this optimization after the v1.32.0.0 overhaul a few months back.
For more details, here are the full release notes for v1.32.4.0:
As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.32.4.0” or higher. Enjoy!
The biggest improvement in this update is a big performance boost when hitting the foreground particle cap. This dramatically improves the minimum particle update rate when the whole screen is filled with particles. This applies to all particle detail levels except for VeryHigh, as that doesn’t have a particle count cap. The amount of performance gain has a wide range and depends on the rate of new particles being spawned while the cap is reached. This ranges anywhere from about a 10% boost, all the way up to a 800% boost for extreme test case scenarios. In common gameplay scenarios, the boost is around 50-60% in specific cases, which is still quite substantial. Please note this only affects the asynchronous update rate of particle movement and has no effect on the framerate of the rest of the game.
Player ship booster particle rendering has been optimized to run many times faster, improving overall performance by 5-10% at all times during gameplay. This was done by combining all booster particles into a single draw call. It was the last remaining particle effect lacking this optimization after the v1.32.0.0 overhaul a few months back.
For more details, here are the full release notes for v1.32.4.0:
- Improved performance for player ship booster particles
-Improves overall performance during gameplay by 5-10%
-This completely reworks how the player ship booster is rendered
-In isolation, the booster now renders 20x faster
-This was the last particle effect not upgraded to a single draw call from the v1.32.0.0 update - Greatly improved performance when the foreground particle limit is reached
-Affects all particle detail levels, except VeryHigh
--VeryHigh has no particle limit
-Greatly improves the minimum update rate for particles in the most intense scenarios
-Improves particle performance from 10% up to 800%
--Depends on the rate new particles are being spawned
--The 800% figure is from an extreme stress test scenario
--More common in-game scenarios will be closer to 50-60% in specific cases
-This update deletes the oldest particles when the limit is reached
--In previous versions, older particles were culled out, but were still being simulated
-This update has no effect on the rendered framerate of the rest of the game
--Only improves the asynchronous update rate of particles - Improved particle multithreading when both foreground and background particles are on screen
-Improves performance by up to 16% when both particle types are on screen
-Makes no difference in performance when only foreground or background particles are on screen
-The main game doesn't use background particles, so most players won't notice a difference - Added an opening fade in animation for the gameover screen
- Fixed the gameover screen default menu selection being incorrect
- Fixed a rare bug that didn't clear out all particles when changing scenes
- Fixed rare background particle graphic artifacts
- Slightly improved background particle rendering performance
- Reworked how draw call and triangle counting is calculated for debug displays
-Much more accurate now, previous versions missed some draw calls and triangles in the counting process
-This is only used for debug displays, not used otherwise
As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.32.4.0” or higher. Enjoy!