v1.37.0.0 - 3D positional sounds, buffed exploder shots, and many improvements!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.37.0.0) Substantial upgrades have been made to the OpenAL sound system for this update. This includes 3D positional sound sources, tracking object movement for attached sounds, and remastered sound assets that are compatible with the new system. Also, surround sound speaker support has been added, but all the action is in front of the camera. Sound source velocity and doppler effect support has been added to the sound system as well, but are not utilized yet.

This update also dramatically cuts down on disk space usage, bringing the maximum install size from 1.4GB down to about 530MB. The greatest disk space savings is for when all high detail terrain DLC is installed. This was accomplished by taking full advantage of custom built asset compression formats for the game engine, and maintains identical quality for all assets in the game.

This update also includes many other improvements, a few bug fixes, and optimizations. Here are the full release notes for v1.37.0.0:

• Added support for 3D sound positioning
  -This affects all sounds generated by the player, enemies, bosses, or item pickups
  -These sounds will spatially blend between stereo speakers based on the in-game position of the sound
  -Surround sound speaker systems are technically supported, but are not utilized because sound producing objects are never behind the game camera
  -Also supports moving sounds, including tracking the player ship's position while charging up a power shot
  -Supports sound velocity and doppler effects, but these are not utilized yet
  -All applicable sound assets have been downsampled from stereo to mono to be compatible with positional sound
  -Numerous sound assets had their volume levels increased or reduced to work better with positional sound
  -Several sounds, including menu actions, screen wipes, and bonus feedback are not affected by this upgrade, and will maintain their non-positional stereo mastered playback
  -Much of the OpenAL sound system and data pipeline was upgraded to support positional data attached to sounds and handle the playback of that data
  
• Reduced baseline volume for all music and sound playback
  -Is now at 1/5th the volume it was originally
  -This brings the overall volume of the game closer to most other games at default settings
  
• Improved high frequency update support
  -Improved timing of each update subcycle
  -Evened out the simulation delta of each subcycle
  -Fixed a rare stutter issue for heavy update workloads
  -Increased the update rate limit from 200 up to 800
  
• Slowed down all exploder and cluster projectile explosion progression by about 50% to boost their effectiveness for groups of enemies
  
• Improved the wave intermission blastoff animation
  -The player ship now flies further in the distance before the screen wipe
  -The whole animation now lasts about 1 more second
  -The screen wipe duration has been extended so it is less abrupt
  -The blastoff sound effect now fades out as the screen wipe occurs
  -The next level now always loads when the screen wipe is at full opacity, ensuring a seamless transition
  
• Replaced the menu selector movement sound with a new sound asset
  
• Tightened up the Flurry Shot bullet trail particle effects
  -Condensed the particles closer to each bullet, to make it clearer where each bullet is
  
• Slightly optimized player bullet particle trail cpu usage
  
• Lengthened the particle bullet trails of slow moving player bullets, such as burst shot projectiles
  
• Increased the size and length of exploder projectile particle trails
  
• Added a "/10" suffix to music and sound volume config options
  
• Choosing the "Ship Selection" option from the gameover screen now switches to the menu music
  
• Fixed a bug that wouldn't properly stop charging sounds when both players charge at the same time during a multiplayer game
  
• Fixed a bug what wouldn't stop charging sounds for the final player death animation in a single player game
  
• Fixed burst fire enemy bullets not playing sounds for Survival and Blitz modes
  
• Fixed some single fire enemy bullets not playing sounds for Survival and Blitz modes
  
• Fixed incorrectly rendered particle trails for exploder projectiles fired by the player
  
• Fixed an occasional music playback stutter when starting a new Area/Wave in a new environment
  
• Fixed an occasional enemy bullet flicker issue when running high update rates, or for slow CPUs
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.37.0.0” or higher. Enjoy!