BlastZone 2 News

This is an announcement that BlastZone 2 leaderboard score submissions are now working again. I apologize for the inconvenience, but leaderboard score submissions were broken for a while, stalling at the "Getting info from the server" message in game. Reading leaderboard scores never had any issues, both on the website or in game, but submitting new scores has now been fixed. This is an immediately available server side fix and doesn't require any client side updates.

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.29.3.3) This is mostly a maintenance release, but fixes and improves a few significant areas. Specular highlights have been improved for numerous objects in the game, being more accurate and better performing than before. Objects affected include enemies, bosses, and player ships. However, the biggest specular lighting improvement is in the cave background, showing much more depth and detail.

This update includes greatly reducing Boss hull damage on the player. This was previously too harsh, so the damage was cut in half to balance difficulty better. Animation hitching has been greatly reduced as well, making gameplay much smoother than before. This was a thread timing issue that affected some CPUs more than others. Also, a particle-related crash issue has been fixed; apologies to anyone affected by this.

Here are the full release notes for v1.29.3.3:

• Improved specular highlight accuracy and performance in the shaders for all enemies, bosses, player ships, and the cave background
  -Only affects the OpenGL 2.0/3.0 renderer
  -The cave background has the greatest improvement, adding more depth and detail to the lighting
  
• Reduced Boss hull damage from 50 to 25
  
• Reduced hitching from thread timing improvements
  
• Increased the framerate cap to 60fps when running in the background
  
• Increased ambient light for the OpenGL 1.5 renderer to match the OpenGL 2.0/3.0 renderer
  
• Fixed an occasional crash when a large number of particles are on screen
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest version, launch the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.29.3.3” or higher. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.29.3.2) The main focus of this update is on rebalancing Training Mission mode to make it more fun to play. This is the first impression many players have of the game, so it is a very important element to improve. Damage output for all ships have been greatly increased to make enemies easier to destroy, addressing an issue many new players have. This also makes each section of a level quicker to take down, putting a greater emphasis on “popcorn” enemies generated between each section as the player gains experience. To counterbalance this and keep overall difficulty the same, this mode starts with fewer lives and fewer bonus lives are awarded during play. This also helps serve as a better training environment to help new players transition to higher difficulties.

General improvements to the Mission Area 1 design have been made for all difficulty levels, as well as many other fixes and improvements. Here are the full release notes:

• Rebalanced Training Mission mode to be more fun to play
  -Greatly increased weapon damage for all ships in this mode to make enemies easier to destroy
  -Also makes boss battles complete faster
  -Many level sections can be completed faster now, putting a greater emphasis on generated "popcorn" enemies
  -Reduced the number of starting lives and bonus lives to counter balance to the easier to kill enemies
  
• Increased the Z range when enemies can be hit by player bullets
  -Makes enemies moving quickly in Z space easier to hit
  
• Added hand placed Health and Points item drops for fast moving Z space enemies in Mission Area 2 and 3
  -Converts these enemies to "bonus enemies" with rewards for destroying them
  
• Adjusted several enemy spawn positions for Mission Area 1 to prevent them from moving outside the gameplay space
  
• Updated emissive lighting for bosses and enemies to be completely uniform, regardless of external lighting
  
• Added a "Try another game mode" gameover screen option when using Kiosk mode
  
• Removed the "Quit Game" menu options from the Pause and GameOver screens
  -The only "Quit Game" menu option left is in the main menu
  
• Added a new "Ship Selection" menu option to the GameOver screen
  
• Removed the "Disconnect" menu option from the Online Multiplayer pause screen
  -This makes it more difficult to quit/disconnect from an online game accidentally
  
• Added a hidden "useParticleHelperThreads" option to the config file
  -This is enabled by default
  -Disabling this still uses multithreading for the particle system, but limits particle updates to a single thread
  -Enabling this uses existing functionality from previous versions, allowing dynamic particle thread scaling up to 16 CPU cores
  -This option was created for debugging purposes; it fixes a rare crash issue when multiple instances of the game are running on the same system
  -It is still recommended to keep this option enabled, as the crash issue doesn't affect running a single instance of the game
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest version, launch the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.29.3.2” or higher. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.29.3.1) This one is focused on making several changes based on feedback and observations from the AVGC BlastZone 2 was shown at. This includes difficulty balancing, streamlining menus, screen wipes, improving ingame text, bug fixes, and more. This is a relatively small update, but it addresses many small things to improve the experience as a whole. Thanks a lot to everyone who dropped by our booth and helped contribute to making the game better!

Also, UAC access requests have been removed from the game, which may fix antivirus false-positives and administrator requirements. BlastZone 2 never made use of UAC access, but the access request is a compiler option that was never supposed to be enabled. Another long running bug that has finally been fixed is the 4k render scale issue. People running 4k monitors or high DPI scaling will now display the game properly. Any feedback on how well these fixes work for you is welcome.

Here are the full release notes for v1.29.3.1:

• Increased hyper power usage for the OmegaCannon from 200 to 250
  
• Increased all ship damage for Mission Training mode to make enemies easier to kill
  
• Player 2 exploder shots are now easier to see
  
• Changed the wave intermission weapon unlock text to be more exciting
  
• Increased starting stat levels for a few level select options
  
• Removed screen wipe animations during the level select screen
  
• Removed the Local/Online selection menu when playing a multiplayer Kiosk game
  
• Fixed incorrect game render scaling when Windows is set to a high DPI render scale above 100%
  -This fixes rendering issues with many 4k displays
  
• Removed UAC access requests
  -This fixes administrator requirement issues with some systems
  -This fixes some antivirus false-positives
  -UAC access was never used in BlastZone 2 and the access request in the executable manifest was left in by accident
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest version, launch the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.29.3.1” or higher. Enjoy!

BlastZone 2 has a booth at AVideoGameCon (AVGC) 2018 this weekend Sept 15-16 in Secaucus, NJ! In celebration, there is a 25% sale on the game all weekend for everyone. Pick it up while the sale lasts!

For more information about the convention, visit the website at: http://www.AVideoGameCon.com