BlastZone 2 News

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.29.4.0) A big part of this update is refactoring several components of the underlying tech and engine of the game. This was done to find and fix existing bugs, reduce the likelihood of new bugs, and speed up development of new features.

There are several bug fixes and improvements in this update as well. Most notably, load times for the outer space background have been greatly improved. This makes the biggest difference when using the “VeryHigh” or “Extreme” terrain detail packs. Other environments still have the ~1-2 second load time in this case, but loading the outer space environment is nearly instantaneous.

This update also includes frame pacing improvements, netcode improvements, graphical tweaks, optimizations, bug fixes, and more.

Here are the full release notes for v1.29.4.0:

• Refactored several components of the engine, including the camera system, light system, background switching, window initialization, menu system, text system, and more
  -Makes the codebase more robust and reduces the chances of bugs occuring in the future
  
• Improved frame pacing when vSync is off or the frame rate is below the refresh rate
  
• Fixed some rare inconsistent timescale update values (improves frame pacing)
  
• Greatly improved the outer space background load time
  -This makes the biggest difference when using VeryHigh or Extreme terrain detail settings
  
• Improved netcode packet loss tolerance for the following scenarios:
  -The client pauses the game
  -The client returns to the lobby
  -Sending text messages by the client or server
  
• Renamed the in-game "Vertical Sync" option to "vSync" to maintain naming consistency with the configuration application
  
• Optimized cpu usage of all text rendering
  
• Applied a small optimization to background terrain rendering
  
• Improved multithreading concurrency for background terrain, water, and clouds
  
• Fixed brief graphical corruption when switching between the OpenGL 1.5 and 3.0 renderers
  
• Fixed the player ship aura animation playing too fast in some situations
  
• Fixed some particle effects appearing differently depending on the current frame rate
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.29.4.0” or above. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.29.3.4) This is a smaller update that makes a few improvements to enemy bullet tails, including a more consistent animation and improved performance. Previous versions would look just fine at 60fps, but would get distorted when running a framerate above or below that. Now, they look perfectly consistent across any framerate. Also, particular care was put into how the animation works for high refresh rate displays (144+ hz) to make it look as smooth as possible. Optimizations have also been made to significantly reduce the CPU load when many enemy bullets are on screen. This was done by increasing the amount of reused data from previous frames, thus eliminating a significant amount of redundant calculations. Player bullet trails have been improved as well, but the biggest difference there is better particle distribution when running a framerate below 60fps.

Here are the full release notes for v1.29.3.4:

• Greatly improved enemy bullet trail animation consistency across all framerates
  -Used to look best at 60fps, but have distortions above and below 60fps
  
• Added 1 more enemy bullet trail shadow to improve animation smoothness for high refresh rate displays
  -Updated enemy bullet trail detail scaling to maintain the same performance of previous versions
  
• Optimized enemy bullet trail matrix calculations by reusing more temporal data from previous frames
  
• Evened out the player bullet trail particle distribution for framerates above and below 60 fps
  -Makes the biggest difference below 60fps
  -Makes player bullet trails look the same for all framerates
  

Another hotfix update was recently released to fix a few smaller bugs and issues. Here are the hotfix release notes:

• Fixed a bug that wouldn't reset the LevelSelect state when playing an online multiplayer game after previously playing a level select game
  
• Changed the default online multiplayer GameOver menu option for the client player to "Return to lobby", instead of "Disconnect"
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.29.3.4” or above. Enjoy!

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!