BlastZone 2 News

A big new gameplay focused update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.28.3.0) I have recently received a few game balance suggestions from the community, so I’ve taken a lot of time to go through every game mode in the game to improve gameplay balance. The biggest part of this update makes a number of changes to Mission Mode stat upgrades. These upgrades are now 33% more potent per pickup, but to balance that out, the drop rates have been reduced, and starting stat levels are slightly lower to prevent the player from becoming overpowered. Along with this, the Mission Mode HUD has been updated to add icons to associate item pickups with each stat. Some users have been confused as to which pickup upgrades which stat, so this clears that up.

More gameplay balance changes include reducing the vertical hitboxes for player beams and projectiles. This will increase the skill needed to hit enemies, but to balance this out, enemy bullet hit boxes have been significantly reduced as well, making it easier to dodge them. This will make the recently more bullet focused Survival and Blitz modes more fun to play. Also, the number of points drops in Survival and Mission mode have been increased to improve the number of bonus multipliers in Survival Mode and Hyper power boosts in Blitz Mode. From testing, this helps Blitz Mode in particular, as strategic play rewards the player more to better maintain Hyper Mode to fight back against the more intense later waves of enemies.

A few other tweaks and bug fixes round out the update. For more details on all the balance changes and other changes included in this update, check out the full release notes below:

• Added new stat icons to the Mission mode hud to show which powerup affects which stat
  
• Rebalanced all stat upgrades in Mission mode so stat management has a greater affect on gameplay
  -Reduced the baseline power of all stats for all ships in Mission mode (doesn't affect other game modes)
  -Reduced starting stats by 5%
  -Increased the potency of all stat powerups
  -Increased stat increase potency by 33%
  -Reduced the occurrence of stat powerup drops from enemies
  -Reduced proportional powerup drops from 60% to 40%
  -Increased proportional points drops from 10% to 30%
  -Increased the stat reduction penalty for losing a life
  -Training difficulty - 2 -> 3
  -Pilot difficulty - 4 -> 5
  -Verteran difficulty - 6 -> 7
  
• Tightened up enemy bullet hit boxes to make them easier to dodge
  -Cut enemy bullet hit box size by 50%
  -This makes a bigger difference for larger enemy bullets
  
• Reduced the vertical hitbox size for player bullets and beams
  -The wide beam hitbox size has been reduced by 28%
  -The omega cannon hitbox size has been reduced by 19%
  -Bullet projectiles hitbox size has been reduced by 25%
  
• Adjusted the proportional drop rates in Survival and Blitz modes for more points drops and fewer health drops
  -Increased proportional points drops from 50% to 60%
  -Reduced proportional health drops from 50% to 40%
  
• Enemy bullets now stay the gameplay color for longer when passing through the gameplay plane in Z space
  
• Enemy tracking bullets outside the gameplay plane now have an adjusted color to differentiate them better
  
• Fixed shaking player ship bug during the wave outro animation
  
• Updated the mission mode help screen
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.28.3.0” or higher. Enjoy the new gameplay improvements!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2. The biggest change in this update is adding new burst fire shots to long range enemy types for Survival and Blitz modes. This adds to the variation of obstacle types to dodge, making the gameplay more interesting. Also, all burst fire shots are fired directly at the player, so it gives a unique audio and visual signature to predict that behavior for dodging.

This update also makes a few changes to the help screens to be more informative of how to play each game mode. This includes better controls displays and updated descriptions on each of the pages. Updated logos have been created for the game as well, making use of the recent graphics improvements to the game.

The Demo version has been updated to the latest version as well. This brings over a huge amount of updates and improvements that have been added to the full version over the last few months. Now, Demo players can enjoy improvements to widescreen support, gameplay, graphics, performance, and the new renderer.

Here are the full release notes for v1.28.2.1:

• Added burst fire shots to long range enemies in Survival/Blitz mode
  -Player targeted bullets are now fired in groups of 3
  -Gives a distinct visual and sound signal for bullets fired directly at the player
  -Changes the way the bullet patterns need to be dodged
  
• Scaled down the number of player targeted bullets fired by long range enemies in the Pilot and Training difficulty levels
  
• Updated a few of the help screens
  
• Brightened the game title image
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.28.2.1” or higher. Enjoy the new update!

A gameplay improvement update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.28.2.0) This update puts more emphasis on bullet patterns by making improvements to long range enemy types for Survival and Blitz modes. Now, long range enemy types move around the right side of the screen for a while and fires rapidly at the player. This brings more variation to gameplay by giving the player a broader scope of enemy behaviors to account for to survive.

An update has been made to enemy bullets to make them easier to track in 3D space. When enemy bullets are outside the gameplay plane, they use a more washed out color, then change to the standard color as they pass through the gameplay plane and can hit the player.

There are also a few performance improvements for the new OpenGL 3.0 renderer. Shaders are now dynamically swapped out for objects based on the current lighting situation to improve graphics performance. Dynamic batching of shader properties has also been implemented to reduce shader management CPU overhead. The new 3d matrix calculation system created a few updates back has been improved as well to better balance multithreading workloads between the rendering and main update threads, improving overall CPU performance. A rare multithreading crash bug was also fixed in this update.

Here are the full release notes for v1.28.2.0:

• The long range enemy type now moves around the right side of the screen for a while, firing at the player
  -This only applies to the Survival and Blitz game modes
  -Increases the emphasis on bullet dodging in these modes, as there was previously too much emphasis on dodging enemy ships
  -These enemies eventually move toward the player to prevent too many from piling up on the right side of the screen
  
• Clearing a wave in Survival or Blitz mode now clears all bullets from the screen to prevent dying between levels
  
• Enemy bullets that are outside the gameplay plane are now colored differently to make it easier to track bullets in 3D space
  
• All player ships are now always in memory, slightly reducing load times between scenes
  
• Updated the custom enemy scripting system to allow for using any player ship model
  -Previously only allowed for using the current Player 1 ship
  
• Updated Class #1 enemy scripting to add the following parameters
  -Stop X position
  -Stop Time
  -Enable AutoFire
  
• Updated the Stress Test level packs to make it easier to test performance
  -Removed AutoFire from enemies
  -Starting stats are now maxed out
  -Increased starting lives for all difficulties to 5
  
• Improved performance when the player is not using Hyper Mode or beam weapons in the OpenGL 3.0 renderer
  -Eliminates extra lighting calculations when only a single light is active
  
• General shader management optimizations for the OpenGL 3.0 renderer
  
• Improved render matrix management performance and parallelism in a few areas
  -Includes enemy ships, enemy bullets, player bullets, and player booster
  -These improvements affect both the OpenGL 1.5 and 3.0 renderers
  
• Fixed a rare multithreading crash bug at the end of the final player death animation
  
• Tweaked screen wipe transitions
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.28.2.0” or higher. I hope everyone enjoys this gameplay update!