BlastZone 2 News

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.36.1.0) This update adds several technical improvements to the engine. This includes improved, more accurate and consistent physics across any frame rate. There are also a few improvements to frame time consistency, reducing frame hitching that existed in specific situations for some systems, and an improved frame limiter, for a smoother overall experience. This update also includes particle system optimizations, using an additional CPU thread for spawning particles, and reducing frame hitches when many particles are on screen.

Here are the full release notes for v1.36.1.0:

• Improved physics in a few areas of the game
  -More accurate movement calculations when accelerating objects
  -Fixes slightly different movement behavior for different frame rates
  -Affects these areas of the game:
  --Player throwbacks when firing big weapons or getting hit
  --EnemyC Behavior 4 (bouncing movement)
  --Many particle effects, including explosions, bullet trails, bullet impact buffs, etc.
  
• Improved particle spawning performance
  -Uses an additional thread to run particle spawning in parallel to other particle operations
  -Reduces particle update hitches when numerous explosions occur at once
  
• Reduced render frame hitches when many particles are on screen
  -Dynamically allows more time to buffer particle data into vram when many particles are on screen
  
• Improved CPU thread management to improve frame time consistency and reduce hitching
  -Better matches the number of active threads with the number of available CPU cores/threads
  -Ensures the graphics driver has enough CPU resources to maintain consistent rendering performance
  
• Improved precision and accuracy of the frame rate limiter
  -Uses 64 bit operations for the whole frame limiter process to improve precision
  -Reduced computational overhead for calculating the timing of each new frame
  
• [Hotfix]-Fixed Mission+ mode erroneously being unlocked by completing Survival mode
  
• [Hotfix]-Fixed some mode/ship unlocks occurring after Wave 6, now consistently requires Wave/Area 8 completion in all modes
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.36.1.0” or higher. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.36.0.0) This update adds another new game mode, Mission+ Mode! This works similar to “New Game+” in other games, as it starts Mission Mode from the beginning, but with all weapons and abilities unlocked, and all stat upgrades at level 3. To keep the difficulty balanced, this mode is always played at Veteran difficulty, and with fewer lives to start. This mode can only be unlocked once Pilot Mission Mode is completed.

Here are the full release notes for v1.36.0.0:

• Added the Mission+ game mode
  -Starts the Mission campaign with all weapons and abilities unlocked, and level 3 stat upgrades
  -Always uses "Veteran" difficulty and fewer starting lives, to offset the more powerful starting loadout
  -This serves as a new way for advanced players to play the game
  -Requires completion of Pilot Mission mode to unlock this mode
  
• Added new local highscore categories for the singleplayer and multiplayer variations of Mission+ Mode
  -Automatically migrates local highscore data from previous versions on startup
  
• Added world leaderboard support for Mission+ Mode
  
• Slight optimization for preparing draw calls
  
• Particle system optimizations when spawning new effects
  
• Fixed mismatched drawing parameter count for some objects
  -Fixes potential visual inconsistencies for some objects
  
• Upgraded a few 3rd party libraries:
  -Curl v8.0.1
  -FreeType v2.13.0
  -libPNG v1.6.39
  -libVorbis v1.3.7
  -SteamAPI v1.56
  
• Updated vertex shaders for the GL 4.X renderer to prevent potential rendering issues
  
• Fixed debug frame data briefly showing zeros for most stats when first opening it
  
• Fixed some Mission Mode script playback not being stopped when entering the gameover screen
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.36.0.0” or higher. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.35.0.0) This update adds a brand new game mode, Turbo Mission Mode! The goal of this mode is to add an alternative high difficulty way to play the main campaign that is very fast for advanced players. This increases the speed of the player ship, enemies, and enemy bullets by 35%, but keeps the ‘Pilot’ quantity of enemies, similar to the Turbo modes for Survival and Blitz. New highscore categories and leaderboards have been added for this new mode as well. Enjoy the new mode!

Here are the full release notes for v1.35.0.0:

• Added Turbo Mission Mode to the game
  -Increases the speed of enemies, enemy bullets, and player movement by 35%
  -Uses the same enemy formations and quantity as 'Pilot' difficulty
  -This new mode serves as an alternative way to raise the difficulty for advanced players
  
• Added new local highscore categories for the singleplayer and multiplayer variations of Turbo Mission Mode
  -Automatically migrates local highscore data from previous versions on startup
  
• Added world leaderboard support for Turbo Mission Mode
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.35.0.0” or higher. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.34.2.0) This update focuses on rebalancing the Training difficulty of Survival and Blitz modes. This involves several aspects, including enemy spawn rates, bullet firing rates, difficulty scaling between waves, and messaging to the player. The difficulty of earlier waves have been reduced, but later waves maintain their difficulty and there are fewer starting lives to balance the overall experience. This was done to help ease new players into the game and learn its systems before the difficulty ramps up.

This update also includes localization fixes, a new command console, and a crash fix. Here are the full release notes for v1.34.2.0:

• Rebalanced the Training difficulty for Survival and Blitz modes
  -Greatly reduced the enemy spawn rate baseline for waves 1 and 2
  -The spawn rate significantly increases each wave until wave 7 and 8 nearly reaches the spawn rate of previous versions
  -Reduced bullet firing rate of Type A Enemies
  -Reduced starting lives from 5 to 4
  -Added a popup message when entering wave 7 to instruct the player to use charge weapons here
  --Charge weapons are stronger in Training mode, and can break through large groups of enemies
  
• All Type A enemies in Survival/Blitz modes now wait a short period of time before starting to fire bullets
  
• Added support for centered message text during gameplay
  -Ship/Mode/Difficulty unlock messages now use centered text
  -The new Training mode Wave 7 message uses centered text
  
• Addressed text that was not localized for Ship/Mode/Difficulty unlock messages
  
• Unlocking a new ship now immediately saves progress to disk
  
• Fixed a rare crash bug when closing the game
  -Was caused by a rare thread collision when shutting down Steam services
  
• Added a new command console interface
  -Press the tilde '~' button to access it
  -Displays a history of previously received messages
  -Press up or down to access previously entered commands
  -This makes it easier to text chat with other players in online multiplayer games
  
• Added input support for several special character when sending chat messages in online multiplayer
  -Includes the top number bar of special characters, and slashes, brackets, colons, quotes, etc.
  -Double quotes are disabled to prevent packet parsing issues in multiplayer
  
• Optimizations for the particle system
  -Improves framerate and update time consistency
  
• Changed menu item and description text for friends list and online lobbies multiplayer
  
• [hotfix] - Fixed duplicate incoming chat messages in the command console during online multiplayer
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.34.2.0” or higher. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.34.1.1) This is a smaller update that includes optimizations, bug fixes, and refinements. The full release notes are listed below:

• Improved event timing when doing screen wipes
  -Ensures the screen is always fully obscured when loading is taking place
  
• Optimized the damage flashing effect for enemies, bosses, and the player ship
  -Previously used 2 passes to create this effect, now its all done with 1 pass
  -Generally provides a minor performance boost, but can improve performance by up to 5% for bosses for some systems
  -This optimization only works for the OpenGL 3.0 and 4.6 renderers
  --The OpenGL 1.5 renderer reverts to the old 2 pass approach, slightly reducing performance
  
• Fixed the player ship being occasionally being stuck in a glowing state during the ship selection screen
  -This would occur when leaving a previous game while the player ship is taking damage
  
• The debug frame stats display now uses commas for the draw calls and particle count displays
  -Also updated spacing for the particle count displays
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.34.1.1” or higher. Enjoy!