BlastZone 2 News

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.33.2.0) The primary improvement in this update makes the Training Mission mode more accessible for new players by slowing down the gameplay by 25%. This includes enemy spawn timing, movement, firing rates, bullet speed, bosses, and the environment camera. Player ship movement remains the same though. Player testing has been done and this was identified as a key area to help newer players get up to speed on the game. This also helps align the experience with Training mode of other game modes, as they already have a slower gameplay speed.

This update also contains numerous small optimizations around the whole game that amount to roughly a ~1% performance boost. In addition, a lot of work has been done under the hood in the rendering system of the game engine, upgrading how it operates. This allows for the possibility of big new features to be developed in the future, but they will be announced at a later date. The updates done so far will have no noticeable impact when playing the game.

Here are the full release notes for v1.33.2.0:

• Reduced the speed of Training Mission mode by 25%
  -This includes all aspects of mission mode, except for the player ship
  -This affects enemy spawn timing, enemy movement, firing rates, bullet speed, bosses, and the environment camera
  -This was designed to help onboard newer players into the game better
  -Helps newer players get ready for the more advanced difficulty levels
  
• Optimized general performance by up to 1%
  -Implemented a generalized texture batching solution that affects nearly all objects in the game
  -Optimized menu background box rendering
  -General shader setup optimizations
  -Optimizations for background particles
  
• Improved leaderboard score submission security
  
• Overhauled code organization for the game engine rendering system
  -This lays the groundwork for potential big updates in the future
  -This is purely a game engine design upgrade, and doesn't change functionality for the end user yet
  
• Fixed the connection error message for TCP multiplayer, so it now displays correctly when attempting to join a server
  
• More time is now taken when attempting to join a TCP multiplayer serve
  -More reliably determines if a successful connection can be made
  -Retries the connection multiple times before giving up
  
• Improved robustness when starting and stopping a TCP multiplayer game to prevent potential bugs
  
• Fixed a small memory leak when applying new video settings
  
• Fixed a rare crash issue when applying new video settings soon after starting the game
  
• Renamed the "useParticleHelperThreads" config file option to "useParticleAuxThreads"
  -This will reset this option to "Enabled" when first starting the game after updating
  -If it is desired to disable this option, it can be disabled the normal way after updating
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.33.2.0” or higher. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.33.1.0) This update adds new mouse cursor lock functionality to the A1 ship. This means if mouse controls are used for this ship, it will always be in the precise position the mouse cursor is. In the hands of a skilled player, this allows for a degree of precise movement around bullets and hazards that otherwise was not possible. The reason why only the A1 ship received this upgrade is because of difficulty balancing. The A1 ship has the weakest armor and weapons, but the fastest speed in the game, so it fits this play style. Giving any other ship this capability would break the game. All other ships will continue using their original mouse behavior, which follows the mouse cursor at the highest speed each ship is capable of moving. A new display has been added to the ship selection screen to show which ships support mouse cursor lock or not, but is only shown when mouse controls are enabled.

This update also includes a few rare crash fixes, mouse button fixes, and particle alpha value clamping fixes. Also, there is a general performance uplift of about 1%. More details are listed below in the full change log:

• Added the ability to lock the player ship to the mouse cursor
  -This is currently only enabled for the A1 ship
  -This eliminates the "trailing behind" effect for the ship when quickly moving the mouse cursor around
  
• Added a new text display in the ship selection screen to show which ship uses cursor lock or not
  
• Fixed a few mouse button bugs that would erroneously have buttons stuck in the "down" state in menus
  
• Fixed a rare crash bug related to player bullet deletion
  
• Fixed a rare crash bug when attempting to parse truncated packets in online multiplayer
  
• Fixed occasional particle alpha value clamping issues
  
• Fixed incorrect world leaderboard display in some cases
  
• Optimized general performance by up to 1%
  -Optimized areas that affect most objects in the game, providing a consistent uplift
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.33.1.0” or higher. Enjoy!

A big new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.33.0.0) This update completely reworks all text displays in the game to support localization. Alongside this update, 10 translations are being added to the game, bringing the total to 11. Localization support has been a highly requested feature for a while now, and this will make the game accessible to a much greater audience. It was a huge undertaking to upgrade the underlying engine to support this, as well as all the translation work for each language.

The languages released so far include English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Polish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Russian. More may be released in the future on request. Also, please let me know if errors are found in any of the translations and they will be promptly corrected. A lot of time went into checking over each translation, but it’s possible a few errors got through anyway.

The localization system uses a new discrete language data file that can be updated separately from the main game binary. Translation corrections can be done, and entirely new languages can be added to the game just by updating this file. Updates of this nature can be quickly released, without having to wait for a new stable binary update.

The text rendering system has also been upgraded to support thousands of new characters, including accented characters from European languages, as well as characters from East Asian languages, such as Japanese, or Korean. Previous versions of the game only supported the 128 baseline ASCII character set, which only supported the English language.

Here are the full release notes for v1.33.0.0:

• Added localization support for all text in the game
  -Reworked all text displays in the game to support dynamic replacement based on the selected language
  -Automatically detects the default Steam language to work as the "Default" language setting in-game
  -Additional languages can be added in the future by updating data files without updating the main game executable
  -Translation errors can be quickly corrected without waiting for the next stable binary release
  
• Upgraded the FreeType text rendering system to support UTF-8 character sets
  -Previous versions only supported the 128 character baseline ASCII character set for text
  -Now, up to 65536 unique characters are supported
  -This enables compatibility with translations to numerous other languages
  
• Now supports 11 total languages
  -Current list of languages:
  --English
  --Spanish
  --French
  --Italian
  --German
  --Portuguese
  --Polish
  --Japanese
  --Korean
  --Chinese
  --Russian
  -Users with any of these languages set as their system language will automatically have the localization setting adjusted accordingly
  -Other users who wish to use any of these translations can change it from the options menu, or the external configuration program
  
• Made numerous adjustments around the game for text positioning, sizing, and menu dimensions to fit several potential localizations
  -This includes centering the menu items for several menus and using two menu selector arrows, one on each side
  
• Greatly improved VRAM usage efficiency for the text rendering system to counteract higher memory requirements for supporting more languages
  -Reduces text VRAM usage when using the English language by about 25%
  -Adding support for accented characters for western European translations only adds about 50% more memory usage for the text system
  --This equates to about 2mb more VRAM
  --Without this optimization, supporting these new characters would double text system VRAM usage (8mb total)
  -This saves hundreds of megabytes of VRAM when East Asian languages are used
  -This consists of 3 main optimizations
  --All non-visible glyphs are no longer loaded into VRAM at startup
  --Only glyphs that exist in the loaded TTF file are loaded into VRAM
  --Extended characters are dynamically streamed as they are used, instead of being loaded at startup
  ---This ensures only glyphs for the current language are loaded
  
• Improved performance of all text rendering
  -Up to a 10% rendering performance boost for text
  -This raises overall performance by about 1%
  -This was done by eliminating draw calls for all space ' ' characters
  
• Made a few HUD text adjustments when running the English language
  -Changed the "XX Left" enemy counter to "XX Remaining"
  -Changed "x mult" to "x multiplier"
  
• Made several adjustments to the English language text around the game
  -This includes descriptions, dialog text, etc
  
• Greatly improved background particle spawning performance
  -Has the greatest effect when spawning many background particles per frame (>100)
  -Internal testing shows over a 10x performance improvement in the background particle creation process in some situations
  -Background particles are very rare in this game, so most users won't notice a difference
  
• Improved general particle spawning performance
  -Improves update thread performance by up to 20%
  -Reduces hitching if numerous explosions are set off at the same time, such as completing a level
  
• General robustness improvements have been made to the sound system
  -Prevents a few potential sound-related bugs from occurring in the future
  
• Updated the external config application to handle language changes
  
• Changed the default value of "Display Switch Compatibility" from enabled to disabled
  -This allows display switching to work better for most users
  -This is only needed for one specific system setup:
  --Using a secondary display when connecting a laptop to an external monitor while using a hybrid passthrough display
  
• Swapped menu item locations of "Online (TCP)" and "Online (Steam)" in the multiplayer selection menu
  -This makes the menu item order more intuitive; in priority order
  -New item order:
  --Local
  --Online (Steam) - This is the best option for most users, so it is more prominent now
  --Online (UDP) - This is the next best online option, should only be used if unable to connect to Steam
  --Online (TCP) - This is a last resort option if unable to connect to Steam and the connection quality is very poor, causing bugs in UDP
  
• Updated the Leaderboard Submission/Download process to eliminate all drive usage
  -Previous versions would download sever data to local files, then read those files
  -Now, all server data is downloaded into system memory, then directly used from there
  -This improves performance of all Leaderboard-related operations
  
• Added a countermeasure to prevent game-breaking bugs if the update thread becomes overloaded
  -This issue was never reproduced under normal conditions, but was technically possible
  
• Fixed a bug in the online server lobby screen that would erroneously display only the second player ship when the second player hasn't joined yet
  -this would occur after previously playing a local coop game with the mouse as the second player controller
  
• Fixed some wave intermission text not being displayed when completing wave 8 of Classic A Training mode
  
• Fixed a rare multithreading crash bug in the particle system
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.33.0.0” or higher. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2. (v1.32.7.3) The biggest update in this release is that the game executable is now built as a native 64 bit binary, eliminating the need for a 32 bit compatibility layer. Advantages of this include faster loading times and a much higher memory usage limit. To use the new 64 bit version, no special action is needed besides the usual Steam game update, it will auto detect which version is best suited for your setup. That means 32 bit systems are still compatible with the game, and those users will receive the 32 bit version of the latest game update.

This update also includes lower memory usage during loading screens and a 1-2% performance boost. More details are below.

Here are the full release notes for v1.32.7.3:

• Added native 64bit binaries for the game
  -Replaced the main game executable and all DLL files with native 64bit versions
  -32bit versions are also available for the latest version of the game for those running a 32bit OS
  -Benefits of 64bit include faster loading times, and support for greater than 1.8gb of ram
  -This allows the game to run natively in a 64bit OS without depending on a 32bit compatibility layer
  
• Fixed a rare case when the game speed could slow down when running on a low end CPU
  -This used to occur when there was a heavier load on the simulation/update thread than the render thread
  
• Optimized matrix operations across many objects; reduces update thread workload
  -Eliminates unnecessary calculations for components that don't need to be updated
  -Improves overall performance by up to 1-2%
  
• Reduced memory usage overhead when loading models by up to 25%
  -Uses 10% lower memory overall during the startup loading bar
  -When switching backgrounds with Extreme quality terrain, reduces memory usage while loading by 100mb
  --Other terrain quality settings also reduce memory usage, but the difference is proportionally less
  -This also slightly improves loading times
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.32.7.3” or higher. Enjoy!

**UPDATE** - A 64 bit compatibility issue has been reported for Windows 7, so the 64 bit version of v1.32.7.3 has been disabled while the issue is looked into. All users will use the 32 bit version for now until the issue is resolved. Apologies for any inconvenience.

**UPDATE #2** - The previously mentioned 64 bit Windows 7 compatibility issue has been fixed and update released. The native 64 bit version has been restored as well. If you have problems starting the game under Windows 7, please restart Steam to ensure you have the latest update.

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2. (v1.32.7.2) This is a maintenance release, including reduced hitching for large particle counts, and a rare multithreading crash fix. Also, this update migrates to the latest version of the LibPNG library used for texture loading.

Here are the full release notes for v1.32.7.2:

• Reduced particle update hitching when first exceeding the 20,000 particle precache size
  -Still hitches a little when this occurs, but much less than before
  
• Fixed a rare multithreading crash bug in the particle system
  
• Migrated from LibPNG 1.5.30 to 1.6.37
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.32.7.2” or higher. Enjoy!

*Hotfix - Fixed a small memory leak when displaying dialog boxes during cutscenes