BlastZone 2 News

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.31.3.1) This one focuses on a few gamepad improvements. Analog stick controls have been improved, allowing for continuous 360 degree movement angling. This improves movement precision and eliminates the old “snapping” directions. Previously, the analog stick would prioritize moving up, down, left, and right with only a small area of analog angling at each of the diagonals. Also, the dead-zone at the middle of the analog movement area has been shrunk, allowing for finer movements at a small scale and a greater degree of speed range in each direction.

This update also improves gamepad deinitialization when closing the game. This has the potential of fixing edge case bugs for some gamepads on some systems.

Here are the full release notes for v1.31.3.1:

• Improved analog movement with a gamepad thumbstick
  -It is now easier to move slightly up/down while moving left/right and vice-versa while angling the thumbstick direction
  --Now uses continuous 360 degree angling instead of "snapping" to up, down, left, and right, with smaller analog angling zones between them
  -Reduced the thumbstick dead-zone from 20% to 10% to allow for more precise movement
  
• Improved gamepad deinitialization on shutdown
  
• Reduced the number of averaged frame times from 10 to 8
  -Helps reduce game speed reaction time when the rendering workload quickly changes
  -Maintains enough averaged frames to smooth out frame hitches well
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.31.3.1” or above. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.31.3.0) This update makes huge performance gains, one of the biggest improvements seen in a single update. Gains range from 15-25% when using lower terrain detail levels, up to 50-60% for Extreme detail settings. This significantly lowers the hardware requirements; If anyone had performance issues with the “VeryHigh” or “Extreme” terrain settings in previous versions, I strongly suggest trying them out again with this new release. This improvement was done by adding lower detail terrain block LODs for areas far in the distance. This has a minor reduction in image quality, but won’t be noticeable in most situations.

This huge boost in performance was also used to increase the view distance for all ViewDistance detail levels. This increases detail for the VeryHigh setting by about 20%, while still having big performance gains over previous versions.

The drawback of this update is more memory usage and a greater workload during the startup loading screen. System ram usage will increase by up to 25mb and vram by 75mb, but any machine that could already run the game should have no issue with this. Also, the startup loader has been improved to scale up to more cpu cores/threads to take on the increased workload, making the increase in loading time negligible in most situations.

There are a few bug fixes as well. For more details, here are the full release notes for v1.31.3.0:

• Added support for terrain model LODs to greatly improve performance
  -Uses lower detail models for terrain far in the distance
  --Has a small reduction in image quality, but in most cases it is barely noticable
  -Improves performance by up to 50-60% over previous versions
  --Lower terrain detail levels have about a 15-25% boost
  --Higher detail levels have the greatest boost
  
• The startup loader now scales up to 9 cpu threads if available
  -These additional threads load terrain LODs in parallel
  -This does not reduce the overall loading time, only loads more data in the same amount of time
  -CPUs with 9 threads or more will see no increase in loading time
  -CPUs with 6-8 threads will only take slightly longer to load, and will have a higher and more consistent workload across all available threads
  -CPUs with 4 threads or less will take longer to load now
  --Previous versions already saturated all 4 threads, and there is a larger amount of data to load now
  --Loading times should only increase by a few seconds at most
  -For reference, previous versions scaled up to 6 cores/threads
  
• Increased the view distance for all ViewDistance settings
  -Increased the "VeryHigh" setting by 20%
  --This slightly reduces performance, but overall performance is still much higher from previous versions from the LOD optimizations
  -Each of the other settings are equivalent to one setting higher from the previous version
  --"High" is equivalent to the "VeryHigh" setting from previous versions
  --"Normal" is equivalent to the "High" setting from previous versions
  --"Low" is equivalent to the "Normal" setting from previous versions
  
• Fixed the Outer Space background not rendering correctly when using the "Low" ViewDistance setting
  
• Fixed some screen elements and objects not rendering correctly for low/normal view distance settings on some hardware/driver combinations
  -Transition screen wipes and fades
  -Final player death red screen fade
  -Ship select stat bars
  -Distant background color for the cave environment
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.31.3.0” or above. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.31.2.0) This update makes several improvements to the object culling system. This includes high precision culling, multithreading optimizations, and early cull detection. These improve performance the most for background terrain, ranging up to a 15-20% boost, depending on system specs and detail settings.

This update also fixes compatibility issues with older GPU hardware and drivers that are limited to OpenGL 3.1 or 3.2. These cases now fallback to the OpenGL 3.0 renderer. Other bug fixes include occasional incorrect sizing and fog for enemies.

A small hotfix update was recently released as well. This fixed a bug that would occasionally get the player ship stuck in a highlighted state during wave intermission and wave intro sequences.

For more details, here are the full release notes for v1.31.2.0:

• Made several improvements to object frustum culling
  -Offloaded frustum culling calculations to the update thread is many cases
  --Reduces the rendering thread workload, improving overall performance
  -Added support for early object culling in many cases
  --Eliminates most setup calculations for objects that are culled out
  -Added a new high precision codepath
  --More aggressively culls out objects near the edge of the screen without affecting visible objects
  --Is more computationally intensive, but is usually combined with offloading from the render thread to accelerate the process
  --This is handled automatically without any user configuration
  
• Big terrain rendering optimization
  -Uses the new high precision frustum culling code path to eliminate more offscreen terrain
  -Also makes use of the offloaded frustum culling calculations and early object culling detailed above
  -Improves performance by up to 15-20% depending on system specs and terrain detail settings
  
• Offloaded all terrain matrix operations from the render thread to the update thread
  -Better balances the workload between threads, improving CPU performance
  
• Increased the minimum requirement of the OpenGL 4.6 renderer to OpenGL 3.3
  -This fixes issues with some OpenGL 3.1 and 3.2 drivers
  -These drivers will now fallback to the OpenGL 3.0 renderer
  
• Player and Enemy bullet trails now smoothly move offscreen
  -Previous versions would remove the bullet trail too soon after the front of the bullet moves offscreen
  
• Increased the thread priority for a few startup loading threads and the particle thread manager
  -Improves startup loading time by sacrificing loading bar animation smoothness
  -Distributes particle thread work more quickly for CPUs with more than 2 cores
  
• Fixed the player occasionally picking up item drops after death
  
• Fixed incorrect enemy sizing in some situations
  
• Fixed fog not being applied to distant enemies
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.31.2.0” or above. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.31.1.1) This update primarily improves texture filtering in a number of scenarios, fixing graininess and moire effects in HUD textures and menu borders when running resolutions below 1080p. This also improves performance at lower resolutions, matching asset pixel density to each display resolution. This doesn’t affect resolutions at or above 1080p, as those already use the highest quality assets.

This update also changes the planet edge atmosphere design in the outer space environment. The render process for this effect has been changed from 2 passes to a single pass, improving performance. This required the asset to be rebuilt, so the design was improved as well.

Here is an image illustrating texture improvements in this update at lower resolutions. The HUD texture takes the worst case scenario in previous versions, running at 1024x768 resolution, and the same texture at the same resolution with the latest version. It also shows the updated atmosphere effect. Take a look:


Here are the full release notes for v1.31.1.1:

• Improved HUD textures when using lower resolutions
  -Only affects screen resolutions lower than 1080p
  -All HUD textures now use lower res versions when a lower screen resolution is used to match detail
  -Graininess and moire effects have been cleaned up for lower resolutions
  -Performance has been slightly improved for lower resolutions
  
• Changed the atmosphere glow design around the planet in the outer space environment
  -Also changed how it is rendered to improve performance
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.31.1.1” or above. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.31.1.0) This includes a significant improvement to the B1/B2 ship primary weapon, making it more effective in long range combat. The “Burst Shot” still has a high damage close range spread of bullets, but the center bullet now continues moving across the rest of the gameplay area, allowing it to hit long range enemies. However, the long range bullet is less effective than from other ships, moving slower and doing less damage over time. This is better than having no long range component at all and keeps the ship balance and intended gameplay style intact. This especially makes bosses more fun to play against. Previously, the only long range attack option was to rapidly tap the Fire2 button, which can be tiresome.

This update also includes descriptions for each ship in the single player ship selection screen. This helps show the play style of each ship to help newer players decide which is the most fun.

A big part of this update is optimizations across many areas of the game engine. On the GPU side, this includes vertex processing speed improvements across the board and lighting optimizations. On the CPU side, a significant chunk of rendering calculations have been offloaded from the rendering thread to the update thread, better balancing the multithreading workload. Combined, these optimizations have up to a 20% performance improvement depending on the situation and hardware used.

For more details, check out the full release notes for v1.31.1.0 below:

• Updated the "Burst Shot" main weapon for the B1 and B2 ships to be more viable for long range
  -Now, the center bullet for each burst shot no longer disappears, allowing it to hit long range targets
  --This is especially useful for bosses
  -Previously, the only long range option was the low charge Fire2 shot, but that required rapidly tapping the Fire2 button
  --This is still available now, just as a secondary option
  -However, the B1/B2 ships still aren't as effective long range as other ships
  --Long range bullet DPS is lower than other ships by about 25%
  --Long range bullets travel slower, making it more difficult to hit fast moving targets
  --This is to balance out the very high short range damage they have
  
• Added a short description for each ship for the single player ship selection screen
  -Helps newer players get an idea of the type of gameplay each ship has
  
• Optimized vertex throughput on the GPU side for all shaders in the game
  -Results in a 10-20% performance boost in all situations
  
• Optimized lighting calculations for all Normal Mapped and Vertex Lit objects in the game
  -Boosts performance by up to 5-10% when many lit objects are on screen
  
• Built a new set of 2 light shaders to greatly improve performance in some situations
  -Previously, a set of shaders were built for when 1 light or 3 lights are active, and used 3 light calculations when only 2 were active
  -Now, when only 2 lights are active, the shader workload is reduced by 33% per object rendered
  -For reference, the 3 types of lights used are:
  --Camera light (always on)
  --Hyper mode glow light
  --Beam light
  
• Optimized the shader management system to eliminate unnecessary shader setup in some situations
  
• Offloaded many CPU-side rendering calculations from the render thread to the update thread to better balance the workload
  -Results in up to a 10% performance gain when many enemies and bullets are on screen
  -Client side rendering performance for online multiplayer increases by up to 15% when many objects are on screen
  
• Fixed a shader bug that would occasionally render item drop models incorrectly for some systems
  
• Fixed a few rare graphic glitches in enemies and the home world terrain for some systems