A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.37.1.0) This upgrades the particle system to support a 2-pass approach to particle rendering. What this means is, most particle effects now share a unified alpha channel, and separate the alpha render pass from the color render pass. This allows most particle effects, such as enemy explosions, to maintain their ‘melding together’ effect of adjacent particles, while also being more prominent from the background. The previous additive-only particles would sometimes get blown out or lost in bright backgrounds, or colors closely matching the color of the particles. This new approach leverages multicore CPUs to neutralize much of the increased workload, resulting in only a minor net increase in particle processing time. The rendering side does have an increased load, but is still low enough overall that virtually all systems won’t see a slowdown.

A few bug fixes and optimizations are included in this update as well. Here are the full release notes for v1.37.1.0:

• Upgraded the particle system to support 3 categories of particles; Additive, Subtractive, and Sorted
  -The new category introduced is Subtractive
  -Mirroring particles in both the Additive and Subtractive categories can be used to improve particle image quality
  --Doing this melds together unified color/alpha channels for groups of adjacent particles, while keeping them prominent from the background
  --This works great for volumetric effects, such as explosions
  --This prevents the particle colors from getting washed out when used with certain backgrounds
  -The particle multithreading system has been extended to run the new Subtractive particle category in parallel with other categories of particles
  --This allows CPUs with 4 or more cores to run the additional load with minimal performance loss
  
• Upgraded several particle effects to take advantage of the upgraded particle system, using the new melded/unified approach to alpha channels
  -Enemy explosions
  -Boss explosions
  -Bullet trails
  -Bullet impacts
  -Bullet firing
  -Attaining charge levels
  -Holding charge levels
  -Item pickups
  -Final player death
  -Enemies impacting the mother ship in Classic modes
  
• Fixed the cloud unlock data getting reset when starting the game from a fresh new install
  
• Fixed the autoplay demo from always using the Homeworld background
  
• Fixed the autoplay demo from erroneously using music from the selected background, now maintains the menu music as intended
  
• Optimized all non-gameplay states of the game by eliminating elements of gameplay rendering that are not needed in these cases
  -Improves performance by up to 5% in these cases
  
• Improved accuracy of render thread time readouts when showing debug frame stats

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.37.1.0” or higher. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.37.0.0) Substantial upgrades have been made to the OpenAL sound system for this update. This includes 3D positional sound sources, tracking object movement for attached sounds, and remastered sound assets that are compatible with the new system. Also, surround sound speaker support has been added, but all the action is in front of the camera. Sound source velocity and doppler effect support has been added to the sound system as well, but are not utilized yet.

This update also dramatically cuts down on disk space usage, bringing the maximum install size from 1.4GB down to about 530MB. The greatest disk space savings is for when all high detail terrain DLC is installed. This was accomplished by taking full advantage of custom built asset compression formats for the game engine, and maintains identical quality for all assets in the game.

This update also includes many other improvements, a few bug fixes, and optimizations. Here are the full release notes for v1.37.0.0:

• Added support for 3D sound positioning
  -This affects all sounds generated by the player, enemies, bosses, or item pickups
  -These sounds will spatially blend between stereo speakers based on the in-game position of the sound
  -Surround sound speaker systems are technically supported, but are not utilized because sound producing objects are never behind the game camera
  -Also supports moving sounds, including tracking the player ship's position while charging up a power shot
  -Supports sound velocity and doppler effects, but these are not utilized yet
  -All applicable sound assets have been downsampled from stereo to mono to be compatible with positional sound
  -Numerous sound assets had their volume levels increased or reduced to work better with positional sound
  -Several sounds, including menu actions, screen wipes, and bonus feedback are not affected by this upgrade, and will maintain their non-positional stereo mastered playback
  -Much of the OpenAL sound system and data pipeline was upgraded to support positional data attached to sounds and handle the playback of that data
  
• Reduced baseline volume for all music and sound playback
  -Is now at 1/5th the volume it was originally
  -This brings the overall volume of the game closer to most other games at default settings
  
• Improved high frequency update support
  -Improved timing of each update subcycle
  -Evened out the simulation delta of each subcycle
  -Fixed a rare stutter issue for heavy update workloads
  -Increased the update rate limit from 200 up to 800
  
• Slowed down all exploder and cluster projectile explosion progression by about 50% to boost their effectiveness for groups of enemies
  
• Improved the wave intermission blastoff animation
  -The player ship now flies further in the distance before the screen wipe
  -The whole animation now lasts about 1 more second
  -The screen wipe duration has been extended so it is less abrupt
  -The blastoff sound effect now fades out as the screen wipe occurs
  -The next level now always loads when the screen wipe is at full opacity, ensuring a seamless transition
  
• Replaced the menu selector movement sound with a new sound asset
  
• Tightened up the Flurry Shot bullet trail particle effects
  -Condensed the particles closer to each bullet, to make it clearer where each bullet is
  
• Slightly optimized player bullet particle trail cpu usage
  
• Lengthened the particle bullet trails of slow moving player bullets, such as burst shot projectiles
  
• Increased the size and length of exploder projectile particle trails
  
• Added a "/10" suffix to music and sound volume config options
  
• Choosing the "Ship Selection" option from the gameover screen now switches to the menu music
  
• Fixed a bug that wouldn't properly stop charging sounds when both players charge at the same time during a multiplayer game
  
• Fixed a bug what wouldn't stop charging sounds for the final player death animation in a single player game
  
• Fixed burst fire enemy bullets not playing sounds for Survival and Blitz modes
  
• Fixed some single fire enemy bullets not playing sounds for Survival and Blitz modes
  
• Fixed incorrectly rendered particle trails for exploder projectiles fired by the player
  
• Fixed an occasional music playback stutter when starting a new Area/Wave in a new environment
  
• Fixed an occasional enemy bullet flicker issue when running high update rates, or for slow CPUs

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.37.0.0” or higher. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2. (v1.36.3.0) This update adds high frequency update support! This means, even if the game is running at 60fps, the game input and simulation could be running at up to 200hz. This allows for the responsiveness of a high refresh rate display without the need for one. This is similar to other low latency technologies, such as Reflex or Anti-Lag, but this is a single solution effective across all graphics vendors. Other game engines require synchronizing input and simulation updates with the render frame rate, but the BlastZone 2 game engine has been architected in a unique way. It allows for the rendering and input/simulation systems to run completely asynchronously from each other, making high frequency updates possible.

This is an exciting new technology, and I can’t wait to hear about everyone’s experience with it!

This update also includes a few bug fixes. Here are the full release notes for v1.36.3.0:

• Added support for independent update rates from the frame rate
  -Allows for running the game/simulation update at a much higher frequency than the frame rate
  -Allows for snappier, more precise controls, even for low frame rates
  -If the frame rate exceeds the target update rate, the update rate will dynamically increase as well to prevent duplicate frames
  --The target update rate acts as an update floor, only taking effect for frame rates below it
  -Defaults to a 60hz update rate, but can be adjusted in the range of 30-200hz
  -In previous versions, enabling game update multithreading had a small latency penalty in exchange for higher performance
  --Running a higher update rate allows for having the performance benefits of multithreading, with lower latency at the same time
  
• Doubled bullet firing density for the Boss 4 first bullet firing pattern
  -Addresses a safe area exploit that made this area too easy in previous versions
  
• Added an "MSAA" suffix to all applicable antialiasing settings
  
• Fixed bugs that would occasionally make the player ship too large or too bright during level intro/flyin animations
  
• Fixed broken enemy bullet rendering when disabling the VBO render code path
  
• Slightly optimized enemy bullet rendering
  
• Updated the external configuration program to support the new UpdateRate setting

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.36.3.0” or higher. Enjoy!

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.36.2.0) This update focuses on multithreading improvements, and a few performance improvements. This includes reduced frame hitches, up to 10-25% particle system performance gains from improved memory bandwidth efficiency, and a general 10% performance gain from adding support for SIMD FMA cpu instructions.

Here are the full release notes for v.1.36.2.0:

• Most of the advanced multithreading options can now be applied without restarting the game
  -This includes the following options:
  --Game Update Multithreading
  --Particle Multithreading
  --Auxiliary Particle Threads
  -Core elements of multithreading management were updated to make this possible
  -The "Sound Multithreading" option still requires a game restart at this time
  
• Improved thread management of the particle system
  -More of the startup loading process is done asynchronously, slightly improving the game startup time
  -Reduced frame hitching when many particles are on screen
  
• Optimized memory bandwidth performance for the particle system
  -Results in up to a 10-25% particle update performance gain
  -Greatly cut down on memory fragmentation
  
• Added support for SIMD FMA CPU instructions
  -Improves general performance by up to 10% for CPU's that support these instructions
  -Matrix multiply operations on the CPU side benefit the most from this, being over 100x faster
  -Uses an SSE2 fallback for older CPUs that don't support these instructions
  
• Enabled anisotropic filtering for several HUD elements and sprites to improve sharpness of them
  
• A few small optimizations to render matrix calculations
  
• Small optimizations to localization text data management
  
• Fixed a few potential bugs

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.36.2.0” or higher. Enjoy!

This is a small update that makes the following changes:

-Cleaned up a few unused data files
-Added particle aux thread runtime readouts for the ingame debug display

A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.36.1.1) This update makes several improvements to the 2nd person shooter sequence in Mission Mode Area 5, including fixing enemy bullet bugs, and fixed effect alignment and timing. This gives an overall more polished sequence as you dodge from enemy fire, while you’re in their sights!

Here are the full release notes for v.1.36.1.1:

• Improved enemy bullet firing behavior for the 2nd person enemy in Mission Mode Area 5
  -Fixed alignment issue between the "charge up" animations and fired bullets from the enemy
  -Slightly reduced the enemy bullet speed in this sequence
  -Improved timing for charging/firing bullet events, improving animation smoothness
  
• Improved enemy tracking bullet behavior for varying framerates
  
• Fixed incorrect Z tracking behavior for tracking enemy bullets
  -This is most noticeable for the 2nd person sequence in Mission Area 5
  -This makes each tracking bullet enter the gameplay plane multiple times
  
• Fixed some stationary enemy bullets disappearing too quickly
  -Also fixed these bullets quickly shrinking after being fired, even when they are supposed to increase in size
  -Many of these bullets are used in the 2nd person shooter scene
  
• Fixed a 'divide by zero' bug when spacer sections are used for enemy firing scripts
  -These are generally used when there is a long waiting period between enemy bullet firing
  -Generally applies to bosses and mini-bosses
  
  As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.36.1.1” or higher. Enjoy!

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!