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!
v1.35.0.0 - Turbo Mission Mode Released!
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!
v1.34.2.0 - Rebalanced Training difficulty for Survival/Blitz modes, new console
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
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!
v1.34.1.1 - Optimizations and bug fixes
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!
v1.34.1.0 release - New and updated sound effects + Improved charging animation
A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.34.1.0) This primarily adds a few new sound effects to the game, including a new flurry weapon firing sound, bullet hit sound, and new sounds for achieving each level of weapon charge. A few sounds have been shortened as well, including menu sounds and item pickups.
There are a few other changes included as well. Here are the full release notes for v1.34.1.0:
Added new sounds to the game -Flurry weapon firing -Flurry bullet impact -Charge level 1 attained -Charge level 2 attained
Shortened a few sounds -Menu open -Change menu option -Select menu option -Collect health pickup -Collect points pickup -Collect stat boost pickup
Music now changes to the appropriate tracks when changing backgrounds after Wave 8 of Classic, Survival, and Blitz modes
Updated the particle effect after attaining charge level 1 while charging for charge level 2
Improved debug frame data -No longer displays immediate values for every frame -These values often changed too fast to be legible in great detail anyway -Collects data every frame, but only updates the values on screen 3 times per second -Added average value displays -Averages frame data from the last 60 frames -Added max and min value displays -Evaluates the last 60 frames of data to calculate these values
As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.34.1.0” or higher. Enjoy!
v1.34.0.2 release - Ship selection menu improvements and BZ1 updates
A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.34.0.2) The primary updates in this release are improvements to the ship selection menu. Now, the next and previous ships are displayed at the top of the screen in a muted form with their shortened names. This visualizes the full roster of ships to choose from, while keeping the currently highlighted ship more prominent. The color of the currently selected ship and arrow selectors has been changed to yellow as well to maintain a consistent color scheme across all menus. The local multiplayer ship selection screen has been updated as well with similar updates to color and ship list.
This update also makes a few changes to BlastZone 1, upgrading it to v1.4. This includes a fix for a rapid fire laser exploit and slightly reduced enemy speed.
This update includes a few smaller updates as well. Here are the full release notes for v1.34.0.2:
Improved ship selection screens for single player and local multiplayer games -Changed the currently selected ship name and selector arrows to yellow to match the color scheme of other menus -Added grayed out short names of the other ships to show all the ships there are to choose from -Also shows which ship is next/previous on the list -Updated selector arrow positioning for multiplayer ship selection to match how the single player screen is done
Updated BlastZone 1 to v1.4 -Fixed an exploit that would slow down enemy movement while rapidly pressing the laser fire button -Reduced enemy movement speed by 5% to account for enemies moving while firing the laser
Screen shakes no longer affect screen wipes
Updated Spanish translation for the ship selection title text
Trimmed down the localization data file size by eliminating unused data
As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.34.0.2” or higher. Enjoy!
A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.34.0.1) This is a maintenance release, focused on bug fixes and optimizations. The biggest fix addresses player bullets being invisible for Radeon graphics cards using drivers 22.7.1 or later. This is because 22.7.1 and later use a brand new, rewritten OpenGL driver, which greatly improves performance, but also has a few bugs. Thankfully, some bugs were addressable on the game engine side.
This update also includes a few small optimizations for player and enemy bullets, resulting in up to a 1% boost in performance. Player and enemy bullets are now layered on top of all particles and other effects as well, making them more prominent than before.
There is also an antialiasing bug causing graphic corruption in this game when using Radeon drivers 22.7.1 and later. More information and workarounds are listed below. Nvidia/Geforce graphics cards and drivers are not affected by this issue.
**UPDATE** The latest Radeon driver 22.11.1 fixes the antialiasing graphic corruption bug! Anyone using Radeon drivers 22.7.1 or later should update to 22.11.1 or later to fix this issue.
Here are the full release notes for v1.34.0.1:
Fixed broken player bullet and charge sprite rendering for newer Radeon drivers (22.7.1 and later)
Player and enemy bullets are now layered on top of all particles and other effects to prevent them from getting obscured
Player bullet particle trails now more closely follow the main bullet sprite
Fixed broken weapon charge animations when turning off particles, doing a weapon charge, then enabling particles again
A few optimizations to player and enemy bullets -All optimizations combined improve performance by up to 1%
NOTE: Using AntiAliasing with Radeon graphics cards and drivers 22.7.1 or later causes graphics corruption
*This bug has been fixed as of Radeon driver 22.11.1! Anyone using drivers 22.7.1 or later should update to 22.11.1 to fix this antialiasing issue -One workaround is to use Radeon drivers 22.6.1 or earlier -Another workaround is to disable AntiAliasing -This is a driver bug and cannot be fixed on the game engine side without severely hindering performance -22.7.1 introduced an entirely rewritten OpenGL driver, which greatly improves performance, but unfortunately introduced bugs as well
As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.34.0.1” or higher. Enjoy!
A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.34.0.1) This is a maintenance release, focused on bug fixes and optimizations. The biggest fix addresses player bullets being invisible for Radeon graphics cards using drivers 22.7.1 or later. This is because 22.7.1 and later use a brand new, rewritten OpenGL driver, which greatly improves performance, but also has a few bugs. Thankfully, some bugs were addressable on the game engine side.
This update also includes a few small optimizations for player and enemy bullets, resulting in up to a 1% boost in performance. Player and enemy bullets are now layered on top of all particles and other effects as well, making them more prominent than before.
There is also an antialiasing bug causing graphic corruption in this game when using Radeon drivers 22.7.1 and later. More information and workarounds are listed below. Nvidia/Geforce graphics cards and drivers are not affected by this issue.
Here are the full release notes for v1.34.0.1:
Fixed broken player bullet and charge sprite rendering for newer Radeon drivers (22.7.1 and later)
Player and enemy bullets are now layered on top of all particles and other effects to prevent them from getting obscured
Player bullet particle trails now more closely follow the main bullet sprite
Fixed broken weapon charge animations when turning off particles, doing a weapon charge, then enabling particles again
A few optimizations to player and enemy bullets -All optimizations combined improve performance by up to 1%
NOTE: Using AntiAliasing with Radeon graphics cards and drivers 22.7.1 or later causes graphics corruption -One workaround is to use Radeon drivers 22.6.1 or earlier -Another workaround is to disable AntiAliasing -This is a driver bug and cannot be fixed on the game engine side without severely hindering performance -22.7.1 introduced an entirely rewritten OpenGL driver, which greatly improves performance, but unfortunately introduced bugs as well -This AntiAliasing bug has been reported to AMD, and they have acknowledged and reproduced the issue internally -This bug still exists as of driver 22.10.3 -Once this issue is fixed on the driver side, an announcement will be made with the driver version to upgrade to
As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.34.0.1” or higher. Enjoy!
New lobby system for Steamworks Multiplayer; Migrated to new SteamNetwork API
A big new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.34.0.0) This update adds public lobby support for Steamworks multiplayer games via Steam Matchmaking. Now, anyone can create a lobby and any player can join it. Lobbies are restricted to 2 players each, and players must be within the same region. This was all built using the Steam backbone and server infrastructure, so it is pretty robust. This has been a hotly requested feature, so I hope everyone enjoys it! Inviting players through the Steam friends list is still available for those to wish to use it.
Also, this update migrates to the new SteamNetworking API for Steamworks online multiplayer games. The previously used Steam Networking communication is deprecated, so migrating to the new version ensures no interruption in Steamworks multiplayer game access. There are also upgrades with the new network communication API that improves responsiveness and consistency of gameplay.
There are a few Steam Friends bug fixes as well. Here are the full release notes for v1.34.0.0:
Added support for public Steamworks Lobbies for online multiplayer -This opens up online multiplayer and discovery between all players on Steam -This uses the Steam Matchmaking system -Steamworks multiplayer games used to only be available by inviting players from the friends list --This is still available for those who want to use it -Anyone can now create a lobby for other players to join -Added a lobby browser to search for games to join --This browser will find lobbies in your region --Displays the user name and game options for each lobby -Lobbies are limited to 2 players each
Replaced all Steam Networking code with a new Steam API for online multiplayer -The previous Steam Networking API used by BlastZone 2 was deprecated some time ago -The new API may improve responsiveness and consistency of Steamworks multiplayer games -Using the new API ensures there will be no online multiplayer service interruptions if the old API is removed
Fixed incorrect Steam friends list display while fading in the menu for it
Added Steam name displays for the client and server for all Steamworks multiplayer games
Sending online multiplayer chat messages now always uses each player's Steam username if they are connected to Steam -When not connected to Steam, it falls back to using each player's current world leaderboard name
Improved realtime feedback of Steam friend invitations -Will show a consistent "connecting..." display until the connection times out or succeeds
Fixed Steam friend invitations occasionally not being sent after a connection timeout
Fixed an issue that a Steam friend invitation isn't always received by the client
Users running a Direct UDP or Direct TCP multiplayer game can no longer accept Steam friend invites -This was done to prevent bugs that would occur in these circumstances
Fixed a bug that caused a broken menu state when creating a UDP Direct IP server, closing it, then accepting a Steam friend invitation
Renamed the "Online (Steam)" multiplayer type option to "Steam Friends"
Added a new multiplayer type option "Steam Lobbies" to access the new lobby system
Renamed "Online (UDP)" and "Online (TCP)" multiplayer type options to "Direct UDP" and "Direct TCP" respectively
Added localization for all Steam multiplayer connectivity messages
Adjusted the blending of ship stat bars during menu transitions for all ship selection screens
Fixed several elements of the online multiplayer server selection screen not fading during menu transitions
As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.34.0.0” or higher. Enjoy!
Bug fixes for the Steam Deck with other fixes and adjustments (v1.33.3.1)
A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.33.3.1) This update focuses on bug fixing for the Steam Deck, which is now a supported platform for the game. All known bugs for the Deck being fixed as of the release of this update, but any bug reports will be greatly appreciated. The list of bug fixes include muted sound, frame hitching, and graphic corruption.
With this update, BlastZone 2 works very well on the Deck at max detail. However, the game has yet to be officially verified by Valve, and submissions are not open to all Steam games yet. This game will probably be reviewed by Valve eventually, but unfortunately the timeframe for that is unknown. Until then, feel free to play the game on Deck and have fun!
Some of the bugs fixed may apply to other systems as well, as some of these issues have been reported in the past, but were never reproduced internally until having a Deck on hand to test with.
This update also fixes an occasional hang issue for background explosions, and updates the design of Mission Area 2 and 6. There are a few other smaller changes and tweaks for this release as well. Here are the full release notes for v1.33.3.1:
Made a few Mission level design changes -Slowed down the 2 dueling enemies near the end of the first section of Area 2 by 50% -Made a few changes to a section about 1 minute in to Area 6 --This is the section when enemies come from the front, then quickly swing behind the player to shoot --Lengthened this section to be about 3x as long as it used to be --Spread out enemy movement here to give the player more space to move
Fixed muted sound issue for the Steam Deck -This has also been fixed for some systems that also had this issue
Fixed frame pacing issues for the Steam Deck -This has also been fixed for some systems that also had this issue
Removed 2x and 4x Antialiasing settings for the Steam Deck -Using these settings would introduce graphic glitches --Fixing bugs with these settings would reduce performance, so removing them is preferable for the best experience -It is recommended to use 8x Antialiasing for the Steam Deck anyway, and this setting doesn't have graphic glitches
Changed the default "pause" gamepad bind from the "Y" button to the "Start" button -Changed this as the in-game default, and for the external config program
Fixed an occasional game hang related to background explosions
Removed sound muting when switching focus to another program
Removed 60fps cap when switching focus to another program
Removed the 16x Antialiasing option for all systems -No consumer grade hardware support this anyway -The external configuration program was also updated to remove this option
Fixed a blank default "Monitor" value in the external config program -Now properly defaults to "Primary"
Fixed sounds not playing for the online multiplayer client if the server has sound volume set to 0
As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.33.3.1” or higher. Enjoy!
