A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.28.1.1) This one focuses on lighting improvements for the new OpenGL 3.0 renderer. It now has multilight support, with hyper mode and beam weapons emitting light that reflect off enemies, bosses, items, and the cave background. The OpenGL 1.5 renderer always had multilight support, but it has been rebuilt for OpenGL 3.0 to look better and be more realistic. The golden hyper mode light is localized around the player, now properly attenuating on the cave background and for enemies nearby the player. All beam weapons now have light evenly emit from the entire length of the beam and properly attenuates as enemies and objects move further away from the beam.
Here are the full release notes for v1.28.1.1:
- Added support for multiple simultaneous light sources in the OpenGL 3.0 renderer -The main areas this affects are on the cave background, enemies, bosses, and player ships -Additional light sources are used when Hyper mode is active, or when beams are fired
- Updated the VertexLit shader to calculate lights per vertex instead of per pixel -This should have a minimal effect on image quality, while performing much faster -This offsets the additional calculations needed for processing multiple light sources
- Fixed incorrect color used for Low detail alien planet clouds with the OpenGL 3.0 renderer
This update shows more of the kinds of effects now possible with the new renderer. If you haven’t read the announcement for the new OpenGL 3.0 renderer, I strongly suggest you do. As always, to ensure you have the latest update, start the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.28.1.1” or higher. Enjoy!