A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.29.3.0) The biggest part of this update is a completely new packet compression system for online multiplayer games. The primary benefit of this is a significant reduction in latency and CPU usage, and packing higher precision floating point values while keeping bandwidth usage about the same. The amount of latency reduction varies depending on CPU power. The time to generate a packet with the old code ranged from 2-16ms, but the new code ranges from 0.25-0.75ms, a huge difference! The old way to compress packets was done by a zLib post process after each packet was created. This was a very CPU intensive operation for the use case. The new compression system has been created from scratch and is done while each packet is created. It uses fast bit-level compression specialized for the way BlastZone 2 packets are constructed.
Another notable part of this update is a new command ship to defend in both of the Classic game modes. This gives better context for the goal of the game, instead of abstractly needing to prevent enemies from passing by the player. Now, the game plays like an escort mission; if too many enemy ships crash into the command ship behind you, it explodes, causing a chain reaction making your ship explode as well. This in combination with the new weaving enemy type in the previous update makes the Classic A and Classic B modes more engaging and fun to play.
A few other fixes and improvements have been made in this update as well. Here are the full release notes for v1.29.3.0:
- Created a completely new netcode packet compression system -Reduces latency by 2-16ms depending on system specs -Significantly reduces CPU usage during online multiplayer games -Uses similar bandwidth to the old system, but with higher data precision -Uses lightweight specialized compression logic as each packet is built instead of running an expensive post operation
- Added a command ship you need to defend in Classic A and Classic B modes -Converts the game mode into an escort mission instead of abstractly preventing enemies from passing you
- Updated Classic mode help screens to reflect the new objective to defend the command ship
- Added support for the Classic A/B death sequence on the client side for online multiplayer
- Corrected kill counts for Survival and Blitz modes in the help screens
- Fixed a few rare multithreading crash bugs
- Fixed the disconnection option not working correctly in the gameover screen when playing a Steamworks multiplayer game
- Improved multithreading concurrency in a few areas to improve performance
- Optimized the final death explosion sequence
- Added "Help", "HighScore", and "Credits" main menu options to the Kiosk version
- Renamed the "Config" menu to the "Options" menu
- Removed bonus lives and unlock messages from the Kiosk version
As usual, to make sure you have the latest version, launch the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.29.3.0” or higher. Enjoy!
Also, the new website for BlastZone 2 has launched! It includes an improved design, interactive buttons, bandwidth saving features, and better news page navigation. The leaderboards page has been significantly improved as well, with better category selection and data caching. The website has been brought up to modern standards in many ways and thanks a lot to Kevin Edzenga for all the hard work to bring this to fruition!
visit the website here:http://www.BlastZone2.com