A huge amount of work went into update releases for BlastZone 2 over the last year and a half and beyond. This includes new gameplay content, as well as a technical and graphical overhaul. This essentially makes the current state of the game a “Remaster” of what it was at release. The game has reached a higher tier of content quality, bringing it to a new price point at $9.99.
I would like to thank everyone who supported BlastZone 2 all this time to help fund this development. In appreciation for this, we are working on another huge update to the game as a free addon. More info is coming soon about this, watch for it!
Below is a summary of the numerous improvements that have been made to the game since release:
Summary of improvements since Jan 2017
Gameplay improvements
- Added BlastZone 1 to the game; now totaling 6 game modes
- Rebalanced the entire game to use native 16:9 gameplay instead of the old 4:3 limits with widescreen viewing
- Added a new score multiplier system to Survival mode. This changes the way the gamemode is played by incentivising skilled play while still being accessible for new players
- Added a new long range bullet firing enemy type for Survival/Blitz modes
- Improved secondary fire controls; the Fire2 button can now be tapped to use it
- Numerous gameplay balance updates, including hitbox sizes, stat upgrade potency, and drop rates
- Created completely new ship selection menus for both local and online multiplayer
- Changed and rebalanced level selection so individual levels can be played in any order, and relevant stat upgrades are given for each area of the game
- There are now visual indications on the player ship when Hyper power is charging faster, and when each regular charge level is achieved, streamlining gameplay
- Added animation looping support for minibosses so they no longer leave the screen after the animation finishes
Graphics improvements
- Added 4k textures, greatly improving detail
- Added many new particle effects for charging, firing, impacts, item collection, attaining hyper mode and more
- Improved detail, lighting, and shadows for the home planet environment
- Completely redesigned the Outer Space background
- Redesigned the Alien Homeworld terrain, adding much more detail
- Improved multiple light support for enemies, bosses, and environments, including the Cave environment
- Added free DLC for extremely high detail terrain models
Technical improvements
- Created an entirely new graphics renderer from scratch using OpenGL 3.0+
- Reworked the game simulation backend to be highly multithreaded, scaling up to 16 CPU cores if available, and making more efficient use of dual core and quad core CPU’s
- Created a new particle system, allowing for over 20x more detail at the same performance levels. Performance scales higher when more CPU cores are available
- Huge general optimizations, improving performance up to 300% without affecting quality
- Improved netcode, having better packet loss compensation, reduced latency, and added client side interpolation and prediction
- Created a new game startup loader, supporting new asset formats, asset swapping, and extreme quality assets. Also greatly improved multithreading support to reduce load times.
- Replaced numerous textures in the game with precompressed S3TC textures to improve quality and speed up loading times
- Greatly improved frame pacing and animation smoothness, also adding native support for high refresh rate monitors up to 240hz
Other significant updates released since launch: (since Feb 2015)
- Complete HUD overhaul
- Added 9 new weapons and abilities to the game, including cluster bombs, force fields, wave shots, machine guns, close range melee attacks, and more; brings the total weapon count to 15
- Reworked every ship in the game to give each of them unique play styles and weapon loadouts and abilities
- Added 55 Steam achievements
- Added trading cards, emoticons, and more for Steam
- Added native Steamworks multiplayer support