Some big technical improvements have been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.27.1.0) The most prominent of these are huge terrain rendering optimizations. These benefit the new VeryHigh and Extreme detail terrain DLC the most, bringing performance boosts ranging from 50-200%, depending on the situation and system specs. This is such a big difference that the minimum and recommended requirements to run the DLC are much lower now. The requirements have been updated on each of the DLC pages, and they are listed below. If your system ran too slow using either of these DLC packs before this update, I strongly recommend trying them again. The new, lower requirements will be posted soon. The terrain optimizations improve performance for the Normal and Low quality terrain as well, just to a lesser degree. The Low quality terrain should expect to see a 4-5% boost in performance, and the Normal quality terrain should see about a 18-35% boost, which is still quite sizable. It is also worth noting that these performance boosts are across the board when playing the game, and are not just for specific situations. Also, these optimizations were achieved without any effect on image quality. Enjoy the performance boosts!
New VeryHigh terrain minimum specs:
CPU - Quad Core 2.0ghz or higher
GPU - Radeon 5770 or Geforce GTX 260 with 1gb vram or more
New VeryHigh terrain recommended specs:
CPU - Quad Core 3.0ghz or higher
GPU - Radeon 7770 or Geforce GT 560 with 1gb vram or more
New Extreme terrain minimum specs
CPU - Quad Core 3.0ghz or higher
GPU - Radeon 7850 or Geforce GTX 570 with 1gb vram or more
New Extreme terrain recommended specs
CPU - Quad Core 3.5ghz or higher
GPU - Radeon RX 460 or Geforce GTX 1050 with 2gb vram or more
The second portion of this update worth noting is an overhaul to the way much of the rendering pipeline is calculated by the engine. More specifically, all Projection and ModelView matrix calculations are performed internally now, giving the engine direct control over the way they are managed, improving flexibility and providing more opportunities for optimizations. This overhaul removes large swaths of old, deprecated API calls as well, modernizing the codebase without breaking compatibility.
This is the first stage of a larger, overarching goal of modernizing the entire rendering pipeline. The renderer was originally designed back in 2006, using a hybrid approach combining OpenGL 2.0 features and effects built on top of an OpenGL 1.5 rendering pipeline. (OpenGL 3.X/4.X didn’t exist back then.) This was done to have optional access to newer features, while maintaining compatibility with older hardware. The part of the overhaul done so far maintains compatibility with OpenGL 1.5 if the shaders are disabled, but I am looking into the best way to move forward from here. If maintaining OpenGL 1.5 support ends up not having enough demand to be worth it, I may drop support entirely in favor of an OpenGL 2.X/3.X/4.X exclusive renderer. Any feedback about this would be appreciated!
Here are the full release notes for v1.27.1.0:
- Overhauled the way 3D matrix calculations are performed in the game engine -Migrated to a forward looking, internalized method to perform matrix transforms to render 3D graphics -Provides direct low level access to a new area of the rendering pipeline, allowing for more optimization opportunities -Removed large swaths of old and deprecated OpenGL API calls to modernize the codebase
- Huge optimizations for terrain rendering -Results in significant across the board performance boosts, especially when high quality terrain is used -Low terrain gains ~4-5% performance depending on system specs -Normal terrain gains ~18-38% performance depending on system specs -VeryHigh terrain gains ~50-200% performance depending on system specs -Extreme terrain gains ~60-250% performance depending on system specs -This was done without affecting image quality -This significantly reduces system requirements to use the new terrain DLC packs
- Adjusted lighting for the outer space planet and moon
As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, start the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.27.1.0” or above. More announcements will be made in the future detailing specific goals for the new renderer, so stay tuned for those. Enjoy the new technical improvements!