A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.33.2.0) The primary improvement in this update makes the Training Mission mode more accessible for new players by slowing down the gameplay by 25%. This includes enemy spawn timing, movement, firing rates, bullet speed, bosses, and the environment camera. Player ship movement remains the same though. Player testing has been done and this was identified as a key area to help newer players get up to speed on the game. This also helps align the experience with Training mode of other game modes, as they already have a slower gameplay speed.

This update also contains numerous small optimizations around the whole game that amount to roughly a ~1% performance boost. In addition, a lot of work has been done under the hood in the rendering system of the game engine, upgrading how it operates. This allows for the possibility of big new features to be developed in the future, but they will be announced at a later date. The updates done so far will have no noticeable impact when playing the game.

Here are the full release notes for v1.33.2.0:

• Reduced the speed of Training Mission mode by 25%
  -This includes all aspects of mission mode, except for the player ship
  -This affects enemy spawn timing, enemy movement, firing rates, bullet speed, bosses, and the environment camera
  -This was designed to help onboard newer players into the game better
  -Helps newer players get ready for the more advanced difficulty levels
  
• Optimized general performance by up to 1%
  -Implemented a generalized texture batching solution that affects nearly all objects in the game
  -Optimized menu background box rendering
  -General shader setup optimizations
  -Optimizations for background particles
  
• Improved leaderboard score submission security
  
• Overhauled code organization for the game engine rendering system
  -This lays the groundwork for potential big updates in the future
  -This is purely a game engine design upgrade, and doesn't change functionality for the end user yet
  
• Fixed the connection error message for TCP multiplayer, so it now displays correctly when attempting to join a server
  
• More time is now taken when attempting to join a TCP multiplayer serve
  -More reliably determines if a successful connection can be made
  -Retries the connection multiple times before giving up
  
• Improved robustness when starting and stopping a TCP multiplayer game to prevent potential bugs
  
• Fixed a small memory leak when applying new video settings
  
• Fixed a rare crash issue when applying new video settings soon after starting the game
  
• Renamed the "useParticleHelperThreads" config file option to "useParticleAuxThreads"
  -This will reset this option to "Enabled" when first starting the game after updating
  -If it is desired to disable this option, it can be disabled the normal way after updating
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.33.2.0” or higher. Enjoy!