A new update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.33.3.0) This update completely reworks how enemy bullets are rendered, greatly improving performance. The most impact will be noticed for the final boss of mission mode, which has the most enemy bullets by far. The amount of performance gained has a wide range, based on CPU speed. The most performance is gained by very slow CPUs, such as dual core netbook-class CPUs, which can be up to 50% or higher for the final boss scene. Moderate to lower end quad core CPUs gain less performance, but still quite substantial, at about 20% or so. The least performance is gained by modern, higher end CPUs with more than 4 cores, which can be around 2-3%.

From these performance gains, enemy bullet trails are now always rendered at full quality, even when numerous bullets are on screen. Previous versions would significantly reduce bullet trail quality for the final mission boss.



This update also adds weapon icons for all ship selection screens, including the single player, local multiplayer, and online lobby screens. These screens have also been rearranged to make use of them better. This makes it much easier to see the kind of weapon loadouts and hyper loadouts each ship has at a glance as you scroll through.



Here are the full release notes for v1.33.3.0:

• Greatly optimized enemy bullets
  -Bullets render over 10x faster now
  -Improves overall performance by up to 50% for specific scenes and PC hardware
  --Highest gain is for the final mission boss
  --Highest gains are for very low end dual-core CPUs (~50%)
  --Good gains for moderate to low end quad-core CPUs (~20%)
  --Small gains for modern or higher core count CPUs (~2-3%)
  
• Enemy bullets now always render at full detail, even when many are on screen
  
• All ship selection screens have been improved
  -Rearranged the layouts
  -Added weapon icons for every loadout
  
• Optimized the player ship booster
  -Improves performance by up to 2-3%
  
• Fixed rendering errors with the OpenGL 1.5 renderer for clouds, water, and some text
  -These issues were introduced in the previous v1.33.2.0 update
  

As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner for “v1.33.3.0” or higher. Enjoy!