Developer News - October 2026

Hey!

It's been another month and time for an update from the developer - aka me

Last month was a big pile of new stuff - the Shop, 300+ new things to put in it, tools in your hands. This month is the other half of that job. One single update, and almost all of it is making what I added actually behave. Less exciting to read about, a lot nicer to play

Its all still on the Experimental version, so if you want to try it: Right click Fireworks Mania -> Properties -> Game Versions & Betas -> "Experimental". To go back to the normal version, change it to "Default Public Version".

The stutter when you spawn and when everything goes off at once

Last Developer News I said the framerate drop when things spawn, and when a lot of fireworks fire at the same time, was what I wanted to spend time on. Thats pretty much where the whole month went.

• Big cakes spawn about 5x faster and launch instantly
• Big shows load in half the time
• Loading the games own shells into mortars is about 4x faster, so loading a blueprint full of loaded racks doesnt hitch like it did
• Joining a game where somebody have already built a huge show lags a lot less
• Mod fireworks got faster too

The game used to quietly turn your fireworks down during big shows to protect the framerate (if the Dynamic Performance Scaling was enabled), which meant the thing you built was not really the thing you were looking at. That is reversed now and things have been renamed a bit. Per default, fireworks always look the way they were made now. If you would rather have the framerate than the full look, set "Prioritize" to Performance under Settings -> Advanced - it replaces the old Dynamic Performance Scaling checkbox, and everybody starts out on Quality. The little performance readout in the corner is off by default now too. Oh, and fireworks far away from you keep more of their glow instead of turning into dim little dots.

Fireworks that do what they are supposed to do

While digging my way through parts of the code to implement the above performance improvement, I discovered a lot of small things that have been quietly wrong, some of them for a very long time.

• In multiplayer a mortar shot - or anything you threw hard - disappeared about 50 meters away for everyone else. Now it flies and lands where people can actually see it, and vanish a few seconds after it stops.
• Big explosions used to fire nearby fireworks off at hundreds of meters per second, which is how they ended up under the map. Its capped at 50 m/s now - in my test 4 out of 82 fireworks ended up under the map instead of 26.
• Rockets with big heads bounced off single shot racks. Only the part that goes into the tube have to fit now.
• Rockets fired from single shot racks lost their thrust too early, so they never got as high as they should. They climb about a quarter higher now, and consistently.
• Mortars jumped and tipped over when you spawned a shell into them - also when you clicked your way fast down a whole row.
• Lady Fingers, strobes and zippers went silent at low framerate. At 20 FPS you got about one crackle out of five. They play fully now.
• Loading a blueprint pushed whatever was standing nearby around or over, and things popped in size while loading.
• Exploded propane tanks left invisible colliders behind that later blasts could throw around, and they stayed in your saves.
• Destroying a building, gas pump, propane tank or anything else with fuel in it triggered its explosion twice.
• Fast moving stuff hitting the buildings in City fell through the sidewalk. The buildings go into the ground now.
• 5" mortars were being weird. Not anymore.

The game telling you whats going on

The hints on the right side of the screen now match the buttons you actually have in your hands, and there are new ones for jumping, running, crouching, flying, changing view, getting up and push-to-talk. If you dont want them, the movement and interaction ones can be turned off under Settings -> Game. Changing view moved to V - D-pad right on a controller - and cycles First Person, Third Person, Reversed Third Person and Far Away View, or you hold it and pick from a wheel. M isnt used anymore, which also freed up a controller button. The Shop got a "How the Shop works" button under the search box, explaining how you earn PyroPoints and what they do, and the Home tab have a short tour of fireworks, building shows, multiplayer and the Shop. Both of those exist because people were quite reasonably confused, and thats on me for shipping the Shop without explaining it.

Sound, voice and the people you play with

SFX Volume is now called Game Volume, Output Volume is now called Voice volume and sits together with the other sliders under Settings -> Audio, and both reset to 100. Theres a new UI volume slider for menu clicks, notifications and the Shop unlock sounds - which are quieter now, because they were far too proud of themselves. When somebody talks via proximity voice chat, you now see their picture and name on the left side of the screen, and the Players list marks who is talking. Turn it off under Settings -> Audio with "Show who's talking". Opening chat while holding push-to-talk also turns your microphone off now - before it stayed on until you pressed push-to-talk again, which is not a fun thing to find out afterwards On a controller you hold D-pad left to talk, which is the button we freed up by cycle all 4 view perspectives into a single button before. There is now a "Report" option on the Players tab. You pick what happened, it comes to me, and I look at them within 7 days. If I see the pattern of a player that continuously seems to be misbehaving, I now have the option to ban them, as they are ruining the game a everybody else.

To make it clear, I can only ban players from online play, they can continue to play Singleplayer.

Whats next

More performance work. I am not done with it, and I dont think I will be for a while - there is still plenty to find. On the Shop: I have not changed how you earn PyroPoints yet. This month went to explaining it better instead, which is not the same thing, I know. The feedback is still very welcome and the earning is still the part I am least sure about. More Shop content is also still coming - nothing new went in this month - but more is in the pipeline . Thanks to everyone running Experimental and reporting things. A lot of this month came straight out of your reports - the mortar shots disappearing in multiplayer, the odd behaving 5" mortars, the quiet Lady Fingers. I would never have found those on my own Thats it for now - need to get back to work

- Enjoy!

Change log

I have pushed the following updates since last Developer News.

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