Natural Selection 2

The latest patch, Build 186, has been implemented for Natural Selection 2.

The patch is just under 1,5GB and was implemented to improve performance, add some new interface and usability features as well as to fix a variety of bugs ahead of Build 187 which will include some new features for the game, possibly including the much anticipated Onos. Below is the changelog for Build 186:

Build 186 features

• Ammo packs, Med packs, and weapons on the ground now have an icon hovering over when you are in need of them
• Spectators can now toggle between small, big, or no minimap visible
• Infestation now has animating parts making it seem more alive (Thanks Schimmel!)
• Added Deadspace-style animated waypoint indicator (lineon the ground showing you were to go)
• An icon will now display on the HUD when the player is standing over a dropped weapon, they can press their drop weapon key to swap their current weapon with the dropped weapon
• New randomized alien egg spawning system. Egg spawning rates also scale with # of players. Many more eggs are created around hives as well. Egg entities are now ignored
• Added ability for dead aliens to choose their egg to spawn from
• Team and personal resources are now visible on the scoreboard to any player on the spectator team

Balance

• Sped up marine rifle reload by 25% to make running out of ammo less harsh (marines die a lot when reloading)
• Trying new alien egg spawn system, to allow marines more momentum when attacking hives, to allow marines to make earlier pushes, to reduce spawn-camping and to add to the atmosphere. Now hives start with 0 eggs, get a new egg every 15 seconds (was 13) and can grow up to 16 eggs. (experimental)
• Increased GL cost from 20 to 25
• Lowered grenade damage from 150 to 130
• Increased ARC movement speed from 2.5 to 5
• Ammo packs can now fill the clip of a weapon, if the reserve ammo is full (this is especially for Commanders buffing marines)
• Increased marine armor +use repair from 12 to 18 to avoid tedium
• Increased armory armory resupply speed by ~40% to avoid excessive waiting (esp. with armor)

Fixes

• Infamous black screen bug fixed (Thanks to all the play testers who helped us figure out the reproduction steps!)
• Fixed bug causing the Alien buy menu to remain on the screen in some cases (Thanks Frhoe and Colin!)
• Fixed an issue where powerpoint gave LOS all the time now they only give LOS when being attacked and a short period of time afterwards. This makes it more fair to the Aliens as they can now be more sneaky when attacking power nodes.
• The recycle button no longer shows up on commander stations that are currently occupied. This is to prevent any possibility of of recycling while occupied. Still allow to recycle when vacant.
• Lerk spikes now have infinite range, to make them more intuitive. Made slightly less accurate to compensate.
• Fixed bug where ARCs couldn’t be repaired by MACs. MACs can also repair each other.
• The local player will be able to hear Swarm and Frenzy sound effects now
• Fixed bug preventing Frenzy from working properly in all cases
• Fixed problems with GL reloading from ammo packs. Fixed problems where ammo packs couldn’t always be picked up when needed when holding the GL. Fixed problem where GL could hold a total of 9 grenades instead of 8.
• Fixed issue where you can place structured on top of each other.
• The distress beacon text will no longer persist on the screen forever in some cases
• The local alien no longer will display a hive sight blip for itself
• Fixed bug where hive spawns first egg immediately when hive was created
• Unbuilt structures can no longer be seen by other units thus do not provide LOS.
• Fixed the ability to weld yourself
• Players do not heal macs now
• Unconnected cysts no longer get auto-healed and take damage
• Fixed bug where Arms Lab didn’t require power to function
• Fixed tech tree so research is properly enabled and disabled when structures are destroyed or they become unpowered and repowered
• Marine damage upgrades now work for all damage types, not only Normal damage
• Fixed bug where marine upgrades depended on the Armory instead of ArmsLab
• Fixed bug where having multiple research nodes that depended on each other weren’t disabled/enabled properly
• Fixed an issue where it was possible when exiting a hive you would get an error about not having a GetEnergy function
• Fixed bug causing dead Marines to respawn in Marine Start instead of near the Observatory during a distress beacon
• Fixed an issue where dead players could provide LOS
• Fixed an issue where Macs would spawn in the ground and in weird locations when being built from the Robo Factory
• The flamethrower effects are no longer visible when switching to the pistol
• Fixed an issue where if you had more than one commander and you were not the original owner of the unit you were commanding you would not be set as the owner for any structures you ordered that unit to build.
• Fixed an issue where Drifters would not revert to there hover location if they failed to build something because of a player or another unit blocking them
• Fixed an issue where you could not select Power Nodes as an Alien Commander
• Fixed an issue where the Flare animation would play and then stop and then Flare would go off… We now just do the Flare when the animation is done
• Fixed an issue where structures were not properly being added as obstacles into the pathing mesh
• Fixed an issue where certain structures pathing obstacles would be floating
• Fixed Pathing debugging
• Fixed an issue where MACs/Drifters could teleport to pathing nodes outside the main map area
• Fixed an issue with the squad text being in a silly place
• Scan entities cannot take damage anymore
• When joining a new team… old player is removed from the spawn queue of the old team
• Fixed a possible script error when spawning as an alien as the round was ending
• Can only weld a marine if you are a marine! No freebies for Aliens!
• The Observatory will no longer beacon Marines after it has been destroyed
• Fixed an issue where structures built by the marine commander did not show up right away
• Fixed an issue where if you went to the ready room as a marine spectator it would not correctly spawn you as a marine
• Fixed an issue where the Armory would keep resupplying dead players
• Observatory Distress Beacon will not spawn players outside the world anymore
• Fixed issue where structures being powered by power packs would not properly powerdown if the power pack was destroyed
• Fixed an issue where you could use the Alien buy menu before the game started… You can still bring it up before the game starts but the message on the button states that game has not started and thus is unclickable
• Fixed floating ARCs
• Fixed an issue with the ARC Idle sound playing while deployed
• Commander selection returns to the Command Station/Hive when the selected entity is destroyed or recycled, this fixes a bug where a new structure could not be built after a previously selected structure was destroyed until selecting a new structure
• Fixed an issue where if an alien was cloaked it would still show them on the minimap if they were in min LOS range
• A player that was about to spawn in an egg changing teams would cause that egg to never spawn another player, eggs are not so monogamous anymore
• Resource received on kill sound effect will now only play for the player who earned the resources instead of everyone on the team
• Tech is no longer allowed if the game has not started
• Fixed an issue where client side pathing data was not removing objects
• Fixed bile bomb broken bug
• Don’t execute Commander targeted actions when clicking on top of the UI
• Fixed an issue where power events where not getting unregistered when an entity died which could result in weird power behavior when rounds reset
• Fixed memory leak when opening the armory menu (opening it and closing it enough would eventually cause an out of memory and client crash)
• Fixed bug allowing Power Nodes to be damaged by Marine players before a round starts for the first time
• Fixed bug where Fade initial blink cost was wrong (it was .1 instead of 10 by accident)
• Fixed bug where RoboticsFactory could be created with an orientation that would allow MACs and ARCs to be created in an invalid spot. Don’t allow RoboticsFactory to be built where it creates units on top of attach points either (tech points, nozzles)
• Fixed an issue where if you build a power source before building a structure it would not properly power the device
• Fixed bug where bile bomb upgrade disappeared if you bought it then evolved another trait
• Fixed an issue where the ARC idle sound would not stop playing when the arc died
• Don’t show 0 health when less than 1 health but still alive
• Fixed bug where players could spam j1/j2 and unbalance teams. Also, can no longer join another playing team without going to the ready room first (but with cheats 1, you can still type “switch”)
• Fixed an issue where structures that did not require power did not have their deploy effects being played
• Fixed an issue where whips would leave stale pathing obstacles when they would unroot and move
• Removed ability to have the quote character ” in a player’s name which was causing some problems on the server
• Fixed an issue where whips would float
• Fixed an issue where whips would play their walking animation forever
• Fixed an issue where whips would take damage while moving
• Fixed bug where phase gate idle sounds continued to play after it was destroyed
• Gorges can no longer build structures on resource nozzles or tech points
• Fixed an issue where Cloaked/Camo structures and units where not getting uncloaked when scanned
• Fixed drifters from spawning outside the map sometimes
• Structure placement is now more strict when checking for collisions. Changed extents of all structures to be more accurate (precalculated from the model)
• Phase gates now can only be placed such that there is some room at the exit
• Tech Points that are owned by a specific team no longer show up as valid build locations. This fixes the issue where you would try to build at marine start and it would pick the heliport tech point
• You can no longer spam taunt sounds
• Removed “error” sound when a ready room player taunted
• Fade blink can no longer be spammed to weird effect
• Starting a blink takes more energy, but being ethereal costs less (tried this before, but wasn’t right)
• Made the visual effects of the flame thrower less spammy
• Fixed problems where players sometimes didn’t die when the command station closed around them, being protected. Forever
• Fixed bug where you could only build structures on attach points (tech points, resource nozzles) with the same team number. This meant that players couldn’t build Hives/CommandStations on their enemy’s starting position after it had been destroyed
• Fixed an issue where the Obs LOS range was smaller than its detect range
• Fixed an issue where scan was not giving LOS because it thought it was an unbuilt structure
• Cloaked drifters uncloak when they attack
• If the stop order is given to a drifter while its building it now properly resets itself
• Added the Power Point destroyed sound back into the game
• Fixed bug causing the Sentry to become inoperable after ordering it to stop as it is moving
• Added back in cool flamethrower audio response when swinging it around rapidly (sounds flanged)
• The player will no longer receive auto-orders while dead

Changes

• When updating AutoHeal we do off infestation/healing in a single loop instead of two loops
• Reworked how the drifters reset themselves when they fail to build
• We now enforce a max height above the ground
• Changed Waypoints to use the pathing system instead of the old nav waypoint system
• Enable code that will filter our static props that are flagged not be included in the pathing mesh
• Egg icons are now half the normal size on the minimap
• Re-enabled multi-threading support for animation
• Removed freelook when dead (to avoid seeing something you shouldn’t)

Improvements

• Optimized server map blip updating (Thanks Matso!)
• Improved client and server performance when interpolating entities
• Optimized updating the blips on the minimap
• Moved the Flamethrower effects to the client
• Broadphase collision detection optimization
• When counting max entities to determine valid building placement, don’t count eggs
• Players on different teams can no longer hear other players before the game starts (interferes with pre-game strategizing, ie “Let’s relocate to Data Core…doh”)
• Spectators can hear team voice chat when they’re following a member of that team (this will be for non-tournament mode only, once that’s in)
• Addressed problems where spawning is confusing/jarring. Now dead aliens go right to the egg instead of floating where they died
• Sentry will now fire visible tracer rounds like other Marine weapons
• Observatories now prevent cloaking (players/structures) and camouflage (players) in range.
• Added new phase gate idle animation when active and linked to another phase gate
• Phase gates can now be used even if there are players blocking the gate on the receiving end. A marine may spawn inside the player, but they will move apart (better than killing a big alien automatically, and not killing them allows griefing)
• Added taunt sound for Marine, Skulk and Lerk
• Increased acceleration on Fade blink to feel more responsive
• Grenade launcher now starts with full ammo and one in the clip (it doesn’t need initial reload)
• Rifle now starts with full ammo

Sounds

• Nicer tail and more reverb on guns
• Added a Cyst idle sound
• A bunch of eq to ambient sounds, and others
• New sound for sentry scanning, fade swipe hits on metal
• More metallic sounding reloads and deploys
• Armory has a nice oneshot sound when opening the menu
• Better grenade bounces
• Grenade fire has more metallic sound now
• Occlusion (sounds now become muffled as they move away, or move behind walls)
• Lerk spikes sounding better with the increased ROF
• Sounds for robotics factory opening and closing
• Sound for commander performing a scan
• Upgrading weapon/armour/ability now has a sound to let players know the upgrade is complete for both teams
• Improvements to axe, armory, flamethrower and GL launcher deploy sounds
• Better invalid sound
• Sounds for whip unroot walk and root
• Better alien chat msg sound
• Sound for when a drifter turns into a structures
• Fixed up some bugs where sounds wouldn’t play more than once
• Timing improvements to whip attack, phase gate deploy, observatory deploy, and axe swing
• Better parasite sound for the skulk
• New skulk jump
• Gorge dry reaching when he hasnt got the res to make a structure
• A sound for whip fury attack
• Better / less glitchy count down sound
• Nicer fade blinking sounds
• Trying out a new pistol fire sound
• Fixing beacon and alien voice sound
• Better rifle butt sound
• Better fade jump
• Small change to res received for marines
• Better skulk bite impact sound
• Fixed some clicks when looping some sounds
• Arcing electricity sound layer for power nodes
• Better commander drop cyst sound

ns2_summit

• Set Dynamic:False for dynamic props in Ventilation
• Fixed power point powering Crossroads instead of noname hallway
• Adjusted collision geometry at Marine Start ceiling

The latest patch, Build 180, has been implemented for Natural Selection 2.

The patch is rather large at 1,138MB and offers a variety of new features, balance changes as well as a long list of bug fixes. While the performance improvements in this build are not extensive, UWE have stated that Build 181 will contain a variety of changes to improve performance. Below is the changelog for Build 180:

Build 180 features

• Added new alien “cysts” which grow and manage the infestation. Gorges and the Alien commander create these in a connected network. Cysts can be killed by regular marine weapons. Cutting a cyst off from being connected to a hive will mean that it starts taking damage. Once dead, the infestation under it shrinks. Pustules will be lit when connected and grey when not. Removed ability for Gorges to create infestation with spray.
• Marines now drop their weapons on death now (and they can be picked up)
• Reworked voice chat (improves quality, allows multiple speakers, etc.)
• A speaker icon appears next to a player’s name on the scoreboard when they are speaking. The speaker icon is now the color of the player speaking on the HUD and scoreboard.
• Added ability to mute players and UI to control who is muted
• Added kill stats
• Added display of phase gate destination on reticle text (thanks slowJusko!)
• Initial version of Skulk air knockback and stun with Rifle melee
• Added the ability for the Fade to crouch

Balance

• Reduced Robotics Factory build time from 40 to 30 because very boring as marine
• Players are slowed somewhat when they take damage (not gas or flame damage). This is an experimental change, please be sure to let us know what you think!
• Increased marine power point repair rate from 100/sec to 150/sec
• Reduced medpack cost from 2 to 1 to help address marine comm running out of res problems
• Mature versions of alien structures now require two hives
• Bilebomb now requires a mature whip
• Armory now uses proper advanced armory module and weapons module merged together
• ARCs are now treated as structures when dealing damage (Bilebomb, Structural, Biological)
• Decreased lerk spike speed
• Lerk changes: Changed lerk spike damage type from Normal to Light (reduced vs. armor). Increased max damage of spikes from 20 to 30 (at point-blank range). Decreased min damage of spikes from 10 to 8 (at distance). Decreased max range of spores from infinity to 10 meters. These changes should make him a more deadly “finisher” of human targets and in combat more
• Increased shotgun damage up close (20/bullet instead of 18) but have it fall off to 1 at distance 20 (used to be 14)
• Slightly randomize fire to hit time so ARCs don’t all fire at the same time (+/- 1 sec)
• Differentiating Fade from Skulk: Reduced blink energy cost from 50/sec to 45/sec. Swipe does more damage, has a slower rate of fire and higher energy usage.
• Changed medpacks to only give health back, not armor (like NS1)
• ARCs and MACs now cost team resources
• Lowered MAC cost from 10 to 5
• Whips do structural damage instead of light damage (2x vs. structures instead of 1/2)
• The armory no longer waits until you’re at full health before giving you ammo
• A player waiting to respawn at an Infantry Portal that is recycled is now put back into the team respawn queue so they don’t remain in respawn limbo forever
• Decreased GL cost from 30 to 20
• Added ability for marines to +use each other to weld their armor
• Changed marine max speed according to how much they’re carrying and what weapon is deployed. Vanilla marine speed is the same. Using heavier weapons will be a little slower and holding less or using lighter weapons will make you a little faster.
• Marines get 1 point for fully welding a marine
• Display health and armor percentages on reticle text when not full
• Changed minimum LOS sighting distance from 8 to 1.5 (just big enough to see skulks munching on your extractors or skulks just about to attack a marine)
• Doors, Eggs and PowerPoints no longer give LOS

Bug fixes and improvements

• Shotgun idle animation is faster and doesn’t block the screen as much
• Skulk mouth doesn’t close as far so view isn’t obscured as much
• Fixed Gorge strafe-jumping exploit (hehe)
• Fixed bug where ARCs didn’t need LOS to hit targets or to keep hitting targets
• Disabling multithreading for model blending (causes hitches)
• Refactoring of movement and camera code for easier testing and better mod support
• Adjusted Gorge size so he can fit inside vents
• Fixed blip positions on minimap
• Fixed bug where networked Vec3 variables would not be returned by reference (which prevented them from being modified by functions like Normalize)
• Fixed bug where the rifle would not stop looping if a player was killed while firing
• Setup the “ents” console command to work on the dedicated server
• Changed minimap alerts to use network messages instead of console commands (hopefully fixes issue with alien alert getting stuck on the screen)
• Lerks are easier to control now (no upward movement when holding in a direction)
• Fixed case where GUIMinimap:ShowMap() was causing the game to slow down
• Bilebomb is the bomb (updated bile bomb effects)
• Reverting power node disabled color back to full red because everyone likes it more
• Fixed bug where you get 25 personal resources every time you join team (abusable). Now you only get your starting resources the first time you join a game.
• Fixed bug causing Skulk bite on non-players to not prioritize attacks properly (now easier to attack power nodes on summit for example, Thanks Matso!)
• Altered the “use” tracing to make building infantry portals easier
• Fixed script error when ejecting commanders
• Fixed bug where evolving alien upgrades restored all your health and armor
• Added ability for research (addon tech) to be only researchable at specific structures (upgraded Whips, etc.)
• Added string encoding so single and double quotes work in chat and fixed some sizing issues (Thanks Marc!)
• Added Commander Arms Lab icon (thanks Hugh!)
• Fixed an issue where the teamNumber was not getting set when replacing a player thus preventing spectators from seeing entities.
• New skulk bite animation (bite4)
• Crag hive becomes a Crag hive when the Crag is created, not when it finishes building
• Added new crosshair images and a custom crosshair for SpitSpray (Thanks Harrison McCabe!)
• Fixed problem where build validity didn’t check the tech tree (resulting in pre-ordered Drifters being able to build upgrade structures you shouldn’t be able to)
• Alien buy menu improvements
• Added JSONP support and fixed content types for stats pages
• Added start of localization support
• Fixed an issue where the ARC would get stuck in deployed mode and become useless if you happen to click the undeploy button while it was targeting.
• Added lights to scan effect (thanks, community!)
• Fixed bug where period on the number pad couldn’t be bound
• Fixed potential “ghost player” on the scoreboard if the player entity no longer existed for a client when they disconnected
• Added new animation graph system (not used yet, but will be basis of new animation tool and system)
• EQed many in-game sounds for consistency
• Fixed bug where you couldn’t connect to a server bound to a non-standard port through the main menu
• Increased minimap size a bit
• Tweaks to grenade launcher fire and Gorge sounds
• Fixed bug where messages could be sent to players before they were fully connected (fixes black screen problem)
• Turned off camera collision when spectating
• Updated the Steam API to the latest version
• Disabled marine taunting as we don’t have anims for it

ns2_summit changes

• Reduced amount and size of noname locations (always powered hallways)
• Added locations “Summit Reception” and “Pipe Junction” (both always powered)
• Increased size of corridor in Pipe Junction leading from Crossroads to Ventilation
• Reduced depth of the pit and removed one of its two stairs in Marine Start, thus easier building placement and navigation
• Rebuild Ventilation, improved geometry, increased size, more space to walk on, added pipes
• Added more GroundWaypoints for Arc (sorry for poor placement, Andrew!)
• Added summit_support models (Thanks, Bill!)
• Removed more geometry/props from commander view
• Removed part of the railings in Alien Start to improve navigation (only catwalk so far)
• Increased size of Marine Start, Alien Start and Surface Access slightly
• Moved Pipe Junction slightly
• Rebuild catwalk area in Crossroads next to Pipe Junction
• Added route with weldable door from Marine Start/Ventilation to that catwalk area in Crossroads
• Renamed location Generator to Reactor (more to come!)
• Improved performance in Crossroads
• Reduced culling issues slightly
• Adressed some annotations
• Fixed holes in Crevice
• Added debris to the broken catwalk in Crossroads
• Added reactor model and changed visuals in location Reactor