Natural Selection 2 Message Board

Half-Life begot the mod Natural Selection, which begot standalone sequel Natural Selection 2, which together with NS1′s Combat mode incestuously begot NS2′s Combat mod, which now begets standalone game Natural Selection 2: Combat. It’s all a bit like Chronicles with assault rifles.

Faultline Games are taking their Combat mod standalone, they’ve announced, expanding and polishing it up as one would expect. Combat’s a murder-oriented version of Natural Selection, focusing on the asymmetric humans vs. aliens FPS combat while doing away with RTS-y bits like resource-gathering and commanders. It also splashes in RPG-y levelling, with murder-earned skill points unlocking new weapons, tech, life forms and whatnot.

… [visit site to read more]

The folks behind Natural Selection are working on an open-world underwater building game. Subnautica will "combine elements of role playing, sandbox, exploration and cinematic games," according to its newly-opened website-slash-blog.Read more...

I started writing this story just to point out that Natural Selection 2 is going to have a free weekend over the next few days, and that if you hadn’t yet bought it then you should take a look. It’s a really good indie multiplayer shooter that managed to overshadow Aliens: Colonial Marines in every possible way, and they’ve just updated it with loads of new content. There’s new weapons, female player models, better tutorials, and more. There’s a trailer for that below. But there’s also a trailer for a new crowd-funding scheme as well. Unknown Worlds has released free updates for the game since it’s been launched, but as the game’s returns diminish they need cash to continue working on it full-time. The latest free update cost them $550,000. Their hope? That a tiered donation and reward system will recoup some of that expenditure.(more…)

Features

Added queued orders (hold shift to queue orders on Drifters, MACs, etc)
Added Cystem for placing multiple cysts at once

Balance

Reduced Flamethrower damage by 18%
Reduced Minigun damage by 20%
Reduced Grenade Launcher splash radius by 20%
Reduced Cyst auto build time by 2 seconds
Cysts can no longer be built by Drifters and and only 1 per Hive will auto construct (Gorges can still use heal spray on them)
Reduced Babbler hitbox size to make it fit the actual model size better

Improvements

Explosions now trigger a slight camera shake
Added shell ejection effects to the Rifle, Pistol and Shotgun
Pickups are now prioritized by item cost
Added a link to a players Steam profile page on the player list page in the server web admin (Thanks CheesyPeteza
Spectators now have access to the request menu
Cysts can now be placed everywhere and all Cysts in between will be created automatically when the nearest parent is too far away
Added power indicator for Marine Commander when dropping structures
Added subtle view model rotation for wall walking Skulks
Added hidden mode for dedicated server, use the -hidden switch while starting the server process to use this feature
Added minimum life time for Grenades before they are allowed to detonate

Fixes

Fixed invisible elements in Commander UI blocking mouse clicks
Fixed bug causing some non-NS2 servers to be listed on the NS2 tab in the server browser
Fixed a script error caused by using Alt+Enter to switch full screen mode while in the main menu
Fixed bug preventing the team resource graph UI from updating properly in spectator mode
Fixed bug causing move forward to not work if it was bound to a mouse button while in free camera spectator mode
Fixed camera tilt for wall walking skulks
Fixed bug where cycling through abilities didnt work properly for Lerks
Fixed bug where recycling got cancelled on power loss
Fixed Marine Commander being able to drop Infantry Portals or Phase Gates in a way that players could get stuck
Fixed Echo Harvesters sometimes not working when being blocked by a Cyst
Fixed bug where Blinking downwards gives you high amounts of extra speed
Skulk ragdoll no longer appears after using Xenocide
Fixed bug causing the main menu alert message box to appear below the main menu news box
Fixed bug allowing Commander to place certain items outside the map (ammo pack, health pack, weapons, etc)
Fixed Parasite model outline sometimes not working
Fixed bug preventing the help widgets from appearing until the player encounters a Gorge tunnel
Fixed Onos camera animations
Fixed Exos not being affected by Parasite
Fixed Echoed Eggs not being usable
Fixed wall jumping sometimes giving more speed than intended

SDK

Added Server.GetServerHidden() function

The female TSF Marine will join the battle of Natural Selection 2 in the game's next update, scheduled for August. The character was one of the first announcements made for post-launch content and developer Unknown Worlds revealed the final render of the game's 3D model on its site.

"The game industry has a history of depicting female characters inappropriately," wrote Unknown Worlds' Hugh Jeremy as part of the announcement. "Often, they are stylized to such a degree that they become sexual objects: While their male comrades are clothed, armed and armored to fight, the female character is notable for the lack of any clothing at all. When female characters are granted equal protection, that protection often ignores basic laws of physics in favor of offering titillating form."

And if you feel good after reading that, don't read the comments found on Unknown World's announcement. Just don't. Don't.

In Natural Selection 2, you can play as just about anything. Gigantic pairs of teeth with tiny feet attached, mutant god elephants, space pterodactyls, scythe-armed devil wraiths, and, you know, men. But not human women. At least, not yet. Thankfully, that’s all about to change, as Unknown Worlds has unveiled a female marine design that’s, well, pretty freaking great. Better late than never, I suppose. So hurrah! Details after the break.

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Balance

Resource System

Changed more extractor health to armor to be easier to weld up
Minimum team resources when no RT active (counts as 0.5 active RTs)
Removed no res while dead rule
Reduced personal resource income per RT from 0.125 to 0.1

General

Reduced harvester cost to 8
Drifters can now clear marine ghost structures
Removed medpack cooldown from marine commander UI
Marines have now a medpack pickup delay
Removed vision obscuring effect of gorge spit
Fixed GL not dealing full damage on direct hit
Reduced exo armor to 280, down from 400
Increased exo armor upgrade to 45, up from 40
Changed puncture player damage scalar to 1.5 (was 1.25)
Reduced phase tech and observatory cost to 10 t.res (were 15)
Disabled gradual melee attacks
Added concept of soft targets which let bullets and melee attacks go through (affects Drifters, MACs, Hallucinations)
Added additional 6 second respawn time when rejoining a team, suiciding or when killed by a death trigger
Movement code rewritten

Anti Spam

Increase crag, shift, shade cost to 15 (was 10)
Increased Crag/Shift/Shade health and effectiveness by 50% (In line with cost increase).
MACs and Drifters are no longer able to attack
Resource towers and command structures will now block re-creation for 5 seconds after destruction
Added supply limit for specific units (200 max per team)
MACs can no longer weld each other
Multiple MACs are no longer able to weld the same target
Crags no longer stack their healing with each other and can heal a maximum of 3 targets at once
Shift energize no longer stacks

Marine Tech Tree

JP and single gun Exos are now available at 1 command station
Mines tech research cost has been decreased to 10 resources (down from 15)
Reduced robotics factory to 10 resources (was 15)
Reduced upgrade to ARC robotics factory costs to 5 (was 10)
Nano shield is now a research at command station
Arms lab no longer requires an armory
Welders no longer require a research
Added small self weld when welding a structure or a player
Grenade Launcher and Flamethrower are now immediately unlocked once an armory is upgraded

Exosuit

Reduced exo cost to 40 (60 for dual minigun)
Rxos can now be nano shielded
Rxosuits can now use their thruster horizontal (use shift)
Reduced exo thruster cool down reduced to 2.5 seconds
Increased exo base speed to 6, up from 5
Reduced claw damage to 30
Miniguns now profit from weapon upgrades
Toned down dual minigun damage to 70%
Reduced vision obscurring effect from bilebomb on exo HUD

Flame Thrower

Increased base damage
No longer benefits from weapon upgrades
Increase flame thrower magazine size to 50
Removed flame thrower damage ramp up
Reduced flamethrower weight
Flamethrower can now burn up bile/whip bombs and disables enemy structure functions
Flamethrower can now burn up drifter clouds

Grenade Launcher

Increased base damage
No longer benefits from weapon upgrades
Reduced grenade launcher cost to 15
Increased grenade launcher reserve ammo to 28
Whips no longer whack grenades

Shotgun

Increased shotgun rate of fire by 18%
Reduced base damage to 170
Adjusted shotgun spread

ARC

Reduced ARC build time from 10 to 7
Reduced robotics factory upgrade time from 40 to 20
Reduced ARC movement speed by 33%
Reduced ARC movement speed by 70% when in combat or on infestation
ARCs are now properly affected by shades ink cloud
Reduced ARC splash radius to 7, down from 10

Marine General

Marines can now build on infestation (25% slower)
All marine structures take damage to armor while on infestation
Reduced health/armor of Phase Gates to 2500/300 (down from 2700/450)
Marines can now always sprint (no more fatigue)
Added ability for marine commander to temporary power individual structures
Amories no longer heal armor
Increased jetpack cost to 15 (was 10)
Removed MAC EMP
Extractors and command stations can now be parasited
Increased spawn time to 8 seconds (was 7)

Alien Spawn

Each alien has individual spawn timer (10 seconds)
An egg is generated every 13 seconds (6.5 seconds for 12 player)
Each hive can have max of 3 eggs (6 for 12 players)
Hives have now the hatch ability (2 eggs for 5 t.res)

Whip

Increased whip bomb splash radius to 6 meters (was 3) and reduced damage by 50% (down to 600)
Whips can automatically bombard once they are matured
Reduced whip cost to 10 (was 15)
Whips will now root and unroot automatically

Alien Tech Tree

Personal upgrades scale now cost depending on life form (0 for skulk, 2 gorge, 3 lerk, 5 fade, 8 onos)
Reduced life form cost to compensate with new upgrade cost (5 gorge, 25 lerk, 40 fade, 60 onos)
Add bio mass: every structure grants bio mass which increases the health of life forms
Scaleable upgrades (for example build a maximum of 3 shells to get maximum efficiency for carapace, regeneration), 20 res per structure
Celerity works now in combat and increases max speed by 1.5 m/s
Regeneration works now in combat
Adrenaline increases max energy and regeneration rate by 10% per level
Added new shade upgrade which shows enemies and their health (Aura)
Merged silence and camouflage (Phantom)

Fade

Swipe damage down by 16%
Fades are a bit easier to see during blink
Blink is now always researched
Shadowstep does not add any momentum anymore and can be researched with biomass level 5
Increased range / accuracy of fade vortex ability
Disabled fade double jump

Lerk

Spores are now tier 3 and bigger / cheaper to use.
Umbra is now available at bio mass 3 (was 3 hies before) and damage reduction has been reduced
Fixed weapon switch delays (umbra to bite and spores to bite)

Onos

Changed stomp to affect marines in a radius rather than being a shockwave
Onos movement wont be blocked by skulks, gorges and lerks anymore
Reduced gore range
Reduced gore damage to 100

Gorge

Hydras are now flamable
Increased gorge build rate

Skulk

Skulk moves now faster on walls
Xenocide cant be cancelled anymore
When dying by xenocide, skulk respawn time is reduce by 6 seconds

Infestation

Cysts will block recreation in the area when destroyed for 4 seconds
Cysts will autobuild once their parent is contructed
Increased cyst build time to 4 seconds, removed cool down
Increased cyst range and infestation radius
Infestation receding is now twice as fast than growing
Gorge tunnel entrances create now infestation when the other side is infested

Drifter

Drifters can now be created during the hive is researching
Reduced drifter cloud costs to 1 (was 2)
Drifters unlock triggered abilities (shade hive: hallucinate, shift hive: storm cloud/movement speed, crag hive: mucous membrane/heals armor)
Moved hallucinations from shade to drifters: every alien in effect range generates a hallucination, controllable by the alien commander

Alien General

Crag, shift and shade can now always be build and can move
Chamber triggered abilities require now the correct hive type
Allow aliens to change upgrades (min gestation time 5 seconds)
Alien structures auto build rate is reduced by 70%, drifters speed up build time to normal rate
Cloaked players are always slightly visible
Regeneration works now in combat (5% of max health every 2 seconds)
Rupture can now be cast directly on infestation, like bonewall
Added echo harvester to shift
Added echo gorge tunnel to shift (only on infestation)
Enemies are outlined with parasite only (damage will no longer trigger it)
The normal gestation time is applied when using a pre-evolved egg instead of just 2 seconds
Shift echo ability no longer requires maturity
Adjusted shade ink ability duration and cool down to allow arcs to fire once between successive use of ink clouds

Fixes

Fixed bug allowing the scoreboard button to be used while text chatting
Fixed bug causing Babblers to sometimes freeze mid-jump while they are trying to cling to an Alien that has no more free cling points
The Onos player can now move their camera up and down while charging
Fixed medpacks being picked up by dead marines
Fixed bug causing player ghost models (Clog, Mine, etc) to freeze in place when placed in certain invalid areas

SDK

Fixed Lua io lib readline functions sometimes crashing if the line was too long
Changed Shared.GetSystemTime() back to unix time
Added Client.SetMouseSensitivityScalarX() and Client.SetMouseSensitivityScalarY() functions to adjust mouse sensitivity independently on the 2 axes
The modding framework is automatically included again (this is so the modding entry system is auto-loaded)

Improvements
LuaJIT now used by the Client and Server for increased performance (Thanks fsfod!)
Grenades are now predicted and updated in the shooters world
Improved the look of the vote menu (Thanks Agiel!)

Balance
Increased grenade launcher reserve ammo to 28 (up from 16)
Disabled Whip Grenade whack

Fixes
Fixed a nil/number being leaked onto the Lua stack every time the server error count is fetched causing the Lua stack to overflow eventually crashing the server (Thanks fsfod!)
Fixed incorrect time being displayed on the server details window
Filtering by map name and server name is no longer case sensitive
Fixed edge case where voting to concede could cause a script error while transitioning to the ready room
Fixed script error caused by spectating around a Hallucinated structure
Fixed bug causing chat input text to be misaligned after changing resolution without restarting the game
Fixed crash on some computers when starting the game
Fixed script error caused by killing an entity with the Flamethrower in a single attack before it was set on fire
Fixed bug causing the password prompt to sometimes not appear before joining passworded servers that you had previously joined

SDK
Fixed bug in ReplaceLocals() where only one local was replaced
Moved the loading of PreLoadMod.lua and PostLoadMod.lua out of Client.lua, Server.lua, and Predict.lua. Mods should be loading these files.
Fixed bug in AddClientUIScriptForClass() when the passed in class name wasnt already used

Docking
Moved Generator further North
Fliped Generator 180 degrees
Moved Stability further north
Moved stability rt and power node
New section that connects stability to courtyard junction
Redesigned maintenance
New section that connects maintenance to generator pressure control
Redesigned courtyard
Deleted north point
New section that connects departures to stability and junction strand
New section that connects courtyard to maintenance maintenance access
Removed locker rooms as marine spawn, once again alien only
Fixed occlusion bug in bar
Power in backalley now works as intended
Deleted Cafe tech point, marines now only spawn in terminal

Tram
Cleaned up commander view around Elevator Transfer, and South Tunnel->Observation corridor (makes overview clearer).
Removed some obstructive faces from commander view in Observation and Ore Processing.
Fixed stuck point in Observation vent, and power issue in Warehouse (thanks to Mendasp)

Optimization
Sped up server start times by pre-computing hashes for files for consistency checking

Improvement
It is no longer possible to spam console commands on the Client
Sound effects are now entity based and inherit the relevancy of their triggering entity
Added custom HUD indication for exosuit thrusters
By default, the consistency configuration file will include all file types except UI textures and View Model assets
Adjusted phase gate engagement point so hydras and other AI units less likely miss their attacks
There is now a warning before auto-concede ends the round
Auto-concede will not kick in for the first few minutes of a round

Change
Only 2 mods will download at a time on the Client while connecting to a Server
Added 1 second cool down to scan to prevent spam
Mods downloaded while connecting to a Server are no longer deleted when you exit the game

Editor
Wireframe/show-edge rendering should be much faster - fixed some inefficiencies
With the line/rect/circle tool, you can now hold CONTROL to ignore existing geometry. Ie. you can create boxes inside rooms without exiting the room.
If anything is selected and a rect/line/circle is active, those will only modify selected stuff
CORRECTION: By default, geo tools will not edit non-selected geometry. Hold CONTROL to edit non-selected geo.
Double-clicking faces should now select orphaned edges as well

SDK
Created new streamlined mechanisms in LaunchPad for creating and publishing mods
Made it possible for multiple people to work on a mod that is managed by LaunchPad
Private is now the default publishing option
Fixed issue where string material parameters could not be set on a RenderModel
Fixed bug where gettign the coordinates of attachment point point in a model with no bones would give the wrong result
Added the ability to specify the target texture size for a camera
Fixed bug where "angles" network fields were inaccessible from script
Fixed crash when calling Shared.LinkClassToMap twice with the same map name
Fixed "reload" parameter in Script.Load() function in NS2
Fixed issue where dofile and loadfile would not use the engine file system
Added support for game://, config://, temp://, and cache:// style file names in Shared.GetMatchingFileNames

Refinery
Fixed exploit of doom

Change

Reduced extractor death and Spikes tracer effect intensity.
Distress beacon sound has no longer a distance restriction.

Feature

Added capturing of dump information from the TechSupport.exe tool if NS2.exe is running.
Clicking an already selected hot group will cause the view to jump to the units position.

Fix

Fixed runtime error that occurred sometimes on map change.
Fixed bug where AI units could push each other off of pathable ground.
Fixed a bug where the microphone is muted until you enter sound options menu.
Reload sounds stop playing when a player drops a weapon or dies.
Fixed medpacks being created under tech points.
Fixed Commander double clicks preventing single click actions from being performed.
Fixed bug where vortexed Marines / Exos take damage inside Gorge tunnels.
Fixed bug where distress beacon could teleport Marines back to an already destroyed Command Station.
Commanders are no longer able to see projectiles from units which are not sighted.
Fixed bug where vortexed Exosuit can smash eggs.
Fixed bug where Commanders select/deselect units unintentionally the moment they perform an action (cast enzyme, drop medpack)
Fixed rookie status drawn in red in the scoreboard.
Fixed bug where you could switch weapons during building.
The camera will no longer jitter while waiting to spawn at an Infantry Portal due to players running over the IP.
Fixed bug where dead players could trigger taunt voice over.
Fixed resource towers / command structures being slightly offset on the minimap.

Balance

Increased Infantry Portal cost to 20 (up from 15)
Reduced nano shield duration to 3 seconds (down from 8)
Increased nano shield effectiveness to 75% (up from 50%)
Increased arms lab upgrade costs to 20/30/40 (was 15/25/35)
Reduced gorge tunnel research cost to 10 (was 30)
Reduced gorge tunnel cost to 5 (was 10)
Increased gorge tunnel armor by 100

Improvement

Added fps console command to toggle displaying the framerate on the top left of the screen.
Improved precision of marquee and Ctrl-Click selection.
Improved med/ammo pack drop precision.
Its now easier to give attack / defend orders on moving targets.
Changed the default player limit on the server if no parameter is specified to 16.
Steam Ids are now also displayed in the traditional format in the Server console (STEAM_0:1:XXXXXXX)
Changed the scoreboard font to match the other in-game fonts.
Added numbers in front of player names on scoreboard to facilitate communication.
Its now easier to hit with parasite (thanks Matso!)

Optimization

Low-level shader optimizations.
Disabled compiler generated buffer security checks.
Effects inherit now the relevancy from their triggering entities.

Editor

Fixed bad texture scales when creating faces; texture scale behavior changed: larger scale values mean texture is stretched should not affect existing maps;
Added spawn_selection_override entity to more directly control how initial spawns are selected.

SDK

Added Class_Reload(className, networkVars) for easier overriding classes.
Added loading of entry points for multiple mods (see lua/entry/readme.txt for more info)
Created simplified sound system that allows sound files to be played without using FMOD projects.
Client.PlayMusic now requires a the FEV project name as part of the cue name (e.g. sound/NS2.fev/Main Menu instead of Main Menu)
ClientUI.lua is now more moddable with exposed functions to add more UI scripts.
Removed support for TTF fonts (bitmap fonts should be used instead)

Refinery

Moved Containment hive to a less snipeable position.
Adjusted cover in Containment in aliens favour.
Added vent from Containment to Containment/Chasm Entrance, and vent from Chasm to Chasm/Turbine entrance to provide more flanking opportunity in the area.
Added cover at exit of vent over the chasm in Chasm.
Adjusted Turbine cover to prevent sniping from Conduit entrance.
Added random spawns for both teams in Flow Control, Smelting, Turbine and Containment, with close spawning prohibited.

Mineshaft

Rotated Deposit tech point around so it is no longer able to be arced from central drilling
Modified Repair tech point with better cover and fewer LOS issues
Modified Cave tech point with more cover for the hive, as well as made the middle path leading into crusher cystable for easier expansion to the resource node.
Modified Operations tech point for better cover also moved the resource node away from the wall so aliens can move behind it
Modified Sorting tech point for better cover, also added a stairway on the north side, to make cysting into north tunnels much simpler
Moved cavern resource node to be centered between the repair and cave tech points
Moved pilot drill resource node to be centered between repair and operations
Modified central drilling to have better cover for aliens, moved the southern resource node to the north, on the upper platform, also added a stairway on the southwest side for better accessibility to the gap
Modified and extended the vent leading from cave to north tunnels
Added a vent from Deposit to the Gap
Added more cover for aliens in Crusher
Modified the minimap to be easier to navigate in places that overlapped or were unclear

Descent

Temporarily disabled the music in Club due to a bug(should be fixed for the next patch)

In celebration of PAX East, Natural Selection 2 is free to play on Steam until Sunday. If you like it well enough, you can purchase it at 50 percent off as well. Developer Unknown Worlds expects over 15,000 people to play concurrently.

If you're at PAX East, the Unknown Worlds team can be found on the show floor, presenting a gorgeous update to Natural Selection 2. (That's not an opinion, that's the name of the update.)

Here’s a cautionary tale, and a stark reminder that digital goods are still the World Wide Wild West. While a majority of PC games these days seem to ultimately involve a Steam key (which is itself an understandably controversial state of affairs), ownership of one of those keys can be sold by any number of third parties. So we see online stores both reputable and troublesome striving to offer downloads for less than a direct Steam activation, less than each other and, most commonly, less than the frequently outrageously inflated official pricing in some territories. Such was (and presumably is) the case for Natural Selection 2. Revealed developer Unknown Worlds yesterday, “Recently, a batch of 1,341 NS2 Steam keys were purchased using stolen credit cards. These keys were then offered for sale by various resellers. The owners of said cards disputed the transactions, and thankfully received their money back.”

Thankfully for them, but less thankfully for a) Unknown Worlds and b) the people who had bought the keys.

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In the battle that is the shipping of a big patch, we do our best to achieve total victory. The bane of our development lives is the hotfix. Hotfixes are horrible. They suck up disproportionate amounts of development time, they are inefficient uses of development resources, and just generally suck.

But try as we might to avoid them, sometimes they are needed. Gorgeous needed one, and here it is! 241 is small and wont make big differences to the way you play. It will fix some hidden nasties that snuck out it the Server process, and some bugs causing consternation to people using babblers, wall jump, and fullscreen windowed mode.

At their release, Babblers were a little bit useless. This uselessness boiled down to the fact that they were too slow to keep up with their host Gorge, catch friendly players hit by the baitball, and close distance with marines. Now, they are much faster, and much more useful.

Winrates in Gorgeous have been exceptionally good. After 25,798 games (on Sunday), the probability of a marine win in a randomly sampled game was 0.507, our best result yet, and a big improvement on build 239′s ~0.41. However, some of this improvement came from a bug causing Skulks to lose momentum when they hit the ground. That is fixed in 241, so we expect the probability of marine wins to decrease back below 0.5 for now.

Servers will update over the next hour or so, so if you cant find games at the moment, sit tight. Here is the full changelog:

Improvement

Added super-sampling when generating reflection cube maps to improve quality.

Balance

Increased Babbler run speed from 5 to 7.

Fix

Fixed bug that prevented an Alien from evolving if they had Babblers attached to themselves.
Eliminated uninitialized data when sending packets with strings less than the maximum length (may cause problems with some firewall rules)
Fixed exploit which allowed Gorge tunnels to be build outside of the map.
Fixed bug which caused Skulks to lose all their momentum instantly when touching the ground.
Fixed bug where mines were ignoring damage falloff.
Fixed bug where Alien attacks got blocked by attached Babblers.
Fixed bug where fullscreen windowed mode forced vsync on.
Changed the maxfps console command to only allow values above 30 FPS to prevent exploitation

Optimization

Reduced overhead of isa method.
Improved server performance.
Reduced the cost of updating entities in the query manager.

Added
•Railgun Exosuit now available at Prototype Lab. Explodes things.
•Gorges may now spawn Babbler eggs, which hatch into Babblers!
•Gorges may now create Gorge Tunnels
•Bait Balls Direct babblers by flinging it at enemies of friendlies
•New map: Descent
•New contextual help system, TipVids.
•Insight Spectator System Mk 2 Redesign and interface overhaul.
•First Person Spectating
•Damage decals
•Reflections
•Refraction effects
•New alien cloaking effects
•New main menu background scene

Change
•Disabled wall walking on Command Stations.
•Added one second cool-down between Gorge structure drops
•Claw damage increased to 75.
•Claw range increased by 10%
•Rifles will now get destroyed when purchasing a new weapon at the armory to prevent a pile of Weapons in big games (manually dropping or picking weapons up is unchanged)
•Removed foresight from Alien Commander.
•Increased frequency of alert message when a base power node is under attack.
•Whips no longer hit multiple targets with their melee attack.
•Doors are no longer usable.
•Removed exo backwards speed scalar.
•Updated personal resource icon in Alien buy menu.
•Reduced phase gate rate from 0.5 to 0.2 seconds.
•Exosuit movement speed depends now on weapons weight (minigun heaviest, railgun lightest)
•Slightly increased Axe range to prevent situations where you could not hit an enemy below you even when crouching.
•Skulk movement adjustments Movement code now makes them slightly less erratic when dancing in your sights.
•Cloaking system is now analog rather than binary Allows for more nuanced use of cloaking trait
•Decreased the amount of time it takes for the game to start once both teams have a Commander.
•Doubled the rate that the Game will not start until both teams have a Commander banner message appears on the screen.
•Enemy players are now damaged while near the enemy Command Structure before the game starts.
•Bile bomb can now destroy dropped weapons.
•Reduced Bile bomb single target damage by ~20% (and reduced force from 13 to 11, so shorter effective range)

Editor
•Added the ability for death triggers to do damage over time instead of instantly killing the entity.
•Max distance that initial Cyst spawn points can be from the Hive increased by 50%
•Changed the texture list in the Editor to and all of the search terms together by default (old or behavior can be reproduced by using ? in front of a search term)
•Changed the texture list box to allow selection of materials in any directory (not just the materials directory)

Feature
•Added -logdir command line option to let server admins override the location of log.txt.
•Added pagination to the mod browser in the dedicated server web admin.
•Added search capability to the mod page of the dedicated server web admin.
•Added resource graph in Insight (Press Q)
•Added commander research bars in Insight, replaces monolithic research block
•Added player energy/ammunition indicators in Insight

Fix
•Fixed bug causing Skulk hitbox and worldmodel to be misaligned on some vertical surfaces (Makes the buggers easier to hit).
•Fixed bug where emissive only surfaces would not be properly bloomed (caused cloaked Alien structures to be somewhat visible)
•Fixed issue where enabling double or triple buffering while in fullscreen windowed mode would cause the display to not update
•Fixed swipe not triggering effects / draining energy when quickly tapping primary attack button.
•Fixed script error when firing a Rifle that had been previously fired and dropped on the ground.
•Fixed holo Marine model being visible for a few frames for the already respawned Marine.
•The unban button now works in the server web interface.
•Fixed health bars showing up in ready room.
•Fixed bug where caps lock couldnt be bound in the input settings.
•Fixed bug where tapping primary attack key with Skulk bite selected wont deduct energy / trigger sound.
•Fixed clogs appearing for one frame at world origin.
•Fixed bug where Marine Commander could select cloaked Alien units.
•Fixed bug where the retry console command would not attempt to reconnect to the last server joined using the connect console command.
•Fixed health/armor not being properly predicted for growing Alien structures.
•Fixed bug where tech point remains smashed after the Hive got replaced by a Command Station.
•Fixed camera hitch when crouch jumping as Onos.
•Fixed sentry battery destruction effects.
•Fixed unsocketed power nodes not considering LOS properly.
•Fixed bug where units recloak when Marine who touched them is still in close proximity.
•Text chat now displays above the Fade to black death screen.
•Fixed Alien structures playing metallic sound when attacked by Skulks.
•Ghost structures disappear now immediately when killed.
•Commander no longer triggers a ping during entering a chat message.
•Fixed Aliens losing abilities when a Hive gets destroyed and they evolve an upgrade without changing life form.
•Fixed issue where chat text would sometimes be displayed escaped in the web server admin console.
•Players can now damage each other after the round ends.
•Changed behavior of Gorge build menu: You no longer need to re-select things to build more of them.
•Fixed bug where hitting alt-enter would not cause the options menu to be updated based on the current windowed/fullscreen status.
•Fixed bug where the microphone would be stuck on if the server changed maps while a player was recording.
•Fixed infestation decal not showing up for Hydras.
•Fixed bilebomb effect not showing up on MAC model.
•When a team surrenders, everyone will be notified.
•Fixed prediction error when jumping in rapid succession.
•Fixed clogs blocking phase gates.
•Fixed bug where Aliens could barely see cloaked units when dark vision is enabled.
•Fixed welder ignoring the deploy animation.
•Fixed bug where Commanders could drop structures when help mode is enabled.
•Fixed Marine structures showing Alien blood when hit by flame throwers.
•Fixed adrenaline / camouflage banner not being displayed.
•All team members will be notified when someone votes to concede or to eject the Commander.
•Robotics Factory cant cancel research.
•Fixed bug which gave Aliens abilities which are not researched.
•Fixed Editor bug that would occasionally cause a vertex to be created a large distance away from its intended location.
•Fixed issue where a change to a shader template file would not necessarily trigger shaders to be rebuilt.
•Fixed hitch when first encountering Infestation after the shaders have been updated.
•Fixed issue where dynamic props wouldnt be animated on the dedicated server due to missing animation graphs.
•Spectator Mouse Hover no longer misses.
•Recycled/Refunded structures are no longer added to total team resource gathered.
•Fixed exploit in server web admin (Thanks confused!)
•Fixed issue where mods that specified a specific version build was required would not mount the file system in the proper order.
•Fixed bug causing pre-placed Cysts to sometimes die at the start of the round.
•Fixed bug where HTTP requests did not follow 301 redirects (fixes the mods list in the web admin)
•Fixed bug where Aliens were able to evolve both upgrades from one Hive type.
•Fixed exploit where selecting multiple shifts allowed it to bypass the global cool down for hatch ability.

Improvement
•Exos display now the thruster duration / cooldown in their HUD.
•Added smoke effect for Spike attacks.
•Added missing minimap icons for shift, shell, spur, veil.
•Insight text now much more legible

Optimization
•Reduced the number of bits used for network fields.
•Optimized determination of whether or not Orders should be relevant to a client (improves server performance)
•Optimized querying the world for entities.
•Infestation blob coordinates are now saved after being generated once (Thanks Mats!)
•Sped up the compiling shaders process.
•Reduced memory usage by compressing animations also reduces load times.
•Tweaked texture streaming reduces load times.

Docking
•Cafe is now now a random marine spawn again
•Lockers is now a random spawn for both aliens and marines
•Redesigned how Cafe connects to Bar
•Redesigned Central Access so it now connects to cafe
•Redesigned Back Alley
•Moved Bar further west to prevent sieging of Lockers
•Moved Cafe RT to the lower level to prevent LOS issues
•Some changes to courtyard to fit the Central Access changes
•Some cosmetic changes to Ball Court
•Some cosmetic changes to Bar
•Reflection Probes added

Refinery
•Made Smelting a marine spawn.
•Removed route from Smelting to Conduit.
•Added new route from Smelting to Routing.
•Bug fixes including building placement and power grid issues.

Summit
•Improved Atrium RT location (less claustrophobic)
•Added more cover and flanking options for aliens in Flight Control
•Added missing lights in Crevice vent

SDK
•Moved all processing of input into script.
•Fixed visualization of the emissive map in the Viewer.
•Added the ability to make an external cinematic loop in the Cinematic Editor.
•Improved error reporting when a material as assigned in a model with an absolute path.
•Increased the timeout for HTTP requests.
•Fixed issue where defining a class on the server but not on the client would cause crashes and other bugs.
•Added the ability to materials layered on models to inherit parameter values from the underlying material.
•Fixed bug where the Ok/Cancel buttons in Create Mod window of Launch Pad would not be visible if the Windows font size was set to large.
•Added animatable shader parameters for objects in the Cinematic Editor.
•Added support for vertex colors in .model files.
•Fixed bug where specifying a float2, float3 or float4 value for a surface shader input would corrupt the value.
•Added the ability specify float2, float3 and float4 parameters in a .material file.
•Added support for optional commas in SJSON files.
•Added LocalPlayerChanged engine event when the local player on the Client changes.
•Added ServerClient:GetSpectatingPlayer() and ServerClient:GetPlayer() methods.
•Added Client.VoiceRecordStart and Client.VoiceRecordStop functions.

Natural Selection 2 gets "Gorgeous" today, along with a 50 percent off sale on Steam. The update, according to Hugh Jeremy of developer Unknown Worlds, introduces "new weapons, creatures, abilities, map, tutorial system and more: Gorgeous takes the struggle for survival between alien and marine to the next level."

At 50 percent off, Natural Selection 2 will be $12.50. We've followed up to find out how long the sale will last.

When you look at RPS, wherever you might be, RPS looks back at you. We’re a lot like The Void in that way. Fear not, however, for our uncanny glare should not intimidate you. Usually we simply squint through the screen and ponder what it is about our words and faces that attracts the most handsome readers of all. I can’t confirm whether or not Natural Selection 2 developers Unknown Worlds watch players of their game battling one another in the people vs aliens team-based shooter, but they are evidently pleased with their lovely playerbase because today they are releasing the Gorgeous expansion for free. “It includes Railguns, Gorge Tunnels, Descent, and quite a few fun surprises.”

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Change
• Shotgun uses now a symmetrical bullet spread pattern.
• reduced grenade launcher damage radius from 8 down to 6.
• reduced spit projectile speed by 12%
• arc menu will now always show both deploy and undeploy button.
• Removed celerity sound and screen effects.
• reduced Gorge spit damage from 40 to 30.
• It is no longer possible to damage anything during the pre-game.
Optimization
• Fixed bug where some objects would be unnecessarily rendered using material techniques that had no effect.
• Reduced the memory usage from keeping level data in memory.
• Reduced the memory usage pathing information.
• Improved Infestation performance on the client (thanks Matso!)
• Improved loading times when vsync is enabled by limiting the loading screen frame rate to 30 FPS.
Feature
• In-game audio device selection.
Fix
• Damage arrows are now more accurate when multiple players are attacked by a Whip at the same time (Thanks to Joop for pointing this out!)
• Fixed bug where request menu was not opening when your team has no Commander.
• Fixed bug where grenades were not dealing full damage on direct hits.
• fixed Whips being able to whack grenades through walls.
• Fixed issue were client side and server side selection status are sometimes out of sync.
• Drifters now uncloak when an enemy unit touch them.
• Fixed bug causing Celerity effects to remain on when the Skulk was walking or standing still in some cases.
• Fixed random number generator issue that caused inconsistencies in the bullet spread between the client and server.
• Fixed Couldnt open error messages appearing in the log.
• Fixed Gorge build menu not getting immediately cleaned up upon death.
• Fixed bug which allowed more than 3 Sentries to be built next to a Sentry Battery in some cases.
• fixed melee attacks not triggering effects when hitting world geometry.
• Fixed bug where the main menu music would play over the tutorial videos.
• The server will now reload the map if 10 hours have passed and no game is currently being played (Thanks Mats!)
• Fixed bug preventing the MAC from attacking Hives.
• Fixed crash on exit if the rendering thread was still processing a frame during the shutdown process.
• Gorge Bile Bomb will no longer interrupt the Gorges Celerity speed boost after shooting the bomb.
• Fixed the speed console command not affecting player movement.
• Aliens may now evolve new traits if an existing trait is lost due to the upgrade structure being destroyed.
• Fixed bug where alt-tabbing out of the game would cause the Exosuit to become opaque.
• Chat will now display correctly in the dedicated server web interface (Thanks Sherman!)
Improvement
• cyst min range check will now pass when the vertical distance between cysts is too high, to prevent situations were Commanders could sometimes not infest resource nodes.
• selection and hotgroup creation works now without any delays.
• Commanders can now select enemy units.
• increased number of allowed hotgroup to 9.
• hot key icons blink up red if a unit in this group is under attack.
• added shift+click for manipulating selection (add/remove units)
• Cysts now redeploy instead of enforcing a minimum placement distance between existing Cysts.
• phase gates now show a connection line between each other on the minimap.
• phase gates show now the destination in their name.
Sdk
• Added support for distortion effects (like refraction) in surface shaders.
• Added Client.GetMusicVolume.
Veil
• Blocked small vents in Topographical
• Added cover to vents in Nanogrid

Natural Selection 2‘s intense multiplayer sci-fi corridor-combat has given me odd dreams. I am not sure why that’s relevant, but I wanted to mention it.

Unknown Worlds’ long-awaited sequel (since 2002!) to the original hybrid mega-mod has been out for a while now, and I’ve been snapping my giant, slavering jaws on the live servers during that time. I believe this means I am ready to send you an encoded transmission that tells you wot I think.(more…)

#ericneigher The freelance reviewer who wrote a video game review that was pulled by GameSpot—and kept on Metacritic nonetheless—says he's sorry for the mistakes in his piece. More »

#metacritic If you head on over to the Metacritic page for Natural Selection 2, you might notice something strange. Of the seven reviews listed, only one is scored below an 80. More »

#review Natural Selection 2 is the first ever game I've enjoyed watching more than I've enjoyed playing. More »

Natural Selection 2's first seven days, since crawling out of the development ooze and onto Steam, have been good for the game. It sold 144,000 copies and earned developer Unknown Worlds over $1 million.

"It has been a success beyond our wildest dreams," the team at Unknown Worlds wrote, sending out a sales infographic, which can be found after the break. "We spent the days leading up to launch dreaming of cracking the top-ten top-sellers on Steam. We ended up staying at number one for 36 hours."

The company will hold its first post-launch competitive event tomorrow, November 10, which you can watch on Twitch.

#naturalselection Natural Selection 2 came out last week, and the folks who made it have created this neat infographic to show off the performance of their new real-time-strategy/first-person-shooter hybrid. More »

Natural Selection 2 is out. You can buy it right now. Given that it’s actually possible both purchase and play (!) a great many games, that might not seem like such a huge deal to you. But make no mistake: Unknown Worlds’ RTS/FPS buildy-chompy-shooty hybrid could’ve easily died on the vine. And it nearly did – over and over and over, for pretty much the entirety of its development cycle. Fortunately, the NS2 team has always had a secret weapon on its side: a community that is – by most definitions of the word – completely and rather terrifyingly insane. This is their story.

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Natural Selection 2 is Now Available on Steam!

Natural Selection 2 is an immersive, multiplayer shooter that pits aliens against humans in a strategic and action-packed struggle for survival. It seamlessly combines a shooter/FPS gameplay with a strategy (RTS) game.

Imagine all the things you could do with seven hours. You could have a somewhat unsatisfying sleep. You could go on a plane flight that wouldn’t quite get you to America. You could complete Dishonored fifteen times. You could clean up your Goddamn house.

One thing you don’t have to do with seven hours is spend them impatiently waiting for Natural Selection 2, which after years of development has had its release date moved forward ever so slightly.(more…)

Natural Selection 2, which was originally slated for a Halloween launch, will now be available later today. The new calculation on the game's Steam page has the team-based shooter's release set for around 8PM Eastern (5PM Pacific, Midnight UK).

As Shacknews points out, the original idea was for the game to launch at midnight Pacific, 10 years to the day of the original Natural Selection mod for Half-Life. Now that it'll launch a little early, it'll be a multiplayer multi-time zone fiesta.

Natural Selection 2 is really pushing that October release window it set up in September; it's now due out on October 31. The original Natural Selection mod came out on October 31, 2002, precisely 10 years prior to its sequel's launch date.

"As the old saying goes, 'you've bitten off more than you can chew,'" Unknown Worlds writes in its release date announcement. "To which we reply: 'swallow it whole.'" While we're not quite sure of the context for that one, it is understandably spooky.

Unknown Worlds have sent word that their hybird FPS/RTS Natural Selection 2 will finally be released on October 31st. Natural Selection 2 is a sequel to the famed and enormously popular Half-Life mod, which was one of the most ambitious attempts to shake up the “Fortress” formula, introducing a top-down commander to bring a tactical-oversight aspect to the usual team-based combat. It was also, brilliantly, asymmetrical, with space marine types fighting a varied team of aliens. Natural Selection 2 is a complete rebuild of that concept, and frankly it looks astonishing. I can’t wait to get stuck in to the finished game. Trailer belooooow.(more…)

True fact: natural selection, the “survival of the fittest” cornerstone of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, was named after Unknown Worlds’ Natural Selection 2. Yes, that’s right: Natural Selection 2 has been in development since the mid-1800s. Check a history book. It’s the truth. But now, after generations of tweaking and perfecting its particular brand of asymmetrical aliens vs marines blasting/teeth-gnashing, the developer’s ready to unleash its promising creation on our lowly, non-immortal forms. What exactly will you get, though? Let’s find out.

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