Progress! These last couple weeks we have been working towards some of our larger goals for the game. We have had multiple public and private test sessions with the upgraded Luajit changes and it is very close to public release. Dependency on Awesomium has been removed and should help with stability and memory leaks. HIVE 2.0 will be launching in parallel to the existing HIVE sometime over the next week using extensions. This will allow us to test our new system in the public and see how well the algorithms and data collection are working and allow us to make some final tweaks before removing the old version entirely (more detail on this in a separate blog post soon).

Looking to make some changes, update 307 includes a new version of Summit with contributions from Wob and Loki. We have been playing it over the last couple weeks and are excited to see how the public adapts to the new changes. There have been continued debates in multiple Discord channels over balance and a wide range of other subjects lately. These discussions have been very helpful and have lead to some inspired changes that you will see in the log below, so keep em going.

Keep an eye out for a new blog post next week showing our evolving Roadmap for the future of NS2 and some of the exciting updates that we hope to be bringing in the near future.

Skulk on and be happy!

Update 307 Changelog

Tweaks / Improvements

• Skulk Changes
  • Reverted HP to 70/10 (was 85/10)
  • Increased base ground speed to 7.25 to match wall walking speed (was 7.0)
  • Increased non-celerity wall jump force to 6.4 to match the celerity force (was 5.2)
  • Increased sneak speed to be 66% of max speed (was 50%)
  • Made wall jump noises more responsive to your speed to provide better feedback

Although we felt that increasing the Skulk base HP was a necessary step to restore the balance, we agree with the community’s sentiment that it didn’t improve the feel for either side. Our aim going forward is to make it so Skulks feel effective, even while their small health pool can feel punishing. These new changes in conjunction with the melee box increase should make Skulks feel a little bit more maneuverable and able to get a kill, especially during the early game and when planning an ambush.

• Removed the Twitter ticker since it is not used much
• Added team say console command `tsay` (Thanks Keats!)
• Replaced HTML renderer to use Steam APIs instead of Awesomium
  • Videos will now play on Linux!

Fixes

• Welcome banner was hidden by the load screen (Thanks Brute!)
• Fixed that text input fields didn’t consume key events (Thanks Brute!)
• Fixed that enemies were still considered in LOS for health bar display when hiding behind structures and other players
• Fixed that enemies were not considered in LOS for health bar display when visible through railings
• Fixed that Skulks’ celerity bonus was not being reduced while sneaking
• Fixed a script error caused by telling a bot to attack a clog
• Fixed that higher level tech was not immediately available in Sandbox mode from the Armory/Protolab
• Fixed that missing placeholders in a localization could cause clients to crash (occurred with Serbian selected)
• Fixed a script issue occurring on ns2_caged caused by achievement handling

Map Changes

• Summit
  • Atrium – Depth of arched pillars increased, tree added and its tube, raised platform at back of summit added console for additional ground cover, fences now solid.
  • Datacore – New pillar added to give partial LOS block on TechPoint when approaching from Pipe Junction
  • Reception – Increased height of ceiling and added new pillar
  • Flight Control -Duplicated roof truss and added tv for cover
  • Computer Lab – Added small pillar increased height of ceiling, route from comp lab to sub now has 2 additional ceiling recesses for hiding skulks etc
  • Reactor Core – Slight room alteration + extended angular struts from the reactor prop
• Derelict
  • Fixed overhead bridge in Biome blocking commander view

SDK

• Model Compiler – Fixed a bug that would cause FBX models to use incorrect bones for attachment points.
• Model Compiler – Fixed a bug that would cause FBX models to have cameras incorrectly oriented.
• Model Compiler – Added a directive to the model compiler “material_path_replace”.  Takes an input string, and replaces all occurrences of it with the output string.  Useful for maintaining proper Maya workflow/naming conventions.

Progress! These last couple weeks we have been working towards some of our larger goals for the game. We have had multiple public and private test sessions with the upgraded Luajit changes and it is very close to public release. Dependency on Awesomium has been removed and should help with stability and memory leaks. HIVE 2.0 will be launching in parallel to the existing HIVE sometime over the next week using extensions. This will allow us to test our new system in the public and see how well the algorithms and data collection are working and allow us to make some final tweaks before removing the old version entirely (more detail on this in a separate blog post soon).

Looking to make some changes, update 307 includes a new version of Summit with contributions from Wob and Loki. We have been playing it over the last couple weeks and are excited to see how the public adapts to the new changes. There have been continued debates in multiple Discord channels over balance and a wide range of other subjects lately. These discussions have been very helpful and have lead to some inspired changes that you will see in the log below, so keep em going.

Keep an eye out for a new blog post next week showing our evolving Roadmap for the future of NS2 and some of the exciting updates that we hope to be bringing in the near future.

Skulk on and be happy!

Update 307 Changelog

Tweaks / Improvements

• Skulk Changes
  • Reverted HP to 70/10 (was 85/10)
  • Increased base ground speed to 7.25 to match wall walking speed (was 7.0)
  • Increased non-celerity wall jump force to 6.4 to match the celerity force (was 5.2)
  • Increased sneak speed to be 66% of max speed (was 50%)
  • Made wall jump noises more responsive to your speed to provide better feedback

Although we felt that increasing the Skulk base HP was a necessary step to restore the balance, we agree with the community’s sentiment that it didn’t improve the feel for either side. Our aim going forward is to make it so Skulks feel effective, even while their small health pool can feel punishing. These new changes in conjunction with the melee box increase should make Skulks feel a little bit more maneuverable and able to get a kill, especially during the early game and when planning an ambush.

• Removed the Twitter ticker since it is not used much
• Added team say console command `tsay` (Thanks Keats!)
• Replaced HTML renderer to use Steam APIs instead of Awesomium
  • Videos will now play on Linux!

Fixes

• Welcome banner was hidden by the load screen (Thanks Brute!)
• Fixed that text input fields didn’t consume key events (Thanks Brute!)
• Fixed that enemies were still considered in LOS for health bar display when hiding behind structures and other players
• Fixed that enemies were not considered in LOS for health bar display when visible through railings
• Fixed that Skulks’ celerity bonus was not being reduced while sneaking
• Fixed a script error caused by telling a bot to attack a clog
• Fixed that higher level tech was not immediately available in Sandbox mode from the Armory/Protolab
• Fixed that missing placeholders in a localization could cause clients to crash (occurred with Serbian selected)
• Fixed a script issue occurring on ns2_caged caused by achievement handling

Map Changes

• Summit
  • Atrium – Depth of arched pillars increased, tree added and its tube, raised platform at back of summit added console for additional ground cover, fences now solid.
  • Datacore – New pillar added to give partial LOS block on TechPoint when approaching from Pipe Junction
  • Reception – Increased height of ceiling and added new pillar
  • Flight Control -Duplicated roof truss and added tv for cover
  • Computer Lab – Added small pillar increased height of ceiling, route from comp lab to sub now has 2 additional ceiling recesses for hiding skulks etc
  • Reactor Core – Slight room alteration + extended angular struts from the reactor prop
• Derelict
  • Fixed overhead bridge in Biome blocking commander view

SDK

• Model Compiler – Fixed a bug that would cause FBX models to use incorrect bones for attachment points.
• Model Compiler – Fixed a bug that would cause FBX models to have cameras incorrectly oriented.
• Model Compiler – Added a directive to the model compiler “material_path_replace”.  Takes an input string, and replaces all occurrences of it with the output string.  Useful for maintaining proper Maya workflow/naming conventions.

Our latest build continues on the path of refinement and stability, and although small there are some nice changes in this patch. Those of you with antivirus woes when opening NS2 should no longer have an issue as all our windows binaries are digitally signed and secure. As stated in the blog post earlier this week, we increased the size of the melee attack on both the skulk and fade and this change is no longer an extension but part of the vanilla code. We have also decided to slightly bump up skulk HP requiring an additional 2 bullets to make contact.

Behind the scenes we are continuing our work on HIVE 2, which is coming along nicely and should see the public soon! Meanwhile FSFOD has not wasted any time on his upgrade of LUAJit and we will be beta testing those changes starting next week. We are very excited to get some of these new features out into the public, but for now, enjoy the update!

Update 306 Details:

Tweaks / Improvements

• All Windows binaries are now digitally signed, which should make AV & Security programs consider NS2 as a validated program. There are some AV programs that will not take this into consideration however (such as Avast Hardened-mode enabled).
• Warmup Mode Improvements
  • Enemies will slowly take damage while in the other team’s spawn location and will receive a notification to retreat
  • Bots will no longer buy tech or evolve, to prevent overwhelming the enemy team with Onos
• Filler bots will be disabled for listen servers
• Disabled many rookie-only checks in listen servers
• Boosted Skulk starting health by 15hp to 85/10
• Size of Skulk melee has been increased to 1.2, 1.2 (was 0.7, 1)
• Size of Fade melee has increased vertically to 0.7,1.2 (was 0.7,1)

Fixes

• Fixed that filler bots stayed longer in the teams than they should which could lead to uneven teams
• The player list now updates properly in the server details window
• Mod names now update properly in the server details window
• Fixed that the sv_forceeventeams command wasn’t working
• Fixed that the “start commanding” text showed up at unbuild hives (thanks NoM)
• Fixed that commander dropped weapons caused phantom item bubbles

SDK

• Texture lock has been further improved.
• Added a new command to the model compiler, “material_path_replace”.  See model tools manual for details.  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ELyjisMUh6TCDubkp5IZTC7SsVrx41j-OdHpHPs4_uU/edit?usp=sharing

Our latest build continues on the path of refinement and stability, and although small there are some nice changes in this patch. Those of you with antivirus woes when opening NS2 should no longer have an issue as all our windows binaries are digitally signed and secure. As stated in the blog post earlier this week, we increased the size of the melee attack on both the skulk and fade and this change is no longer an extension but part of the vanilla code. We have also decided to slightly bump up skulk HP requiring an additional 2 bullets to make contact.

Behind the scenes we are continuing our work on HIVE 2, which is coming along nicely and should see the public soon! Meanwhile FSFOD has not wasted any time on his upgrade of LUAJit and we will be beta testing those changes starting next week. We are very excited to get some of these new features out into the public, but for now, enjoy the update!

Update 306 Details:

Tweaks / Improvements

• All Windows binaries are now digitally signed, which should make AV & Security programs consider NS2 as a validated program. There are some AV programs that will not take this into consideration however (such as Avast Hardened-mode enabled).
• Warmup Mode Improvements
  • Enemies will slowly take damage while in the other team’s spawn location and will receive a notification to retreat
  • Bots will no longer buy tech or evolve, to prevent overwhelming the enemy team with Onos
• Filler bots will be disabled for listen servers
• Disabled many rookie-only checks in listen servers
• Boosted Skulk starting health by 15hp to 85/10
• Size of Skulk melee has been increased to 1.2, 1.2 (was 0.7, 1)
• Size of Fade melee has increased vertically to 0.7,1.2 (was 0.7,1)

Fixes

• Fixed that filler bots stayed longer in the teams than they should which could lead to uneven teams
• The player list now updates properly in the server details window
• Mod names now update properly in the server details window
• Fixed that the sv_forceeventeams command wasn’t working
• Fixed that the “start commanding” text showed up at unbuild hives (thanks NoM)
• Fixed that commander dropped weapons caused phantom item bubbles

SDK

• Texture lock has been further improved.
• Added a new command to the model compiler, “material_path_replace”.  See model tools manual for details.  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ELyjisMUh6TCDubkp5IZTC7SsVrx41j-OdHpHPs4_uU/edit?usp=sharing

It’s been two weeks since our last update, be honest you missed us! Moving to this model has allowed for us to make some much needed changes to our way of implementing and testing changes to the game. This update may seem light, but it has some good fixes and more enhancements to our server browser including a friends filter. This filter will allow you see what servers your steam friends are playing on and get you connected to them.

One of the new additions I mentioned above is “Playtest with the Dev’s,” a weekly opportunity to jump into the beta of next update and play a series of games and give your feedback on the upcoming changes. We strive to make changes that have a positive impact on the community and next to our discord or forums this is a nice direct interface for the players and devs to communicate.

Our newly implemented feedback system has given us some nice results over the last couple weeks. The most selected option for lower rated rounds was “Uneven Teams” and for newer players was “Inexperienced Commander.” To attack these issues we have begun work on a set of new features, the first being a long needed update of our backend Player Skill tracking system HIVE. Hive 2.0 will go a long way towards helping us resolve some old internal bugs, and add some much needed speed to the communication between servers and the database. The second feature is our continued expansion on the tutorials available to players. A new Commander Tutorial is being drafted and developed to give players a better grasp on commanding a team for both Aliens and Marines.

These two features are only the beginning of our Phase 3 plans. We will be starting a new series of QA videos on our YouTube channel to better explain and show off upcoming development on NS2. There will be another blog post next week going into more details on how you can submit questions and feedback for us to talk about in our series.

See the full changelog below and happy hunting!

UPDATE 305 CHANGELOG

Tweaks / Improvements

• Added a Friends tab to the serverbrowser
  • Easily join your friends, wherever they are
• Bots will now fill up empty servers up to 12 slots by default
  • Makes it easier to form teams as player can directly join the team they want to play
  • Makes Warmup mode engaging even without other players
  • Makes it faster to start a game without many human players
  • Bots are ignored by the Warmup Mode check
• The cooldown of Belly Slide and Charge get now displayed by the HUD (Thanks Steelcap!)
• Increased the rate with which each Minigun heats up from 0.2 to 0.3 to compensate for them being independent now
• Autobalance doesn’t stop players from spawning anymore when teams are uneven

Fixes

• Fixed the description of the Machine Gun and Lerk Spores
• Fixed that sometimes you couldn’t evolve if you had babblers attached to you
• Fixed most issues with stuttering when running past clogs caused by desync of the clog collision in the predict world
• Fixed that the server browser was sending significant more pings than needed
• Fixed issue with NS2+ causing health bars to show up when players were spawning in

Map Fixes

• ns2_derelict (Thanks Zavaro!)
  • Fixed Occlusion Geometry in Nursery
  • Geothermal No longer a marine spawn
  • Western Entrance No longer an Alien spawn

It’s been two weeks since our last update, be honest you missed us! Moving to this model has allowed for us to make some much needed changes to our way of implementing and testing changes to the game. This update may seem light, but it has some good fixes and more enhancements to our server browser including a friends filter. This filter will allow you see what servers your steam friends are playing on and get you connected to them.

One of the new additions I mentioned above is “Playtest with the Dev’s,” a weekly opportunity to jump into the beta of next update and play a series of games and give your feedback on the upcoming changes. We strive to make changes that have a positive impact on the community and next to our discord or forums this is a nice direct interface for the players and devs to communicate.

Our newly implemented feedback system has given us some nice results over the last couple weeks. The most selected option for lower rated rounds was “Uneven Teams” and for newer players was “Inexperienced Commander.” To attack these issues we have begun work on a set of new features, the first being a long needed update of our backend Player Skill tracking system HIVE. Hive 2.0 will go a long way towards helping us resolve some old internal bugs, and add some much needed speed to the communication between servers and the database. The second feature is our continued expansion on the tutorials available to players. A new Commander Tutorial is being drafted and developed to give players a better grasp on commanding a team for both Aliens and Marines.

These two features are only the beginning of our Phase 3 plans. We will be starting a new series of QA videos on our YouTube channel to better explain and show off upcoming development on NS2. There will be another blog post next week going into more details on how you can submit questions and feedback for us to talk about in our series.

See the full changelog below and happy hunting!

UPDATE 305 CHANGELOG

Tweaks / Improvements

• Added a Friends tab to the serverbrowser
  • Easily join your friends, wherever they are
• Bots will now fill up empty servers up to 12 slots by default
  • Makes it easier to form teams as player can directly join the team they want to play
  • Makes Warmup mode engaging even without other players
  • Makes it faster to start a game without many human players
  • Bots are ignored by the Warmup Mode check
• The cooldown of Belly Slide and Charge get now displayed by the HUD (Thanks Steelcap!)
• Increased the rate with which each Minigun heats up from 0.2 to 0.3 to compensate for them being independent now
• Autobalance doesn’t stop players from spawning anymore when teams are uneven

Fixes

• Fixed the description of the Machine Gun and Lerk Spores
• Fixed that sometimes you couldn’t evolve if you had babblers attached to you
• Fixed most issues with stuttering when running past clogs caused by desync of the clog collision in the predict world
• Fixed that the server browser was sending significant more pings than needed
• Fixed issue with NS2+ causing health bars to show up when players were spawning in

Map Fixes

• ns2_derelict (Thanks Zavaro!)
  • Fixed Occlusion Geometry in Nursery
  • Geothermal No longer a marine spawn
  • Western Entrance No longer an Alien spawn

With the summer sale now in full swing, we decided to take a lighter approach to the update this week. Minor tweaks and improvements over last week’s patch should address some of the feedback we heard. Moving forward, we are adjusting our patch cycle to be bi-weekly. This allows us to start tackling some larger features and helps with our testing schedule.

As many of you know and for those of you that don’t, each update to NS2 comes with not just hours of development time but lots of bug and gameplay testing. Our playtesters are community volunteers and give many hours each week so that you can enjoy the fruits of our labors. Our EU Playtest Lead Asraniel has been around since the beginning of time and given so many hours that I couldn’t even begin to list all the many influences and tasks he has helped address. Asraniel is taking a step back to focus on his next step in the world and we wish him nothing but the best in his endeavors. He has left his mark on not just this game but our community as a whole, thank you and good luck!

Update Notes
Tweaks / Improvements

• Exo miniguns will not overheat each other
• Feedback UI – “Out of sight, out of mind”
  • Every time you close the feedback UI will increase the time it won’t show up afterwards
  • Every time you give feedback will increase the time the feedback UI shows up
  • You can also close the feedback UI using the Escape button
  • Feedback UI doesn’t show up at listen servers anymore
  • Added a close button to the feedback UI (as requested)
• Sandbox Mode – “Back to the roots”
  • Restored the tooltip functionality of the sandbox mode (no idea how that broke)
    • Explore the map and all game elements with descriptions
  • Made sure all weapons, upgrades, classes and abilities get unlocked in the sandbox mode
  • Limited to Docking at the moment
• Many game strings still need to be updated (Weldable Doors are still not planned)
• Running an experiment to see if changing the default setting for health bars, damage numbers, and hit sounds makes a measurable difference to new player behaviors (this will have no impact to current players)
• Removed British alternate tutorial VO

Fixes

• Fixed that the feedback UI blocked various button presses
• Fixed a script error caused by the arcade achievement
• Fixed issue where forward movement was dependent on view angles.
• Fixed right click preventing sprinting
• Fixed arcade achievement not being given on ns2large servers
• Fixed phase gates not setting angles correctly for people who use inverted mouse (boo, hiss)
• Fixed guns floating in midair when dropped.
• Fixed guns held by marines sometimes not following the marine.
• Fixed exploit allowing instant switch to rifle once per life
• Fixed that the boot camp stayed invisible after closing the popup with escape

With the summer sale now in full swing, we decided to take a lighter approach to the update this week. Minor tweaks and improvements over last week’s patch should address some of the feedback we heard. Moving forward, we are adjusting our patch cycle to be bi-weekly. This allows us to start tackling some larger features and helps with our testing schedule.

As many of you know and for those of you that don’t, each update to NS2 comes with not just hours of development time but lots of bug and gameplay testing. Our playtesters are community volunteers and give many hours each week so that you can enjoy the fruits of our labors. Our EU Playtest Lead Asraniel has been around since the beginning of time and given so many hours that I couldn’t even begin to list all the many influences and tasks he has helped address. Asraniel is taking a step back to focus on his next step in the world and we wish him nothing but the best in his endeavors. He has left his mark on not just this game but our community as a whole, thank you and good luck!

Update Notes
Tweaks / Improvements

• Exo miniguns will not overheat each other
• Feedback UI – “Out of sight, out of mind”
  • Every time you close the feedback UI will increase the time it won’t show up afterwards
  • Every time you give feedback will increase the time the feedback UI shows up
  • You can also close the feedback UI using the Escape button
  • Feedback UI doesn’t show up at listen servers anymore
  • Added a close button to the feedback UI (as requested)
• Sandbox Mode – “Back to the roots”
  • Restored the tooltip functionality of the sandbox mode (no idea how that broke)
    • Explore the map and all game elements with descriptions
  • Made sure all weapons, upgrades, classes and abilities get unlocked in the sandbox mode
  • Limited to Docking at the moment
• Many game strings still need to be updated (Weldable Doors are still not planned)
• Running an experiment to see if changing the default setting for health bars, damage numbers, and hit sounds makes a measurable difference to new player behaviors (this will have no impact to current players)
• Removed British alternate tutorial VO

Fixes

• Fixed that the feedback UI blocked various button presses
• Fixed a script error caused by the arcade achievement
• Fixed issue where forward movement was dependent on view angles.
• Fixed right click preventing sprinting
• Fixed arcade achievement not being given on ns2large servers
• Fixed phase gates not setting angles correctly for people who use inverted mouse (boo, hiss)
• Fixed guns floating in midair when dropped.
• Fixed guns held by marines sometimes not following the marine.
• Fixed exploit allowing instant switch to rifle once per life
• Fixed that the boot camp stayed invisible after closing the popup with escape

Happy Summer Marines! We are ushering in the sunshine with update 303. This is a lighter patch focused on some bug fixes and a couple tweaks and additions to the game. With this update we are introducing a new post-round feedback system, this will help provide us with more details about your games and comparing round data to support future changes.

The last six months has seen a lot of changes and experimentation to the game and we aren’t done yet. We are working on developing plans over the next week to continue to build on the new foundation that we’ve created over these last few months. Be on the lookout for some exciting new opportunities and changes to come.

As always, thank you for being part of our community and your continued support of our team.

UPDATE 303 DETAILS

Tweaks / Improvements

• Added a round feedback UI – Help us to improve the game based on your feedback
  • Rate the last round you played
  • Select multiple reasons on feedback based on rating
• Added new Achievement “Arcade Champion”
  • Explore for at least one hour the various community made custom game mode which wait for you in the Arcade section of the server browser:
    • Faded
    • Gun Games
    • Siege
    • Last Stand
    • Defense
    • NS2 Large

• Removed all outdated tip videos in the training menu
• Updates the “VS. Bots” tab of the training menu
• Commander bots can now generally be replaced by entering the command station
• Restored the spawn animation of eggs (broke a long time ago)
• The spawn animation of alien structures is less obscuring now by lowering the size of the initial infestation blob

Fixes

• Fixed that parasite never timed out if an entity was outside the relevancy distance
• Fixed a bug that stopped the scoreboard from showing up after connecting to a server
• Fixed an script error which occurred when you used escape at the tundra unpack menu
• Fixed that the cancel button of the tundra unpack menu wasn’t functional
• Fixed Gorge structures not being destroyed in warmup mode
• Fixed various in-game tooltip descriptions (e.g. power surge, contamination and mines)
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause a research button for a commander to permanently disappear — forcing the commander to either let someone else start the research, or return to ready room to reset it.
• Fixed that marine upgrades stayed available after an arms lab has been power surged
• Power nodes no longer play the flinch animation and buzzing sound when they are infested but their armor is gone. However, the lighting in the room will continue to flicker to indicate the power node is infested.
• Power nodes will now be properly infested if they are rebuilt from death in an infested area.
• Cysts will no longer “flash” infestation right before it begins to spread.
• Fade stab will now work even after switching to a different weapon mid-stab.
• Marines can now immediately shoot upon spawning from infantry portal — they no longer play the rifle deploy animation. IP-biting skulks beware!
• Marines will now always look in the proper direction after using a phase gate. Before, having previously used a gorge tunnel would cause the view angles to be different.
• Command station will no longer leave behind the login screen after being killed.
• Fixed Gorge tunnels and Phase Gates are deactivated during the concede sequence.
• Fixed exiting a hive or command station, the commander will now face the direction they were facing when they entered.
• Fixed that bots were counted as human players by the concede and commander eject vote
• Fixed various script errors caused by the Marine commander bot
• Fixed that Commander bots placed structures in warmup mode

Maps

• Caged (Thanks Flat!)
  • Made ceiling geometry around the fans in Ventilation commander invisible
  • Fixed misaligned trim textures on the curved corners of the doorways in Main Hold
  • Added collision geometry behind pipe in east corridor of Central next to Access entrance so Fades cannot get behind it
  • Made various props and sections of geometry commander Invisible in Life Support and the east corridor of Central
• Tram (Thanks Zavaro!)
  • Fixed the Occlusion Geometry in Shipping around the door towards South Tunnels

Editor

• Fixed a bug that would cause the displacement tool to crash the editor.

Happy Summer Marines! We are ushering in the sunshine with update 303. This is a lighter patch focused on some bug fixes and a couple tweaks and additions to the game. With this update we are introducing a new post-round feedback system, this will help provide us with more details about your games and comparing round data to support future changes.

The last six months has seen a lot of changes and experimentation to the game and we aren’t done yet. We are working on developing plans over the next week to continue to build on the new foundation that we’ve created over these last few months. Be on the lookout for some exciting new opportunities and changes to come.

As always, thank you for being part of our community and your continued support of our team.

UPDATE 303 DETAILS

Tweaks / Improvements

• Added a round feedback UI – Help us to improve the game based on your feedback
  • Rate the last round you played
  • Select multiple reasons on feedback based on rating
• Added new Achievement “Arcade Champion”
  • Explore for at least one hour the various community made custom game mode which wait for you in the Arcade section of the server browser:
    • Faded
    • Gun Games
    • Siege
    • Last Stand
    • Defense
    • NS2 Large

• Removed all outdated tip videos in the training menu
• Updates the “VS. Bots” tab of the training menu
• Commander bots can now generally be replaced by entering the command station
• Restored the spawn animation of eggs (broke a long time ago)
• The spawn animation of alien structures is less obscuring now by lowering the size of the initial infestation blob

Fixes

• Fixed that parasite never timed out if an entity was outside the relevancy distance
• Fixed a bug that stopped the scoreboard from showing up after connecting to a server
• Fixed an script error which occurred when you used escape at the tundra unpack menu
• Fixed that the cancel button of the tundra unpack menu wasn’t functional
• Fixed Gorge structures not being destroyed in warmup mode
• Fixed various in-game tooltip descriptions (e.g. power surge, contamination and mines)
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause a research button for a commander to permanently disappear — forcing the commander to either let someone else start the research, or return to ready room to reset it.
• Fixed that marine upgrades stayed available after an arms lab has been power surged
• Power nodes no longer play the flinch animation and buzzing sound when they are infested but their armor is gone. However, the lighting in the room will continue to flicker to indicate the power node is infested.
• Power nodes will now be properly infested if they are rebuilt from death in an infested area.
• Cysts will no longer “flash” infestation right before it begins to spread.
• Fade stab will now work even after switching to a different weapon mid-stab.
• Marines can now immediately shoot upon spawning from infantry portal — they no longer play the rifle deploy animation. IP-biting skulks beware!
• Marines will now always look in the proper direction after using a phase gate. Before, having previously used a gorge tunnel would cause the view angles to be different.
• Command station will no longer leave behind the login screen after being killed.
• Fixed Gorge tunnels and Phase Gates are deactivated during the concede sequence.
• Fixed exiting a hive or command station, the commander will now face the direction they were facing when they entered.
• Fixed that bots were counted as human players by the concede and commander eject vote
• Fixed various script errors caused by the Marine commander bot
• Fixed that Commander bots placed structures in warmup mode

Maps

• Caged (Thanks Flat!)
  • Made ceiling geometry around the fans in Ventilation commander invisible
  • Fixed misaligned trim textures on the curved corners of the doorways in Main Hold
  • Added collision geometry behind pipe in east corridor of Central next to Access entrance so Fades cannot get behind it
  • Made various props and sections of geometry commander Invisible in Life Support and the east corridor of Central
• Tram (Thanks Zavaro!)
  • Fixed the Occlusion Geometry in Shipping around the door towards South Tunnels

Editor

• Fixed a bug that would cause the displacement tool to crash the editor.