A happy new year to all of you out there! I’ll bet some of you thought we hit the snooze button around the holidays and never woke up, but no! We’ve been tinkering in the shadows and working on some fun new stuff to show you.

First off, we’re finally finishing up on our changes to NS2 training and bringing you the new Alien Commander tutorial. As per usual, BeigeAlert has put a lot of love and once again, yes, even an easter egg into this new training scenario. Special shout out to all our contributors in tutorial-committee for their input and advice. We decided to also make some slight changes to a couple gameplay features to continue and round out some of our changes made during the last year.

The patch is filled with lots of little bug fixes and updated features such as; a new updated machine gun texture, a refactored badge system allowing us to have better and quicker control over distribution of badges and some improvements to cyst placement.

Lastly, and to the future… I am happy to announce that while work is still being done to test stability, NS2 is now being beta tested in 64-bit! FSFOD and others on the team have been hard at work upgrading lots of code and plugins to allow this to happen and so far our testing is proving great. Why do I mention this now? Well, with the update we will be able to open up a variety of new features and abilities within the game and engine that were a bottleneck in 32-bit, memory consumption being primary concern.

Also we will be working reaching out to some of our community server ops to help us run public tests on the 64-bit platform to see what gains or stability or problems arise. So look for more information about 64-bit in future updates.

We at Unknown Worlds would like to thank the community for its continued passion and dedication to NS2!

-Dillon “WasabiOne”


Gameplay

• Lerk
• Increased base health points to 150 (from 125)
• Lowered the biomass health bonus to 2 (from 3)
• This change makes the Lerk slightly more durable in early engagements.
• Machine Gun (MG)
• Decreased weight to 0.21 (150% of the Grenade Launcher) from 0.26
• This change helps players with the MG to aim more quickly in combat and mobility.
• Mucous Cloud (Drifter Ability)
• Increased the amount of extra health point mucous grants to 20% (from 15%) of the target’s base hp.
• This change makes mucous cloud more viable compared to the hallucination cloud which generates hallucinations with 32% of the target’s base hp.

Tweaks / Improvements

• Replaced the Machine Gun texture with a higher quality version.
• Added new Alien Commander tutorial
• Learn the basics of Alien Commanding.
• Includes some hidden achievements and easter eggs.
• Added new badges (steam items) for the competitive ensl league:
• Added a badge for the winner of the 10th season
• Added badges for the world championship 2014 finalists
• Added badges for the upcoming newcomer tournament
• Refactored the badge API:
• API is now handling the badge enum correctly
• Supports multiple columns for each badge which may be user specific
• Adds support for Steam Item based badges
• Improved Cyst placement routines to ensure they are more consistently and evenly placed along paths.
• Improved Cyst placement to be accurate per mouse cursor position
• Optimized the update routine of clogs, webs and alien weapons (Thanks Katzenfleisch).

Fixes

• Fixed that Whips kept attacking invalid targets instead of searching for new targets.
• Fixed that parasite was not correctly applied onto players logging out of the command chair.
• Fixed that the ghost model for certain commander drops wasn't matched up with where it actually is when spawned (eg hives were sunk half way into the tech point instead of hovering on top of them).
• Fixed that mines had the wrong ghost model when commander was dropping them.
• Fixed that the evolution chamber wasn’t selectable sometimes due to relevancy issues.
• Fixed slerp calculations which would result in player models twitching rapidly (Thanks Nin).
• Fixed that the Exo flashlight was facing towards the floor (Thanks Nin).
• Fixed that the “purchase” sound of the marine buy menu didn’t play correctly (Thanks Brute).

Maps

• Refinery
• Fixed two stuck spots in Ready room for Winter seasonal theme.
• Fixed non-seasonal stuck spot in Lava Falls.
• Fixed reflections maps incorrectly using Biodome map.
• Mineshaft
• Fixed stuck spot in ready room for Winter seasonal theme.
• Kodiak
• Fixed several stuck spots in ready room for Winter seasonal theme.
• Caged
• Fixed Fall seasonal in-game props showing for other seasons in Shipping Tunnels.
• Tram
• Fixed Fall seasonal prop showing for other seasons.
• Summit
• Fixed missing collision on some props near Sub Access.
• Fixed flickering texture in Atrium.
• Fixed missing collision on glass pane in Flight Control.

SDK

• Fixed the perfanalyzer.py to work with the latest plog format version.
• Fixed that the Entity.AddTimedCallback early parameter had no effect on callback behavior.

A happy new year to all of you out there! I’ll bet some of you thought we hit the snooze button around the holidays and never woke up, but no! We’ve been tinkering in the shadows and working on some fun new stuff to show you.

First off, we’re finally finishing up on our changes to NS2 training and bringing you the new Alien Commander tutorial. As per usual, BeigeAlert has put a lot of love and once again, yes, even an easter egg into this new training scenario. Special shout out to all our contributors in tutorial-committee for their input and advice. We decided to also make some slight changes to a couple gameplay features to continue and round out some of our changes made during the last year.

The patch is filled with lots of little bug fixes and updated features such as; a new updated machine gun texture, a refactored badge system allowing us to have better and quicker control over distribution of badges and some improvements to cyst placement.

Lastly, and to the future… I am happy to announce that while work is still being done to test stability, NS2 is now being beta tested in 64-bit! FSFOD and others on the team have been hard at work upgrading lots of code and plugins to allow this to happen and so far our testing is proving great. Why do I mention this now? Well, with the update we will be able to open up a variety of new features and abilities within the game and engine that were a bottleneck in 32-bit, memory consumption being primary concern.

Also we will be working reaching out to some of our community server ops to help us run public tests on the 64-bit platform to see what gains or stability or problems arise. So look for more information about 64-bit in future updates.

We at Unknown Worlds would like to thank the community for its continued passion and dedication to NS2!

-Dillon “WasabiOne”


Gameplay

• Lerk
• Increased base health points to 150 (from 125)
• Lowered the biomass health bonus to 2 (from 3)
• This change makes the Lerk slightly more durable in early engagements.
• Machine Gun (MG)
• Decreased weight to 0.21 (150% of the Grenade Launcher) from 0.26
• This change helps players with the MG to aim more quickly in combat and mobility.
• Mucous Cloud (Drifter Ability)
• Increased the amount of extra health point mucous grants to 20% (from 15%) of the target’s base hp.
• This change makes mucous cloud more viable compared to the hallucination cloud which generates hallucinations with 32% of the target’s base hp.

Tweaks / Improvements

• Replaced the Machine Gun texture with a higher quality version.
• Added new Alien Commander tutorial
• Learn the basics of Alien Commanding.
• Includes some hidden achievements and easter eggs.
• Added new badges (steam items) for the competitive ensl league:
• Added a badge for the winner of the 10th season
• Added badges for the world championship 2014 finalists
• Added badges for the upcoming newcomer tournament
• Refactored the badge API:
• API is now handling the badge enum correctly
• Supports multiple columns for each badge which may be user specific
• Adds support for Steam Item based badges
• Improved Cyst placement routines to ensure they are more consistently and evenly placed along paths.
• Improved Cyst placement to be accurate per mouse cursor position
• Optimized the update routine of clogs, webs and alien weapons (Thanks Katzenfleisch).

Fixes

• Fixed that Whips kept attacking invalid targets instead of searching for new targets.
• Fixed that parasite was not correctly applied onto players logging out of the command chair.
• Fixed that the ghost model for certain commander drops wasn't matched up with where it actually is when spawned (eg hives were sunk half way into the tech point instead of hovering on top of them).
• Fixed that mines had the wrong ghost model when commander was dropping them.
• Fixed that the evolution chamber wasn’t selectable sometimes due to relevancy issues.
• Fixed slerp calculations which would result in player models twitching rapidly (Thanks Nin).
• Fixed that the Exo flashlight was facing towards the floor (Thanks Nin).
• Fixed that the “purchase” sound of the marine buy menu didn’t play correctly (Thanks Brute).

Maps

• Refinery
• Fixed two stuck spots in Ready room for Winter seasonal theme.
• Fixed non-seasonal stuck spot in Lava Falls.
• Fixed reflections maps incorrectly using Biodome map.
• Mineshaft
• Fixed stuck spot in ready room for Winter seasonal theme.
• Kodiak
• Fixed several stuck spots in ready room for Winter seasonal theme.
• Caged
• Fixed Fall seasonal in-game props showing for other seasons in Shipping Tunnels.
• Tram
• Fixed Fall seasonal prop showing for other seasons.
• Summit
• Fixed missing collision on some props near Sub Access.
• Fixed flickering texture in Atrium.
• Fixed missing collision on glass pane in Flight Control.

SDK

• Fixed the perfanalyzer.py to work with the latest plog format version.
• Fixed that the Entity.AddTimedCallback early parameter had no effect on callback behavior.

The Halloween event and free weekend went great, but it was not without its issues. Luckily we were able to resolve the issues without needing to do a steam update by using our extension system (these are the Lambda, Delta, and Omega extensions you see when you join a server). We try to limit our use of the extension system to avoid conflicting with mods, and that is the main reason we are patching this week, and why it is a light one. With this maintenance patch we are integrating those fixes into the main game, clearing out the extensions, and attempting to deploying the badge customization UI for the second time. We also realized that not enough people knew about the new shoulder patch that was able to be earned during the Halloween weekend by playing Infested, so we’ve decided to remove the time lock on it, and allow it to be earned at any time through games of Infested.

There are plenty of other exciting features coming down the pipeline, but they are not quite ready.

Our NS2 Roadmap is continuing to be updated as we have been working on our long term goals. https://trello.com/b/njrpasjl/ns2-roadmap

Gameplay

• Red emergency lights are no more, and have been changed to orange for all seasons
• Removed Halloween player effects (the files are still available for now, so mod away)
  

Tweaks / Improvements

• Moved player’s badge customization from old Hive website to be in-game via the Customize player menu
  • Menu restores hive 1 order at first use.
• Play Now changed to use a different ranking function when trying to join Infested
• Updated description of Pumpkin Patch in new item popup notification
• Updated description of Infested in play now popup
• The Pumpkin Patch is now able to be earned regardless of the season, if you are playing Infested
  

Fixes

• Fixed performance issue caused by new badge API due to deprecated code in the status UI
• Fixed that badges were not broadcasted correctly to all connected clients
• Fixed that the badge selection menu did not close correctly
• Fixed incomplete merge of Hive 2 extension
• Fixed issue with progress bar not showing proper values for levels 8 through 14
• Fixed that players were recording the wrong playtime at launch (this is relevant for our data analytics)

The Halloween event and free weekend went great, but it was not without its issues. Luckily we were able to resolve the issues without needing to do a steam update by using our extension system (these are the Lambda, Delta, and Omega extensions you see when you join a server). We try to limit our use of the extension system to avoid conflicting with mods, and that is the main reason we are patching this week, and why it is a light one. With this maintenance patch we are integrating those fixes into the main game, clearing out the extensions, and attempting to deploying the badge customization UI for the second time. We also realized that not enough people knew about the new shoulder patch that was able to be earned during the Halloween weekend by playing Infested, so we’ve decided to remove the time lock on it, and allow it to be earned at any time through games of Infested.

There are plenty of other exciting features coming down the pipeline, but they are not quite ready.

Our NS2 Roadmap is continuing to be updated as we have been working on our long term goals. https://trello.com/b/njrpasjl/ns2-roadmap

Gameplay

• Red emergency lights are no more, and have been changed to orange for all seasons
• Removed Halloween player effects (the files are still available for now, so mod away)
  

Tweaks / Improvements

• Moved player’s badge customization from old Hive website to be in-game via the Customize player menu
  • Menu restores hive 1 order at first use.
• Play Now changed to use a different ranking function when trying to join Infested
• Updated description of Pumpkin Patch in new item popup notification
• Updated description of Infested in play now popup
• The Pumpkin Patch is now able to be earned regardless of the season, if you are playing Infested
  

Fixes

• Fixed performance issue caused by new badge API due to deprecated code in the status UI
• Fixed that badges were not broadcasted correctly to all connected clients
• Fixed that the badge selection menu did not close correctly
• Fixed incomplete merge of Hive 2 extension
• Fixed issue with progress bar not showing proper values for levels 8 through 14
• Fixed that players were recording the wrong playtime at launch (this is relevant for our data analytics)

Natural Selection 2 is free to play on Steam all weekend! This Halloween, NS2 celebrates its fourth birthday, and NS1 its 14th!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/4920/

Come and see what this Alien vs Marine shooter / strategy hybrid is all about. We've got new-player-friendly servers springing up all over the world, so don't be shy, come and get bitten by a Skulk!

NS2 has continued to receive constant updates over the past four years, with Update 311 being released earlier today. Even if you've played NS2 before, chances are there are lots of new features and improvements to explore.

- Unknown Worlds :mac: :welder:

Natural Selection 2 is free to play on Steam all weekend! This Halloween, NS2 celebrates its fourth birthday, and NS1 its 14th!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/4920/

Come and see what this Alien vs Marine shooter / strategy hybrid is all about. We've got new-player-friendly servers springing up all over the world, so don't be shy, come and get bitten by a Skulk!

NS2 has continued to receive constant updates over the past four years, with Update 311 being released earlier today. Even if you've played NS2 before, chances are there are lots of new features and improvements to explore.

- Unknown Worlds ːmacː ːwelderː

It’s crazy to think it has been four years since NS2 was launched and even more so to think that many of us were playing Natural Selection 14 years ago. Things have come a long way since then and to allude to the perfect pun, they continue to evolve.

We decided to run a free weekend starting today at 10 am PT to invite every player out there to celebrate this anniversary with us!

Furthermore we wanted to do something special for you ... So say hello to The Infested - an entirely new game-mode which we will be releasing on the Steam Workshop this Friday (October 28th)!



You have been dispatched to deal with a dangerous pathogen which has been detected within a remote TSF outpost. Race to repair the air filtration system before the pathogen corrodes it too severely and the air becomes overwhelmed by infectious spores. But watch out, one of your teammates has already been infected!

Work is also continuing on our conversion to 64-bit, FSFOD is hard at work chipping away at the pieces of this large puzzle and we get closer everyday to unlocking more potential for the future of Natural Selection. Signs of life are appearing, so stay tuned ‘cause there is plenty more to come over the next few months! We can’t wait for you to see what’s in store for NS2.

Additionally this patch includes some spooky/fun enhancements to the official maps and yes, you can throw candy in the ready room again!

Happy Anniversary and Happy Halloween!

Update 311 Changelog

Gameplay

• Players can now see who the enemy commander is during pre-game, to help get games started faster
• Made lights more spooky

Tweaks / Improvements

• Revamped Training menu to be more orderly and useful for new players
• Added the beginnings of a new Progression System to Hive
  
  • Just a first step to pave the way for many future enhancements
• Moved player’s badge customization from old Hive website to be in-game via the Customize player menu
• Play now window restyled to fit new themes and look nicer
• Made some changes to prepare for Infested’s launch
• Added new Halloween effects to various parts of the game, which will automatically change per a server’s seasonal setting. (Thanks IronHorse!)
• You can now throw candy during warmup mode

Fixes

• Fixed several edge-case issues with Hive’s skill calculations
• Fixed edge-case issue that prevented Hive from updating round data when submitted
• Fixed conflicts with Hive changes within Hive Challenge and Tutorials

Maps

• All map readyrooms have been made more spooky (Thanks Zavaro, Flatrectomy, and Samus!)

SDK

• Fixed Overview.exe to not render seasonal groups
• Fixed Decoda update.dll load error
• Added more non colliding and commander invisible seasonal groups for use by mappers
• Fixed that Modloader.SetupFileHook returned an error message even on success
• Fixed that Filehook entry files could not be used as filehook
• Added “Badges+” API to manage in-game badges

It’s crazy to think it has been four years since NS2 was launched and even more so to think that many of us were playing Natural Selection 14 years ago. Things have come a long way since then and to allude to the perfect pun, they continue to evolve.

We decided to run a free weekend starting today at 10 am PT to invite every player out there to celebrate this anniversary with us!

Furthermore we wanted to do something special for you ... So say hello to The Infested - an entirely new game-mode which we will be releasing on the Steam Workshop this Friday (October 28th)!



You have been dispatched to deal with a dangerous pathogen which has been detected within a remote TSF outpost. Race to repair the air filtration system before the pathogen corrodes it too severely and the air becomes overwhelmed by infectious spores. But watch out, one of your teammates has already been infected!

Work is also continuing on our conversion to 64-bit, FSFOD is hard at work chipping away at the pieces of this large puzzle and we get closer everyday to unlocking more potential for the future of Natural Selection. Signs of life are appearing, so stay tuned ‘cause there is plenty more to come over the next few months! We can’t wait for you to see what’s in store for NS2.

Additionally this patch includes some spooky/fun enhancements to the official maps and yes, you can throw candy in the ready room again!

Happy Anniversary and Happy Halloween!

Update 311 Changelog

Gameplay

• Players can now see who the enemy commander is during pre-game, to help get games started faster
• Made lights more spooky

Tweaks / Improvements

• Revamped Training menu to be more orderly and useful for new players
• Added the beginnings of a new Progression System to Hive
  
  • Just a first step to pave the way for many future enhancements
• Moved player’s badge customization from old Hive website to be in-game via the Customize player menu
• Play now window restyled to fit new themes and look nicer
• Made some changes to prepare for Infested’s launch
• Added new Halloween effects to various parts of the game, which will automatically change per a server’s seasonal setting. (Thanks IronHorse!)
• You can now throw candy during warmup mode

Fixes

• Fixed several edge-case issues with Hive’s skill calculations
• Fixed edge-case issue that prevented Hive from updating round data when submitted
• Fixed conflicts with Hive changes within Hive Challenge and Tutorials

Maps

• All map readyrooms have been made more spooky (Thanks Zavaro, Flatrectomy, and Samus!)

SDK

• Fixed Overview.exe to not render seasonal groups
• Fixed Decoda update.dll load error
• Added more non colliding and commander invisible seasonal groups for use by mappers
• Fixed that Modloader.SetupFileHook returned an error message even on success
• Fixed that Filehook entry files could not be used as filehook
• Added “Badges+” API to manage in-game badges

Today we have a treat for you. New first person animations have arrived for all the core pieces of a Marine's basic kit: Rifle, Pistol, and Axe! Every single animation has been rebuilt completely from scratch and ran through a new modernized pipeline to improve the weight and feel of the weapon handling and movement in NS2. In addition, while updating the animations, we have also fixed many issues in the animation graphs that control which animations play and how they blend together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6pz-u5wgXM

For many, playing the game with new animations may feel like a bit of a shock considering we've all been used to the same animations for upwards of five years; but give it a chance and I think you'll come to love them.

In addition to new animations, we also are switching the game over to Hive 2. This is no miracle fix for team stacking issues, but it does give us a lot more control over the system and ability to fix issues as they come up. There are many technical improvements to the new system, some of which you can read about here.

Although Hive 2 is not going to fix team balancing, it does bring with it some significant improvements to the underlying skill learning algorithm. Moultano has provided a great description of how this works, and an image showing the difference between how the two algorithms might perform when trying to discover a player's underlying skill value.



Moultano's Sage Words: “Imagine a mountain covered in fog…”

Notice how the Hive 2 value gets closer to the target value much faster (with many less games played) than if the same set of games is recorded by Hive 1.
This week we are also working on putting together a 64 bit beta build, which you will be able to opt in to and play with on build 310 servers so that you can help test the stability and performance of the 64 bit version of NS2 in actual games. Come join us in Discord for more details. The more people that help us test it, the better we will be able to make it.

Update 310 Changelog

Gameplay

• Onos cost increased to 62 pres (was 55)
  When pres gain was increased to 1.25 per tick, Lerk cost had to be decreased to maintain the same initial timings. Because of how late into the game Onos arrive, their cost needs to be raised to account for the additional pres gain and restore the old timings. By pushing out the Oni by a minute or two, aliens have a larger need for Fades, and Marines have a little more breathing room and time to prepare.
• Increased the Shotgun spread slightly to decrease the one-shot range to approximately what it was prior to the alien hit box changes
• Lerk movement tweaks
  • Increase non-celerity flap force to match celerity to reduce Lerk’s dependence on Celerity
  • Improved crouch diving mechanics to help with ambushing and spiking
  • Increased strafe flap force to help with spiking
• Decreased Gorges off-infestation belly slide friction so that Gorges can maintain their speed a bit longer (0.2 to 0.1)

Tweaks / Improvements

• Hive 2.0
  • Algorithm Changes
    • Instead of a constant learning rate, Hive now uses both an AdaGrad-based learning rate and a constant learning rate. This makes skill values change faster initially, but change slower once they've converged. Expect large changes to your skill value for your first several games in the new system.
    • Skill values imported from the old hive system have been modified using a function of play time. (Thanks Nordic!) This fixes the issue where some new players started with a skill of 1000, and others started with a skill of 0. This has the effect of reducing all skill values, particularly those of newer players.
    • Exploits involving switching teams mid-game have been fixed. Players that switch teams will be credited with both a win and a loss, and the skill updates will be proportional to how long they played on each team, weighting the beginning of the game much more than the end.
    • Games with few human players no longer cause anomalously large skill updates. Games with fewer than 12 human players will have a very small effect on skills.
• Added graphical element for mucous shield
• Added an additional diagnostic icon which will appear when a server's performance dips to yellow or red

Fixes

• Fixed that script error icons would flash on screen after map loads
• Fixed exploit that allowed players to regain all energy by exploiting the “Evolve Last Upgrades” feature
• Fixed that you couldn't hit cysts at your feet with the Axe while standing on top of them
• Fixed a client crash caused by trying to read from a model that has not finished loading
• Fixed an scripted error occurring when bot commander got kicked
• Fixed that alien bots tried to evolve upgrades on higher lifeforms even though they couldn't afford them
• Fixed that commander bots would try to build RTs in a weird order due to it using birds-eye distance rather than path distance
• Fixed that command chairs could not be built by bots
• Fixed a bug that would cause a babbler-covered gorge to have a more difficult time heal spraying structures
• Improved how cyst chains are placed.  This should make cysts more reliably connect to the closest cyst

Maps

• Refinery : Stuck spot in Chasm <-> Lava Falls vent fixed (Thanks Zavaro!)

SDK

• In Viewer’s Animation Graph Editor, you can now press the spacebar to recenter your view on either the selected or starting node
• Fixed that LiveMixin:DeductHealth was not using the correct formulas for applying normal damage types, as it advertised

 

Today we have a treat for you. New first person animations have arrived for all the core pieces of a Marine's basic kit: Rifle, Pistol, and Axe! Every single animation has been rebuilt completely from scratch and ran through a new modernized pipeline to improve the weight and feel of the weapon handling and movement in NS2. In addition, while updating the animations, we have also fixed many issues in the animation graphs that control which animations play and how they blend together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6pz-u5wgXM

For many, playing the game with new animations may feel like a bit of a shock considering we've all been used to the same animations for upwards of five years; but give it a chance and I think you'll come to love them.

In addition to new animations, we also are switching the game over to Hive 2. This is no miracle fix for team stacking issues, but it does give us a lot more control over the system and ability to fix issues as they come up. There are many technical improvements to the new system, some of which you can read about here.

Although Hive 2 is not going to fix team balancing, it does bring with it some significant improvements to the underlying skill learning algorithm. Moultano has provided a great description of how this works, and an image showing the difference between how the two algorithms might perform when trying to discover a player's underlying skill value.



Moultano's Sage Words: “Imagine a mountain covered in fog…”

Notice how the Hive 2 value gets closer to the target value much faster (with many less games played) than if the same set of games is recorded by Hive 1.
This week we are also working on putting together a 64 bit beta build, which you will be able to opt in to and play with on build 310 servers so that you can help test the stability and performance of the 64 bit version of NS2 in actual games. Come join us in Discord for more details. The more people that help us test it, the better we will be able to make it.

Update 310 Changelog

Gameplay

• Onos cost increased to 62 pres (was 55)
  When pres gain was increased to 1.25 per tick, Lerk cost had to be decreased to maintain the same initial timings. Because of how late into the game Onos arrive, their cost needs to be raised to account for the additional pres gain and restore the old timings. By pushing out the Oni by a minute or two, aliens have a larger need for Fades, and Marines have a little more breathing room and time to prepare.
• Increased the Shotgun spread slightly to decrease the one-shot range to approximately what it was prior to the alien hit box changes
• Lerk movement tweaks
  • Increase non-celerity flap force to match celerity to reduce Lerk’s dependence on Celerity
  • Improved crouch diving mechanics to help with ambushing and spiking
  • Increased strafe flap force to help with spiking
• Decreased Gorges off-infestation belly slide friction so that Gorges can maintain their speed a bit longer (0.2 to 0.1)

Tweaks / Improvements

• Hive 2.0
  • Algorithm Changes
    • Instead of a constant learning rate, Hive now uses both an AdaGrad-based learning rate and a constant learning rate. This makes skill values change faster initially, but change slower once they've converged. Expect large changes to your skill value for your first several games in the new system.
    • Skill values imported from the old hive system have been modified using a function of play time. (Thanks Nordic!) This fixes the issue where some new players started with a skill of 1000, and others started with a skill of 0. This has the effect of reducing all skill values, particularly those of newer players.
    • Exploits involving switching teams mid-game have been fixed. Players that switch teams will be credited with both a win and a loss, and the skill updates will be proportional to how long they played on each team, weighting the beginning of the game much more than the end.
    • Games with few human players no longer cause anomalously large skill updates. Games with fewer than 12 human players will have a very small effect on skills.
• Added graphical element for mucous shield
• Added an additional diagnostic icon which will appear when a server's performance dips to yellow or red

Fixes

• Fixed that script error icons would flash on screen after map loads
• Fixed exploit that allowed players to regain all energy by exploiting the “Evolve Last Upgrades” feature
• Fixed that you couldn't hit cysts at your feet with the Axe while standing on top of them
• Fixed a client crash caused by trying to read from a model that has not finished loading
• Fixed an scripted error occurring when bot commander got kicked
• Fixed that alien bots tried to evolve upgrades on higher lifeforms even though they couldn't afford them
• Fixed that commander bots would try to build RTs in a weird order due to it using birds-eye distance rather than path distance
• Fixed that command chairs could not be built by bots
• Fixed a bug that would cause a babbler-covered gorge to have a more difficult time heal spraying structures
• Improved how cyst chains are placed.  This should make cysts more reliably connect to the closest cyst

Maps

• Refinery : Stuck spot in Chasm <-> Lava Falls vent fixed (Thanks Zavaro!)

SDK

• In Viewer’s Animation Graph Editor, you can now press the spacebar to recenter your view on either the selected or starting node
• Fixed that LiveMixin:DeductHealth was not using the correct formulas for applying normal damage types, as it advertised