Our friends at the Natural Selection League are hosting a one-weekend, no holds barred clash of some of the best players and teams in this Open Tournament!

Our friends at the Natural Selection League are hosting a one-weekend, no holds barred clash of some of the best players and teams in this Open Tournament!






Saturday and Sunday (the 29th and 30th) at 09:00 PDT / 12:00 EDT / 16:00 GMT / 18:00 CEST

Update 328 includes an upgrade to Visual Studio 2017 runtime, continued balance tweaks in response to the last update, updates to DirectX 11 (getting us closer to ditching DirectX 9 altogether) and numerous fixes and optimizations throughout the game. We are making great strides in achieving our goal on the roadmap and 329 is looking to be another great update, so stay tuned for public tests in advance of release. Lastly we want to thank all of you that have been purchasing DLC and all the newcomers that have been buying the game over the last few months. Remember all sales of NS2 and DLC directly affect our development budget and allow our team to continue work on NS2.

Check out the full changelog below to see all the goodies contained within.

Note to all Windows users: You will need to ensure the 2017 Visual C++ redistributes are installed on your system! Otherwise the game won’t start after the update. Steam should take care of this during the update process but is known to fail sometimes.

Changelog

Gameplay

Merged balance changes we released live 3 weeks ago via our extensions mod

• Undeployed ARC health decreased to 3000/200 (from 3000/500)
• Babblers:
  • New maximum lifeform shield values (total):
    • Skulk: 21 (from 35)
    • Gorge & Lerk: 21 (from 42)
    • Fade: 40 (from 65)
    • Onos: 85 (from 150)
  • Increased spawn rate from 1.5 seconds to 2.5 seconds
• Grenade Launcher:
  • Change structural damage multiplier from 5x to 4x (450 -> 360 structural damage)
• Lerk:
  • Decreased Spike damage to 5 (from 6)
  • Decreased adrenaline energy refresh rate to 30% (from 60%)
• Phase Gates
  • Increased armor from 600 to 800
• Advanced Support:
  • Decreased research costs to 20 team resources (from 25)
  • Decreased research time to 60 seconds (from 90)
• Marine weapons:
  • Dropped weapons expiry now refreshes when a marine is really close/walks over them. So you no longer have to pick them up)
• Cysts:
  • Lower maximum base Cyst HP to 200. Cysts close to a hive (near the Alien naturals) can scale up to 350
  • De-cloaking camouflage Cysts (shade hive passive) should now feel a bit snappier and more reliable
• Reduced Welder cost to 2 personal resources (from 3)

Optimizations

• Improved various expensive world update routines to stabilize and decrease their run-time cost for both Client and Server.
  • Cache mixin methods for each class after first class instance initialization to speed up any further class instance creation (Thanks Las)
  • Avoid expensive closure creations in hot path calls via a loadstring trick (Thanks Las)
  • Precache beacon spawn points at map load so we don’t need to calculate them during runtime (Thanks Katzenfleisch)
  • Optimized tech tree data lookup calls (Thanks Las)
  • Changed behavior of non player entities to not run their update routine every world update tick specially when there hasn’t been any state change
    (Thanks Steelcap & Nin)
  • Limit the amount of time that the client spent on updating GUI scripts every frame (Thanks Las)
  • Added optimized implementation for set and queue data containers to reduce runtime of various hot paths calls

Tweaks / Improvements

• Added badges for the ENSL.org Newcomer and Community Challenge Tournaments
• Added new shiny material shaders for most computer monitors and displays in the game (Thanks RuneStorm!)
• Update anti-aliasing code to latest version of FXAA. Grants a minor improvement to final image sharpness and run-time speed
• Armories and Prototype Labs now has consistent Usable range for Marine and will no longer show the use-key when you are out of range
• Improved the visual quality of shadows, notably when the light source was far away from shadow casters
• Improved shadow rendering for Windows 8 and above clients using shadow comparison sampler features
  • Do note that shadows will have lower visual quality on Windows 7 clients. This is due to missing rendering features in the DirectX API, and those features are only available on Windows 8 or higher
• Added a new "Refraction Quality" option to the graphics menu. "Low" acts like it does currently, while "High" uses some extra samples while rendering the refraction pass to reduce the amount of aliasing introduced (very noticeable in the railgun exosuit's shot trails)
• Added a Lifeform popup reminder for Alien players with "High HUD Detail" enabled. This popup reminds players to evolve to a higher Lifeform once they have enough personal resources and the team could use more of that type
  • Only displays when High HUD Detail option is enabled
  • Only displays when the Evolve Menu is not open
  • Only show for lifeforms when the number of them alive & evolved on the team is less than 20% of the total number of players on a team. (So that it’s only one Gorge on a team of 6)
  • Only show after respawning and player is not in combat, within a 15 second window of time
  • Does not stay on screen for more than 10 seconds
  • Does not show within 30 seconds of round start. (to prevent everyone going Gorge)
• The Scoreboard Personal Resource colors are now yellow starting at 75 and orange starting at 90 because your PRes doesn’t overflow at 100 PRes. (Thanks Handschuh)
• Lessened the likelihood of having duplicate bot names at the same time
• Improved the new Alien Health Bars by ensuring the Upgrade Chamber icons no longer overlap with the Health Bar icons from 720p up to 4k resolutions
• Improved the Alien Energy Bar by coloring white the section of energy that is added by the Adrenaline upgrade

Fixes

• Fixed various DirectX 11 issues:
  • Fixed shadows not being rendered properly
  • Fixed emissive decals not being rendered correctly
  • Some textures would appear corrupted at lower mip levels
  • Fixed Exo Minigun Heat bars being distorted
• Fixed weird “magic hands” animation bug when switching to another weapon after reloading the Machine Gun or Flamethrower
• Fixed Alien Tunnels (including Infested versions) having differing HP values
• Fixed Alien Tunnels not starting with 100% eHP
• Fixed that attached Babblers didn’t cloak/decloak properly with their parent
• Fixed that dropped weapons started to expire near an Armory when a player walked over them
• Fixed that spectating players would rubber-band between players in first-person mode sometimes
• Fixed that a number of Exo HUD elements were misaligned
• Fixed a script error that stopped players from joining bootcamp servers (this was released live already weeks ago through our extensions mod)
• Removed out-dated tip clips about Gorge Tunnels and Babblers
• Fixed the mouse over tooltip in the Options Menu that said you need to restart the game if you apply new menu music
• Fixed that the Lerk crosshairs had a tiny black bar near the top of them
• Fixed that the Unearthed loading screen had an FPS counter in the top right of the last screen
• Fixed that you could not scroll down far enough in the control bindings menu to change the Help Screen binding entry

Sounds

• Fade Metabolize, Onos running rumble sound, and Lerk gliding sounds no longer play after their respective lifeform’s death

Maps

• Unearthed (Thanks Kash!)
  • Move the RT node from Transfer into Toxic pool to prevent Furnace from having 3 "Natural" resource nodes (Thanks Zavaro!)
  • Moved the Briefing RT node slightly further to the west and moved the fencing to the east to make defending easier for marines (Thanks Zavaro!)
  • Added crates in briefing to allow access to the ceiling area more easily. (Thanks Zavaro!)
  • Fixed numerous Stuck spots throughout the map (and ready room/secret room) (Thanks Zavaro!)
  • Added invisible geometry to many areas of the map to smooth out the feeling of movement
  • Tweaked pathing throughout the map
  • Removed a small amount of the clutter in Purification to make play in the area more fluid
  • Increased the size of the raised platform with the RT node on it in Purification to make the area slightly more marine accessible
  • Removed the middle support pillar in Cavity and tweaked the remaining pillars to make the area slightly less alien OP
  • Moved the Cavity RT node to be more approachable for marines
  • Removed collision from railings without the panels and replaced with collision geo to make play feel better for both marines and aliens
  • Minor lighting tweaks throughout the map
  • Made the vent between Toxic pool and Exposure more obviously accessible to marines from the Toxic pool side
  • Made the vent from Toxic pool to Extraction marine accessible from both sides
  • Reduced cover in Transfer to make the room less alien overpowered.
  • Changed the bridges in both Toxic pool and Crevice to be more visually appealing
  • Removed the Passage exit from the vent that leads from Harvesting to Access
  • Closed 2 of the 4 ceiling covers in Furnace to allow for better movement through the room for Aliens
  • Removed the remaining girder arches from Junction to reduce marine frustration in the area
  • Moved the Filtration power node to a less frustrating location
  • Improved collision geo in multiple areas of the map to help bot navigation. (Thanks Nin!)

Tools

• Cinematic Editor
  • Fixed anisotropic filtering and particles sometimes not being enabled in the renderer
• Viewer
  • Add support to view and test Material Swapping via the Materials Window. This only works when opening models. Note: There will be a delay when setting an override material, as it needs to load the resource before rendering it
• Map editor
  • Added a new option for static props called “allowBullets”. It's intended to be used on railing props and other small items like bottles or hanging wires that you may normally have to add collision geometry around. Note that this option will stop melee attacks and projectiles, but will not stop hit scan bullets, parasite, or flamethrowers

SDK

• Added Las’ library for lua closures that are not as expensive to generate during run-time as normal closures. See core/lua/Closure.md for details
• Added a command line option "force_renderer" which accepts either "D3D9" or "D3D11", which forces the renderer to use DirectX 9 or 11, overriding the value in the user's settings

Known Issues

• Viewer - Opening Materials Window when the opened asset is not a model causes odd behaviors
• As a side effect from a GUIScale fix that was part of the GUIManager optimizations, the size of GUI elements may differ on some resolutions compared to build 327
• Entering the wrong password when joining a server may incur a crash using DirectX 9
• DirectX overlays (like the Steam overlay) cause performance issues under DirectX11 on some GPUs. We recommend to disable all DirectX overlays for now if you notice frequent frame time spikes (via r_stats)

Check out the epic bash that is the Community Challenge! In this event hosted by our friends at the Natural Selection League, it's community VS community as different servers prepare for battle to compete for the crown of Community Champion! This is a two day tournament held on the 15th & 16th of June, starting at 8 PDT / 11 EDT / 15 GMT / 17 CEST
You can catch streams of this event on the following Twitch Channels:
NaturalSelection2 (Starting 1 hour from this post)
NSLTV (The stream should be starting in a few minutes!)


This Saturday , (June 15th at 13:00 PDT / 22:00 CEST - or 5 hours from this post)
We will have a public playtest of build 328!!

This patch is focused primarily on client and server performance improvements, and as such we think its a good idea to ensure others do not experience anything broken, and that we can adequately stress test our server.

All are invited to join us to play some rounds / break things, ensure the build is stable and provide any additional feedback!

Join our General Voice Channel in this discord to coordinate with us and feel free to show up a few minutes early to ensure you get a chance to play or ask questions. We will give out the server password over voice the moment we begin. It will be on the publicly available Beta branch on our NAPT server.

Unknown Worlds would like to invite you to watch or sign up to play the NEWCOMER TOURNAMENT, an event hosted by our friends at Natural Selection League.

The tournament will be played on Saturday, June 1 and Sunday, June 2.

Saturday (Group Stage):
Start: 19 CEST / 17 GMT / 1 PM EDT
At most 3 matches, with 4 rounds each
All games, if not finished earlier, will end at 00:00 CEST / 6:00 PM EDT

Sunday (Finals):
Start: 19 CEST / 17 GMT / 1 PM EDT
Half-Finals and Finals, played in a best of 5 format

You can catch streams of the event on the Official Natural Selection 2 and Natural Selection League twitch channels!


⦿ Do I need a complete team?
No, you don’t! Everyone can register. It doesn’t matter if you register only yourself, with a few friends or a complete team.

⦿ Who can register?
All players who have not played in any of the NSL seasons can participate.

⦿ Where do I register?
Registration is run by the NSL Homepage homepage. This video explains the process. It is also the page where you can find teams, players, and your results.

Also please fill out this form if you wish to participate to make it easier for captains to sort out teams!


For additional details, please see the Help Document.

Don’t miss any news about the Newcomer Tournament by subscribing to the NSL Steam Group.

For additional help (or to just hang out!), see:
The Official Natural Selection 2 Discord Server
The NSL Discord Server

What has build 327 Unearthed? A lot actually! This new update to NS2 includes a new map, changes to existing maps, new skins, new models, new sounds and new gameplay and balance changes. All told the changelog for build 327 came to be 10+ pages once we included everything. There is so much in this update to sink your teeth into, read ahead for all the details or just jump in game and figure out all the changes in battle. People playing on the new map Unearthed will receive a new alien commander skin and if you like that you might also check out our Catalyst DLC Pack, which has many other skins and now includes a new Sandstorm skin for the updated machine gun model. Remember all sales of NS2 and DLC directly affect our development budget and allow our team to continue work on NS2.

Click here to see the full changelog and all the goodies contained within.
Follow the NS2 Development Roadmap to see our plans for future updates.

Update 326 includes crash fixes, changes to quickplay, spectate updates, bug fixes, and new cosmetics to the Catalyst Pack. In honor of Gorgemas, everyone who has purchased the Catalyst Pack DLC will receive new gorge toxin skins for all the gorge structures. If you don’t own the Catalyst Pack, you can still purchase it and unlock all the DLC skin packs included. Remember all sales of NS2 and DLC directly affect our development budget and allow our team to continue work on NS2.



From all of us at Unknown Worlds, we wish you the happiest of holidays and Merry Gorgemas!

Check out the full changelog below to see all the goodies contained within.
Follow the NS2 development roadmap to see our plans for future updates.

Changelog

Tweaks / Improvements

• Added Toxin skins for all the Gorge structures.
  • Hydras
  • Babbler Eggs
  • Babblers
  • Clogs
  • Gorge Tunnels
• Disabled LuaJIT’s trace stitching to try and resolve in game client crashes.
• Reduced the size of the server performance fields in the move packet to lower the overall bandwidth consumption (Contributed by Steelcap)
  • This is something that will become more robust in the coming patches, further reducing server bandwidth. A requirement if we are to increase server rates.
• You can now block servers in the server browser and in the scoreboard:
  • Blocked servers are only listed at the very bottom of the server list by default. (custom sorting preferences such as sorting by ping will undo this)
  • The server entries of blocked servers are grayed out.
  • Quick play will skip blocked servers.
  • You can manage the blocked servers via the Blocked server tab in the server browser, next to the History tab.
  • Similar to adding a server to your favorites while in a server, you can utilize the scoreboard to click on the Block icon at the top of it.
• Quick Play now lists the amount of servers it skipped.
  • The reasons why a server may be skipped because they are full, passworded, rookie only, blocked or the server operator opted out the Quick Play feature.
• Quick Play will no longer connect you to a server you disconnected from in the prior 10 minutes, unless there are no other servers available.
  • Joined a server you did not like? Quickplay will try to avoid it next time.
• Improved the overhead spectator mode:
  • Added a binding legend to the bottom of the overhead spectator HUD
  • You can now focus a player by just clicking on them
  • Hovering over a player status panel at the sides of the screen will display the hitpoint values.
  • Hovering over a structure with passive abilities will display it’s radius if it has any.
  • Added health bars for non-standard dropped weapons displaying the time remaining until they expire
  • Added the name of the target location to the unit status of Phasegates and Gorge Tunnels for overhead spectators.
• Removed the 32 bit OS main menu warning.

Fixes

• Fixed that Gorge ghost placement models (such as a hydra or clog before it is placed) were color highlighted incorrectly by the default Alien Vision.
• Fixed that certain mods like NS2+ caused the main menu to not load after failing to connect to a server due to a consistency failure.
• Fixed reflections being too intense due to recent changes.
  • Reflection shininess is now back down to sane levels.
• Fixed that the ping server browser filter was applied even when it wasn’t visible at lower resolutions.
• Fixed that the Ranked server browser filter wasn’t applied to custom gamemode server. This caused some players to believe that certain custom gamemode servers are ranked while they are not.
• Fixed that the serverbrowser’s attempt-to-join-full-server dialogue mentioned reserved slots even when none were available.
• Fixed that clicking on servers in the history tab that were no longer available could cause a script error.
• Fixed small visual issues in the Tram and Eclipse menu backgrounds.
• Fixed that sometimes the user’s server Favorites were not saved correctly.
• Fixed a rare server crash related to relevancy portals that would occur when the server was struggling.

Maps


Kodiak

• Fixed stuck spot in a vent from Observation to Hangar Bay

Eclipse Menu

• Fixed flipped text

Tools

• Map Editor
  • Added selection masks for ambient_sound and reverb entities.

SDK

• Rendering Pipeline
  • Changed how the GBuffer stores normals and gloss data.  
    • Shouldn’t notice any visual difference!
    • Normals now stored with only 2 components (x, y).
    • Gloss is now stored in the z component of the normals buffer, instead of the alpha channel of the spec buffer.  This allows gloss to be properly blended with decals (before, gloss would be discarded, as the alpha channel of the texture is used as the blending factor).

Known Issues

• There are still some FMOD related crashes that are being looked into, that represent roughly 20% of known crashes, that mostly occur upon launch or exit of the game.

This Steam Community group has been neglected. For eight years, we forgot it existed. Before this post, the last update was from Flayra in January 2010, offering Natural Selection 2 pre-orders! It's time to bring it back to life.

Back in 2010, Subnautica wasn't even a twinkle in anyone's eye. NS2 hadn't topped Steam on Halloween. People were using iPhone 3's. Windows 7 was only a few months old. This is a vintage Steam Community, and resurrecting it is an opportunity for reflection.

Since 2010, Unknown Worlds has been through a lot. We've navigated near-death financial valleys to the heady heights of #1 top-seller on Steam. Our team size has grown from around 10 to around 40. We've gotten a little older, a little wiser, and formed firm friendships as a team.

Through it all, the consistent force behind our survival and success has been you. You've hurled feedback on Twitter, debated design on Discord, reviewed roadmaps on Trello, shared trailers on YouTube, endured horrific Early Access bugs, delayed updates, awful frame rates, and so much more.

Your engagement with the development process is the critical secret sauce. Without all of you, our games would probably suck.

To everyone that has followed us since 2010, and before, and to everyone that is with us now, and to those thinking of joining us in future, thank you. We're pumped to keep making great games with you.

- Unknown Worlds

Update 325 includes balance adjustments, map refinements, bug fixes, gameplay tweaks, and new cosmetics to the Catalyst Pack. A long time veteran of NS2 development has rejoined the team, Fsfod is back and putting all his focus on improving and stabilizing LuaJIT. Fsfod was the original developer that implemented LuaJIT support for NS2. His efforts will ultimately yield a faster and more stable game.

The Machine Gun is getting some needed love this update. The Commander is no longer required to research it separately after upgrading to an Advanced Armory and we have lowered the cost of the Commander weapon drop as well. Additionally, with a lower overall weight and slight increase to the base damage, this is starting to feel like a better weapon choice to have in a group of Marines later in the round.

Sound is a critical component of NS2 gameplay. Hearing the clatter of claws on metal can mean the difference between life and death. Our resident audiophile Sweets has prepared an overhaul of audio cues, from footstep distances to Gorge Tunnel sounds over the last few patches and now has taken a peck at the Lerk glide and ambient sounds for additional player tracking.



Last update we introduced the Catalyst Pack, new Sandstorm skins for all Marine equipment, and Toxin skins for all Alien lifeforms. This update we are adding to that DLC, Catalyst now gives the Command Station and Hive the cosmetic DLC love they’ve always deserved. This update also includes cosmetic options for Alien Eggs and Harvesters as well as Marine Extractors.

 

 

*Proceeds from the sale of all NS2 DLC items, including this new Catalyst Pack, go towards funding the on-going and long-term development of NS2.

Since this is Halloween, we have added our first ever animated shoulder badge. This spooky new babbler badge will unlock after completing just five rounds of play that are at least five minutes long.

 

Check out the full changelog below to see all the goodies contained within.

Follow the NS2 development roadmap to see our plans for future updates.

Changelog

Gameplay

• Machine Gun tweaks
  • Now unlocks with the Advanced Armory
    • We felt that accessibility was an issue preventing the weapon from being seen in most games, with the research cost and research time not being justified by the stats.
  • Lowered weight to 0.18 (from 0.21).
    • Now it weighs slightly more than the Grenade Launcher. This allows you to move faster with it, to include when using a jetpack to chase down those higher lifeforms.
  • Increased base damage to 9 (from 8)
    • The weapon should feel more impactful now later in the round, creating a greater distinction from the rifle when it comes to DPS.
  • Lowered commander dropped costs to 20 team resources (from 40)
    • This should bring it into parity with other commander dropped weapon prices.
• Prototype Lab build time
  • Fixed that the build time was 8 instead of the intended 23 seconds.
• Eggs and Embryos (Contributed by Katzenfleisch)
  • All eggs (spawned by hives) and embryos (player evolved or commander dropped lifeforms) now have a flat 350 hp and do not mature anymore. Additionally, we have removed Marines from seeing the nutrient mist “column” effects that play on evolving players. Aliens can still see the effect on their evolving teammates.
    • We did not like how frustrating it felt for a field Marine to so easily determine which were weak evolving embryos and which were strong eggs, without commander assistance.
  • Lifeforms now share their HP relative with their Embryo. For example: While evolving, if your Embryo takes 50% damage you will hatch with 50% HP. Also: If you evolve with only 50% HP, your embryo will only have 50% of its 350 HP when you begin evolving.
    • A compromise to the aforementioned increase in HP for embryos, and because it felt horrible to shoot an embryo to 5% HP and have a 100% HP Onos hatch out.
  • Both eggs and embryos can now be healed.
    • This just felt natural to finally have, and fitting with the relative HP changes. It also can make egg-locking slightly more difficult to achieve.
  • Regardless of the damage eggs take, respawning Skulks will always hatch with 100% HP.
    • This will ensure a Hive room under attack can still respond accordingly with respawning players.
• Default Alien Vision Changes
  • Players and structures on Marines and Aliens now have separate colors
    • During chaotic engagements with teammates involved, it was easy to lose your target with only a screen full of orange. Now Marine structures are dark blue but Marine players are still the same color (red-orange) and Alien structures are now tinted green and Alien players have a faint green outline. Hive Vision outlines now dim depending on if the highlighted player is through a wall or not. If it can damage you, it will be red-orange like a Marine.

Tweaks / Improvements

• Added Commander skins for owners of the catalyst pack:
• Added the animated Haunted Babbler shoulder patch:
  • Play 5 rounds during the remaining halloween season to unlock it!
• The location caches for lights, reflection probes, and emissive props will now be calculated at map load, rather than as power points first come into relevancy for a player.  This prevents hitches in the early game of the first round of each map change.
• Flinch animations have been removed from all players, Alien and Marine alike.
  • The blending of these animations were causing slight Client / Server desynchronization resulting in inaccurate hit feedback occasionally, and they were barely visible during typical engagements.
• Removed the key binding to hide/show player names on the minimap (Contributed by Handschuh)
• Modified structure extent boxes used for checking placement validation to more closely match the model. This is an improvement, but does not fix all cases.

Sound Effects / General Audio (Thanks Sweets!)

• Removed all Alien idle sounds
  • Idle sound triggers were unreliable and difficult to predict. Most idle sounds were based on speed with an arbitrary cooldown time. A fast moving player would unknowingly play an idle sound at a time which would betray their position unintentionally. Additionally, leaving the sound turned on in 1st person only would be confusing, leading the player to believe they are making idle sounds that could be audible to the enemy.
• Lerk Gliding
  • To prevent Lerk gliding from being completely silent after the removal of idle sounds, the 1st person sound you typically hear while gliding as a Lerk is now audible to all players. It will increase in volume slightly based on your speed. The range is very short. It is designed to allow shotgunners to flip around and respond to the Lerk sound at the very last second rather than responding only after receiving 2 bites, if they are paying attention in a quiet environment.
• Fade Blinking
  • Sound added for all players while remaining in Ethereal form. (holding down the Blink key)
• Audio for the Refinery buckets pouring in Smelting have been turned off for the time being until a difficult bug can be resolved.

Fixes

• Fixed issues with input handling that occurred at consistent ~80 fps or lower, resulting in ignored input commands and frame hitching. This fix makes user input consistent regardless of framerates. (Thanks Matso!)
• Fixed issue with Gorge belly slide sound cutting out and playing inconsistently.
• Fixed Alien regeneration sound not consistently playing when alien lifeforms or structures are healed.
• Fixed that hydras could still shoot if they were completely inside of a clog.
  • Key word: completely. If you can see it, you can kill it.
• Improved scenarios where commanders could execute multiple actions simultaneously that were intended to be single-use only.  For example, alien commanders could upgrade 2 or more hives at once to crag hives, or ink with more than one shade at a time.
  • More often than not these actions were done on accident, wasting resources and even having permanent repercussions (in the case of the hive type). There is still an edge case that allows you to upgrade two hives with the same hive type, but the primary means has been resolved.
• Fixed that the Marine commander’s cursor would vanish if the player opened the main menu before the chair had fully closed around them.
• Fixed that some players still got the summer gorge patch notification while not being able to unlock it anymore.
  • That lazy gorge on the inner tube wouldn’t hush up about summer never ending on their world.
• Fixed some server/client desync issues with the flinch animation which could cause hit registration false positives
• Fixed the marine builder tool animation flickering occurring while building structures from certain angles (Contributed by Katzenfleisch)
  • IronHorse is forever in Katzen’s debt for fixing his #1 most hated bug of all time.
• Fixed that some players got beaconed when they were already in the target room (Contributed by Katzenfleisch)
• Fixed that updating the game to a newer version (when a patch releases) and immediately connecting to a server actively playing on a custom map could cause an invalid files error.

Maps

• Biodome (Contributed by pSyk)
  • Improved stairs in Bridge so Skulks can use the gap between them.
  • Fades can now use the gap under stairs for the lowest staircase in Bridge.
  • Improved performance of Low Lights setting
  • Improved overall performance in multiple locations by optimizing occlusion culling and lighting.
  • Map wide tweaks to Commander view to reduce visual clutter, which should make dropping structures and commander abilities easier from multiple viewing angles.
  • Fixed several misaligned textures and props
• Descent (Contributed by Zavaro)
  • Removed Launch Bay – Shipping vent to prevent alien mobility and cheesing
  • Removed Monorail – Water Treatment vent to prevent alien mobility and cheesing
  • Removed Shipping – Hydroanalysis vent on South side of room as it was unnecessary as well as an annoying spot for Gorges to prevent Marines from ever feeling safe in Hydroanalysis
  • Added additional Shuttle Bay – Gravity vent for flanking and escape
  • Added Gravity – Shipping vent for lifeform escape
  • Added Water Treatment – Silo vent for alternate Alien path
  • Removed Hydroanalysis broken glass tube to prevent near invincible shotgun Marine positioning, is now the “unbroken” asset
  • Added pipe and cables to block line of sight from northern Hydro vent entrance to
  • prevent Gorges from Bile Bombing structures from an invincible spot (Thanks, Psyk!)
  • Broke down catwalk in Shuttle Bay – Gravity hallway to increase marine speed to the top
  • Increased size of Nebula sign in Receiving northward to better block LOS to Receiving-Hydro staircase
  • Broke glass and opened door of kiosk in Receiving to offer some additional way into/out of Shipping
  • Broke glass on rounded corner on upper level of Gravity to give line of sight to vent for marines to kill escaping aliens
  • Removed crates and a support beam to upper Shipping to make the area less cluttered and better for movement in combat
  • Added reflective glass reflections and geo to props that lack that shader
  • Changed the signs in Plaza and other areas to have proper aspect ratios
  • Fixed a number of areas with misaligned textures and holes
  • Removed a bunch of lights that were inside the walls in both vanilla and NSL lowlights
• Refinery
  • Fixed misaligned textures around Containment tech point
  • Fixed areas where structures could not be built
  • Fixed cyst several placement bugs in multiple location

Tools

• Fixed all NS2 tools always allocating 2GB of memory.
• Updated GUI framework used by all tools.
  • This significantly increases their stability! No longer does using the Cinematic Editor feel like you’re blindly defusing a sentient bomb with every mouse click, waiting for it to crash just because it knew you forgot to save your work and wanted to watch you suffer.
• Editor
  • Fixed startup crash issue when attempting to initialize a sound device.
  • Fixed a memory leak in the prefab tool that would occur whenever a prefab was placed.
  • Fixed an issue that would cause static props that were mirrored to not properly generate pathing mesh on top of themselves.
  • Lights are now filtered for selection according to their type (spotlight, point-light, and ambient-light), rather than all lights being filtered together.
  • Added a reflection probe selection filter.
  • Added a CommanderInvisibleNonCollision group (Contributed by Nin)
• Cinematic Editor
  • Added support for the Edit and View viewport cameras to be saved in cinematic files automatically.

SDK

• Crash dumps are now compressed before being uploaded and now have an ID that can used when reporting an issue. Click the “Copy GUID” button on the crash dump dialog window, or see your “%appdata%/Natural Selection2/dumps/dumplog.txt” file
• Increase the amount of data captured in crash dumps to try and help track down the Lua stack corruption crash.
• Changed how some of the engine’s Lua bindings are generated, to work around the Lua crash (seems to reduce them but not entirely fix the issue)
• Fixed the steam branch name not always being written to the log correctly

Known Issues

• Tools
  • Some of the tools may crash when moving/dragging their sub-window panes outside the main program window.
• Client Crashes
  • We continue to look into our recent crashes and have made some adjustments through client only updates – as well as this patch – to both help us better locate the issue and resolve it. This continues to be the top priority of our team and we have contracted FSFOD to assist in resolving these crashes and enhance our crash data gathering tools.

Update 324 is the start of something exciting! It’s the catalyst to our new development cycle! Over the last few years we have made changes and fixes to further develop NS2 with the emphasis on helping to stabilize the gameplay and create the best experience possible for every player. Today we start the sale of our limited time DLC the Catalyst Pack! This premium DLC offers the single largest skin pack we have ever released and it also includes future custom skins and items as a thank you for purchasing the DLC now. Sales of this DLC directly affect the budget for our development team and will help us to continue to bring you more exciting updates to the game. See more at http://www.naturalselection2.com/catalyst, but hurry because this DLC will only be available for a short time and then it will be locked away in the UWE vault forever!

We have spent the last few months working behind the scenes to develop a Roadmap for our vision of NS2 2.0. This isn’t a new game, but what we feel is the ultimate version of NS2. Once our objectives on the roadmap have been completed, we will work with our partners to do a large marketing push and even test some free to play options to get NS2 in the hands of those who haven’t had the opportunity to play.

While our focus is shifting towards new and exciting changes, we will still continue to fight for more performance both server-side and client-side. We are fortunate to have so many community contributors who are helping on both fronts. We’re excited and passionate about supporting their efforts and we can’t wait to see their work included with a future release.

With our push to both increase development productivity and shorten the time we can release this roadmap to you, we have hired an additional programmer. Not a stranger to NS2, please welcome Brian “Samoose” to the team! Over the years Samoose has been a big part of work done with our old customize menu and he has done lots of tinkering around the entire game. With his addition to the team, we hope to accomplish a lot of our tasks in a shorter amount of time.

We thank you for your continued support

See you on the battlefield!

Changelog

Gameplay

• Fade
  • Decreased the size of the Fade’s hitbox slightly
    • In recent months, feedback from the community has illustrated that the Fade can feel a bit too vulnerable or “squishy”, leading to aversion from average players in choosing the crucial lifeform. In lieu of adjusting its eHP values, we decided to refine the hitbox to make it closer to the actual model, making it slightly harder to hit for inaccurate shots. We’ll be monitoring this change closely.
• Gorge Tunnel
  • Added a new unique building sound that can be heard beyond the Gorge Healspray distance. (Thanks Sweets!)
    • This allows attentive Marines the chance to counter and contend aggressively positioned tunnels that are placed a full room away, but it should not heavily impact defensively placed tunnels that are predictable (such as Nanogrid). This has allowed us to lower the build time.
  • Lowered build time to ~8.5 seconds (from 12, was previously 5).
    • We received a lot of unhappy feedback regarding the longer build times, which were originally intended to provide time for Marines to discover them when laning. However, utilizing sounds should allow us to lessen this build time while accomplishing similar goals.
  • Added a new unique idle sound that can only be heard just beyond melee range by both teams (Thanks Sweets!)
    • This should aid both Aliens and Marines locating the tunnel in cramped and busy structure environments, especially when shaded. Aliens can no longer utilize silence to conceal a tunnel from a nearby Marine.
  • Removed the Tunnel cysts (“muffins”) inside the tunnel
    • These obstructions were originally intended to provide brief cover for Aliens traversing inside, but after years worth of experience, it is clear that they more often obstruct Alien movement instead. Commence Gorge bellyslide halfpipe stunts!
• Webs: (Thanks Katzenfleisch!)
  • You can now place Clogs on Webs.
    • This allows for some creative Clog placement rather than simple Clog towers, and while it can better obstruct Marine movement it often provides a greater LOS for the Marine to shoot through.
    • You can place 3 Clogs on a web. Any more than this will break the web and your clogs will fall. Hydras and Babbler Eggs on the underside of these Clogs will be destroyed when a Clog falls, so be wary of their placement!
    • You can utilize this mechanic to get to previously hard to reach positions.
  • Webs are no longer destroyed on contact by Marines. Only Exosuits remove them on contact.
    • This was done to both accommodate Clogs on Webs (otherwise a single Marine can just run through your creation to destroy it) as well as provide a much needed increase in utility to the carefully placed Webs. As such..
  • Webs can be destroyed by the Axe
    • It takes 4 swings to destroy a web with no weapons upgrade, 3 swings at any other level. So better get a welder if you’re in a hurry!
• Babblers
  • They will now reattach when a player evolves, even to another lifeform. They will also reattach to a player after leaving the Hive. (Thanks, Katzenfleisch!)

Tweaks / Improvements

• Added the first batch of skins for the Catalyst DLC:
  • Toxin skins for all playable Kharra lifeforms.
  • Sandstorm skins for all Frontiersmen equipment including for the first time the Grenade Launcher and Welder.
• Optimized the Marine droppable Catalyst Pack and Onos Boneshield effect shaders (Thanks Handschuh)
• Players now lose their rookie status at Hive Level 15

Sound Effects / General Audio

(Thanks Sweets!)

• Marine footstep distance for Aliens have been slightly increased to 12 (from 11)
• Increased Jetpack looping sound at mid-distance. Jetpack looping sound now louder than the burst sound.
• Gorge Tunnel ambient sounds now play everywhere inside the tunnel and are much more audible.
• Hive pain sound no longer plays for the Marine Commander at full volume across the other side of a map. Volume rolloff dependenton how close the camera is to the hive.
• Optimized sound banks including 150 sounds. Many critical sounds that are very short but needed to be played immediately were inefficiently being streamed from disk which created a small delay. Other Voice Overs and music tracks which are larger files are no longer loaded into memory. This will help players the most who are still using mechanical HDDs and it slightly lowers overall memory usage for all players.
• Axe impact sound on organic materials (Lifeforms, structures, infestation) is no longer delayed.
• FEV and FSB files are now part of the default consistency checks.

Fixes

• Fixed Commander droppables not “snapping” to the target entity (such as an empty RT node or a Marine receiving a medpack) as intended.
  • The placement model flickering on and off unreliably was also fixed
• Fixed that the lua garbage collector did not run while the renderer is finalizing the frame frame but afterwards. Additionally we made sure it doesn’t run longer than absolutely necessary every frame to decrease the time spent only collecting garbage every frame. This decreases the time spent to generate each frame for at least 0.5 ms.
• Fixed that almost all sound and visual effects were networked and thus shown to the enemy commander even if they didn’t have any line of sight (LOS) to them. All known LOS issues have now been resolved except for the following:
  • Gorge Tunnel, Phase Gate, and Beaconing may still show the enemy transition to their new location on the map momentarily if LOS is achieved first.
  • Bonewall (from spectator only)
  • Webs remain (after gaining LOS at least once)
• Fixed issue where gorge web placement model would persist after an invalid placement attempt.
• Fixed that beaconing cared more about proximity to the command chair than room location. (Thanks, Katzen!)
  • For example, on Descent, a marine in Receiving would not get beaconed to Hydroanalysis
• Fixed that you couldn’t drop a hive while hovering directly over the techpoint with your mouse.
• Fixed that you could Echo upgrade chambers on top of Hive tendrils
• Fixed that embryos appeared on the minimap using a different icon than eggs if they were your friends on steam, allowing marines to easily distinguish between eggs and evolving players.
  • NOTE: Despite the obvious balance implications of this change, this has been classified as a bug, and has been fixed.  The rationale behind it is that eggs and embryos appear identical in the world, therefore they should appear identical on the minimap.  The minimap should not be capable of providing more information to the team than they could collectively gather from in-world visuals alone.  In the future, the embryo world-model may be altered to appear different than the egg model, in which case the embryo minimap icon can be reinstated.
• Fixed that using the bait ball inside a gorge tunnel caused all babblers to be destroyed.  (Thanks, Katzen!)
• Fixed that babblers did not reattach after leaving a hive.  (Thanks, Katzen!)
• Fixed that too many babblers could stop khammanders from dropping a structure.  (Thanks, Katzen!)
• Fixed that the team’s skill tier was often off due to using incorrect player values.
• Fixed that the server’s skill tier didn’t correctly account for bots and added a tooltip for the icons in the server browser.
• Fixed that running the performance profiler crashed the application when a worker thread got interrupted by the operating system. However there are still some other less commonly known cases where using the profiler can crash the application.
• Fixed that firing a shotgun into infestation (or anything that plays the “materials/organic/ricochet” sound event) caused a massive hitch.
• Fixed that you could place Cysts on floors below gratings/stairs, despite collision geo inbetween, and floors being set to “commandernobuild.”  (Thanks, Katzen!)
• Fixed that you could not open the Server console on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 or higher.
• Fixed starting a server on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 or higher would result in an immediate crash.

Maps

• Biodome
  • Fixed an issue with visible Seasonal items in the Ready Room (Thanks, Zavaro!)
  • Fixed z-fighting textures near Join Team entities (Thanks, Zavaro!)
• Caged
  • Fixed a hole in Purification (Thanks, Zavaro!)
• Derelict
  • Fixed an issue with cysts stuck under the stairs in Western Entrance (Thanks, Kash!)
  • Fixed hole in ceiling in Lookout (Thanks, Zavaro!)
• Kodiak
  • Improved Command window visually and added additional Occlusion Geometry (Thanks, Loki!)
  • Added preplaced IPs in Marine Start (Thanks, Psyk!)
  • Fixed Marine Start hologram (Thanks, Loki!)
  • Fixed fullbright Hangar when power goes out (Thanks, Psyk!)
  • Improved Occlusion Geometry and performance (Thanks, Psyk!)
  • Improved and brightened lighting (Thanks, Psyk!)
  • Fixed an area where structures are unpowered in Command (Thanks, Zavaro!)
• Mineshaft (Thanks, Kash!)
  • Fixed map visual issue near The Gap
  • Fixed unpowered areas in North Tunnels, Crusher, Water Pumps, Snake Pass
  • Fixed location entities not covering parts of rooms
  • Fixed stuck spot in Pilot Drill
  • Made the Cart Tunnel to Water Pumps vent exit more easily used
  • Added partial cover to the ceiling of Operations so that the hive tendrils attach to something when a hive is dropped there.
  • Added lights to eliminate black spots in brew room and the water pumps vent.
  • Added collision geo to make walking in the lower section of Pilot Drill less frustrating.
  • Tweaked a few props in North Tunnels to make it less of a mess visually.
• Summit
  • Fixed some commander invisible issues with snow and waterfalls
• Veil
  • Removed collision of props above all doors
  • Fixed Onos stuck spot in Topographical
  • Fixed various holes and minor gaps throughout the map
  • Polished up some glass around the map to be shiny
  • Added crate to allow Onos to get out of small pit in Topo near the gold pipes

Tools

• Fixed that builder was attempting to use the wrong path for the nvcompress executable and couldn’t build any textures.
• Editor
  • Added new Rotation Nudging tool to assist in getting precise placement and rotation of model props. New key-binds are available for this tool, but not set by default. These binds can be found under the “Edit” menu while using the Rotation Tools. To use this new feature, hover over the axis to rotate around and press the keys that were bound

SDK

• Fixed that static prop collision visualization wasn’t properly scaled, and thus didn’t match the actual collision model.

Known Issues

• There is a micro stutter that can occur for players with less than 70 fps held consistently, while circle strafing, and using Windows 10. (strafing around an object while keeping your view centered on it.) We have a fix ready for the next patch. This stutter has been in the game for months, and was not introduced this patch.