NS2 192/193 Update news - Natural Selection 2

Build 193 is now available on Steam. This patch is a small hot fix for a crashing bug and a performance issue that were originally introduced in Build 190. Thanks to the crash reports you submitted, we were able to track this down even though we were unable to reproduce it ourselves. If you do experience a crash in NS2 and are presented with the dialog box for submitting a report, please do, they are very helpful!

Fixes

• Various crashes related to collision objects being destroyed

Optimization

• Disabled PhysX visualization unless debug draw enabled

Here's one more maintenance/fix 192 patch before we get back to work on the bigger "Gorilla". This fixes some new crashes and improves balance over 191.

Features

• Added map cycling on the server (now you can run ns2_tram!). Use mapcycle.txt file to set up.
• Added Left 4 Dead style animated screen hints to make it more clear when marines should build structures, build power nodes, or guard power nodes.
• Hitting marines with Gorge spit will obscure their view.

Balance

• Removed change in alien armor effectiveness with # of hives. This was supposed to work like NS1, but a recent meant that aliens got _weaker_ with more hives! Now it's gone completely.
• Added 2 points of "hide" armor to Lerks (every attack does 2 less damage, good vs. groups).
• Added a very small delay between a mine being armed and exploding (*BEEP* ... BOOM!!!).
• Increased Fade carapace armor from 30 to 50.
• Increased Gorge bile bomb damage from 200 to 300 and splash radius from 5 meters to 8 meters.
• Increased Mature Whip health/armor from 900/150 to 1,050/175.
• Increased Skulk carapace armor from 15 to 20.
• Increased mine purchase cost from 10 to 15.
• Increased minimum spawn time for eggs from 6 to 8, to try to allow marines to counter-rush after a failed attack (also to compensate for recent egg bug fix).
• Lowered Gorge carapace armor from 60 to 50.
• Lowered Robotics Factory build time from 30 to 25 to be less annoying and closer to other structures.
• When players and structures are on fire, they recover energy at 25% normal rate (was 10% rate, which was very rough for Fade).
• Personal resources have now a limit of 100 per player. Any overflow will be split amongst the other players on the team.
• Whip bombs will not bounce off world geometry anymore.
• Changed corrode damage to deal only a small amount to players armor instead of full damage.

Fixes

• A player will no longer be distress beaconed if they are close enough to the command station being beaconed to already.
• Death messages for Players or Structures killed by Mines that were destroyed by other Mines will now display correctly.
• Don't invoke collision callback if one of the objects has been destroyed.
• Fixed bug where a client would not properly go back to the main menu when there was an error during connection (e.g. the client doesn't have the map).
• Fixed bug where aliens used hive1 armor for 3+ hives and hive3 armor for 1 hive...(egads - thanks Jaweese!).
• Fixed bug where clients would not be returned to the main menu if they failed to authenticate.
• Fixed bug where grenades would explode too early depending on your ping time (OnCreate is now called in the world time stream instead of the lag compensated time stream).
• Fixed bug where the game would not display the reason for being disconnect from a server when it returned to the main menu.
• Fixed crash in PhysX on level change (caused by creating too many materials).
• Fixed crash when too many reliable commands were sent at the same time.
• Fixed packet format errors when too many mines explode simultaneously.
• Fixed players not showing up in a server when viewed on Steam Friends.
• Fixed prediction errors when using the speed command.
• Fixed script error caused by giving a rally order to an unbuilt Hive.
• Game freeze when placing cysts.
• Mines detonate each other with some randomness now, for aesthetic effect(thanks Mats!).
• Multiple Whips or ARCs can now be given a root/unroot or deploy/undeploy command.
• No longer ignore damage types when calculating # of health points per point of alien armor.
• Physics transform changes are detected even if they happen in a sub-step.
• The Marine will only be slowed on landing if they jumped first (going down stairs will not artificially slow a player).
• The sound effect that plays when distress beacon is finished will only trigger if at least 1 player was successfully beaconed.
• Updated Lerk weapon spike and spore tooltips.
• Viewer sometimes starts with black screen.
• Whip bombs will now correctly deal damage to players (small amount and armor only).
• Whips will properly attack grenades again.
• Reduced network usage for updating infestation (thanks matso!).
• reserve Fade velocity when coming out of blink.
• Improved spit effect to look less 'spritey'.
• Don't create new material instance when the default material matches the friction/restitution settings (physics).

Sound

• Added private 2D sound effect for when a player is distress beaconed to ensure they always hear this effect.
• Better alien vision sounds.
• Better commander scan sound.
• Better powernode destroyed sound.
• Fixed ARC fire sound.
• Hooked up Mine sounds: Drop, Warmup, Explode.
• Hooked up new Alien tooltip sound effect.
• Hooked up private 2D sound for when a player teleports through the Phase Gate (so they hear this effect better).

SDK

• Added support for the Lua IO library (file names use special prefixes "game://", "user://", "temp://", and "cache://" to determine where they are located in the file system).
• Changed console command for collision rep visualization to 'collision'.
• Cull physics/collision debug drawing to view frustum.
• PhysX scene visualization (using the 'physics' console command).
• Table.contains will now return the key of the element when found.

OK, NOW it's Gorilla time...