Gorilla released (NS2 Build 194)
2 February 2012, 6:31 pm

Gorilla. Has. Arrived.

NS2 Gorilla Gameplay Trailer

Features

• You can now evolve to Onos when your team has three hives.
• The Onos can toss marines with his Gore attack, smash structures and Stomp on the ground, sending a shockwave that disables marine structures for 5 seconds. Upgrades are no longer available, sentries stop firing, Infantry Portals stop spawning, etc.
• Added Prototype Lab and the ability to research and buy Jetpacks
• Added new map: ns2_mineshaft
• Added camera animation and display during count down phase.
• Name tags now appear over the head of nearby teammates.
• Added lines for rally points.
• Mines detonate when hit by Stomp.
• Added an option to enable mouse acceleration (off by default)
• Infestation is now displayed on minimap (dying infestation is indicated red)
• Added some missing Marine structure icons.

Balance

• Reduced Rifle butt range from 1.5 meters to 1 meter (now same as Skulk bite)
• Shotgun damage changed to Light (armor is twice as effective against it). Made it lighter to carry and increased the damage to compensate (# of shots vs. base Skulks, Lerks and Fades should unchanged, 1 extra pellet vs. Gorges). So Shotguns should become less effective against heavily armored targets. (thanks Schimmel!)
• Bile bomb range and splash increased a lot, damage decreased somewhat and energy cost decreased a little (trying to make Gorge less vulnerable on front lines and also more able to do at least some damage to entrenched Marines). He is NASTY now, watch out.
• Increased Hydra health from 500 to 600 and armor from 0 to 75.
• Increased Lerk Spike cost from 1.5 to 2.5. Changed distribution of Command Station health and armor so it's more resistent vs. Light damage (ie, Lerk Spikes).
• Disabled res for kills to simplify the game, remove confusion about what happens when you make a kill, reduce end-game stalemates with 1 tower and to increase the strategic aspects of the game.
• Armory no longer required to drop med packs (unnecessarily restrictive during rushes)
• Lowered bile bomb damage from 300 to 225.
• Increased repair rate for Marines repairing each others' armor from 18 to 35 (to make it less annoying and to allow Marines to sustain attacks better).
• Reverted Fade carapace armor buff from 50 to 30.
• Removed Lerk "hide" armor.
• Reduced Shotgun research time from 40 to 20 (it was 0 in NS1). Helps Marines get a foothold with early aggression.
• Increased minimum egg spawn time from 8 to 10 seconds to less that early Alien assault (now it's the same as Marines)
• Lowered infantry portal build time from 10 seconds to 7, and Armory from 15 to 12 (to try to lessen effectiveness of Skulk rush)

ns2_tram

• Moved warehouse north.
• Removed north-east Warehouse entrance.
• Opened tram tunnel between Server and Warehouse.
• Reworked connecting corridors into Warehouse.
• Fixed drifter pathing issues between Server and Control.

ns2_summit

• Reworked Flight Control and nearby vents
• Reworked Sub Access
• Added vent between Comp Lab, Sub Access and Maintenance Access

Fixes

• Fixed bug where the Gorge Bile Bomb ability used the Spit ability icon.
• Fixed bug where the Gorge Mini Cyst ability used the Hydra ability icon.
• Fixed script error if a Hive was destroyed while the Gorge that built it as Commander was a rag doll.
• Cleaned up some Client console spam when a Fade blinks.
• Fixed script error caused by a spectating player receiving points by getting a kill with a structure placed when they were not a spectator.
• Added placeholder icons for the Shell and Veil.
• Fixed bug where the game would randomly lockup while placing a Cyst.
• Drifter spawn sound effect will no longer play at world origin.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Skulks from leaping at maximum speed.
• Fixed bug where the physics representations for the Armory and Infantry Portal did not match up with the visual model.
• Weapon secondary attacks can no longer occur at the same time as primary attacks while coming out of a sprint in some cases.
• Armory buy menu will not instantly appear once construction is completed.
• Adjusted Skulk wall walking smoothing rates so that that the 3rd person model rotates more quickly to match the 1st person model (especially while jumping)
• Health and Ammo packs can now be dropped directly on top of a Marine player.
• Restored reloading of script files when they change on disk.
• Fixed Whip 'grenade whack'
• Bombard projectiles will not collide with the Whip and nearby friendly structures anymore and is created at the correct attach point.
• Alien player names for Hydra kills will no longer appear in blue text in the death message.
• Fixed a bug causing Mini Cysts placed by the Gorge to be disconnected when created even in cases where the ghost model indicated the connection was valid.
• Fixed bug causing dropped weapons to disappear too quickly if they were picked up and dropped again after initially being dropped.
• AI units cannot attack friendly players anymore unless FF is enabled.
• Fixed bug causing script error when a Cyst died due to not being connected to a Hive.
• Fixed crash when too many objects are visible.
• PhysX scene now supports mirrored geometry.
• Initial team starting locations chosen with a more random method.
• Mine will detect enemies more accurately.
• Slime effect during sprinting will not show up in thirdperson anymore.
• The ARC will prioritize other structures before Eggs and Cysts.
• Player turn poses (arms moving with feet planted on the ground) reset once the player starts moving.
• Fixed multi-threading crash when using the o_stats console command.
• The "getting ready to spawn" blue spin effect now disappears immediately upon the Infantry Portal being destroyed.
• Fixed bug where the Spore cloud would be created improperly when a Lerk was not moving.
• Fixed bug where connecting to the localhost would cause the game to go into an infinite loop.
• Fixed bug where Marines would spawn above the Infantry Portal platform.

Improvement

• Added "warp" console command to teleport to a position in space when cheats are on, "warp 0 0 0" for example.
• Improved Skulk wall walking (sticks better to surfaces, thanks matso!)
• Skulks can now leap from mid-air, ala NS1.
• The "locate" Client console command will constantly display the local player's location on the screen if "true" is given as a parameter.
• Added Mine icon for death messages (Thanks Saba!)
• Reformatted Scoreboard so more player names can fit on the screen at the same time.
• Server name is now displayed at the top of the Scoreboard.
• Improved ScenarioHandler (Thanks Matso!)

Sound

• Removed Bile Bomb hit sound when Gorge creates a structure.

Optimizations

• Optimized network fields in Structure, CloakableMixin, ScriptActor and PowerPoint (thanks Matso!)
• Reserve memory for faceSets (prevents excessive allocation)
• Reduced networked bandwidth for Camoflauge by eliminating an unnecessary network field (thanks Matso!)
• Reduced networked bandwidth for Skulks by eliminating wall walking network variables (thanks Matso!)
• Optimized Door auto-opening.
• Reduced number of cells CollisionGrid queries look through.
• Reduced network bandwidth required to send which fields of an Entity changed (uses indexing scheme when only a few fields changed and a bitmask when many changed)
• Reduced network bandwidth usage for entities that have energy.
• Reduced bandwidth for transmitting attachment points for entities by 26 bits.
• Reduced bandwidth for transmitting angles.
• Eliminated lastTimePlayerMoved networked field in Player.
• Mines require less processing time to check for nearby enemies.
• Reduced bandwidth by 20 bytes per second for each Entity sent to the client.
• Changed particle effects to only update if they were visible last frame.
• Slightly more aggressive compiler optimization options.

SDK

• Added Vector:Add method.
• Added Shared.SortEntitiesByDistance.
• Removed ProximityGrid.
• Added sphere query to CollisionGrid.
• Added EntityQueryManager (fast queries for entities within range, uses CollisionGrid)
• Exposed EntityQueryManager to Lua, started converting script to use new API.
• Added support to ObjectTagQueryManager for testing whether entity has a specific tag.
• Entities get tagged with their class name (and base class names). Tag is prefixed with 'class:'.
• Added time network variable type.
• Added "private" network fields which are only sent to the client controlling the Entity.
• Added support for networking floating point values as fixed point (specified as float ( to by )
• Added Client.GetServerName() function to return the name of the server the client is connected to.
• Added Server.GetName() function to return the name of the server.
• Added Server.GetFrameRate() function to return the current tick rate of the server.
• Added Mersenne twister Randomizer class to Lua, same API as Lua random functions but better generator.

We hope you enjoy this mega-build with us!



Source: Natural Selection 2 News

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NS2 Build 193 released
20 January 2012, 12:00 pm

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

Source: Natural Selection 2 News

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NS2 Build 191 released
13 January 2012, 12:27 am

We released a quick follow-up patch to yesterday's mega-build. This should tide you guys over for a bit while we focus on "Gorilla"...

Balance

• Buying mines now gives you 2 mines instead of 3.
• Increased mine arm time from 3 seconds to 4 (to reduce them in-combat).
• Mine health, armor, and point value lowered.
• Mines now set off other nearby mines when they explode.

Fixes

• Alien commanders are no longer able to see flamethrower effects when they don't have LOS to the Marine firing it.
• Dropped weapons no longer collide with the player controller.
• Fixed bug where console commands on the server were not properly verified to be coming from a local client.
• Fixed bug where players were not always frozen during the round start countdown period.
• Fixed bug where sometimes ready room players could become frozen during the round start countdown period.
• Fixed bug where the game did not use the Lua entry points specified in the game_setup.xml file.
• Fixed rally points.
• Fixed various script errors (thanks dePara!).
• Prevent slowing down of leap when leaping off a wall.
• Removed additional resource display for alien buy menu.
• Restored docking props to the build.
• Changed nano-shield "create" and "take damage" sounds from 2D to 3D (so you don't hear them everywhere).
• Skulks will not land on their back anymore when jumping from the ceiling in tight corridors.
• Less dubstepy nano shield damage sound.

Source: Natural Selection 2 News

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Optimizing NS2
10 January 2012, 1:55 pm

Here's a new video talking about optimization of NS2. Max, Brian and Dushan talk about scripting, profiling and the overall process behind optimizing the game:



Source: Natural Selection 2 News

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Dynamic infestation prototype + source
12 December 2011, 7:38 pm

You may have seen the video of our dynamic infestation gameplay prototyping a few weeks ago. I got sidetracked with Build 189 but am starting to look at finishing up a "final" prototype that we can use to inform this interesting feature:

I thought I would release this so you guys could try playing with it and maybe give some feedback about how to make it better. Specifically, I want to make it more "analog", so the exact way you create the infestation matters for gameplay, not simply if you had infestation in an area or not. Ie, it shouldn't matter only when or if you build in an area, but HOW you build in an area.


Here's a link for the demo (and source code) you can play with (made in Processing). Let me know if you have any ideas or modify it to make something cool on your own.

Source: Natural Selection 2 News

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