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.

[ 2017-01-27 15:32:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Natural Selection 2 pits alien against human in an action-packed struggle for survival. Wield devastating weaponry as a Frontiesman marine, or become the xenomorph as a deadly. Kharaa life-form.

Strategy Meets Shooter

Natural Selection 2 is a First Person Shooter and Real Time Stategy game rolled into one! Each team, alien and human, has a Commander. The Commander looks down on the battlefield and issues orders, places structures, collects resources, researches technology, and deploys abilities.



Here are some gameplay examples: A human Commander could drop health packs and ammunition to a trapped marine squad, and deploy sentry guns to help them defend their position. Or an alien Commander could grow a new Hive to spread infestation throughout newly captured territory, allowing more alien eggs to spawn...

Two Unique Sides

Aliens players choose to evolve into one of five lifeforms: The fast, fearsome Skulk can run on walls and deliver massive damage with is jaws. Lerks fly and deploy gasses to support their teammates in battle. Gorges heal other lifeforms and build tunnels, hydra turrets, walls, and other tactical structures. Fades blink in and out of battle, picking off marines with giant scythes. Finally, the giant Onos is so massive and so tough, that even entire marine squads can't take it down.



Marines wield rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers, pistols, and other weapons. Cluster grenades can clear ventilation shafts of sneaky Skulks, flamethrowers make short work of alien structures and infestation, and boosts dropped by the Commander increase combat effectiveness.

When attacking on foot doesn't cut it, marines can construct hulking Exosuits wielding miniguns and railguns, and equip jetpacks for high speed assaults on alien Hives.

Long Term Development

Natural Selection 2 receives constant updates. This year, 2016, Unknown Worlds continues to develop new features, content, and improvements.

Mod Tools Come Standard

Natural Selection 2 comes with all the tools we used to make the game. All game code is open source. That means you can create, and play, an endless variety of mods. Publish, share, and download mods from the Steam Workshop, and automatically download mods when you join modded games.

Digital Deluxe Edition

Digital Deluxe Edition includes:

• Official Soundtrack - 1 hour of tribal, industrial music composed by David John and Simon Chylinski
  
• Digital Art Book - 40+ pages of art by Cory Strader, including environments, creatures, weapons and more
  
• Exclusive in-game marine model - Exclusive in-game marine model - A new marine model with custom visor and armor plating
  
• Exclusive Wallpapers and Avatars - Unique views of the NS2 universe by Amanda Diaz