Welcome to December Update, Part 2. You can read Part 1 of our reveal about the December Update here. Important Point: This update WILL NOT contain Xen. We are hard at work on Xen and are preparing media to show to you guys. But there will not be a release of Xen soon and we still do not have a timeframe for it. Here are some more interesting details for what's to come in December's Content Update 2. This list is not exhaustive. The update is huge and there's going to be A LOT of stuff.

Godrays

Godrays (also known as Crepuscular Rays if you want to be more scientific) are the first of the new graphical features we have written with Xen in mind. We're testing them by deploying them publicly on our existing singleplayer and multiplayer maps. Very pretty, and highly customisable per level - useful for modders and level designers.

Shell Ejection

Marines and other players in multiplayer now eject weapon brass when firing. Seems like a small touch, but in a big firefight with multiple Marines it can actually add quite a lot to the atmosphere!

AI Tweaks

We've started our first round of AI tweaks. There will be more to come. One big one was tweaking the way Marines react to Alien Grunts. They used to use grenade avoidance behaviours to try and escape the Alien Grunt's Hornets, which led to some very odd behaviours in fights between them. They now no longer do that. They would also try and avoid their own grenades which led to some odd behaviour too. They don't do that anymore, either.

Multiplayer Tweaks and Changes

Multiplayer has seen quite a bit of love for this update, though there's plenty to come for you singleplayers too! Firstly, all of the base multiplayer code was completely rewritten from scratch. This is HUGE. MP should now be far more responsive, better performing, and less buggy/crashy.

• Fixed prediction/lag compensation on the Crossbow. Zoomed fire should now be extremely responsive and reliable.
• Added subtle spawn effects/sounds for weapon and player spawns.
• Added a "walk" function.
• Unlocked all movement related cvars to allow us to better tweak movement and feel to match HL1.
• Removed some Taus and ammo from most maps, to better match the fact that the Tau is really, really powerful now.
• Better colours on the scoreboard/coloured killfeed and coloured chat for better clarity.

And many more! We may reveal more later!

Bugfixes

• Fixed .357 Guard being unable to fire.
• Fixed Hivehand falling through the elevator on C2A5E.
• Headcrabs now properly inherit momentum when shot off Zombies instead of just falling to the ground.
• Crossbow's lowered sensitivity when zoomed in now works properly. No more weird feeling.

And many more! We may reveal more later here too!

Crossfire, and a Singleplayer Update

Next part, we will talk about the main MP focus of the update: Crossfire! That's right, Crossfire is coming in the December Update, better than ever! And we also have a Singleplayer Update lined up for Content Update 2, which we suspect a lot of you have been anticipating and excited for (reiteration: it is NOT Xen!)
Work in Progress. Map is still being polished! Join us soon for the next part!