Another update for Natural Selection 2 has rolled out through Steam. Build 238 and build 239 (I’ll get to that) are maintenance updates rather than content drops but they make a couple of changes that should please the marines. Mainly, the shotgun has been improved removing any element of luck from the bullet spread and the speed of alien’s goo spit has been decreased making it a less effective long range weapon.
More changes below and news of the content drop later this month. Oh, and that mysterious build 239.
OK, so the major updates in 238are all contained in this handy little video but I’ve posted the full change log down below:
Now, Build 239. It’s a wee’un. Essentially, build 238 introduced “A nasty bug” that allowed “Aliens to evolve all traits at once.”While the Alien players were happy the marines were less thrilled. As well as patching out the bug, build 239 also optimised the game’s animations saving memory for everyone.
Here’s the full 238 change list for your perusal:
Change
- Shotgun uses now a symmetrical bullet spread pattern.
- reduced grenade launcher damage radius from 8 down to 6.
- reduced spit projectile speed by 12%
- arc menu will now always show both deploy and undeploy button.
- Removed celerity sound and screen effects.
- reduced Gorge spit damage from 40 to 30.
- It is no longer possible to damage anything during the pre-game.
Optimization
- Fixed bug where some objects would be unnecessarily rendered using material techniques that had no effect.
- Reduced the memory usage from keeping level data in memory.
- Reduced the memory usage pathing information.
- Improved Infestation performance on the client (thanks Matso!)
- Improved loading times when vsync is enabled by limiting the loading screen frame rate to 30 FPS.
Feature
- In-game audio device selection.
Fix
- Damage arrows are now more accurate when multiple players are attacked by a Whip at the same time (Thanks to Joop for pointing this out!)
- Fixed bug where request menu was not opening when your team has no Commander.
- Fixed bug where grenades were not dealing full damage on direct hits.
- fixed Whips being able to whack grenades through walls.
- Fixed issue were client side and server side selection status are sometimes out of sync.
- Drifters now uncloak when an enemy unit touch them.
- Fixed bug causing Celerity effects to remain on when the Skulk was walking or standing still in some cases.
- Fixed random number generator issue that caused inconsistencies in the bullet spread between the client and server.
- Fixed “Couldn’t open ”” error messages appearing in the log.
- Fixed Gorge build menu not getting immediately cleaned up upon death.
- Fixed bug which allowed more than 3 Sentries to be built next to a Sentry Battery in some cases.
- fixed melee attacks not triggering effects when hitting world geometry.
- Fixed bug where the main menu music would play over the tutorial videos.
- The server will now reload the map if 10 hours have passed and no game is currently being played (Thanks Mats!)
- Fixed bug preventing the MAC from attacking Hives.
- Fixed crash on exit if the rendering thread was still processing a frame during the shutdown process.
- Gorge Bile Bomb will no longer interrupt the Gorge’s Celerity speed boost after shooting the bomb.
- Fixed the “speed” console command not affecting player movement.
- Aliens may now evolve new traits if an existing trait is lost due to the upgrade structure being destroyed.
- Fixed bug where alt-tabbing out of the game would cause the Exosuit to become opaque.
- Chat will now display correctly in the dedicated server web interface (Thanks Sherman!)
Improvement
- cyst min range check will now pass when the vertical distance between cysts is too high, to prevent situations were Commanders could sometimes not infest resource nodes.
- selection and hotgroup creation works now without any delays.
- Commanders can now select enemy units.
- increased number of allowed hotgroup to 9.
- hot key icons blink up red if a unit in this group is under attack.
- added shift+click for manipulating selection (add/remove units)
- Cysts now “redeploy” instead of enforcing a minimum placement distance between existing Cysts.
- phase gates now show a connection line between each other on the minimap.
- phase gates show now the destination in their name.
Sdk
- Added support for distortion effects (like refraction) in surface shaders.
- Added Client.GetMusicVolume.
Veil
- Blocked small vents in Topographical
- Added cover to vents in Nanogrid