On this day, Halloween 2012, Natural Selection 2 was launched on Steam. The following year has blown our minds at Unknown Worlds. More people have purchased, played, contributed to and been a part of Natural Selection 2 than we ever thought possible. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G18vkNAyZs Naturally, this date calls for a celebration. Natural Selection 2 build 259 is now live on Steam - It doesn't have a special name, because its special nature lies in its normalness. Natural Selection 2 has been updated countless times since launch, and it is the cumulative improvement that these updates have brought which are most proud of. The birthday build also includes some new toys to play with - The Shadow Gorge, and Shadow Lerk.

In game model of the Shadow Gorge and some of its toys

 Both the Shadow Gorge and Shadow Lerk are available to everyone that has purchased Shadow Tier in the Natural Selection 2 Reinforcement Program. For a limited time, anyone with Silver, Gold, or Diamond tiers can upgrade to Shadow Tier for only the difference in tier price. To upgrade, go to naturalselection2.com/shadowupgrade.

In-game model of the Shadow Lerk

 That's not all. It is also Natural Selection 1's birthday - It's 11th birthday. To celebrate, a very special piece of Natural Selection history is making a comeback later this year. Here is a teaser. Prepare to nostalgia: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w306WXduiqk The party carry's over to Steam as well - This Halloween through November 4th, Natural Selection 2 is 75% off on Steam!

Happy birthday Natural Selection.     ...     Oh ok, here's the changelog! Fixes Fixed crash in the animation system Fixed Biomass UI and tech map sometimes not showing tooltip info for Commanders Fixed Marine HUD health bar appearing corrupted when leaving Command Station at low health Fixed script error preventing an unbuilt Gorge Tunnel entrance from being consumed when a third one is being built Fixed Webs blocking bullets and projectiles (only Welder and Flamethrower will hit them now) Fixed Heal Spray effects being visible to Marine Commander without LOS Fixed Gorge Tunnels being droppable in areas which Marines can't reach Fixed Skulk aligning their model in midair to other players / entities they are about to collide with Fixed some icons staying greyed out in Alien tech map once requirements have been reached Fixed wrong side of the Gorge Tunnel flinching when attacked Fixed main menu background sound continuing to play while the menu is closed (thanks Mendasp!) Fixed Nanoshield sometimes failing and possibility of applying to dead units but still costing resources A commander is no longer able to go to the ready room and rejoin their team to gain 20 resources The game no longer attempts to load female versions of Alien voice overs (Thanks Samusdroid!) Fixed bug causing sound volume to increase after failed connections Lerk idle sound will no longer play in 2D space (Thanks Samusdroid!) Improvements Improved hit registration of Flamethrower (damage application was slightly offset from crosshair) Improved behavior of Flamethrower fire effect when colliding with a surface Waypoints and Pings will now fade out while aiming at their direction Removed cooldown from Scan (old nearby Scans are removed to prevent effect spam) Improved behavior and client side misprediction of Grenades Dead end Gorge Tunnel entrances can no longer be entered. They will now show a specific pose depending on if they are connected or not to fix the confusion when having multiple Tunnel entrances in one room. Increase size of Hand Grenades when thrown to make them more visible Enzyme Cloud effect is less obtrusive Improved explosion effects for the Grenade Launcher Improved Onos Gore effects Linux dedicated server now requires the Steam runtime. This is documented in the Dedicated_Server_Usage.txt file. Additions Shadow Gorge + Toys Shadow Lerk Balances Reduced Nanoshield damage absorb to 32% (down from 75%) Increased Nanoshield duration to 5 seconds (up from 3) Removed marine dodge jump Optimization Optimized animation computations The score update network message now uses less bandwidth Compressed all audio which saves a lot of in game memory Editor Dynamic props now have a default model (Thanks Samusdroid!) SDK The default Builder setup will now generate minimaps and correctly copy CSS files (Thanks Samusdroid!) Fixed security issue where a mod could potentially read files outside of the sandboxed directories (Thanks Deco!) NS2_Refinery Moved location of Containment power node. Made some fixes to commander visibility. Adjusted detailing in Conduit Filled bucked in smelting with cooled ore to prevent gorge nest madness. Deleted empty prop_static entities. Changed death triggers on lava falls to do damage over time (no more lerk insta-death). Fixed flickering textures. Added power node to Falls Approach. Fixed exploit where you could build outside the map near Lava Falls. Raised pipes in Conduit to remove an exploit spot. Improved pathing mesh. Thanks to SamusDroid for his help bug-squashing.