Build 161 of the Natural Selection 2 Beta is now available on Steam. There are a lot of changes in this patch, so it took some extra time to work through bugs; we should be back to releasing more frequent updates now.

Build 161 Change Log

• Rewrote marine Commander UI (now all Lua, not Flash) for massively improved frame rate for the Marine Commander!
• Changed Marines to put away their weapon when building
• Added data-driven effect system for artists
(EffectManager.lua and *Effects.lua)
• New marine expansion room on ns2_tram
• Fixed timeout when creating a local server
• Fixed crash when Lua code performed an invalid operation
• Fixed the alien tech tree so the Whips have the proper prerequisites melee 1 > melee 2 > melee 3 (thanks Enceladus)
• Fixed observatory buttons to not be active until the observatory is built (thanks Enceladus)
• Fixed Crag upgrade menu not having a back button (thanks Enceladus)
• Fixed Skulk leap prediction issues
• Flamethrower look-up/look-down 3rd person animations fixed
• Fixed texture lock in the Editor
• Fixed bug where a WebRequest response was limited to 8192 characters
• Fixed exploit where an embryo would slide if the alien was moving prior to gestating
• Fixed bug where looking straight up and moving forwards would cause the player to move backwards
• Fixed bug where looking straight down and firing the pistol would cause the view to flip
• Fixed Alien "structure under attack" alerts not properly displaying
• Fixed bug where Aliens could use the Armory
• Fixed bug where Special Edition black armor didn't show up in the ready room
• Fixed Distress Beacon not working
• Fixed prediction issues with weapon unholstering
• Fixed bug where a Marine could obtain all of the weapons simultaneously
• Fixed commander tool tips not displaying the proper resource requirements (carbon, plasma, etc.)
• Fixed armor bug which was causing marines to be killed in 2 bites instead of 3 (thanks Harimaru)
• Fixed bug where the bots wouldn't use the current target's location to move/aim
• Fixed bug where bots would stop acting after they had killed their target
• Fixed bug where "create" command created 2 entities instead of 1
• Fixed bug where aliens could escape the map or get stuck in walls while evolving
• Fixed bug where clicking with Commander ghost selected the unit underneath (meaning you can support with med/ammo much easier now)
• Fixed Sentries not being able to see targets very close to it (now "sees" out of the camera on the model)
• Fixed bug where infantry portal wouldn't wait full spawn time before spawning players
• Added drawing commander buttons in red when they are available but you don't have enough resources
• Added the ability to drop weapons as a Marine (weapon pickup will be in a future patch)
• Added culling of lights when they have zero intensity (optimizes bullet impact effects)
• Added flashlight key binding (thanks Enceladus)
• Added support for joining a friend's game through the Steam UI
• Added the ability to get a player's Steam ID in script
• Added a parasite indicator on the Marine HUD
• Increased the brightness of the flashlight
• Changed marine and alien spawn timing (marines take 10 seconds to spawn at IP, eggs take 9 seconds)
• Changed the master server query port to be port+1 instead of being hard-coded to 27016
• Changed the names of parasited team-mates to be drawn in yellow in the HUD
• Tightened rifle cone of fire from 4 degrees to 3 degrees to make it feel more like NS1
• Added new alien and marine blood effects