Build 162 of the Natural Selection 2 Beta is now available on Steam!

Developer commentary

Usually we post a simple text change log describing the changes but we're trying something new this week: here's a short video that has the NS2 developers talking about and SHOWING what they worked on in this update:

Max and the rest of the team aren't in here and we didn't cover every change (we ran out of time) but the important thing is to get SOMETHING out there to you quickly.

Build 162 Change Log

• Optimized physics/collision detection
• Fixed server memory leak when the server was restarted while clients were connected (thanks endar)
• Fixed bug where clients wouldn't receive a message when the server shutdown
• Added auto-save support to the Cinematic Editor
• Fixed Lua errors not properly printing out the call stack information in the log
• Fixed bug where the Observatory could scan before it was built (thanks Enceladus)
• Fixed bug where the healing radius for the Crag wasn't displayed (thanks Enceladus)
• Fixed bug when a structure gets recycled or destroyed that a running upgrade is lost (thanks Enceladus)
• Fixed bug where the Umbra button was not usable with a Mature Crag (thanks Enceladus)
• Fixed bug where a Mature Whip was not recognized as valid for researching melee upgrades (thanks Enceladus)
• Added Shared.GetDataFromUrl function to retrieve data from an Internet URL
• Added a section overview to the in-game profile display

This build also includes several weeks of work rewriting the physics and collision systems to yield better performance and support for multi-threading. Our new physics/collision system is also designed to give us better control over the shapes the game uses to detect bullet hits, melee attacks and movement. This is something we're hoping to take advantage of in the next patch.

We're very interested to hear what you think about this format. Do you want to see more videos like this? More talking heads or less? Do you prefer us to focus on the game, technology or the personalities behind them?