Progress! These last couple weeks we have been working towards some of our larger goals for the game. We have had multiple public and private test sessions with the upgraded Luajit changes and it is very close to public release. Dependency on Awesomium has been removed and should help with stability and memory leaks. HIVE 2.0 will be launching in parallel to the existing HIVE sometime over the next week using extensions. This will allow us to test our new system in the public and see how well the algorithms and data collection are working and allow us to make some final tweaks before removing the old version entirely (more detail on this in a separate blog post soon). Looking to make some changes, update 307 includes a new version of Summit with contributions from Wob and Loki. We have been playing it over the last couple weeks and are excited to see how the public adapts to the new changes. There have been continued debates in multiple Discord channels over balance and a wide range of other subjects lately. These discussions have been very helpful and have lead to some inspired changes that you will see in the log below, so keep em going. Keep an eye out for a new blog post next week showing our evolving Roadmap for the future of NS2 and some of the exciting updates that we hope to be bringing in the near future. Skulk on and be happy! Update 307 Changelog Tweaks / Improvements

• Skulk Changes
  • Reverted HP to 70/10 (was 85/10)
  • Increased base ground speed to 7.25 to match wall walking speed (was 7.0)
  • Increased non-celerity wall jump force to 6.4 to match the celerity force (was 5.2)
  • Increased sneak speed to be 66% of max speed (was 50%)
  • Made wall jump noises more responsive to your speed to provide better feedback

Although we felt that increasing the Skulk base HP was a necessary step to restore the balance, we agree with the community’s sentiment that it didn’t improve the feel for either side. Our aim going forward is to make it so Skulks feel effective, even while their small health pool can feel punishing. These new changes in conjunction with the melee box increase should make Skulks feel a little bit more maneuverable and able to get a kill, especially during the early game and when planning an ambush.

• Removed the Twitter ticker since it is not used much
• Added team say console command `tsay` (Thanks Keats!)
• Replaced HTML renderer to use Steam APIs instead of Awesomium
  • Videos will now play on Linux!

Fixes

• Welcome banner was hidden by the load screen (Thanks Brute!)
• Fixed that text input fields didn’t consume key events (Thanks Brute!)
• Fixed that enemies were still considered in LOS for health bar display when hiding behind structures and other players
• Fixed that enemies were not considered in LOS for health bar display when visible through railings
• Fixed that Skulks’ celerity bonus was not being reduced while sneaking
• Fixed a script error caused by telling a bot to attack a clog
• Fixed that higher level tech was not immediately available in Sandbox mode from the Armory/Protolab
• Fixed that missing placeholders in a localization could cause clients to crash (occurred with Serbian selected)
• Fixed a script issue occurring on ns2_caged caused by achievement handling

Map Changes

• Summit
  • Atrium - Depth of arched pillars increased, tree added and its tube, raised platform at back of summit added console for additional ground cover, fences now solid.
  • Datacore - New pillar added to give partial LOS block on TechPoint when approaching from Pipe Junction
  • Reception - Increased height of ceiling and added new pillar
  • Flight Control -Duplicated roof truss and added tv for cover
  • Computer Lab - Added small pillar increased height of ceiling, route from comp lab to sub now has 2 additional ceiling recesses for hiding skulks etc
  • Reactor Core - Slight room alteration + extended angular struts from the reactor prop
• Derelict
  • Fixed overhead bridge in Biome blocking commander view

SDK

• Model Compiler - Fixed a bug that would cause FBX models to use incorrect bones for attachment points.
• Model Compiler - Fixed a bug that would cause FBX models to have cameras incorrectly oriented.
• Model Compiler - Added a directive to the model compiler "material_path_replace".  Takes an input string, and replaces all occurrences of it with the output string.  Useful for maintaining proper Maya workflow/naming conventions.