This Friday we're releasing a patch to the Natural Selection 2 toolset and engine test. As we mentioned last week, this build includes a special version of Decoda that can be used to debug Lua scripts in Natural Selection 2. This is the same tool that we use to program NS2 (and that we've licensed to some of the biggest game companies in the industry!).

We've also included our Cinematic Editor tool in this release. This tool is used to create particle effects, in-game cinematics (like the main menu) and 3D sky boxes that can be assigned in the Editor. We also use the Cinematic Editor to create promotional videos like the teaser video and the April Fools' Day reveal.

All of the tools can be accessed by right clicking on "Natural Selection 2" and selecting "Run Launch Pad...". With these two tools the entire Spark toolset is now available to everyone that's pre-ordered.

In addition to the new tools, we've included some enhancements to the Editor, Viewer and COLLADA exporter:

• Added layer functionality to work with edges and vertices of faces
• Added group functionality for selection and categorization by name
• Added the ability to manipulate rag dolls in the Viewer
• Fixed layer support to work properly beyond 32 layers
• Fixed issues when multiple rigid bodies in a COLLADA file had the same name
• Fixed networking prediction errors due to the time being out of sync on the server and client

Here's a teaser video of the rag doll manipulation in the Viewer. The rag doll-able Skulk isn't included in this release (hence the tease!), but will be available soon:

The new build will be available shortly on Steam to everyone that's pre-ordered. It will automatically one the patch online. If you haven't pre-ordered and would like to, you can do so here!

Update: The build is now live