Hey all,

NS2 Build 215 has now been released. We've been extremely busy and focused around here - we are certainly in ship mode. We are cutting things that we can't get working and madly fixing everything else. So there are no new features in this build, but there instead you'll find a slew of balance, polish and performance changes.

The Exosuit isn't in yet, but we've been playtesting with it a lot. It's shaping up nicely, but isn't ready for release. And before you ask: the new version of Veil (NS1 remake!) is also not quite ready but is playing really well. It's shaping up to be fantastic and we can't wait to release it to you.

Balance

• Increased alien respawn wave time from 9 to 11.
• Increased power point weld rate by 33%.
• Initial Harvester health is now 16% less (it's max health/armor is the same when fully mature).
• Lowered Extractor build time (15 to 10) a bit.
• Lowered Power Point build time (5 to 3) a bit.
• Nano-shield now has cooldown of 10 seconds and cost of 5.
• Onos with Carapace isn't so slow any more.
• Reduced Fade health from 300 to 250.
• Reduced Gorge build time per heal-spray from .7 to .6.
• Reduced Hydra build time from 15 to 10 so they can be used on the front-lines again.
• Reduced Lerk Carapace from 100 to 75 (this message has been approved by SabaLerk).
• Reduced Robotics Factory build time from 25 to 17.
• Reduced tres flow a bit.
• Welder now does "flammable" damage, so it will melt Cysts and Clogs.
• Gorge heal spray energy cost increased from 10 to 12.
• Gorge heal spray now more effective on structures.

Changes

• Added ability for Fade to do a double-jump in the air.
• Added team resource limit of 200.
• Armories now remove parasites.
• Changed infestation spikes to appear after an initial spawn animation.
• Destroyed powerpoints require now to be repaired by a welder/MAC.
• Disabled secondary fire mode for pistol.
• During feign death energy regeneration or healing won't work anymore.
• Grenades and mines are now directly affected by vortex.
• Increased feign death timeout from 10 to 20 seconds.
• Increased player use range by 50%.
• Logout text now constantly displayed on the Commander logout button.
• Medpacks don't cure poison anymore (armories still do).
• Medpacks no longer remove parasites.
• Nano shield prevents now from being vortexed.
• Poison bite deals now 6 damage to health per second (up from 4).
• Poison bite has now a maximum duration of 6 seconds.
• Reduced "LOS timeout" from 3 to 0.5 seconds.
• Removed alien vision costs.
• Removed nano construct (it wasn't working well).
• Vortex duration decreased.
• Vortex radius now grows to full size within the first second, instead of starting at full radius.

Fixes

• Added many missing localization strings (Thanks Mendasp!).
• Bug in FindRandomPointAroundCircle.
• Changed mouse sensitivity values to be on the same scale as Natural Selection 1.
• Double click select not requiring you to click twice on a unit.
• Fixed ARC, droppacks and weapons showing incorrectly E icon for using them.
• Fixed bug causing animations to not be correct in some rare cases.
• Fixed bug causing the Whip to not cancel it's order when commanded in some cases.
• Fixed bug were Skulk could wall walk at full speed during feign death.
• Fixed bug where a new Marine player waiting to spawn at the IP could freely move the camera around.
• Fixed bug where alien command could always see the advanced armory module.
• Fixed bug where footsteps sounds would not play for some Aliens.
• Fixed bug where Nano-Shield was played as 2d sound for everyone.
• Fixed bug where Parasite would be blocked by movement geometry.
• Fixed bug where sometimes a Commander menu would have two cancel buttons.
• Fixed bug where strafing + pressing forward gave more boost for shadow step.
• Fixed bug where the bounding boxes for models in the broadphase did not take into account animation.
• Fixed bug where voice communication would be stuck on after alt-tabbing out of the game.
• Fixed cancel button for whips.
• Fixed console error message when no name was specified for a server.
• Fixed crash when a shader for a material was not available.
• Fixed Foresight not working at marine structures.
• Fixed issue where the order of network fields was relying on undefined behavior (could vary based on the implementation of Lua tables).
• Fixed marines being able to phase to unpowered phase gates.
• Fixed memory corruption bug when setting a string network field to a value that was longer than its maximum length.
• Fixed not being able to root / unroot multiple whips at once.
• Fixed problem where mines would not deal damage when their owner is vortexed.
• Fixed problem where the first click as commander was always treated as double click.
• Fixed problem with resource tower LOS.
• Fixed Robotics Factory accepting wrong build direction (building with opening against wall was allowed, valid orientation was forbidden).
• Fixed script error caused by manually targeting the ground with a Sentry.
• Fixed script error caused by not providing a player id to sv_kick.
• Fixed script error related to blinking fades.
• Fixed server error caused by an empty admin file.
• Fixed server error caused by an empty ban file.
• Fixed the font on the Rifle and Shotgun displays (thanks axamdeep!).
• Flashlight and Alien Vision will no longer spam on and off rapidly when the button is held down.
• Improved precision of the mouse when raw input is disabled.
• MAC will now autobuild structures, autoweld units, and follow build orders again.
• Reduced compression artifacts on normal maps.
• Xenocide now always kills the Alien that uses it, regardless of other abilities such as Feign.
• Client-side bugs with EntityQueryManager fixed. Change-avoidance code stopped entities from being moved from 0,0 to correct pos when they were re-added.

Improvements

• Added Lerk flying help widget for new players.
• Added Skulk leap help widget for new players.
• Added custom icon and initial animation when opening minimap to make it easier to define were you currently are.
• Added life form tooltips for alien buy menu.
• Added separate spore effect for non enemies (easier to see through).
• Armories only heal health, not armor (like NS1). Encourages welder use, should help with 1-base stalemates.
• Improved random spawning code, uses pathing mesh now.
• Inactive tabs in the commander menu are now greyed out, to make it more clear which tab is currently the active one.
• Red circles appear now on minimap whenever a team alert like "structure is under attack" is send.
• The Alien evolve button can now be held down without toggling the menu on and off repeatedly.

ns2_summit

• Expanded Ventilation and added a small ledge on the pipes area and a ladder so you can get back up if you fall.
• Fixed Fade stuck issue in Glass Hallway vent.
• Fixed evolution problems in Glass Hallway vent.
• Fixed gorge stuck point in Maintenance Access.
• Fixed issue with invisible wall blocking bullets between Glass Hallway and Reactor Core.
• Fixed stuck points/player movement in Pipe Junction vent.
• Moved the crates in Maintenance Access so you can jump over the railing earlier.
• Onos can't get into the Maintenance Access vent anymore.
• Slightly resized crossroads floor vent so Gorges could traverse it easily.

ns2_tram

• Fixed hole in floor in Server Room that you could fall through.

Optimizations

• Cached off the Weapon map name which is queried often.
• Changed GameInfo to not call OnSynchronized.
• Changed flinch effects to get triggered client side.
• Changes particle effects to be networked as entities rather than messages (reduces choke).
• Eliminated cost of updating the physics model for objects that were not near dynamically simulated objects.
• Got rid of aggregates - PhysX doesn't seem to like our use case, turns out it runs much faster without them.
• Optimized Entity.GetMapName.
• Optimized GUI rendering.
• Optimized querying whether or not an entity needed to be updated.
• Reduced bandwidth needed for updating Alien structure Maturity.
• Reduced client-side interpolation from 150ms to 100ms.
• Removed overhead of checking for the need to call OnInit on the client.
• Removed unnecessary function call from ModelMixin:OnSynchronized.
• Setup FireMixin to not use OnSynchronized.
• Setup SoundEffect entities to not have OnSynchronized called on them.
• Setup TeamInfo entities to not have OnSynchronized called on them.
• Too much dirty marking on origin changes (line of sight).
• Speedup multi-function calls from Mixins.
• Use c-closure to save one level of function calls in MixinUtility.
• Optimized vertex buffer updating for rendering the GUI.

SDK

• Added OnInitialized method on Entity which is called once an entity has been initialized with values from the first update from the server (on the client), or from values passed into Server.OnCreate (on the server).
• Added functionality to render out to a sequence of bitmaps from the Cinematic Editor.
• Added reports, search to PerfAnalyser.
• Added support for gobo textures on lights.
• Added support for multiple scripted materials on a single model.
• Created OnInitialized function called by the engine to replace OnInit, OnLoad.
• Fixed bug where reflection probes were not initialized properly in the Editor.
• Fixed bug where the "strength" value for a reflection probe was ignored in the Cinematic Editor.
• Fixed layout in the render settings dialog in the Cinematic Editor.
• Improved error messages when a network field was declared incorrectly.
• PerfAnalyser plot search result on detail window.
• Simplified the display of emitters in the Cinematic Editor to reduce visual clutter.

It's shaping up to be a very busy summer. And one spent largely indoors...