It is just over seven days since launch. What does seven days on Steam look like for a small independent game studio?

Icelanders are the most NS2 obsessed, the US is the biggest market, Singaporeans are the most likely to buy the Deluxe edition, and Belgians the most likely to buy 4-packs for their friends. As of yesterday, 75,105 games of NS2 had been played by up to 7,135 concurrent players.

All of that calls for a little bit of celebration. This weekend, Charlie and Hugh are shipping off to Cologne, Germany with Exertus and Archaea. There, those two teams will participate in a live studio grand final to determine who is the best team in Europe right now.

It …

Natural Selection 2 Build 228 is now live on Steam. This patch fixes crash issues some players are experiencing, especially those during the "pre-caching" phase of connecting to a server. If you do experience a crash in NS2, please submit the crash report via the displayed dialog; this information is very useful for us to fix any problems quickly.

Fix

• Fixed issue where the game would run out of memory on 32-bit Windows.
• Fixed bug where unicode characters could not be deleted in text inputs.
• The server browser scroll bar now resets when the menu is displayed and when the "Refresh" button is pressed.
• Fixed server crash caused by getting a new ability in the same frame an Alien was

What a ride. About 36 hours ago, Natural Selection 2 went live on Steam. Now, two sleepless nights later, how did we do? It’s time to take stock of what went well, what went wrong, and let you guys know what we are up to right now.

As the timer ticked down towards launch hour, we were shocked to see that NS2 was rising to the top of the Steam top-sellers list. With one hour to go, it made it. It stayed there until this morning. To say this made us happy is an exercise in gratuitous understatement. Such success was certainly unexpected. So unexpected, that we were caught ever-so-slightly off-guard in terms of servers. What happened over the …

Alert to Frontiersmen. Alert to Frontiersmen.

After a journey of over 5 years, after many course adjustments and the judicious use of fuel, we approach station NatSel. Repeat: prepare to dock with NatSel.

The Kharaa presence has been confirmed onboard. Before we lost our readings, sensors showed multiple forms moving at incredible speed through the ventilation shafts and maintenance tubes. Expect immediate and intense conflict the moment you deploy.

Control the resources. Defend your base. Listen to your commander. Be prepared to face more and more powerful alien foes. Learn their many forms and abilities, and how to counter them. Find the heart of the Kharaa threat, and eradicate it. The battle begins now. Its outcome rests in your …

We are very close to hitting v1.0! Here is a near-final update with some small but nice fixes.

Tomorrow is going to be a big day for us.

Features

• Brand new infestation. It’s interesting that it was the first thing we ever worked on for NS2 and now the last thing as well. It’s come full circle! We will probably crank up the amount infestation soon, but this is a great start.

Balance

• Increased base egg health from 250 to 350.

Fixes and improvements

• Replaced outdated Skulk tutorial videos (Thanks Skie!)
• Fixed bug in explore mode where multiple hives and command stations were present
• Made explore mode highlighting not repeat quickly on the same object (noticeable on an animating Harvester)

NS2 Build 225 is now live on Steam!

Here is the change log:

Changes

• Added maximum limit of Drifter / MAC (3 per tech point) to prevent unreasonable spam
• Increased workers per tech point to 5
• Added map specific loading screens
• Increased maximum FPS limit to 200

Fixes

• Fixed deadlock on dual core CPUs when starting a listen server
• Fixed hitch when stopping movement
• Fixed misprediction of Onos charge
• Fixed bug where server command line settings weren’t validated when starting a dedicated server
• Fixed bug causing the Builder effects to briefly appear on the Rifle in some cases after the Marine finishes building
• Fixed script error caused by using the "spectate" console command while playing as a Commander
• Fixed one

NS2 will be released on Steam in five days, smack bang on Halloween. Right now, there are five maps in the beta: Tram, Docking, Mineshaft, Summit and Veil. On launch day, that will change. It is our pleasure to present the sixth launch map: Refinery, designed by Andrew ‘Insane’ Jones.

Refinery was conceived as one of four original official maps, along with Tram, Mineshaft and Docking. Each one of these maps represents one part of a huge mining and refining facility. In Refinery, large machines process ore from Mineshaft, transferring it to tracks that will transit Tram, all attended by workers who have their quarters in Docking. Of course, where there is ore processing, there must be lots …

Well, we’re one week from releasing the game to the world and we’re making some BIG technical changes. The networking and performance changes in this build are staggering. Ideally we wouldn’t be making these changes this close to launch, but we felt that the improvements were worth the risk. Note: there is a "hitch" when you come to a stop. We know about this and will fix it shortly, but wanted to get all the other improvements out to you in the meantime.

Onward!

Features

• Added a mechanism where mods and replays can use historical versions of the game for compatibility.
• Added first person tracer effects.
• Added new request menu.
• Added ability for players on the ground to "ping" a

We spend 99% of our time working to make Natural Selection 2 awesome, so we do not often think about ‘corporate’ stuff. We do however have an Unknown Worlds motto: ‘Unite the world through play.’ Throughout the development of NS2, there has always been the sense that the game was a global phenomenon.

Our office is a prime example. The majority may be US citizens, but we also have an Austrian, a Pole, and an Australian here in San Francisco. Offsite, Indonesia, France, the UK, and many more countries are all represented by full-time off-site developers. Our volunteer playtest group is a rainbow of nationalities, with a plurality of accents calling out ‘kill that Onos!’

Here is a graphic that …