Today, NS2 got the Humble Bundle treatment. With over 179,000 bundles sold as of this post, eight hours into the three week run, there are some new players about. What better way to welcome them to the NS2 community than with that age old tradition: The new build.

Build 261 is here, it is sweet, and it wants your attention. Like 260, 261 is a collaboration between UWE’s very own Andi and the infinitely energetic volunteer SamusDroid. There are three stand out features: Improved collision, commander keybinds, and reduced early game hitching.

Whenever a player hits something in the environment, an approximation of their model is used to calculate the appropriate physical response. Games do this because calculating …

This weekend on Twitch is packed with NSL (ensl.org) and AUSNS2 League (ausns2.org) matches. Watching competitive play is a great way to learn how to up your game – And talking smack in the chat with fellow NS2 players is always a blast. Because these matches take place all over the world, there is always at least a handful on in every timezone across the planet. Here is a summary:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5gzoHGPdV8

EDIT: Note – The Seraphic v Singularity match is on Sunday, not Saturday (Saturday evening for US viewers). Thanks mattiji104 for noticing!

There are many more NSL matches happening, but because of the flexible nature of the NSL timetable they are not net tightly scheduled. …

Build 250 is now live on Steam. Servers will update over the next few hours, and Steam will update your game automatically. Build 250 contains lots of balance changes!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvAlMs-IQoA

All these changes mean that there’s stuff to learn. Over the next few days, we will be releasing lots of videos, blog posts and tutorials to help you learn all about what’s going on!

Balance

Build 249 is now available on Steam!

This one is a real doozy. Thanks to the oustanding work of Thomas ‘fsfod’ Fransham, Natural Selection 2 now runs a whole lot faster. That man is a true genius, and everyone at UWE is very thankful for his efforts!

Anyone who has been running NS2 with a configuration that is CPU bound will notice significantly improved performance. Everyone, regardless of GPU/CPU limits, will notice lower variance in time taken to render frames. This manifests itself as less ‘stutter’ and ‘hitching.’

Full changelog:

Improvements

LuaJIT now used by the Client and Server for increased performance (Thanks fsfod!)
Grenades are now predicted and updated in the shooters world
Improved the look of …

Intro

In this tutorial, we will go through the process of creating a new mod for Natural Selection 2 and uploading it to the Steam Workshop. This tutorial assumes no prior knowledge of programming or modding (but both will certainly help!).

Launch Pad

The first tool we will discuss is the Launch Pad. This is the application that will create and manage your mods as well as publish these mods to the Steam Workshop. This tool is called LaunchPad.exe and is located in the game’s installation directory.

On my computer, Launch Pad is located at:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Natural Selection 2\LaunchPad.exe

Once Launch Pad is open, go get some tea, use the bathroom if needed, and get ready because we are …

The current month is April, but we may as well rename it Modril, because mods are absolutely modding everywhere. Last week, UWE held a week long modjam. It was a total blast, and reminded us just how awesome modding can be. After all, Natural Selection was originally a mod!

Don’t be modded out. Because this week, it’s time to talk about a mod that is modding awesome: Combat. Combat was a staple of NS back in the day, and there was never a doubt in the collective community hive mind that it would return on the Spark Engine. Return it has, with a vengeance!

Combat is a variant of Natural Selecti0n play in which an alien and marine team …

Here is a list of all the places you can watch the Nexzil Proving Grounds tournament! Note that Vindaloo is actually Vindalo0 (zero on the end!)

Starting on http://twitch.tv/naturalselection2 in 45 minutes!…

Hugh writes about the experience of taking NS2 to Cologne for the NSL Invitational Grand Final, and the wonderful people that made it happen.

Time was ticking away. A minute ago, all those who would be on-camera, match admins, and other critical people had walked out of a final briefing from Oli, the producer, on the top floor of the Turtle Entertainment building in Cologne, Germany. At the base of the stairs, I passed Charlie my phone. ‘Walk with me boss’ – And the next few seconds were caught as part of NSL Episode 4 / NS2HD[605].

This was t-25 minutes. Sean, the evening’s MC and host, was prepping to introduce the show. Dillon was beginning to fire up the …

A Natural Selection 2 Free Weekend will take place between Thursday, 21 March and Sunday, 24 March. During this free weekend, which is PAX week, NS2 will be 50% off!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPsqT1R3jzw

This weekend, we expect over 15,000 people to concurrently play NS2, and some of them might like it so much they choose to buy the game. Whether or not they do, and whether our community grows even bigger after this weekend, will come down to two factors.

The first is how good the game is. We’ve worked non-stop since launch four months ago to improve NS2. The Gorgeous Update added new content, and consistent maintenance patches (15 of them!) have improved performance, stability, balance and eliminated bugs. The most …