NS2 Build 213/214 changelog

We were thinking it was about time to release a patch. Then we had a pizza and decided to go ahead and release TWO patches on the same day.

This patch features a couple of new alien upgrades and some performance improvements.

Now you are probably thinking: "Great! The game is running at 200,000 frames per second and will never need performance improvements ever again!" and now you are thinking "How does he know what I am thinking?". But guess what? The game isn’t running at 200,000 fps yet so we are still making it faster!

Also, we have installed brain monitoring software into your head with this patch so we can always know what you are thinking in order to understand what it is you want from NS2, faster!

Features

• Feign death upgrade.
• Adrenaline upgrade.
• Commander ping.

Summit

• Fixed Gorge stuck issue in Computer Lab.
• Smoothed out player collisions in the Reactor Core vent.

Balance

• Upped energy cost of Vortex to 60.
• Reduced gravity on Leap so Skulks have more of a fighting chance against jetpackers.
• Reduced fully-mature Hydra health by 12.5% and shifted some hit points into armor.
• Lowered initial cyst health further to prevent dropping in combat.
• Increased Shade cost to 15.
• Decreased spores damage per second from 16 to 13 to adjust for bigger and more transparent spores.
• Sped up Lerk (13 from 11) and reduced his armor (50 to 25).
• Infestation Spike lifetime now 5 seconds instead of 12, cooldown is now 10 seconds instead of 5.

Changes

• Toned down the celerity screen effect.
• Changed MACs and drifters to not collide with players anymore, instead they will get pushed away.
• Matched weapon and drop pack life time so players won’t encounter constantly empty weapons.
• Armory/prototype lab buymenu shows now as default the currently active weapon instead of a blank screen.
• Marines drop now all their weapons which cost resources when dying.
• Drifters now uncloak when casting enzyme cloud.
• Blinking Fades can no longer trigger mines.
• Ink clouds now cancels any scans from the Marine Commander.
• Alien vision now lowers energy regen rate.
• Removed cyst build time.
• Reduced amount of flaps required to gain proper speed (around 50% less key presses required)
• Fade changes (full damage during blink, no max blink time, increased health)

Fixes

• Fixed script error caused by using sv_status at the dedicated server console.
• Fixed first person death effect triggered multiple times and causing FPS issues.
• Fixed error caused by attempting to join a server without first selecting one in the server browser.
• Handle the +connect command line option correctly (allows to join Steam friend’s game)
• Fixed bug with echo costs not being subtracted correctly.
• Fixed bug where structures could be echoed off infestation.
• Fixed blink sound effects getting played twice for the local player.
• Fixed shadow step sound getting played twice for the local player.
• Fixed bug where you would slow down in mid air with jetpack when crouching.
• Triggers now correctly send out events to overlapping objects when enabled.
• Shade is allowed to cloak itself.
• Disabled spacebar to switch camera modes for team spectators.
• Removed camera animation when switching spectator follow targets.
• Fixed collision, physics and nav_debug console commands not working.
• Fixed build effect remaining on screen after construction has been completed.
• Fixed bug where bilebombs were dealing more damage to players than intended.
• Fixed bug where slowdown on land was not applied properly.
• Fixed bug where uncloaking stopped all sounds.
• Fixed bug where cloak effect was not canceled when switching to Marine team.
• Fixed bug where you could heal backwards through walls.
• Fixed bug where distress beacon is not canceled when observatory gets vortexed.
• Unsocketed power nodes can no longer get parasited.
• Fixed Commander hotgroups and problem when comming both sides in a single game.
• Fixed problem where the giving orders required 2 clicks after unit selection.
• Right click and Escape now correctly cancels any Commander action/ghost model.
• Various crashes related to collision objects being destroyed.
• The Bloom graphics setting now works correctly.
• Non-armed weapons now update their position before being dropped.

Improvements

• Add lock icon for passworded games in the server browser.
• Added priorities for team alerts, so messages like "Command Station is under attack" won’t get lost when a less important structure was attacked right before.
• Changed Marine waypoint line to "breadcrumb" arrows.
• Added heal indicator to armory.
• Added life form icons above pre-evolved eggs.
• Health bars of players appear now color coded for Commanders when parasited/poisoned.
• Changed land sounds to be triggered client side only.
• Added the ability to ban players by Steam ID that are not currently connected to the server (Thanks devicenull!)
• Fixed control select and added double click select for Commanders (selects all units of the same kind on screen)

Optimizations

• Improved server performance by moving many structure animations to only play on the client.
• The Infantry Portal no longer attempts to stop the spin effects every tick.
• Ping updates are sent less often.
• Damage indicators now use less network bandwidth.
• Disable PhysX visualization unless debug draw enabled.

SDK

• Added PerfAnalyzer tool.
• Fixed bug where playing a cinematic attached to a view model in the Cinematic Editor would not display properly.
• Added the ability to specify help text for properties in the editor_setup.xml file.
• Fixed issue where the camera would start out below the ground plane in the Cinematic Editor.
• Added support for sphere, box and plane emitters in the Cinematic Editor.
• Fixed bug where setting the visible property for physics emitters to false would not hide them.
• Added the ability to serve static content from the built in web server.
• Added Ring Buffer implementation to core scripts.
• Added sv_listbans command.
• Provided more feedback on the sv_ban related commands.
• Fixed script error caused by not providing a duration to the sv_ban command.
• Added sv_unban to remove players from the ban list.
• Removed obsolete FlashPlayer bindings.

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