Our latest build continues on the path of refinement and stability, and although small there are some nice changes in this patch. Those of you with antivirus woes when opening NS2 should no longer have an issue as all our windows binaries are digitally signed and secure. As stated in the blog post earlier this week, we increased the size of the melee attack on both the skulk and fade and this change is no longer an extension but part of the vanilla code. We have also decided to slightly bump up skulk HP requiring an additional 2 bullets to make contact.

Behind the scenes we are continuing our work on HIVE 2, which is coming along nicely and should …

Hi everyone. I thought today would be a good day to take a moment and discuss some recent changes to the game. For almost a month, the dev team has been dabbling with combat mechanics. One of them was something we had been considering for some time, player hitboxes. As you can see from the before and after image below, the original hitboxes / hitreg have always been frustrating due ironically, to the precision of the hitboxes. Most games don’t have hitboxes that are as precise as NS2, which ran counter to the fast pace of the game. It felt unfair to miss skulks because of matchstick legs, or not be landing hits on a lerk while shooting center of …

It’s been two weeks since our last update, be honest you missed us! Moving to this model has allowed for us to make some much needed changes to our way of implementing and testing changes to the game. This update may seem light, but it has some good fixes and more enhancements to our server browser including a friends filter. This filter will allow you see what servers your steam friends are playing on and get you connected to them.

One of the new additions I mentioned above is “Playtest with the Dev’s,” a weekly opportunity to jump into the beta of next update and play a series of games and give your feedback on the upcoming changes. We strive …

With the summer sale now in full swing, we decided to take a lighter approach to the update this week. Minor tweaks and improvements over last week’s patch should address some of the feedback we heard. Moving forward, we are adjusting our patch cycle to be bi-weekly. This allows us to start tackling some larger features and helps with our testing schedule.

As many of you know and for those of you that don’t, each update to NS2 comes with not just hours of development time but lots of bug and gameplay testing. Our playtesters are community volunteers and give many hours each week so that you can enjoy the fruits of our labors. Our EU Playtest Lead Asraniel has …

Happy Summer Marines! We are ushering in the sunshine with update 303. This is a lighter patch focused on some bug fixes and a couple tweaks and additions to the game. With this update we are introducing a new post-round feedback system, this will help provide us with more details about your games and comparing round data to support future changes.

The last six months has seen a lot of changes and experimentation to the game and we aren’t done yet. We are working on developing plans over the next week to continue to build on the new foundation that we’ve created over these last few months. Be on the lookout for some exciting new opportunities and changes to come.…

After the successful construction of a new mining station on asteroid codename: Kodiak, the crew of the Industrial Construction Vessel “Caged” sent out a distress signal. ALTERRA Corp quickly dispatched a private military unit to investigate the source of the distress, what they found was an empty vessel and no signs of human life…

Welcome to Caged, the newest official map in the NS2 universe. A throwback to the original NS1 Map by Nelson ‘manah’ Ferryman, Flaterectomy and other community contributors and testers have worked to honor the original but also offer a new take for the current state of play. Caged offers players a fun four techpoint map with plenty of res and unique rooms and corridors for …

Following on from the March and April entries, it is time to update Planet Earth on what is going on with Natural Selection 2. This is a retrospective look at development in May. To keep the length under control, (April’s entry was a bit overboard!) this post will stick to three topics: Environments, Technical, and Game. Let’s start with Biodome!

Environments

Michael, (‘Olmy’) has been cranking on Biodome. The map is striking, thanks to its new art set and ‘flora’ focus. The accompanying images show some of the stages environments go through, from idea (1, above), to rough 3d layouts (2, below), to texturing, lighting, detailing and prop placement (3, two below).

Biodome will be an absolute blast, but …

It is update time! Build 247 lives, and is live on Steam. Go download it and sink your teeth in!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hhOK-UrdiI

The two main new features in 247 are the in-game vote system and some very basic training bots. The former should improve the ability of players to manage their play experience, and the latter will bring on our doom at the hands of Skynet.

Here is the full changelog (minus some map changes, which will be added to the log later):

Features:

Added Server Details window to the server browser
Added “server name” field to server browser filters
Added filter tabs in server browser
Added history tap to server browser
Added in game voting system (change map, kick player, …

Aww yeah, it’s patch day! Natural Selection 2 Build 244 is out in the wild and ready for you to play. It was a doozy to get out the door, scheduled for Thursday PDT but sneaking out Friday afternoon PDT instead. This is post-launch update number 17 for NS2! Here is a changelog highlights video:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrFkNxMy3Q

Lots of stuff changed in Build 244. Mineshaft and Refinery received lots of love, Andi made balance tweaks, Dushan changed the way the Spark Editor works, and Brian fixed a bug. The changes to Mineshaft and Refinery have made several tech points much more viable, and eliminated long standing indisyncricies of fights in certain rooms. For example, check out the changes to Operations:…