Fellow Chompers and Frontiersmen,

Today we introduce a new (small) gameplay change! One of our goals is to ‘shake up’ certain elements of gameplay- be it long standing balance issues, tech that has become obsolete, or barriers that cause excessive hardship to newer players. In update 294, we’re making what will be hopefully the first of several new gameplay tweaks.

We’re changing medpacks from 50 instant healing to 25 instant healing and 25 healing-over-time (the course of one second). Medpacks will still cost 1 res. What’s the point of splitting the healing like this, you ask?

The target of this change is excessive combat med spam. Currently it’s fairly common to med spam marines through engagements and one of the …

In our newest release we take a look back or should I say forward at marine Exo Suit. Our approach with this update was to improve the quality of life use for the Exo and the players interactions with using it. So suit up and join the fight against the alien scum and we’ll see you on the other side!

UPDATE NOTES

Tweaks / Improvements

• Exosuits have had a Quality of Life pass
  • While deploying, your view is no longer locked and you are frozen for less time to better match the animations
  • You can eject instantly, and it will throw you more in the direction you are looking. You can even use it to get to some vents!
  • Subnautica

Hi everyone!

Continuing our theme of the week, Patch 287 adds some additional support to help new players learn about the game before joining the ranks. We are now able to guide new players through an on-screen checklist, to help them learn all the basics of the game. If they complete these tasks they are rewarded a new shoulder patch (‘Eat your Greens’). The other benefit in having this system hooked up is that we now have Steam Achievements for the rest of the players out there! So prepare yourself and see how many achievements you can collect, we will continue to add more over time and are open to suggestions on fun/harder ones to achieve too.

Next up we …

It seems like only yesterday that we were talking about Natural Selection 2 Build 250. But then game 251, 252… And now we’re at 260. 260 is a special build because it represents a tight collaboration between Unknown Worlds and you, our community.

SamusDroid is an NS2 player with a bit of a dab hand for fixing annoying bugs. He had previously published mods that dealt with stuff that UWE had not manged to fix. By combining his energy and skill with the experience and wisdom of Andi, many of those fixes have now made it into the official game.

This is no mean feat. What works in a mod does not necessarily work in the full game: Unforeseen …

G’day everyone! Build 256 is now live on Steam and your clients will update automatically over the next few hours. Official servers will drop offline momentarily while they are updated as well.

We’ve broken our own rule: Never patch on Fridays. We do not normally patch on Fridays because on the off-chance we blow up the game, it is much harder to fix on a weekend than a weekday. But we feel unusually confident about 256, as it as been gestating for several weeks and not undergone too many changes over the last few days. Regardless of the day of release, as with most new NS2 builds, many mods will break. We suggest disabling mods until modders have a chance …

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, …

Brian tried to stop us. ‘No! Not another patch! I don’t know if I can handle another patch!’ But we made him do it. The 19th post-release update is now live on Steam, where you can download it, keep it on your hard drive, and even play it!

Build 246 is a fun build because it allows you to play Last Stand, La Fauche, and Fighter – The three mods created during the UWE Modjam just over a week ago. They are in various states of disrepair and dysfunction, but the basics are there and you can host your own games. We are working on releasing the source code soon, so that you can improve on what we …

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:…