Skulks, Specs and Whips OH MY! Update 317 is now available to the public and there is plenty to sink your teeth into.

First off, we’ve added a new training module called ‘Skulk Challenge’. This will help you learn to hone your skulk wall jumping abilities, while also giving you an opportunity to reach a global rank and earn badges. Another cool feature, you can download other players ghosts and race them too! You be surprised how addicting this challenge is and how much you can learn by watching others.

Next, we come to an entire reworking of Spectator Slots. No more will you be confused in the server browser by how many playable slots are actually available, or see 25/24 slots in use and wonder, “what the heck?.” The other major benefit is that server operators can now run a full 24 player server and spectators will not use playable slots but up to 24 of their own! You can read more about this feature and how the rest of the system works in the changelog below.

Lastly, we as developers can only do so much with the time that we have and NS2 has always prospered from the incredible contribution of the many community developers out there. This update include some awesome fixes to both Whips (thank you, Katzenfleisch) and MACs (thank you, Twiliteblue). Along with these awesome contributors are also our playtesters and other community players who have done an outstanding job. This update has been working hard to get out to the public for nearly a month and a lot of testing and time went into getting it ready, so thank you again to our playtest team and to the community players that showed up for our public playtests as well.

Looking forward, 64-bit is finally going into beta and will be released shortly as a smaller update. Players and servers alike will be able to run the upgraded platform and help us make sure it is finally ready for full release in the coming months. What does this mean for players using 32-bit Operating Systems? Well, it means you won’t be able to play the game without an upgrade. Luckily of all our monthly unique players this is far less than 1% of you, but we care about all our players nonetheless. So let this serve as official warning of the end of 32-bit support. Within the next 30 days or more NS2 will move to a 64-bit only environment on both servers and clients. In general there are many benefits across the board for NS2 to go 64-bit only but as a system owner, you too can open up some serious local benefits to both your system and performance by biting the bullet and finally upgrading too!

Until the next update, skulk forward and let those bullets fly. Oh and watch out for whips, no seriously, watch out!

CHANGELOG

GAMEPLAY

• Introducing the “Skulk Challenge!” [list]
• Available in the training menu. [list]
• Hone your Skulk wall-jumping skills as you race to earn the fastest time.[/*]
• Study other players’ racing techniques with our replay system, or even better: race against their ghost![/*]
• You can view your friends’ times in the leaderboard, or view the global leaderboard by clicking on the globe icon.[/*]
• If you’re fast enough, you’ll earn a badge to be displayed in game! Be sure to enable it in the Customize Player menu.[/*]

• Added dedicated spectator slots. Reasoning: Players want to know that they can join a server that truly has player slots available and won’t just get thrown onto spectators, wasting their time. Server operators want the ability to have spectators without going over the 24 player limit. Lastly, the Quick Play feature was unable to determine if a server had actual player slots available to play without official spec slot support. So while you can run 24 players with 24+ spectators and still be a ranked server, do keep in mind that your performance will vary if those spec slots are active; Adjust accordingly. [list]
• Servers can now have dedicated spectator slots. Use the new -speclimit server startup parameter to set up a limit for the dedicated spectator slots (default: 0). If left to default of 0, players that join spectators will still count towards the player slot count (-limit parameter) and the server browser will always report 0/0 spectators.[/*]
• Clients that attempt to join servers that are full but still have spectator slots available will receive a prompt asking them if they wish to cancel or spectate before joining.[/*]
• If a client joins as a dedicated spectator they will automatically be placed on spectators and restricted to it until a player slot opens up, where they can then join the ready room and then a team. Before that point, the player cannot join the ready room. Shuffle or force even team votes will not change this, and neither will admins when attempting to manually move the player.[/*]
• Player slots and dedicated spectator slots will remain assigned to the same players even through a map change. This means if you were a dedicated spectator before the map change, you will still be one after the map changes, if no players leave. No cutting in line allowed![/*]
• Clients can switch from a dedicated spectator slot to an available player slot by going into the Ready Room, if and when a player slot is available.[/*]
• Clients using a player slot can still spectate. However, they will be giving up their player slot if another spectator joins the ready room or a team. (Unless the spec limit is reached already.*)[/*]
• Clients will never be restricted from going into spectator mode, but if the player limit and spec limit is reached, doing so will not change the amount of players reported in the server browser until a player leaves the server. [list]
• Clients will only give up their player slot if there are spec slots available.* This means that if there are 16/16 players and 5/5 spectators, and a player using a player slot joins spectators, the server browser will still report 16/16 players and 5/5 spectators. This is to ensure that a new player cannot join the server, and thus permanently create an ever increasing pool of spectator slots. (See known issues below.)
  Refactored the reserved slot system to be handled by the engine API instead of custom server tags.[/*]

• Fixed that the crash dumps created by the crash reported were missing the exception information[/*]
• Fixed that curl handler were not released correctly and stayed active even after usage which caused curl to run out of available ports at some after some time and all http request to just time out.[/*]
• Fixed that the damage taken/flinch sound effects didn’t play after the first time. We are planning to redo the complete flinch sound system in one of the next builds to make the damage feeback more consistent.[/*]
• Fixed that “guard” orders were not canceled when the target left the team.[/*]
• Fixed that Focus decreased the players attack speed even after Veils were destroyed.[/*]
• Fixed that the Regeneration effects played even after Shells were destroyed.[/*]
• Fixed that Fade Metabolize switches back to the weapon you had selected before using metabolize after it finished, even if you switch the weapon while performing Metabolize. This means Blink is now disabled during Metabolize.(contributed by Twiliteblue)[/*]
• Fixed that Boneshield doesn’t reduce Grenade Launcher projectile, pulse, or cluster grenade damage. (contributed by Nin)[/*]
• Fixed an issue that would cause web pages displayed in-game (like the news feed) to disappear if the user alt+tabbed out of the game in DX9 mode.[/*]
• Fixed some script error spam caused by the help screen attempting to display keybinds for actions that were unbound.[/*]
• Fixed a bug that caused team message (eg “Warmup Mode”, or “Hive under Attack!”) to not appear until user had displayed help screen at least once before.[/*]
• Fixed a bug that caused the help screen to appear if a player happened to press the help screen keybind while typing a chat message. (contributed by Salads)[/*]
• Fixed that you could vote to reset the round without a round started yet (contributed by Keats)[/*]
• Fixed the player ping (red box w/ location name that appears when you hit middle mouse button) is already visible and animating when you first join a team – even if nobody has pinged.[/*]

• Fixed fall seasonal stuff appearing in Caged ready room when it shouldn’t be.[/*]

• Fixed that multi line lua comments were not parsed correctly and could cause script errors if the included a end tag[/*]
• Added a few new API methods in regard to the spectator slots. Please check the api docs json for further details about each method.[/*]
• It is now possible to multiply two Vector objects together. This just performs a per-component multiplication between the two vectors.[/*]