Update 324 is the start of something exciting! It’s the catalyst to our new development cycle! Over the last few years we have made changes and fixes to further develop NS2 with the emphasis on helping to stabilize the gameplay and create the best experience possible for every player. Today we start the sale of our limited time DLC the Catalyst Pack!  This premium DLC offers the single largest skin pack we have ever released and it also includes future custom skins and items as a thank you for purchasing the DLC now. Sales of this DLC directly affect the budget for our development team and will help us to continue to bring you more exciting updates to the game. See more at naturalselection2.com/catalyst , but hurry because this DLC will only be available for a short time and then it will be locked away in the UWE vault forever!

We have spent the last few months working behind the scenes to develop a Roadmap  for our vision of NS2 2.0. This isn’t a new game, but what we feel is the ultimate version of NS2. Once our objectives on the roadmap have been completed, we will work with our partners to do a large marketing push and even test some free to play options to get NS2 in the hands of those who haven’t had the opportunity to play.

While our focus is shifting towards new and exciting changes, we will still continue to fight for more performance both server-side and client-side. We are fortunate to have so many community contributors who are helping on both fronts. We’re excited and passionate about supporting their efforts and we can’t wait to see their work included with a future release.

With our push to both increase development productivity and shorten the time we can release this roadmap to you, we have hired an additional programmer. Not a stranger to NS2, please welcome Brian “Samoose” to the team! Over the years Samoose has been a big part of work done with our old customize menu and he has done lots of tinkering around the entire game. With his addition to the team, we hope to accomplish a lot of our tasks in a shorter amount of time.

We thank you for your continued support

See you on the battlefield!

Changelog

Gameplay

• Fade [list]
• Decreased the size of the Fade’s hitbox slightly [list]
• In recent months, feedback from the community has illustrated that the Fade can feel a bit too vulnerable or “squishy”, leading to aversion from average players in choosing the crucial lifeform. In lieu of adjusting its eHP values, we decided to refine the hitbox to make it closer to the actual model, making it slightly harder to hit for inaccurate shots. We’ll be monitoring this change closely. [/*]

• Added the first batch of skins for the Catalyst DLC: [list]
• Toxin skins for all playable Kharra lifeforms.[/*]
• Sandstorm skins for all Frontiersmen equipment including for the first time the Grenade Launcher and Welder.[/*]

• Marine footstep distance for Aliens have been slightly increased to 12 (from 11)[/*]
• Increased Jetpack looping sound at mid-distance. Jetpack looping sound now louder than the burst sound.[/*]
• Gorge Tunnel ambient sounds now play everywhere inside the tunnel and are much more audible.[/*]
• Hive pain sound no longer plays for the Marine Commander at full volume across the other side of a map. Volume rolloff dependenton how close the camera is to the hive.[/*]
• Optimized sound banks including 150 sounds. Many critical sounds that are very short but needed to be played immediately were inefficiently being streamed from disk which created a small delay. Other Voice Overs and music tracks which are larger files are no longer loaded into memory. This will help players the most who are still using mechanical HDDs and it slightly lowers overall memory usage for all players.[/*]
• Axe impact sound on organic materials (Lifeforms, structures, infestation) is no longer delayed.[/*]
• FEV and FSB files are now part of the default consistency checks.[/*]

• Fixed Commander droppables not “snapping” to the target entity (such as an empty RT node or a Marine receiving a medpack) as intended. [list]
• The placement model flickering on and off unreliably was also fixed[/*]

• Biodome [list]
• Fixed an issue with visible Seasonal items in the Ready Room (Thanks, Zavaro!)[/*]
• Fixed z-fighting textures near Join Team entities (Thanks, Zavaro!)[/*]

• Fixed that builder was attempting to use the wrong path for the nvcompress executable and couldn’t build any textures.[/*]
• Editor [list]
• Added new Rotation Nudging tool to assist in getting precise placement and rotation of model props. New key-binds are available for this tool, but not set by default. These binds can be found under the “Edit” menu while using the Rotation Tools. To use this new feature, hover over the axis to rotate around and press the keys that were bound[/*]

• Fixed that static prop collision visualization wasn’t properly scaled, and thus didn’t match the actual collision model.[/*]

• There is a micro stutter that can occur for players with less than 70 fps held consistently, while circle strafing, and using Windows 10. (strafing around an object while keeping your view centered on it.) We have a fix ready for the next patch. This stutter has been in the game for months, and was not introduced this patch.[/*]