Gorilla. Has. Arrived.
NS2 Gorilla Gameplay Trailer
Features
- You can now evolve to Onos when your team has three hives.
- The Onos can toss marines with his Gore attack, smash structures and Stomp on the ground, sending a shockwave that disables marine structures for 5 seconds. Upgrades are no longer available, sentries stop firing, Infantry Portals stop spawning, etc.
- Added Prototype Lab and the ability to research and buy Jetpacks
- Added new map: ns2_mineshaft
- Added camera animation and display during count down phase.
- Name tags now appear over the head of nearby teammates.
- Added lines for rally points.
- Mines detonate when hit by Stomp.
- Added an option to enable mouse acceleration (off by default)
- Infestation is now displayed on minimap (dying infestation is indicated red)
- Added some missing Marine structure icons.
Balance
- Reduced Rifle butt range from 1.5 meters to 1 meter (now same as Skulk bite)
- Shotgun damage changed to Light (armor is twice as effective against it). Made it lighter to carry and increased the damage to compensate (# of shots vs. base Skulks, Lerks and Fades should unchanged, 1 extra pellet vs. Gorges). So Shotguns should become less effective against heavily armored targets. (thanks Schimmel!)
- Bile bomb range and splash increased a lot, damage decreased somewhat and energy cost decreased a little (trying to make Gorge less vulnerable on front lines and also more able to do at least some damage to entrenched Marines). He is NASTY now, watch out.
- Increased Hydra health from 500 to 600 and armor from 0 to 75.
- Increased Lerk Spike cost from 1.5 to 2.5. Changed distribution of Command Station health and armor so it's more resistent vs. Light damage (ie, Lerk Spikes).
- Disabled res for kills to simplify the game, remove confusion about what happens when you make a kill, reduce end-game stalemates with 1 tower and to increase the strategic aspects of the game.
- Armory no longer required to drop med packs (unnecessarily restrictive during rushes)
- Lowered bile bomb damage from 300 to 225.
- Increased repair rate for Marines repairing each others' armor from 18 to 35 (to make it less annoying and to allow Marines to sustain attacks better).
- Reverted Fade carapace armor buff from 50 to 30.
- Removed Lerk "hide" armor.
- Reduced Shotgun research time from 40 to 20 (it was 0 in NS1). Helps Marines get a foothold with early aggression.
- Increased minimum egg spawn time from 8 to 10 seconds to less that early Alien assault (now it's the same as Marines)
- Lowered infantry portal build time from 10 seconds to 7, and Armory from 15 to 12 (to try to lessen effectiveness of Skulk rush)
ns2_tram
- Moved warehouse north.
- Removed north-east Warehouse entrance.
- Opened tram tunnel between Server and Warehouse.
- Reworked connecting corridors into Warehouse.
- Fixed drifter pathing issues between Server and Control.
Fixes
- Fixed bug where the Gorge Bile Bomb ability used the Spit ability icon.
- Fixed bug where the Gorge Mini Cyst ability used the Hydra ability icon.
- Fixed script error if a Hive was destroyed while the Gorge that built it as Commander was a rag doll.
- Cleaned up some Client console spam when a Fade blinks.
- Fixed script error caused by a spectating player receiving points by getting a kill with a structure placed when they were not a spectator.
- Added placeholder icons for the Shell and Veil.
- Fixed bug where the game would randomly lockup while placing a Cyst.
- Drifter spawn sound effect will no longer play at world origin.
- Fixed a bug that prevented Skulks from leaping at maximum speed.
- Fixed bug where the physics representations for the Armory and Infantry Portal did not match up with the visual model.
- Weapon secondary attacks can no longer occur at the same time as primary attacks while coming out of a sprint in some cases.
- Armory buy menu will not instantly appear once construction is completed.
- Adjusted Skulk wall walking smoothing rates so that that the 3rd person model rotates more quickly to match the 1st person model (especially while jumping)
- Health and Ammo packs can now be dropped directly on top of a Marine player.
- Restored reloading of script files when they change on disk.
- Fixed Whip 'grenade whack'
- Bombard projectiles will not collide with the Whip and nearby friendly structures anymore and is created at the correct attach point.
- Alien player names for Hydra kills will no longer appear in blue text in the death message.
- Fixed a bug causing Mini Cysts placed by the Gorge to be disconnected when created even in cases where the ghost model indicated the connection was valid.
- Fixed bug causing dropped weapons to disappear too quickly if they were picked up and dropped again after initially being dropped.
- AI units cannot attack friendly players anymore unless FF is enabled.
- Fixed bug causing script error when a Cyst died due to not being connected to a Hive.
- Fixed crash when too many objects are visible.
- PhysX scene now supports mirrored geometry.
- Initial team starting locations chosen with a more random method.
- Mine will detect enemies more accurately.
- Slime effect during sprinting will not show up in thirdperson anymore.
- The ARC will prioritize other structures before Eggs and Cysts.
- Player turn poses (arms moving with feet planted on the ground) reset once the player starts moving.
- Fixed multi-threading crash when using the o_stats console command.
- The "getting ready to spawn" blue spin effect now disappears immediately upon the Infantry Portal being destroyed.
- Fixed bug where the Spore cloud would be created improperly when a Lerk was not moving.
- Fixed bug where connecting to the localhost would cause the game to go into an infinite loop.
- Fixed bug where Marines would spawn above the Infantry Portal platform.
Improvement
- Added "warp" console command to teleport to a position in space when cheats are on, "warp 0 0 0" for example.
- Improved Skulk wall walking (sticks better to surfaces, thanks matso!)
- Skulks can now leap from mid-air, ala NS1.
- The "locate" Client console command will constantly display the local player's location on the screen if "true" is given as a parameter.
- Added Mine icon for death messages (Thanks Saba!)
- Reformatted Scoreboard so more player names can fit on the screen at the same time.
- Server name is now displayed at the top of the Scoreboard.
- Improved ScenarioHandler (Thanks Matso!)
Sound
- Removed Bile Bomb hit sound when Gorge creates a structure.
Optimizations
- Optimized network fields in Structure, CloakableMixin, ScriptActor and PowerPoint (thanks Matso!)
- Reserve memory for faceSets (prevents excessive allocation)
- Reduced networked bandwidth for Camoflauge by eliminating an unnecessary network field (thanks Matso!)
- Reduced networked bandwidth for Skulks by eliminating wall walking network variables (thanks Matso!)
- Optimized Door auto-opening.
- Reduced number of cells CollisionGrid queries look through.
- Reduced network bandwidth required to send which fields of an Entity changed (uses indexing scheme when only a few fields changed and a bitmask when many changed)
- Reduced network bandwidth usage for entities that have energy.
- Reduced bandwidth for transmitting attachment points for entities by 26 bits.
- Reduced bandwidth for transmitting angles.
- Eliminated lastTimePlayerMoved networked field in Player.
- Mines require less processing time to check for nearby enemies.
- Reduced bandwidth by 20 bytes per second for each Entity sent to the client.
- Changed particle effects to only update if they were visible last frame.
- Slightly more aggressive compiler optimization options.
SDK
- Added Vector:Add method.
- Added Shared.SortEntitiesByDistance.
- Removed ProximityGrid.
- Added sphere query to CollisionGrid.
- Added EntityQueryManager (fast queries for entities within range, uses CollisionGrid)
- Exposed EntityQueryManager to Lua, started converting script to use new API.
- Added support to ObjectTagQueryManager for testing whether entity has a specific tag.
- Entities get tagged with their class name (and base class names). Tag is prefixed with 'class:'.
- Added time network variable type.
- Added "private" network fields which are only sent to the client controlling the Entity.
- Added support for networking floating point values as fixed point (specified as float (<min> to <max> by <step>)
- Added Client.GetServerName() function to return the name of the server the client is connected to.
- Added Server.GetName() function to return the name of the server.
- Added Server.GetFrameRate() function to return the current tick rate of the server.
- Added Mersenne twister Randomizer class to Lua, same API as Lua random functions but better generator.
We hope you enjoy this mega-build with us!
Build 193 is now available on Steam. This patch is a small hot fix for a crashing bug and a performance issue that were originally introduced in Build 190. Thanks to the crash reports you submitted, we were able to track this down even though we were unable to reproduce it ourselves. If you do experience a crash in NS2 and are presented with the dialog box for submitting a report, please do, they are very helpful!
Fixes
- Various crashes related to collision objects being destroyed
Optimization
- Disabled PhysX visualization unless debug draw enabled
Here's one more maintenance/fix patch before we get back to work on the bigger "Gorilla". This fixes some new crashes and improves balance over 191.
Features
- Added map cycling on the server (now you can run ns2_tram!). Use mapcycle.txt file to set up.
- Added Left 4 Dead style animated screen hints to make it more clear when marines should build structures, build power nodes, or guard power nodes.
- Hitting marines with Gorge spit will obscure their view.
Balance
- Removed change in alien armor effectiveness with # of hives. This was supposed to work like NS1, but a recent meant that aliens got _weaker_ with more hives! Now it's gone completely.
- Added 2 points of "hide" armor to Lerks (every attack does 2 less damage, good vs. groups).
- Added a very small delay between a mine being armed and exploding (*BEEP* ... BOOM!!!).
- Increased Fade carapace armor from 30 to 50.
- Increased Gorge bile bomb damage from 200 to 300 and splash radius from 5 meters to 8 meters.
- Increased Mature Whip health/armor from 900/150 to 1,050/175.
- Increased Skulk carapace armor from 15 to 20.
- Increased mine purchase cost from 10 to 15.
- Increased minimum spawn time for eggs from 6 to 8, to try to allow marines to counter-rush after a failed attack (also to compensate for recent egg bug fix).
- Lowered Gorge carapace armor from 60 to 50.
- Lowered Robotics Factory build time from 30 to 25 to be less annoying and closer to other structures.
- When players and structures are on fire, they recover energy at 25% normal rate (was 10% rate, which was very rough for Fade).
- Personal resources have now a limit of 100 per player. Any overflow will be split amongst the other players on the team.
- Whip bombs will not bounce off world geometry anymore.
- Changed corrode damage to deal only a small amount to players armor instead of full damage.
Fixes
- A player will no longer be distress beaconed if they are close enough to the command station being beaconed to already.
- Death messages for Players or Structures killed by Mines that were destroyed by other Mines will now display correctly.
- Don't invoke collision callback if one of the objects has been destroyed.
- Fixed bug where a client would not properly go back to the main menu when there was an error during connection (e.g. the client doesn't have the map).
- Fixed bug where aliens used hive1 armor for 3+ hives and hive3 armor for 1 hive...(egads - thanks Jaweese!).
- Fixed bug where clients would not be returned to the main menu if they failed to authenticate.
- Fixed bug where grenades would explode too early depending on your ping time (OnCreate is now called in the world time stream instead of the lag compensated time stream).
- Fixed bug where the game would not display the reason for being disconnect from a server when it returned to the main menu.
- Fixed crash in PhysX on level change (caused by creating too many materials).
- Fixed crash when too many reliable commands were sent at the same time.
- Fixed packet format errors when too many mines explode simultaneously.
- Fixed players not showing up in a server when viewed on Steam Friends.
- Fixed prediction errors when using the speed command.
- Fixed script error caused by giving a rally order to an unbuilt Hive.
- Game freeze when placing cysts.
- Mines detonate each other with some randomness now, for aesthetic effect(thanks Mats!).
- Multiple Whips or ARCs can now be given a root/unroot or deploy/undeploy command.
- No longer ignore damage types when calculating # of health points per point of alien armor.
- Physics transform changes are detected even if they happen in a sub-step.
- The Marine will only be slowed on landing if they jumped first (going down stairs will not artificially slow a player).
- The sound effect that plays when distress beacon is finished will only trigger if at least 1 player was successfully beaconed.
- Updated Lerk weapon spike and spore tooltips.
- Viewer sometimes starts with black screen.
- Whip bombs will now correctly deal damage to players (small amount and armor only).
- Whips will properly attack grenades again.
- Reduced network usage for updating infestation (thanks matso!).
- reserve Fade velocity when coming out of blink.
- Improved spit effect to look less 'spritey'.
- Don't create new material instance when the default material matches the friction/restitution settings (physics).
Sound
- Added private 2D sound effect for when a player is distress beaconed to ensure they always hear this effect.
- Better alien vision sounds.
- Better commander scan sound.
- Better powernode destroyed sound.
- Fixed ARC fire sound.
- Hooked up Mine sounds: Drop, Warmup, Explode.
- Hooked up new Alien tooltip sound effect.
- Hooked up private 2D sound for when a player teleports through the Phase Gate (so they hear this effect better).
SDK
- Added support for the Lua IO library (file names use special prefixes "game://", "user://", "temp://", and "cache://" to determine where they are located in the file system).
- Changed console command for collision rep visualization to 'collision'.
- Cull physics/collision debug drawing to view frustum.
- PhysX scene visualization (using the 'physics' console command).
- Table.contains will now return the key of the element when found.
OK, NOW it's Gorilla time...