Version 1.04

From NS community wiki

January 24th, 2003 - Natural Selection Version 1.04

• Fixed exploit that allowed aliens to look like marines and fire marine weaponry
• Changed max machine gun ammo to 250 (used to be 300, though it would only display 250)
• Fixed various commander mode exploits
• 3rd party entities are never propagated to client (ie, adminmod_ entities). This could fix an occasional crash (thanks Alfred)
• Moved auto-concession on unfair teams into server variable (mp_autoconcede: if set to greater then 0, then if teams are ever different by this many players, that smaller team loses immediately)
• Dead players can now talk to their teammates in both casual and tourny mode (needed to prevent team from getting an advantage by using external voice program in CAL)
• Fixed problem where ammo could be picked up while holding mines
• Aliens without any hives no longer take damage when the server is in tournament mode
• Added more triggers (for Psychostats and 3rd party program support)
• Fixed visual problem where advanced armory had weird build circle
• Reduced radius of acid rocket splash from 200 to 165
• Alien respawn time reduced from 10 seconds to 8 seconds
• Reduced shotgun cost from 20 to 16
• Reduced welder damage from 10 to 7
• Armory can now give out ammo while upgrading to advanced armory
• Increased cost of infantry portal from 15 to 22
• Increased cost of phase gate from 20 to 25
• Decreased health of phase gate from 3500 to 2000
• Increased scan cost from 1 to 3
• Increased grenade launcher damage back to 200 (back to v1.0 value)
• Umbra now blocks 5 out of 6 bullets instead of 6 out of 7
• Arms lab reduced from 50 to 45 points
• Reduced siege cannon range from 1250 to 1100
• Siege cannon targets now must be sighted to be hit (in view of friendly player or scanned by commander)
• NOTES:
  • The green circle that appears when the siege cannon is selected by the commander is using the old range, but this will be fixed in v1.1.
  • This is the value siege range was for most of our internal playtesting (hence the bast and hera issues that suddenly arrived with v1.0)
  • Initial hive now spawns with full health instead of having to heal up to full health on spawn
  • Fixed bug where advanced turret factories don't have full health
  • The advanced armory now has 2400 health instead of 1500 (same as regular armory, this is a fixed bug, not a balance change)
  • Fixed bug where tournament mode caused some damage to be reduced more then it should be (acid rocket vs. any alien structures)
  • Fixed bug where hive would sometimes play wound sound/animation when it got hit but didn't take damage
  • Removed lingering "organic" damage type for acid rocket and spore cloud (fixes bug where acid rocket wasn't doing damage properly to organic structures)
  • Aliens lose all their points when they leave the team, and the team doesn't get them either (this will be revisited in v1.1)
  • Fixed non-visible motion sensor and proximity "blips" (linux only)
  • Defense chambers no longer heal themselves
  • Removed gibbing of corpses (off by default, but some servers had enabled it). This means death animations always play, so no more disappearing models when using high-powered weapons.
  • Alien health circles seen by gorge now take armor into account (so gorge knows when player is fully healed)
  • Morphing resets your health again (preserves percentage of armor when evolving carapace too)
  • Fixed logging bug where model name was reported instead of team name for say and and say_team
  • When hive is constructed, have it check to see if technology should be supported automatically (exploit for getting extra upgrades after a hive is killed and rebuilt)
  • Observers can hear other observers and players on the screen, and can chat with each other
  • Fixed various problems with holding mines while building or using command station
  • Changed cloaking so it deactivates when a player moves faster then a certain speed, fixing an exploit. Moving very slowly should still allow an alien to remain cloaked.
  • Added "highdamage" cheat for testing (sv_cheats must be 1, all damage is x100 vs. buildings, x10 vs. players)
  • Added "slowresearch" cheat for testing (sv_cheats must be 1, research takes full time instead of normal 2 seconds when cheats are on)
  • Phase gates now must be +used instead of just touched (less frustrating when trying to attack them or fight nearby)
  • Don't play "select your troops, and give them orders" commander hint if you have no other players on your team
  • Grenades and mines are now enhanced by arms lab damage upgrades
  • Fixed exploit where multiple upgrades from the same category could be purchased by jamming hotkeys (thanks localhost)
  • Fixed bug where trying to exploit alien abilities could crash the server
  • Fixed bug server name wasn't displayed on scoreboard
  • Reduced "intermission" time after game ends before mp_timelimit is checked. Disabled mp_timelimit map-switching for tournament mode.
  • Phase gates now only play their effects (particles, sound, light) when there another active phase gate (so a player can look at a phase gate and know if he can go through it)
  • Fixed end-game server crash for large games
  • Fixed rounding errors for level 3 arms lab upgrades for marine weaponry (thanks Kitsune and Comprox)
  • Fixed bug where babbler and xenocide damage wasn't being applied properly (babbler damage was halved, xenocide wasn't doing blast damage)
  • Fixed bug where laser-style mines sometimes wouldn't go off when touching the base
  • Turret factory cost reduced from 25 to 20
  • Siege turret cost reduced from 25 to 20
  • Lerk spike damage increased from 16 to 18 (big lerk changes coming in v1.1, this is a hold-over)
  • Fixed problem where mines sometimes blow up on their own for no apparent reason after they are placed
  • Added "detectall" cheat for testing motion-tracking and marine blips
  • All entities can hurt themselves (allows 1-hive alien team to battle siege, figure it out...)
  • Allow siege cannons to see targets themselves (no spotter needed if target is in sight of the cannon)
  • Tweaked armories to refill your primary ammo supply before your clip
  • Changes for PsychoStats support (thanks Stormtrooper, get well soon). Visit www.psychostats.com to download Psychostats v1.9.1 which now supports NS
  • Fade cost increased from 44 to 54
  • Movement chambers now teleport to aliens to a hive that's under attack, or the farthest active hive if none are under attack.
  • Carapace now slowly gives out extra armor points with upgrade level, instead of giving it out all at once. For example, a skulk with 0/1/2/3 carapaces has armor of 10/16/22/30. All other properties of carapace remain the same.
  • Regeneration upgrade now heals approximately twice as fast
  • Redemption increased in effectiveness slightly
  • Hive now heals nearby players faster in effort to allow aliens better chance to hold off early marine rush (20 points per second instead of 8)
  • Added ability for Guides to send hint tooltips to individual players. More information on the Guide program is coming.
  • Cloaking changed so higher levels make it faster to cloak instead of harder to see. All levels now make the alien equally invisible (not quite invisible, but very close)
  • Fixed various bugs and exploits which enabled players to use weapons while commanding
  • Fixed bug where players trying to execute alien abilities manually crashed the server
  • Fixed bug where hive death animation kept looping after hive was dead
• Linux improvements:
  • Ported code to updated version of GCC
  • Compiled NS with optimizations, which should bring the linux server up to speed with the win32 server (CPU optimizations)
  • Fixed all motion-tracking and visibility problems
  • Important: there are problems when NS v1.04 Redhat and Adminmod are used together. If the server crashes when players join, temporarily disable Adminmod or revert back to v1.03. This is a standard-library problem and the NS team is currently working on a solution.