Build 242 Live on Steam - Natural Selection 2
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Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Build 242 Live on Steam - Natural Selection 2
Build 242 has been released. We are quite proud of this build. Brian, Steve, Dushan, Max and Andi have been hard at work making the game work better, faster, and with more carrot.
Comments
Changelog:
Optimization
Fixed issue where video cards with small amounts of off-board memory would unload textures unnecessarily.
Optimized lighting shaders.
Optimized occlusion culling rasterization using SIMD.
Infestation is no longer derived from entity and produces less network traffic.
Multi-threaded effect updating.
Infestation updates less often when it is "stable"
Smoother velocity input for player animations.
Flinches are updated less often on the Client.
Optimized lighting.
Removed need to constantly check if a unit should be deselected based on LOS.
The code that determines what effects to trigger now has a memory.
Disabled unnecessary C++ features.
Change
Units appear now red on minimap when under attack.
Score board will now reset on round start (instead on round end)
Babbler Bait is now hit scan when the target is close enough.
When building more than 3 babbler eggs, the first babblers will get destroyed (same as Clogs and Hydras)
Babblers now follow more disciplined the Gorges orders and will cling onto an Alien until told to leave.
Increased Babbler lifetime to 5 minutes, up from 2.
Feature
Added "FollowAndWeld" order for the MAC. The MAC will follow a target and attempt to weld/construct anything in range.
Fix
Fixed bug where "Removing old version of mod" would not actually remove the mod from disk.
Fixed issue where HUD and other important textures would take a long time to load on some Machines.
Decreased the number of performance samples stored on the server to prevent hitches while the admin is using web admin.
Fixed rounding error for damage numbers.
Fixed script error caused by a render model not being initialized in some cases.
Fixed potential crash when dequeuing a texture for loading.
Fixed crash when docking windows in the Editor.
Don't show the game needs a restart message on computers with no input and/or output devices.
Fixed Flamethrower showing flame effect during deploying.
Fixed death messages being incorrect when multiples of the same unit die in the same server tick.
Fixed LOS not being reset when viewer dies.
Fixed certain Marine structures not ragdolling.
Fixed crash when calling Server.GetClientAddress with a nil value.
Fixed script error caused by a Commander being ejected.
Fixed bug where cached shader files would not always be rebuilt when necessary.
Editor
Added ambient_sound_player entity, useful for making a button play nearby ambient sounds for a jukebox as an example.
Sdk
Added Entity:AddTimedCallback() API, replaces the old TimedCallbackMixin.
Increased the maximum number of entities to 4096.
Refinery
Reduced travel time from Flow Control by moving Smelting & Transit further west.
Tracked down and deleted some prop entities that had invalid file references.
Made cosmetic improvements to Flow Control and Exchange
Note: If you are getting a skulk jumping bug, it is due to NS2Stats not being compatible with 242 yet, it will need to be updated. It's suggested servers do not run it until it has been updated.
What's that?
What xenocide bug?
Nice to see the Babblers get a little bit of a buff. Time to head into the game and see how effective they are now. Thanks UWE!
Use xenocide and jump in the hive before you detonate. Nothing exploitative, just fun.
Hope less client updates on flinch animations doesn't result in terrible structure hitreg again.
No fix for mostly invulnerable alien structures is a shame.
Nice performance improvements.
I'll give it a try... if I'm in a game where the comm actually researches xenocide.
exploreeeeeeee mode.
tried joining servers, says invalid verison.
Hooray!
I heart UWE.
[EDIT] Though I wonder whether it prioritizes following over welding/building. Otherwise I feel sorry for the ARC train that makes the mistake of wandering past an unarmored marine who is going in the opposite direction.
however, i did get a c2d while playing on refinery.
"Fixed issue where HUD and other important textures would take a long time to load on some Machines."
best change ever, it was annoying to wait 30-60s after loading into game for the minimap/some textures to show up.
Or at least it did in the last game I played, marines were in departures and the onos was behind the wall in the corridor outside it stomping them at the CC.
Performance definitely feels a bit better, thanks for that! Hope to see more of this in the future!
Looks like they do prioritize following over welding/building. But they don't move at the speed of whatever they're following. So if you have them following a slow ARC train and they happen to catch up when they're within range of something that needs welding, they'll stop following the ARC, weld whatever needs welding and then catch up to the ARC.
Most of the improvements are aimed at worst-case FPS, ie large combats in built-up areas where fps dropped < 30 for average rigs. For that particular example, fps for the PTs that participated increased by 25-50%, in a conservative estimate.
Personally, I consider aiming at increasing worst-case fps is probably the right way to go. Best-case fps can probably take care of itself ... :-)