Update 295 Released! - Natural Selection 2

SystemSystem Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
edited April 2016 in NS2 General Discussion

imageUpdate 295 Released! - Natural Selection 2

Keeping in tune with our weekly releases is key to our continued work on NS2. What’s great about this schedule is that we can make tweaks and improvements across all...

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  • WasabiOneWasabiOne Co-Lead NS2 CDT Join Date: 2011-06-15 Member: 104623Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
  • moultanomoultano Creator of ns_shiva. Join Date: 2002-12-14 Member: 10806Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
    Servers will report now the sum of the median and standard deviation of all player skill rating as average player skill. This should make the skill row of the server browser more reliable
    Can you describe this a little more? Is the intent to use (roughly) the 70th percentile of the skill values?
  • WyzcrakWyzcrak Pot Pie Aficionado Join Date: 2002-12-04 Member: 10447Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
    Wow. That's a lot of work! Great job, everyone. :)
  • MoFo1MoFo1 United States Join Date: 2014-07-25 Member: 197612Members
    I thought it was just me, until someone else in game mentioned it also. It seems like something is off with the resolution. The text looks different (different font could explain this) but so does the rest of the game. Harvesters, Shifts, Aliens, Marines, Armories... it just all looks a little off It's kind of hard to even describe because it doesn't even look bad, it's just something barely different enough to cause notice... Not to say it's a problem, I just thought it was strange. My resolution is still at 1920x1080 and I didn't see any graphical chances in the log...

    Other than that minor oddity this looks like a great patch. I especially like the nickname change as now the ™ at the end of my name shows.


  • VetinariVetinari Join Date: 2013-07-23 Member: 186325Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver
    That's some great little changes.

    Does "shaking up ns2 gameplay" mean you'll also finally, finally, finally take a look at webs and their unlock requirements?

    Also do you intend to look at gore damage at all? (curious)
  • ObraxisObraxis Subnautica Animator & Generalist, NS2 Person Join Date: 2004-07-24 Member: 30071Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Silver, WC 2013 - Supporter, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts
    Grissi wrote: »
    Performance has been getting worse patch after patch and lowering move rate to compensate is just a lazy way out. I think the bigger question is why has server performance fallen so much that this change was required?

    With < 5 weeks left of our Phase 2, we do not have time to work on deep network changes or fixes. It's not lazy. It's being efficient. This change is simply the best choice with the time we have left, and should not significantly change pub-play, but improve server performance (and in turn, client performance).
  • RysskRyssk Join Date: 2012-12-18 Member: 175441Members
    @Grissi Dragon noticed when they came out with the medpack patch, that the servers tickrate was flying to the roof. At the START of the game, the server was hitting at a 80% CPU usage, on a 4970K with 4.0 GHZ.

    And in mid game/late game it was down to 40%.. Is that normal? NOPE!

    So yeah.. right now it's the easy workaround, and i hope they are actually looking into the actual problem. And dont overlook and forget about this whole moverate. Is the HoTs of medpack hitting the server this hard? Investigate it!
  • ZycaRZycaR Join Date: 2002-11-12 Member: 8263Members
    Grissi wrote: »
    I'm worried about changes like this one and I'm surprised that its even tried to be justified:
    Default server moverate reduced from 30 to 26. This restores it to approximately what it was prior to build 279, and should help server performance

    I'll start my argument with a quite from an older post of mine that kinda predicted this issue:
    Grissi wrote: »
    What worries me more is that performance seems to be getting worse and random bugs have started appearing in the recent patches - such as floating guns, I'll let @Mendasp explain in this high quality video:

    As much I like seeing patches every 2-3 days I think its also important to not get ahead of yourself and keep the groundwork clean. We can't sacrifice hitreg, performance and other little things while adding new stuff. At some point it will bite you in the ass and it will be hard to fix it since so many things have been build on top of the code causing it.

    Performance has been getting worse patch after patch and lowering move rate to compensate is just a lazy way out. I think the bigger question is why has server performance fallen so much that this change was required?

    The similar issue is happening on every map ... but in it's origin (position vector 0x0x0)..

    The video shows very old bug never fixed, but floating pistols and pistol's shells are very common these days :( .. looks like they are not shifted to origin of map just left where freeze.
  • GhoulofGSG9GhoulofGSG9 Join Date: 2013-03-31 Member: 184566Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Supporter, Pistachionauts
    edited April 2016
    Grissi wrote: »
    I'm worried about changes like this one and I'm surprised that its even tried to be justified:
    Default server moverate reduced from 30 to 26. This restores it to approximately what it was prior to build 279, and should help server performance

    I feel like it's important to note that the way the move timing is calculated has been changed with build 279.

    You can see the impact of that change in this google sheet (make a copy to edit it). With that change in mind you will clearly understand that a move rate of 30 is not the same pre-279 and post-279.

    And that actually a value of 26 now still is better overall than the pre-279 30.
  • DilligafDilligaf Join Date: 2014-05-25 Member: 196238Members
    "Update 295 begins our movement towards a continued shakeup from the norm of NS2 gameplay" Hope this time you really are going to give us some gameplay features, you been teasing me/us for 3 years now and we even even lost the fade abilities in the meantime :'(
  • zoljazolja Join Date: 2003-06-06 Member: 17057Members
    How to change ragdolls and font back to what it was?
  • xen32xen32 Join Date: 2012-10-18 Member: 162676Members, Reinforced - Supporter
    edited April 2016
    I don't like ragdoll change. Looks meh.
    Toggle in options please?

    I love kicking corpses of gorges and oni.
  • navazkanavazka Join Date: 2015-12-08 Member: 209825Members
    Removed over 200 no longer used game strings to help our community translators.

    Greatly appreciated. However, there has been some error when generation those translation files. Czech is 99% translated according to translate.naturalselection2.com, but csCS.txt file is half untranslated (to be exact, 977 strings out of 1726 are original English version instead of Czech). Even worse, the content seems to be very old, those translations look like something predating the time 2-3 weeks ago when I started working on it. But at translate.naturalselection2.com I see my recent translations. Even weirder is that csCS.txt has 1726 lines, but enUS.txt has 1541 lines. How on earth is that possible? Something is messed up. Can you please have a look at it? (I forced game files verification in Steam to make sure I have the latest unmodified files, no change).

    I was planning to email some Czech gaming news sites saying that NS2 has now full czech support (translations and character rendering), but with the current state I can't. Thanks.
  • GhoulofGSG9GhoulofGSG9 Join Date: 2013-03-31 Member: 184566Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Supporter, Pistachionauts
    edited April 2016
    navazka wrote: »
    Removed over 200 no longer used game strings to help our community translators.

    Greatly appreciated. However, there has been some error when generation those translation files. Czech is 99% translated according to translate.naturalselection2.com, but csCS.txt file is half untranslated (to be exact, 977 strings out of 1726 are original English version instead of Czech). Even worse, the content seems to be very old, those translations look like something predating the time 2-3 weeks ago when I started working on it. But at translate.naturalselection2.com I see my recent translations. Even weirder is that csCS.txt has 1726 lines, but enUS.txt has 1541 lines. How on earth is that possible? Something is messed up. Can you please have a look at it? (I forced game files verification in Steam to make sure I have the latest unmodified files, no change).

    I was planning to email some Czech gaming news sites saying that NS2 has now full czech support (translations and character rendering), but with the current state I can't. Thanks.

    @navazka You should really join our discord server, we have an private channel just for the ppl actively translating where informations like the following one have been shared in the past. To make it short the download buttons do not work anymore. A up to date zip with all translation txt files can be fetched via http://translate.naturalselection2.com/api/buildLangFiles/1/ .
  • AeglosAeglos Join Date: 2010-04-06 Member: 71189Members
    The ragdoll dissolve is great. I've been crying ever since you guys broke NS2+'s instant dissolve.

    Also, not sure if intended, but the new item popup is still giving me a steam notification. Is the change for the NS2 main menu only?
  • migalskimigalski Boston Join Date: 2014-07-02 Member: 197181Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    Can either the font be changed of the menu or have a newer nice looking menu made please? This new one feels so cringe worthy with the font and the size of the menu
  • VetinariVetinari Join Date: 2013-07-23 Member: 186325Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver
    Aeglos wrote: »
    The ragdoll dissolve is great. I've been crying ever since you guys broke NS2+'s instant dissolve.

    Also, not sure if intended, but the new item popup is still giving me a steam notification. Is the change for the NS2 main menu only?

    That's a steam thing - steam gives you a notification every time something gets added to your inventory.
  • develdevel Join Date: 2014-09-13 Member: 198444Members
    MoFo1 wrote: »
    I thought it was just me, until someone else in game mentioned it also. It seems like something is off with the resolution. The text looks different (different font could explain this) but so does the rest of the game. Harvesters, Shifts, Aliens, Marines, Armories...
    migalski wrote: »
    Can either the font be changed of the menu or have a newer nice looking menu made please? This new one feels so cringe worthy with the font and the size of the menu

    What are you talking about?

    Am I insane? I can't see the difference...
  • migalskimigalski Boston Join Date: 2014-07-02 Member: 197181Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    devel wrote: »
    MoFo1 wrote: »
    I thought it was just me, until someone else in game mentioned it also. It seems like something is off with the resolution. The text looks different (different font could explain this) but so does the rest of the game. Harvesters, Shifts, Aliens, Marines, Armories...
    migalski wrote: »
    Can either the font be changed of the menu or have a newer nice looking menu made please? This new one feels so cringe worthy with the font and the size of the menu

    What are you talking about?

    Am I insane? I can't see the difference...

    No clue about other resolutions but at 1080p, it just looks horrible, the menu and options looks huge and just so akward
  • MoFo1MoFo1 United States Join Date: 2014-07-25 Member: 197612Members
    devel wrote: »
    MoFo1 wrote: »
    I thought it was just me, until someone else in game mentioned it also. It seems like something is off with the resolution. The text looks different (different font could explain this) but so does the rest of the game. Harvesters, Shifts, Aliens, Marines, Armories...
    migalski wrote: »
    Can either the font be changed of the menu or have a newer nice looking menu made please? This new one feels so cringe worthy with the font and the size of the menu

    What are you talking about?

    Am I insane? I can't see the difference...

    Honestly it's such a small difference that i wasn't even really sure if anything had changed at all. (besides the font of course)

    It wasn't until someone else started complaining about the graphics looking weird since the update, that's when I knew it wasn't just me.


    I only mentioned it out of curiosity in the off chance someone from the PDT has an explanation.. It's no biggie
  • AliteAlite Join Date: 2007-03-02 Member: 60188Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    Nice font change! everything looks SO much clearer now /s
  • remiremi remedy [blu.knight] Join Date: 2003-11-18 Member: 23112Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester
    edited April 2016
    Grissi wrote: »
    I'm worried about changes like this one and I'm surprised that its even tried to be justified:
    Default server moverate reduced from 30 to 26. This restores it to approximately what it was prior to build 279, and should help server performance

    I feel like it's important to note that the way the move timing is calculated has been changed with build 279.

    You can see the impact of that change in this google sheet (make a copy to edit it). With that change in mind you will clearly understand that a move rate of 30 is not the same pre-279 and post-279.

    And that actually a value of 26 now still is better overall than the pre-279 30.

    To expand on this... The way moverate was calculated changed in build 279. You can see this in the spreadsheet ghoul linked. To keep the original moverate, it should have been lowered to 26 at that time. Since it wasn't, it was equivalent to raising the moverate (pre-279) from 30 to 40. This is why a lot of servers had a lot more performance issues after that patch.

    Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. Mats thought he could get away with "raising" the MR like that due to the other performance improvements that he had done leading up to and including 279. But now, since there have been ongoing complaints about server performance issues (especially in these last two patches where nothing at all changed in that regard), we've decided to try this.

    The problem, as you pointed out, is that it sounds like we are making servers worse, even though we are actually just restoring the old status quo.

    Hope this explanation clears this up a bit for you, @Grissi
  • woozawooza Switzerland Join Date: 2013-11-21 Member: 189496Members, Squad Five Blue
    remi wrote: »
    Grissi wrote: »
    I'm worried about changes like this one and I'm surprised that its even tried to be justified:
    Default server moverate reduced from 30 to 26. This restores it to approximately what it was prior to build 279, and should help server performance

    I feel like it's important to note that the way the move timing is calculated has been changed with build 279.

    You can see the impact of that change in this google sheet (make a copy to edit it). With that change in mind you will clearly understand that a move rate of 30 is not the same pre-279 and post-279.

    And that actually a value of 26 now still is better overall than the pre-279 30.

    To expand on this... The way moverate was calculated changed in build 279. You can see this in the spreadsheet ghoul linked. To keep the original moverate, it should have been lowered to 26 at that time. Since it wasn't, it was equivalent to raising the moverate (pre-279) from 30 to 40. This is why a lot of servers had a lot more performance issues after that patch.

    Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. Mats thought he could get away with "raising" the MR like that due to the other performance improvements that he had done leading up to and including 279. But now, since there have been ongoing complaints about server performance issues (especially in these last two patches where nothing at all changed in that regard), we've decided to try this.

    The problem, as you pointed out, is that it sounds like we are making servers worse, even though we are actually just restoring the old status quo.

    Hope this explanation clears this up a bit for you, @Grissi

    Still not mentioned are the many Interpolations warnings and fails that came with build 279 and can be monitored with perfmon. They occur every now and then even the server has idle value of 50% or more. ( I have not checked them since b294, maybe they got fixed, correct me when I am wrong).

    Another example is that no server now can hold 1500 entities or more with a default tickrate. Before b279 came out, my servers had tickdrops when reaching 2500 entities, now this happens with 1000 entities less.

    A good way to see the performance actually is when all players will be moved after a game to the readyroom. With 42 players the idle drops to 10-20%, before b279 it was at about 40-50%.
  • ArchieArchie Antarctica Join Date: 2006-09-19 Member: 58028Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Supporter
    Is there any documentation on how the moverate was changed other then trello? pls matso-san.
  • AeglosAeglos Join Date: 2010-04-06 Member: 71189Members
    remi wrote: »

    Thanks for your feedback. Sorry to say, but we aren't going to be introducing toggles for every change we make. I would suggest playing with it a bit more and see if your opinion changes or if you get used to it. I'd be interested to hear what you think after having given it a shot.

    The intent of the ragdoll change is to make it so players can more easily tell when an enemy has been killed and is no longer a threat. The ragdolls often looked very buggy/wrong (onos rolling around a hallway, command chairs being pushed around), and blocked players from seeing the other immediate threats. By making it dissolve immediately it should help keep your attention on the action and help new players waste less bullets. It is the same effect that was used before, just triggered sooner.

    If feedback shows it's disappearing too quickly, we can adjust the equation further. The equation we're using is shown here: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/xdugiqqvb8

    The blue line is the new equation, the orange line is the old equation. The black line is showing how we could adjust it to make it dissolve far slower, if that is the consensus of the feedback we receive.
    (The orange line actually should start at x=6 rather than x=0 to be a more accurate representation of the old dissolve.)

    Ragdolls are a great part of NS2, why the hell would you get rid of them? In every single game, ragdolls are present. They are there to show realism and act as a sort of trophy for the marine who kills five skulks in the room. Removing this feature is doing a major disservice to the NS2 community as a whole, veterans and greenies alike. The way lifeforms and structures just dissolve in thin air looks unnatural and makes absolutely no sense. Ragdolls need to come back in the next patch, no if's, and's, or but's.

    My favorite thing to do as a marine comm is to redrop a res node when the ragdoll pieces are still in place, flinging the pieces across the room. This is no longer possible.

    Onos deaths are not as fun. When you kill an onos you WANT to see it's dead body roll around on the floor. The way a skulk's lifeless body continues to fly is absolutely rewarding. Watching a fade's arms fold and body crumple fills me determination to kill the next one.

    We already know when a lifeform dies, when I see the green +# in the middle of my god damn screen. It's not hard to understand what that means.

    Seriously, get your **** together UWE. If you don't revert this, at least add a toggle for ragdolls.

    .
    .
    .

    oh and one more thing, CHANGE THE FONT BACK.

    Hi, you don't represent everyone. Thanks.
  • xen32xen32 Join Date: 2012-10-18 Member: 162676Members, Reinforced - Supporter
    Aeglos wrote: »
    remi wrote: »

    Thanks for your feedback. Sorry to say, but we aren't going to be introducing toggles for every change we make. I would suggest playing with it a bit more and see if your opinion changes or if you get used to it. I'd be interested to hear what you think after having given it a shot.

    The intent of the ragdoll change is to make it so players can more easily tell when an enemy has been killed and is no longer a threat. The ragdolls often looked very buggy/wrong (onos rolling around a hallway, command chairs being pushed around), and blocked players from seeing the other immediate threats. By making it dissolve immediately it should help keep your attention on the action and help new players waste less bullets. It is the same effect that was used before, just triggered sooner.

    If feedback shows it's disappearing too quickly, we can adjust the equation further. The equation we're using is shown here: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/xdugiqqvb8

    The blue line is the new equation, the orange line is the old equation. The black line is showing how we could adjust it to make it dissolve far slower, if that is the consensus of the feedback we receive.
    (The orange line actually should start at x=6 rather than x=0 to be a more accurate representation of the old dissolve.)

    Ragdolls are a great part of NS2, why the hell would you get rid of them? In every single game, ragdolls are present. They are there to show realism and act as a sort of trophy for the marine who kills five skulks in the room. Removing this feature is doing a major disservice to the NS2 community as a whole, veterans and greenies alike. The way lifeforms and structures just dissolve in thin air looks unnatural and makes absolutely no sense. Ragdolls need to come back in the next patch, no if's, and's, or but's.

    My favorite thing to do as a marine comm is to redrop a res node when the ragdoll pieces are still in place, flinging the pieces across the room. This is no longer possible.

    Onos deaths are not as fun. When you kill an onos you WANT to see it's dead body roll around on the floor. The way a skulk's lifeless body continues to fly is absolutely rewarding. Watching a fade's arms fold and body crumple fills me determination to kill the next one.

    We already know when a lifeform dies, when I see the green +# in the middle of my god damn screen. It's not hard to understand what that means.

    Seriously, get your **** together UWE. If you don't revert this, at least add a toggle for ragdolls.

    .
    .
    .

    oh and one more thing, CHANGE THE FONT BACK.

    Hi, you don't represent everyone. Thanks.

    I feel the same as him. What about IMMERSION mentioned few build earlier?
    If anything, I always wanted for ragdolls to stay for a little longer. They are pretty cool in NS. In most games, ragdolls inherit too much velocity from bullets and fall unrealistically, but in NS skulks/lerks/fades just continued to move in the same direction, just in a 'relaxed' state. Looked so cool and NATURAL.
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