NS2 Build 220 & Euro Gamer news

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220 Patch Notes

Features

• Added "draw damage" option to the game. Animates damage you to do to players and structures, showing it on screen even if you're moving around fast and your target quickly leaves your screen. Can be disabled in the options. All predicted on client. Doesn't work for projectiles yet but will shortly.
• Added -config_path command line parameter to the client and the server to change where game configuration files are loaded and saved from.
• Added information to r_stats about how long the CPU waits for the GPU during a frame.
• Added wait for vertical sync and triple buffering options.
• Changed the game to use the speaker configuration that was designated in the Windows control panel.
• Added "rookie mode". You are a rookie when you've logged 4 hours or less of play. Rookies show up in green (voice chat, text chat, scoreboard) for their team mates, prompting others to help them. Servers can indicate if they are friendly to new players or not (server ops, docs are here)
• Player resources are now saved when a player disconnects and reconnects to a server.

Balance

• Increased spore cloud damage radius
• Corrosive damage is 2x as effective vs. Exos (bile bomb).
• Crag and Shade costs reduced by 10.
• Initial Harvester health increased by 10%, mature Harvester health increased by 10% (was very hard for aliens to keep alive).
• Lerk Celerity effect reduced a bit, Fade Celerity bumped up a bit.
• Lowered Shift maturity time from 120 to 90.
• Marine weapons and armor research costs reduced from 20/30/40 to 15/25/35. Weapons/Armor1 time increased by 20 seconds, Weapons/Armor2 increased by 10 seconds (reducing increased res. usage of marine economy and promoting dual Arms Labs).
• Regeneration combat delay reduced from 8 seconds to 5 (want to see more regen).
• Skulk bite range reduced by 20% (skulk domination, this is much closer to NS1).
• Slowdown with Carapace removed (drawbacks are implicit in choices, not within traits themselves).
• Tightened Lerk spike accuracy (supposed to be in 219).

Changes

• Adjusted walljump vertical speed to be closer to b216.
• Adrenaline upgrade now increases total energy pool by 200% instead of energy regeneration.
• MACs cannot be welded for 1 second after they took damage.
• Recycling structures now count as inactive.

Fixes

• Fixed bug causing the initial Harvester to sometimes not be covered by infestation.
• Fixed bug where Clogs and Hydras could fall through other entities such as the Command Station.
• Fixed bug where players would not fall if the structure they were standing on was destroyed.
• Fixed bug where the state of the console could get out of sync when playing back a recorded game.
• Fixed issue with exosuits not taking correct damage to armor.
• Fixed issues when rendering models that contained bones but the vertices were not skinned to the bones.
• Fixed loss of precision in timing after the game had been running for a long time.
• Fixed marines being able to hear spikes attack sound of silenced lerks.
• Fixed onos not colliding with phase gate and clipping through the model.
• Fixed script error where the gameEffectsFlags field wasn't sent with enough bits.
• Fixed word wrapping for text.
• Player crouch footsteps will no longer play after the player has stopped crouching.
• Restored voice chat sampling rate to 16KHz.
• Scoreboard made more consistent.
• Slightly better ragdolls.
• The use button UI will no longer display when near a Hallucination.
• The weapon and armor upgrade HUD icons will no longer display in red for the Exo when they shouldn't.

Improvements

• Added Fade Blink help widget.
• Added Fade Double Jump help widget.
• Added Fade Shadow Step help widget.
• Added Skulk running "weave" animations where the back half of the body is slightly delayed from the front.
• Added custom rifle muzzle effects for different weapon upgrades.
• Added exo flashlight effect.
• Added new rifle sounds which change depending on weapon upgrade level.
• Added scan effect to alien view model when detected (when showing up as motion blip in the marine HUD).
• Alien GUI armor is now part of the health ring and stands out better.
• Cysts and infestation align now correctly on sloped floors.
• Don't display all tech in "enables" text for Commander (set "showenables" to false in tech tree).
• Fixed Sentry Battery text.
• Lots of updates and refinements to Commander tooltip text.
• Passive commander icons display as grayed out.
• Removed unimplemented ARC upgrades.
• Simplified Pheromones and make them more clear and usable. Removed multiple "levels" of pheromones. Added animation effect to pheromone UI. Fixed bug where pheromones weren't being created and destroyed properly. Different pheromones have different lifetimes. Added tooltips.
• Hi-res player arrow animation on the minimap.

ns2_mineshaft

• Added a Resource point inside new Drill Repair Room.
• Added new ore model and container environment assets to various places.
• Added ore detail to belts.
• Added vent from Cart Tunnel to Pumping Station.
• Created new area called "Pilot Drill" outside "Operations".
• Created new area called "Water Pump Station" linked from "Drill Repair" to "Pilot Drill".
• Fixed EXO stair well access in "Ore Extraction".
• Fixed navigation way point issues.
• Fixed various player stuck issues.
• Moved "Ore Extraction" resource point to back of the room away from staircase.
• Moved Drill Repair to a new location right of Cart Tunnel.
• Plugged hole in corridor opposite brew room.

Optimizations

• Combined lighting and shadowing into a single pass.
• Fixed bug where the number of Infestation blobs would grow uncontrollably when cloaked by a Shade.
• Optimized accessing class member variables from script.
• Optimized curve evaluation for particle systems.
• Optimized synchronizing render models with Entities.
• Optimized updating the animation graph state.
• Optimized updating the cloaking effect.
• Reduced shader setup on cards that don't support two sided stencil.
• The minimap updating is now twice as fast (Thanks jeffco!).

SDK

• Added Server.AddTag and Client.GetServerHasTag to allow servers to be tagged with special properties like "new players only".
• Added ServerConfig.json file used to configure server settings.
• Removed Server.GetAdminPath().
• Renamed "user://" to "config://".
• Updated map cycle file format to use .json files like the other server configuration files.

Sound

• Different rifle sounds depending on weapons level
• Bilebomb now sounds more like a gorge.
• Fixing up timing issues with GL reload sounds.
• Iterations to minigun spin up sound.

Art

• Lots of skulk animation improvements
• Increased size of alien upgrade chambers to make them easier for the Kharm to interact with (Crag, Shell, Veil)