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Natural-Selection 2 FAQ Tutorial Version History Natural-Selection Steam 1.04 FAQ Tutorial Version History

       

Version History

• v3.2 - March 1st, 2007
• v3.2 Beta 2 - January 8th, 2006
• v3.2 Public Beta - November 21st, 2006
• v3.1.3 - April 10th, 2006
• v3.1.2 - December 2nd, 2005
• v3.1.1 - November 20th, 2005
• v3.1 - November 10th, 2005
• v3.05 beta 2 - June 10th, 2005
• v3.05 beta 1 - June 5th, 2005
• v3.04 - June 1st, 2005
• v3.03 - April 27th, 2005
• v3.02 - April 4th, 2005
• v3.01 - March 11th, 2005
• v3.0 (otherwise known as beta6) - March 5th, 2005
• v3.0 beta 6 build 5 - February 25th, 2005
• v3.0 beta 6 build 4 - February 21st, 2005
• v3.0 beta 6 build 3 - February 12th, 2005
• v3.0 beta 6 build 2 - January 31st, 2005
• v3.0 beta 6 build 1 - January 9th, 2005
• v3.0 beta 5 - September 4th, 2004
• v3.0 beta 4a - May 2nd, 2004
• v3.0 beta 4 - April 23rd, 2004
• v3.0 beta 3 - February 11th, 2004
• v3.0 beta 2 - January 31, 2004
• v3.0 - (previously referred to as v2.1)

• v2.01 - September 19th, 2003
• v2.01e Beta Changes
• v2.01d Beta Changes
• v2.01c Beta Changes
• v2.01b Beta Changes
• v2.01a Beta Changes
• v2.0 - July 31st, 2003 (previously referred to as v1.1)

• v1.04 - January 24th, 2003
• v1.03 - November 27th, 2002
• v1.02 - November 16th, 2002
• v1.01 - November 6th, 2002
• v1.0 - October 31st, 2002

• Release Candidate 10
• Release Candidate 9a
• Release Candidate 9
• Release Candidate 8
• Before..

v3.2 - March 1st, 2007

New Features

• Bind-able alien movement abilities (blink, leap, charge)
  • Movement abilities can be bound directly using +movement.
  • Movement abilities can still be selected as a "weapon" and fired (no change).
  • Movement abilities can be used in the readyroom but play at a much lower volume.
  • Set "r" to default +movement in the keyboard bindings.
  • Changed description for "Reload" to "Reload/alien movement" in the keyboard bindings.

• Added teleport feature to hives
  • Players may now use anactive hive to be teleported to the next hive with an 0.8 second cool-down per player.
  • If a player uses a growing hive, it triggers 'The Enemy Approaches' Alert and makes it available for both hive and movement chamber teleportation.
  • Gorge spit can also be used to trigger 'The Enemy Approaches' on a growing hive.
  • Normal friendly fire no longer makes a hive available for teleportation.
  • Hive teleport order is determined by the top-to-bottom order shown on the alien HUD.
  • If a player can't reach a hive to use it, standing directly under the hive while pressing use will also work.

• "Ghost" placement model for marine structures
  • When a marine structure is first placed by the commander, it will be a ghost structure.
  • A ghost structure is partially transparent (but still solid) and will be immediately recycled for 80% of the resource cost if touched by an alien player.
  • A ghost structure can be attacked and damaged without triggering an immediate recycle.
  • The commander can choose to recycle a ghost structure in the same manner as an unbuilt structure.
  • When a marine player starts to build a ghost structure, it will turn into a normal unbuilt structure.

• NS on HLTV
  • NS now sends minimap updates to a connected HLTV server.
  • NS now sends particle system templates to a connected HLTV server.  Spores, Welder sparks etc. should display when spectating via HLTV.
  • NS now sends hive information to HLTV.
  • Every 30 seconds, the HLTV server rebuilds the information so recently connected players get the data too.
  • Various bug-fixes to improve the HLTV experience ( detailed later in the changelog ).

New map ns_lucid ( by Mouse )
ns_lucid is a map with a distinctive visual style and frantic gameplay. Its flowing architecture and well connected layout means that teammates as well as enemies are never far away. The map's high ceilings and winding corridors give the advantage to whoever can get the first hit in and victory to whoever can hit the hardest.
New map ns_machina ( by Merkaba )
Machina is set on a mining ship designed and owned by a reclusive set of human colonists, of whom nothing much is known owing to their societies apparent disdain for any cultural exchange. After intelligence reports came in detailing sightings of this derelict behemoth, the TSA council leapt on the opportunity to send in a team to investigate and discover more about this mysterious colony and their intruiging technology. Of course, the alien threat which rendered the ship helpless would have to be dealt with first...

New map co_umbra ( by Kalessin )
co_umbra is a large combat map which features long, wide corridors with moderate cover and high ceilings. Despite the apparent advantage the marines may have, the aliens can utilise the extensive ventilation network and the many concealed ambush points to hamper the marine's progress. There are three routes linking the alien half of the map to the marine side, each route converges in the centre of the map where most of the action takes place. Because of the size of the map, it is important that the marines play aggressively to be able to secure a victory.

Gameplay changes:

• Reworked the Alien hive-based armor bonus.
  • No armor bonus for the second hive.
  • For the third hive aliens get an armor bonus equivalent to two hive armor in previous versions.
• Modified lerk flight
  • Increased the base lerk speed to 650.
  • Reduced the effect of celerity on lerk flight from 25 to 20 ( per chamber ).
  • Lerks now lose more speed when they climb, but still dive quickly.
• Onos Changes
  • Increased Health from 700 to 950.
  • Added knock-back effect to charge so that the Onos may not be blocked by aliens or marines.
  • Charge causes damage at a rate of 80 health per second, as long as charge contact is maintained.
  • When using charge, the Onos will be propelled forward as long as +attack/+movement is activated and the Onos has enough energy.
• Lowered blink fire rate so energy drain is reduced.
  
  • Blink maximum speed unchanged.
  • Blink requires you to press your +attack or +movement key for double the time, but energy is drained at half the rate.

• Changed cloak behavior to be more consistent and intuitive.
  • Cloaking takes 1 second to begin.
  • It takes 12, 8 and 4 seconds to cloak depending on the number of sensories.
  • When near a sensory chamber, an alien player always cloaks as if under the effect of 3 sensory chambers.
  • Teleporting via a movement chamber or hive cause the player to uncloak.
• Modified defense chamber healing effect:
  • A player or structure is only healed by a single defense chamber at a time.
  • A target is now healed for the usual 10 health points and an additional + 3% of its maximum health (per DC healing tick).
• Web changes
  • Webs now harden 1.5 seconds after being formed.
  • Unhardened webs can be destroyed by marines walking through them without causing the player to get entangled.
  • Web sounds updated to reflect the new behavior.
  • Changed web rendering so they are consistent and easily visible in all render modes ( i.e. visible with the alien flashlight on ).

• Reduced Marine Resource Tower Health from 6000 to 5500.
• Increase the points awarded for killing an RT from 3 to 5.
• Leap no longer does Friendly Fire damage.
• When redemption chooses a destination hive, it will not choose a hive under attack unless no other active hive is available.
• If the current hive is under attack, the player will not be teleported to it (assuming that there is another valid destination hive available).
• Reduced bilebomb velocity from 750 to 650.

• Changed ladder functionality for fades.
  • The fade will never stick to a ladder when actively blinking.
  • The fade can only climb ladders when its vertical speed is low (between -175 and 175).

• Removed telefragging by adding pushback to infantry portals and phasegates.
• Reduced phase gate cooldown from 0.5 seconds to 0.4 seconds.
• Jetpack cost tweaks (to make the JPs less risky as a strategy).
  • Increased JP research cost by 10 res.
  • Increased JP research time by 15 seconds.
  • Reduced JP cost from 15 to 10.
  • Players who touch the ground with a jetpack active no longer stick to it.

Gameplay interface:

• Improved scoreboard
  • The scoreboard now shows the player's team first.
  • Added resource counts for each alien player.
  • Added icons to display the weapons a player has picked up.
  • This column shows the player's level when playing combat.
  • Added map name and round timer to scoreboard.
  • Fixed a bug where team score was being displayed in the kills column.
  • Allow muting of players on the other team.

• Minimap improvements
  • Can now be viewed before the round starts.
  • Structures under attack flash red on the minimap.
  • New colour scheme for minimap sprites.
  • Show the full minimap sprites for the commander on +showmap.
  • Added cl_hudmapzoom 0|1|2|3 to control the level of zoom on the marine in-hud minimap.

• Added transparent minimaps with cl_labelmaps
  • 0: unlabelled minimap.
  • 1: labelled minimap.
  • 2: transparent, unlabelled minimap.
  • 3: transparent, labelled minimap.

• Added new inventory indicators to marine HUD:
  • welder.
  • mines.
  • hand grenades.

• UUUpdated HUD icons to more clearly indicate the level of marine upgrades.

• Added a cloaking indicator to the alien HUD.
• Modified the alien upgrade HUD icons.
  • Reduced size to make them less obtrusive.
  • AdAdded indicator for available upgrade level.

• Updated sprite for generic progress bar.
• Added custom crosshairs
  • Five crosshairs types for every weapon.
  • The crosshair choices are available in the advanced multiplayer options.
  • CaCan also be selected with cl_customcrosshair 0|1|2|3|4.
  • Type one and two include spread indicators, while type three and four stay the same for all weapons.
  • Type zero selects the crosshairs from 3.1.
  • Crosshairs are available at these resolutions: 640/800/1024/1280.

• Hive sight HUD text
  • Added transparency effect: the farther from the center of the screen the HUD text is, the more transparent it will be.
  • Added cl_labelhivesight cvar (default 1) to allow players to disable hive sight labels on the alien HUD.

Various fixes:

• Minor server performance improvements in the way frequently used cvars are accessed.
• Gorges under attack flash red on the minimap.
• Webs can not be destroyed by friendly fire.
• Fixed a demo playback lockup.
• Fixed a bug where targetondeath was not firing when hives died. ( Thanks Kouji_San )
• Fixed: Losing all upgrade levels when at least 1 active chamber remains.
• Fixed a bug where a player had to click "Readyroom" twice.
• Fixed: flashlight sound is affected by silence
• Fixed: Votemap was not adjusting the required votes when a player left the server.
• The advanced alien sight ( flashlight ) will not be automatically switched off when a player dies.
• Death sprites now determined by the weapon doing the damage instead of the current weapon selected (e.g. no more "stomp" kills).
• Players always see the health indicator for the other team's structures, not the unbuilt status.
• Reverted the animation of a jumping skulk to 3.0 behavior. This is an animation changed only.
• Fixed a problem where sieges automatically sighted structures in range that are on slopes.
• Fixed a problem where players could not sight structures on slopes.
• Fixed commander keyboard scrolling ( +scrollleft, +scrollright, +scrollup and +scrolldown ).
• Heavy armour and jetpack are now visible in the readyroom.
• Fixed cl_autohelp in options window.
• Added player list to game menu for steam friends. ( Thanks anakin )
• Improved playback of HUD alert messages ( base under attack, enemy approaches, hive under attack etc. )
• Added support for +commandmenu.
• Fixed: "building under attack" will play on friendly structures after an enemy structure dies in the same location.
• Fixed commander view of alien health rings.
• Fixed server crash related to large numbers of chambers (entities)
  • added server variable sv_structurelimit, which restricts the number of structures that can be built on the map at once (excluding hives, RTs, and CCs).
  • default value is 300.

• Fixed end-of-round player disconnection issue (usually seen on large servers)
  • Chambers and structures no longer play effects when being destroyed during round reset.

• Fixed a textmsg crash.

• Votes against a commander are now retained unless a different player becomes commander.

• Fixed setgamma.
• Fixed slowresearch (sv_cheats 1) for build times.
• Reset the crosshair show count on round reset, fixes the issue where a player's crosshair would sometimes dissapear. problem.
• FixFixed onos digestion progress bar.
• Fixed: if an advanced armory is lost and no other armories exist, the observatory and armslab can not be built until a new armory is built.
• Fixed a formatting issue with the server name in the scoreboard.
• Removed the voice- and sound-related signoncommands from ns-hltv.cfg.
• Fixed a logfile print issue for end of round score.
• Fixed a bug where team score was not being reset if mp_tournament mode was changed from 1 to 0 between rounds.
• Crouched lerk flight plays flap animation.
• Crouched alien attack animations now play.
• Aliens can not gestate on steep slopes.
• Eggs no longer take fall damage.
• Fixed a bug where the hive gained 15% health when it completed after it has been killed before.
• Exploit prevention
  • Improved cvar locking.
  • Added ns.wad, ns2.wad and v_wad.wad to consistency check.
  • Removed the cl_rate command from the game.
  • Fixed a bug where the obs affected neutral entities on the minimap for both teams.
  • Fixed silent walk exploit.
  • Fixed a bug where observatory actions ( e.g. scan ) were selectable during research.
  • FixFixed an exploit where commanders could place structures silently. ( thanks RouterBox )
    

• Fixed "Auto Director" button in HLTV.
• Fixed a bug where player chat in HLTV wasn't displayed after round end.
• Fixed a HLTV bug where a minimap would become unavailable after map change.
• The HUD initialises correctly when connecting to HLTV directly from an active game.
• Fixed a bug where joining a HLTV server after playing on a game server (either the server you are spectating, or another) would cause sprites and particle effects to display oddly.
• Scoreboard is now updated more frequently for HLTV ( so connecting players get the info ).
• Fixed problematic model hitboxes

Maps Updates:

• Updated altair ( by KungFuDisoMonkey )
  • Brand new Submarine Bay that now features a res node as well as a Submarine in the pool
  • Added an entrance in Annex to the existing Muck-Pump vent
  • Moved the entrance of a vent from inside the Omega Site Hive to Phi Test Site
  • Moved Air Filtration south to line it up with Life Support Hive
  • Added a vent between Iota Corridor and Life Support Hive
  • AddAdded a vent to connect Ore Pipeline

• Updated bast ( by Mendasp )
  • AddAdded vent between Databank Access and Tram Tunnel.

• Updated caged ( by JazzX )
  • Moved the Command Console to the open area of Marine Start
  • Moved the Marine Start res node to the CC's original location
  • Removed one node from Central Processing and moved the remaining node
  • Added a res node to the Sewer Hive room, and moved Purification's node North
  • Added a res node to Generator Hive room and moved Stability monitoring to the West
  • Permanently blocked the Upper Sewer vent entrance
  • Changed the weldable between Central Processing and Ventilation Access into a breakable

• Updated eclipse ( by MrBen )
  • Removed pillar in marine spawn.
  • Redesigned power sub junction.
  • Removed clipping errors across map.
  • Minor architectural change to south loop to remove snagging.
  • RRemRemoved water and infestation from the floor of computer core.

• Updated ns_eon ( by Olmy )
  • Moved gunpod resource tower to the center of the room.
  • Raised the command console.

• Updated ns_nancy ( by Lazer )
  • New Vent from Port to Aux Command. Should help aliens defend the port hive a little bit more.
  • Ladders at Cargo moved to the sides to make them less obstructive to movement.
  • Mother hive has been tweaked some to be bit more alien friendly.
  • Bug where some grid floors were causing the commander to be unable to place items on them has been resolved.
  • Added some more optimizations in some areas.
  • GeneGenerally improved texture alignment in most locations.

• Remake of ns_origin ( Originally by Cadavar, remake by Menes)
  
  • Replaced Biodome elevators with stairs.
  • Modified Biodome architecture.
  • Moved Biodome resource node to North-East of the hive room.
  • Added a vent North-East of Biodome leading to the existing vent system.
  • Moved Xenoform Research resource node to Power Core.
  • Modified Power Core architecture.
  • AddeAdded a weldable vent in Power Core leading to the existing vent system.
  • Added a vent connecting the two vent systems of the Biodome area.
  • Added height alterations to the vent between Biodome and Ventilation.
  • Lowered the height of the Cargo Bay ladders.
  • Added a vent connecting the vent systems above Industrial Ante-Chamber and Cargo Bay.
  • Added a vent leading to Coolant Monitoring from the Ventilation/Furnace vent.
  • Modified the height and the length of Ore Extraction.
  • Modified the hallway leading to Furnace from Ore Extraction.
  • ModiModified the conveyor hallways between Ore Extraction and Cargo Bay to allow an onos to pass.
  • Moved Furnace hive slightly to the East.
  • Fixed Computer Lab railings not blocking fire.
  • Fixed not being able to drop structures and items on certain parts of the floor in Lava Catwalk.
  • Modified the Cargo Bay elevators to prevent instant killing (they now do 45 damage per second).
  • Fixed problem where an onos would need to duck to pass in the Ventilation vents.
  • Fixed the ceiling of Ore Scanner blocking the commander's view.
  • Fixed stuck issues in Ventilation.
  • Fixed clipping issues with the Biodome floor.
  • Fixed sprites appearing in the corner of Cargo Bay.
  • Fixed unintuitive clipping preventing players from going in various areas/corners.
  • Modified the spawn points in each hive and in Control Room (marine start).
  • Modified the ready room.
  • ModiModified slightly/greatly the texturing in many areas.

• Updated ns_shiva ( by Moultano )
  • Flattened Draft Shafts: no more ladders, no more stairs.
  • Removed elevator in shiva core. Replaced with ramp.
  • Enlarged 2 hallways in steam tunnels.
  • Expanded maintenance and southern hallway overlooking maintenance
  • ExpanExpanded walkways in shiva core
  • Changed the animation on welding the node in shiva core to open up the room more. The center now gets out of the way.
  • Enlarged hallway in lower level of generator.
  • Enlarged vents in steam tunnels, cryochambers, tunnel, shipment processing.
  • Enlarged vent entrances in steam tunnels, cryochambers, airlock.
  • Added generator->tunnel vent, and extended cryochambers vent into databurst.
  • Reworked ladders in steam tunnels. (Onos hate angled ladders.)
  • Commander can no longer accidentally build the double node, although gorges still can.
  • Added delay to shivacore weldable to prevent players rushing in and getting smashed.
  • Airlock weldable no longer kills everything inside, and one of the two doors remains open.
  • Moved cryochambers ladder to slightly more protected position.
  • Flattened ceiling of hallway between generator and steam tunnels to ease blinking.
  • Shrunk platform in generator to ease blinking.
  • Moved some of the spawns in datacore to prevent spawn camping.
  • Partially plugged the hole next to elevator in cryochambers.
  • Structures are no longer placeable in outside areas.
  • Widened vent into tunnel
  • Hopefully fixed onos-splatting around shiva core.

• Updated ns_veil ( by MrBen )
  • Minor architectural changes to pipeline.
  • Redesign of c12 area.
  • Removed the infestation of subsector roof so medpacks can now be dropped on hive floor.

v3.2 Beta 2 - January 8th, 2006

Balance Changes

• Reduced Marine RT Health from 6000 to 5000.
• Increased Onos HP from 700 to 950.
• DC Limit: each entity can be healed by only one DC per tick.
• Each DC heals 10 + 3% per tick, an extra 2% over beta1.
• The third hive grants an armor bonus equal to the 3.1 armor bonus.

Bugfixes

• Fixed: Spectator names replaced with cam view name.
• Fixed a bug where targetondeath was not firing when hives died. ( Thanks Kouji_San )
• Added ns_shiva to mapcycle.txt.

Other changes

• Remove LMG icon from scoreboard.
• Increase the points awared for killing an RT from 3 to 5.
• Gorge spit activates 'the enemy approaches' on a building hive.
• Player sprites on the minimap now have a border to make them more visible.

• Updated ns_caged -Re-added the weldable between Purification and Vent (Central to Vent is still just a breakable).
  -Removed the Upper Sewer Opening to the Vent into Marine Start.
  -Adjusted the location of the Sewer Hive Res Node.
  

• Updated ns_lucid -Fixed several clipping issues.
  -Filled in the alcove behind Nemesis Hive.
  -Fixed HOM near Void hive.
  -Fixed minimap for cl_lablemaps 0.
  

• Updated ns_machina -Fixed readyroom bug.
  -Fixed sunlight in Tau Ceti
  -Fixed dropping problems for commander in Tau Ceti.
  -Fixed sinking behind hive in Mausoleum, by making it unbuildable on the transparent infestation.
  -Fixed some commander view irregularities.
  -Fixed not being able to leap from The Pit floor.
  -Fixed various stuck points.
  -Fixed being able to walk/jump along the edge of Circumn.
  -Added vent from Mausoleum hive to Turning Point, to Otherside.
  -Added ledges to the base of two 'chutes' - one from Maus, one from Turning Point.
  -Added ledges along the edge of the chasm in Crater to act as a safety net for fades & jetpackers.
  -Added a very minor vent system to Marine Start.
  -Added infestation to Mausoleum hive, intended to provide camoflauge/cover for aliens.
  -Added a ladder to The Pit from which players can jump into the vent there, allowing them to cross to Southern Shell over the chasm.
  -Added a large grating across the chasm in Crater, from one chute exit to a vent entrance to The Pit. Essentially is a vent from Southern Shell to The Pit, but can also be considered a path in its own right (if a very precarious one).
  -Added weld to The Pit. Marines can now make the two pillars descend into the floor for better room coverage.
  -Many ladders introduced allowing floor-bound aliens to access the vents in hives.
  -Added some blocking architecture to the marine start in an effort to reduce fade/lerk dominance.
  -Removed pit beneath Imine Falls, replaced with water.
  -Removed a path in The Pit area, to simplify.
  -Removed lift in Crater, and cut off the walkway before reaching the Destroyer.
  -Replaced lift to The Pit (from Snakes Body) with a large slope.
  -Made cosmetic changes to Crater South - Destroyer.
  -Detailed Turning Point, The Approach, Southern Shell, and Otherside.
  -Slight visual addition to Circumn.
  -Made some cosmetic changes to Angels Grave.
  -The two-part bar door will now kill anyone who blocks it.
  -Enlarged minimap (thanks JazzX).
  -Rotating lift has been replaced with a more stable train-lift.
  -Northern Shell's lighting has been somewhat redone for better visibility. Still a WIP.
  -Redirected vent from Ceti Noon to The Pit - now goes from Ceti Noon to Barren.
  -Expanded Tau Ceti.
  -Opened up a wall between Snakes Tail and Central Node Descent.

v3.2 Public Beta - November 21st, 2006

New Features

• Bindable alien movement abilities (blink, leap, charge)
  • Movement abilities can be bound directly using +movement.
  • Movement abilities can still be selected as a "weapon" and fired (no change).
  • Movement abilities can be used in the readyroom but play at a much lower volume.
  • Set "r" to default +movement in the keyboard bindings.
  • Changed description for "Reload" to "Reload/alien movement" in the keyboard bindings.

• Added teleport feature to hives
  • Players may now use an active hive to be teleported to the next hive with an 0.8 second cooldown per player.
  • If a player uses a growing hive, it triggers 'The Enemy Approaches' Alert and makes it available for both hive and mc teleportation.
  • Friendly fire no-longer makes a hive available for teleportation.
  • Hive teleport order is determined by the top-to-bottom order shown on the alien HUD.
  • If a player can't reach a hive to use it, standing directly under the hive while pressing use will also work.

• "Ghost" placement model for marine structures
  • When a marine structure is first placed by the commander, it will be a ghost structure.
  • A ghost structure is partially transparent (but still solid) and will be immediately recycled if touched by an alien player.
  • A ghost structure can be attacked and damaged without triggering an immediate recycle for 90% of the resource cost.
  • The commander can choose to recycle a ghost structure in the same manner as an unbuilt structure.
  • When a marine player starts to build a ghost structure, it will turn into a normal unbuilt structure.

• NS on HLTV
  • NS now sends minimap updates to a connected HLTV server.
  • NS now sends particle system templates to a connected HLTV server. Spores, Welder sparks etc. should display when spectating via HLTV.
  • Every 30 seconds, the HLTV server rebuilds the information so recently connected players get the data too.
  • Various bugfixes to improve the HLTV experience ( detailed later in the changelog ).

New map ns_lucid ( by Mouse )
ns_lucid is a map with a distinctive visual style and frantic gameplay. Its flowing architecture and well connected layout means that teammates as well as enemies are never far away. The map's high ceilings and winding corridors give the advantage to whoever can get the first hit in and victory to whoever can hit the hardest.


New map ns_machina ( by Merkaba )

New map ns_prometheus ( by Pithlit )
The Prometheus relais station was abandoned when the technology it used was outdated and updates were no longer feasible. Five Years later it was brought back on duty to serve as an advanced materials lab for special compounds that were discovered by a mining operation in the surrounding asteroids in the rings of the gas giant prometheus. Operations ran smoothly for several years. On a fateful day the station was infected by the Kharaa during mining incident. The nearby supply cruiser on route to the station now sends over its marines to seize research data and rescue any possible survivors.

New map co_umbra ( by kalessin )
co_umbra is a large combat which features long, wide corridors with moderate cover and high ceilings. Despite the apparent advantage the marines may have, the aliens can utilise the extensive ventilation network and the many concealed ambush points to hamper the marine's progress. There are three routes linking the alien half of the map to the marine side, each route converges in the centre of the map where most of the action takes place. Because of the size of the map, it is important that the marines play aggressively to be able to secure a victory.

Gameplay changes:

• Removed the hive-based armor bonus. Aliens now have "hive one armor" throughout the game.
• Modified lerk flight
  • Increased the base lerk speed slightly.
  • Reduced the effect of celerity on lerk flight from 25 to 20 ( per chamber ).
  • Lerks now lose more speed when they climb, but still dive quickly.
• Onos charge
  • Added knockback effect to charge so that the Onos may not be blocked by aliens or marines.
  • Removed the damage from charge.
  • When using charge, the Onos will be propelled forward as long as +attack/+movement is activated and the Onos has enough energy.
• Lowered blink fire rate so energy drain is reduced.
  • Blink speed unchanged.
  • Blink requires you to press your +attack or +movement key a little longer compared to 3.1 but you use less energy.

• Changed cloak behaviour to be more consistent and intuitive.
  • Aliens always cloak at rate dependent on the number of sensories.
  • Cloaking takes 1 second to begin.
  • It takes 4, 8 and 12 seconds to cloak depending on the number of sensories.
• Increased defense chamber healing effect:
  • a target is now healed for the usual 10 health points and an additional + 1% of its maximum health (per DC healing tick).
• Web changes
  • Webs now harden 1.5 seconds after being formed.
  • Unhardened webs can be destroyed by marines walking through them without causing the player to get entangled.
  • Web sounds updated to reflect the new behavior.

• Leap no longer does Friendly Fire damage.
• When redemption chooses a destination hive, it will not choose a hive under attack unless no other active hive is available
• If the current hive is under attack, the player will not be teleported to it (assuming that there is another valid destination hive available).
• Reduced bilebomb velocity from 750 to 650.

• Changed ladder functionality for fades.
  • The fade will never stick to a ladder when actively blinking.
  • The fade can only climb ladders when its vertical speed is low ( between -175 and 175).

• Removed telefragging by adding pushback to infantry portals and phasegates.
• Reduced phase gate cooldown from 0.5 seconds to 0.4 seconds.
• Jetpack cost tweaks (to make the JPs less risky as a strategy)
  • Increased JP research cost by 10 res.
  • Increased JP research time by 15 sec.
  • Reduced JP cost from 15 to 10.
  • Players who touch the ground with a jetpack active no longer stick to it.

Gameplay interface:

• Improved scoreboard
  • The scoreboard now shows the player's team first.
  • Added resource counts for each alien player.
  • Added primary weapon type for each marine player.
  • This column shows the player's level when playing combat.
  • Added map name and round timer to scoreboard.
  • Fixed a bug where team score was being displayed in the kills column.

• Minimap improvements
  • Can now be viewed before the round starts.
  • Structures under attack flash red on the minimap.
  • New colour scheme for minimap sprites.
  • Commander minimap improvements.

• Added transparent minimaps with cl_labelmaps
  • 0: unlabelled minimap.
  • 1: labelled minimap.
  • 2: transparent, unlabelled minimap.
  • 3: transparent, labelled minimap.

• Added new inventory indicators to marine HUD:
  • welder.
  • mines.
  • hand grenades.

• Updated HUD icons to more clearly indicate the level of marine upgrades.

• Added a cloaking indicator to the alien HUD.
• Modified the alien ability HUD icons.
  • Reduced size to make them less obtrusive.
  • Added indicator for available upgrade level.

• Updated sprite for generic progressbar.

• Added custom crosshairs
  • Five crosshairs types for every weapon.
  • The weapon choices are available in the advanced mutliplayer options.
  • Can also be selected with cl_customcrosshair 0|1|2|34.
  • Type one and two include spread indicators, while type three and four stay the same for all weapons.
  • Type zero selects the crosshairs from 3.1.
  • Crosshairs are available at these resolutions: 640/800/1024/1280.

• Hive sight HUD text
  • Added transparency effect: the farther from the center of the screen the HUD text is, the more transparent it will be.
  • Added cl_labelhivesight cvar (default 1) to allow players to disable hive sight labels on the alien HUD.

Various fixes:

• Players always see the health indicator for the other team's structures, not the unbuilt status.
• Reverted the animation of a jumping skulk to 3.0 behaviour. This is an animation changed only.
• Fixed a problem where sieges automatically sighted structures in range that are on slopes.
• Fixed a problem where players could not sight structures on slopes.
• fixed commander keyboard scrolling ( +scrollleft, +scrollright, +scrollup and +scrolldown ).
• Heavy armour and jetpack are now visible in the readyroom.
• fixed cl_autohelp in options window.
• Added player list to game menu for steam friends. ( Thanks anakin )
• Improved playback of HUD alert messages ( base under attack, enemy approaches, hive under attack etc. )
• added support for +commandmenu.
• Fixed: "building under attack" will play on friendly structures after an enemy structure dies in the same location.
• Fixed commander view of alien health rings.
• Fixed server crash related to large numbers of chambers (entities)
  • added server varaible sv_structurelimit, which restricts the number of structures that can be built on the map at once (excluding hives, RTs, and CCs).
  • default value is 300.
• Fixed end-of-round player disconnection issue (usually seen on large servers)
  • Chambers and structures no longer play effects when being destroyed during round reset.
• Fixed a textmsg crash.
• Votes against a commander are now retained unless a different player becomes commander.
• Fixed setgamma.
• Fixed slowresearch (sv_cheats 1) for build times.
• Reset the crosshair show count on round reset, fixes the missing crosshair problem.
• Fixed onos digestion progress bar.
• Fixed: if an advanced armory is lost and no other armories exist, the observatory and armslab can not be built until a new armory is built.
• Fixed a formatting issue with the server name in the scoreboard.
• Removed the voice- and sound-related signoncommands from ns-hltv.cfg.
• Fixed a logfile print issue for end of round score.
• Fixed a bug where team score was not being reset if mp_tournament mode was changed from 1 to 0 between rounds.
• Crouched lerk flight plays flap animation.
• crouched alien attack animations now play.
• Aliens can not gestate on steep slopes.
• Eggs no longer take fall damage.
• Fixed a bug where a the hive gained 15% health when it completed after it has been killed before.
• Exploit prevention
  • Improved cvar locking.
  • Added ns.wad, ns2.wad and v_wad.wad to consistency check.
  • Remove the cl_rate command from the game.
  • Fixed a bug where the obs effected neutral entities on the minimap for both teams.
  • Fixed silent walk exploit.
  • Fixed a bug where observatory actions ( e.g. scan ) were selectable during research.
  • Fixed an exploit where commanders could place structures silently. ( thanks RouterBox )

• Fixed "Auto Director" button in HLTV.
• Fixed a bug where player chat in HLTV wasn't displayed after round end.
• Fixed a HLTV bug where a minimap would become unavailable after map change.
• The HUD initialises correctly when connecting to HLTV directly from an active game.
• Fixed a bug where joining a HLTV server after playing on a game server (either the server you are spectating, or another) would cause sprites and particle effects to display oddly.
• Scoreboard is now updated more frequently for HLTV ( so connecting players get the info ).
• Fixed problematic model hitboxes:

Maps Updates:

• Updated ns_altair ( by KungFuDisoMonkey )
• Updated ns_bast ( by Mendasp )
  • Added vent between Databank Access and Tram Tunnel.

• Updated eclipse ( by MrBen )
  • Removed pillar in marine spawn.
  • Redesigned power sub junction.
  • Removed clipping errors across map.
  • Minor architectural change to south loop to remove snagging.
  • Removed water and infestation from the floor of computer core.

• Updated ns_nancy ( by Lazer )
  • New Vent from Port to Aux Command. Should help aliens defend the port hive a little bit more.
  • Ladders at Cargo moved to the sides to help fades from getting stuck.
  • Most everything has texture alignment now.

• Updated ns_shiva ( by Moultano )

• Updated ns_veil ( by MrBen )
  • Minor architectural changes to pipeline.
  • Redesign of c12 area.
  • Removed the infestation of subsector roof so meds can now be dropped on hive floor.

v3.1.3 - April 10th, 2006

• Gorges only get 50% health regeneration from their own healing spray
• The alien resource tower "hull" has been increased in height to reduce the effectiveness of players hiding inside the model
• The message printed when a player joins a team will not be displayed during the warmup. After the round has started, the message is not displayed more than five times a second to prevent client disconnects

v3.1.2 - December 2nd, 2005

• Hand grenade damage reduced from 100 to 80.
• Hand grenade damage reduced from 2x vs. structures to 1x.
• Gorge healspray now heals Gorge that triggers it as well.
• Increased Gorge armor from 50 to 70.
• The shotgun pellets now distribute more evenly.
• Shotgun has a range of 700.

v3.1.1 - November 20th, 2005

• Fixed a crash related that some servers were experiencing ("Host_Error: PF_MessageEnd_I", BlipList message no longer exceeds maximum transmission size of 20 friendly, 25 alien blip limits)
• Fixed an issue where under certain conditions the wrong sound files were being played when a player requested another player to weld them
• ssay82 and ssay83 are now checked when mp_consistency is 1

v3.1 - November 10th, 2005

New features

• Skulk wallwalk has been improved:
  - Skulks can now vault from walls. When attached to a wall, pressing jump will make the skulk jump in the direction the player is facing.
  - Precision wallwalking: While holding +speed (aka walk) the skulk will stick to walls much more rigorously then before. This makes it possible to navigate difficult architecture.
  - Wallwalk is now disabled when walking on the floor.
  
  
• Implemented teammate query icons:
  - Invoking a query from the popupmenu ("Follow me", "Covering you", "Weld/Heal me") displays an icon over the player issuing the query. This lasts for 6 seconds.
  - The invoking player may look at another player to issue that order directly to their target. The query will pop up in the upper middle of the target player's HUD.
• Added new map: ns_shiva (Thanks Moultano!)
• Added Fade eye icon next to NS in the Steam games list

Gameplay changes

• Hand Grenades significantly reworked:
  - Reduced their research cost: 20 res -> 10 res (Classic Mode only)
  - Reduced the time between throw and detonation: 2.0s -> 0.75s
  - Hand Grenades can now be thrown before the prime grenade animation has finished, allowing faster throws.
  - Number of Hand Grenades equipped upon spawn has been increased: 1 -> 2
  
• Changed Alien gestation times (times are given for Classic Mode and are in seconds, they are scaled down in Combat):
  - Skulk 7 -> 3
  - Gorge 17 -> 10
  - Lerk 20 -> 15
  - Fade 23 -> 25
  - Onos 38 -> 35
  
• Shotgun pellets now spread randomly: five pellets in an outside 20 degree cone, and five pellets within a 7 degree cone
• Duck toggle implemented:
  - Bind "toggleduck" to a key to use
  - While duck is toggled, pressing +duck will unduck and releasing will revert the player to a ducked state
  - This also allows reverse wallwalk; where pressing duck enables wallwalk and releasing it drops you from the wall
• Set Alien base Cloaking opacity from 10 to 0 (aka 100% Cloaking)
• Armory now consistently supplies 10 health with every use (once per 0.9 seconds)
• Added some client-side consistency checks for sprites (e.g. muzzleflash)
• Mines can no longer be placed on players or structures
• Mines can't be placed within 15 units of each other (to avoid exploits)
• Commander created structures now dropped from 4 units above the floor (should help with some sinking structure issues)

Game mechanics

• Added support for labelled minimaps:
  - Added new setting to advanced multiplayer options: "Draw Location Names"
  - cvar is cl_labelmaps
  - default value is 'on' (1)
  - Map dynamically switches in both HUD and map view
  - When turned on, the game displays ns_"map"_labelled.spr in place of ns_"map".spr, if no labelled minimap exists the default one is displayed.
  
• Added the ability to toggle off NS's gamma ramp:
  - Added setting to the advanced options menu: "Enable gamma ramp"
  - cvar is cl_gammaramp
  - default is 'on' (1)
  - Turning this to off will disable the forced gamma ramp. This should allow players on 64-bit systems and others who recieve "downloadable gamma not supported" errors to bypass the problem and set their gamma and color options via their video drivers.
  
• The commander can now see the health for all buildings and marines, even when not selected, as transparent health circles. Health circles for selected buildings and marines are rendered as normal.
• Mines and Hand Grenades moved to weapon slot 5
• All sayings from the popupmenu now have a cool down time of 3 seconds, to prevent them from being spammed.
• Changed the popupmenu to better reflect the new teammate orders.
• Commander waypoints and orders now pop up in the receiving player's HUD.
• Placing a structure does no longer automatically give selected marines a waypoint to it.
  O Structure health is now always visible to maintenance players (players having a welder or healspray set as their active weapon).
• Hive sight range increased: 1500 -> 3000 units
• Players now have to press f4 twice within two seconds to go to the readyroom as a safety measure.

Cosmetic changes:

• Weapon upgrade level is now ignored when determining how much to shake the screen while firing - it is now constant for Pistol, LMG, HMG, and Shotgun.
• Heavy Armor Player model fixed; now stands on floor correctly
• Buildings produce less smoke and more sparks when recycled
• Updated light and heavy HMG model with new sound calls, including new reload sounds (thanks CoolCookieCooks!)
• Cleanup of titles.txt
• Slight change to the LMG draw sound timing
• End game notifications now display in the center of the screen for 10 seconds with a 2 second fadeout.
• Moved alien resource label down
• Moved the chat text panel down so long lines of text won't conceal the crosshair
• Moved left side help text a bit up to prevent overlapping with the chat panel

Map changes:

• Updated co_sava: (Thanks Mendasp!)
  - The vents in the hive are now covered (can't shoot the hive unless you're inside the room)
  - Add a broken resource tower in Cargo room in order to provide a line of sight block (thanks CoolCookieCooks!)
  - Reworked vent system (Lerks can fly in them, shorter travel times, new entrances/exits)
  - Removed railings from the Auxiliar monitoring room
  - Added more clip brushes to help with the skulk wallwalk in some areas
  - Blocked line of sight from the lower entrance to the hive
• Updated ns_altair: (Thanks KungFuDiscoMonkey!)
  - Rebuilt Omega Hive
  - Rebuilt Consistency Hive
  - Rebuilt Marine Start
  - Rebuilt Station Monitoring Main
  - New Life Support Hive
  - New Sub Bay
  - Modified the layout of the center of the map
  - Changed the P-Corridor to Station Monitoring Main path into a vent
  - Added a new path to connect Access Corridor Zeta to Station Monitoring Annex
  - Moved the Station Monitoring Stabilty res node to Station Monitoring Annex
  - New Readyroom
  - Reworked much of the lighting on the map
• Updated ns_bast: (Thanks Mendasp!)
  - Fixed Onos spawn issues (redemption / movement chamber) in Feedwater
  - Added vent from Feedwater to Atmospheric processing
  - Extended path between Engine and Water Treatment
  - Fixed stuck point behind the Observe match ladder in the ReadyRoom
  - Fixed invisible wall in Refinery Hive above copper pipes
  - Lowered ceiling in the corridor between the Marine Spawn and Main Aft Junction
• Updated ns_eon: (Thanks Olmy!)
  - Significantly reworked the Node Layout
  - Extended Core Monitoring closer towards Core, so that the joining corridor is shorter, and so sieging is easier
  - Renamed Coolant Maintenance to Coolant Transfer
  - Shifted Coolant Transfer south, to put it closer to core, so that the joining corridor is shorter, and so that sieging is easier
  - Widened Cooland Transfer
  - Fixed all vis errors
  - Opened up the Repair Bay/Maintenance Corridors area a bit
  - Opened up Sleeping Area considerably (no more dead ends), and made navigation easier (flat ceiling etc)
  - Improved Sleeping Area visually slightly
  - Rerouted Life Support vent from Sleeping Area to N-Turn
  - Added a new room (with vent access) on the Eastern end of Engine Walkway to house a res node
  - Sbend reworked visually
  - Vent exit in Sbend changed to exit out of a small room off of Sbend
  - Added alot more infestation in the hives
  - Added crate at East exit of Marine Start, and moved MS RT slightly East
  - Fixed all the sinking structures problems associated with metal grates (apart from the ones in The Hub, as the structures are easily accessible anyway)
  - Fixed the bug where you could build structures on the antenae (spikes) outside the Communications window
  - Removed the water in Engineering Hall hive, and raised the broken floor so that you can step up it easily
  - Added a shielded area on the central structure in Core hive, and also lowered the hive
  - Widened the North and South corridor coming off of Core Monitoring
  - Made the 'donut' east of Gunpods more spacious (the central structure is considerably smaller now)
  - Deleted the Core Power -> Core Monitoring vent
  - Made the corridor entering Living Area from Life Support less convoluted and deleted the door so it is less confusing
  - Some minor r_speed optimisations here and there
• Updated ns_hera: (Thanks Merkaba!)
  - More MS tweaks - the glass walkway is now wider, and the entrance into the MS from this direction is now wide open.
  - Added a small window overlooking the corridor from Cargo, allowing marines to attack incoming aliens without fear of melee attacks. This has potential to make it hell for aliens, or just mildly annoying.
  - Extremely bright light in Northern Corridor is now a lot easier on the eyes.
  - Hopefully fixed the problem with wallwalking through the vent into Data Core hive.
  - Sticky light fixtures from MS -> Fog Corridor fixed.
  - Redesigned MS -> Cargo route to remove the marine-sized door bottleneck.
  - Added a weldable underneath the lift between MS-Cargo - welding brings the lift up and seals off that entrance.
  - Put in hint brushes in MS in an attempt (read: attempt!) to bring r-speeds down. It's better in general now, but still goes over 700 in spots.
  - Hopefully fixed the stuck-problems in ventilation. All the tunnels now have smooth surfaces allowing for Sasier skulk movement too.
  - Tweaked Ventilation Hive, main change being that skulks/lerks/gorges can walk across the area under the hive without having to jump over the...er...struts, or whatever they are.
  - Added a hole in the weldable grate in northern corridor, allowing skulks/lerks/jetpackers/fades through, and gorges + marines from one side only.
  - Extended vent from Archiving Hive to Northern Corridor so it has another exit above the RT in same corridor
  - Fixed the most minor of graphical artifacts in Reception (this was my fault and nothing to do with the wires texture or anything else)
  - Fixed HOM in Northern Corridor (Like I need to say that...)
  - Added a ladder in Holoroom leading up onto the balcony to cargo
  - Retextured Ventilation to an extent
  - Modified RT room in Processing so the RT is no longer blocked from view until you run around the centre computer console
  - More minor changes
• Updated ns_metal: (Thanks Quazilin!)
  - Made Marine start smaller
  - Fixed 2 location names
  - Added cover in the hallways near Storage D

Bugfixes:

• Players can now climb up ladders without having to face up or jump on to them (thanks Soylent Green!)
• Fixed loss of lastweapon information when user makes a redundant weapon selection
• Updated Light marine model, removes phantom shotgun cocking sound present in the models' sound calls
• Fixed a bug where a crouching player on an IP would not be killed
• Structures can no longer be dropped in vents in which they would sink
• Fixed bug where the Onos would not properly uncloak while charging
• Fixed bug where some items in the marine popupmenu ("Start", "Weapon", "Orders", "Comms", etc) would be disabled after exiting the command chair
• The shotgun now properly fires an empty click sound when under water and emptied
• Fixed bug where a dead player would not respawn while a key bound to a +command was depressed
• Releasing duck quickly after pressing it will no longer make the player bounce
• Improved client side alien attack animations.
• The installer no longer checks whether Steam is running or not, as it does no real harm if it is.

v3.05 beta 2 - June 10th, 2005

• Fixes the spectator related hitreg bug.
• Removed shotgun falloff. Shotgun damage falloff is bugged in 3.0.4 and even if it were fixed, it would impair an evaluation of the new hitbox code.

v3.05 beta 1 - June 5th, 2005

• This fix correctly rotates the models of the player so that the rendered model matches the hitbox. For example, in 3.0.4 a skulk on the wall will be difficult to hit because his model will be rotated on the marine's client but the hitboxes will not be rotated on the server.

v3.04 - June 1st, 2005

• Increased alien upgrade gestation time from two to three seconds.
• Doubled the marine's Light MachineGun starting reserve ammo to 100. (Classic Only)
• Doubled the marine's Pistol starting reserve ammo to 20. (Classic Only)
• Reduced time needed to research to adavanced armory from 180 to 160 seconds.
• Increased HeavyArmor research time from 100 to 110 seconds.
• Increased Jetpack research time from 50 to 60 seconds.
• Increased siege damage from 380 to 400.

v3.03 - April 27th, 2005

• +5 armor (each armour level is now +5) for LA and JP marines.
• 380 siege damage. (+50 siege damage from 3.0f)

v3.02 - April 4th, 2005

• Reduced observatory cost from 20 to 15.
• Increased observatory starting energy to 40.
• Reduced Armslab cost from 25 to 20.
• Reduced Phase Gate transportation throttle rate from 0.8 to 0.5 seconds per player.

v3.01 - March 11th, 2005

• Fixed choke issues experienced by the operators of larger servers. On our test servers, we saw performance improvements of more than 20%.
• Removed an exploit of the updated mapvote system
• Fixed a bug that hindered the commander from dropping structures on a specific occasion.

v3.0 (otherwise known as beta6) - March 5th, 2005

Gameplay changes

• Aliens have innate regeneration at a rate of 2% per second, this regeneration will always heal at least 1 point of health or armor and adds to healing from Defense Chambers or Hives, but doesn't 'stack' with Regeneration.
• Alien upgrades no longer cost resources.
• Gestating to skulk cost no resource points anymore.
• Sieges no longer damage players (damage against structures has been adjusted to stay consistent with previous versions).
• Turrets now priorise players over structures.
• Offense Chambers now priorise players over structures.
• Parasite now takes precedence over Scent of Fear on Hive Sight (allows players to see that their Parasite hit when using SOF to help teammates track enemies).
• Bile Bomb's range has been increased by 15%.
• Cat-pack cost has been reduced from 4 to 3 resource points.
• Marines near Sensory chambers show up as if detected by Scent of Fear.
• Acid rocket now does double damage to armor.
• Fades can now blink off ladders.

• Major changes to the alien cloaking upgrade:
  - Players moving faster than walking pace will gradually become more visible the faster they move, but only to a max visibility of 30%.
  - Players using Cloaking upgrade will no longer be fully visible at any time unless attacking or being attacked.
  - You have to wait 3 seconds after uncloaking before you begin to cloak again.
  - Turrets will not fire at slow moving aliens (-> players with less than 10% visibility).
  - Increased visibility for aliens moving at greater than normal moving speed (bunnyhopping, gliding, etc.).

• Changed Scan cost from 25 to 20 energy units.
• Changed default combat game time to 15 minutes.
• Combat scan is now triggered by partially cloaked aliens. Note: Scan 'fires' every 3 seconds, so there is a window in which a fast alien can still close the distance.
• Combat scan deploy time halved to 0.25 seconds.
• Alien flashlight tweaks: marines in the alien's field of view are now lit up just like friendly structures and players.
• Shotgun range begins to fall off at 500 units, and is then reduced by 1% for every 2 further units, resulting in no damage after 700 units, to stop shotgun sniping.
• Alien respawn time reduced for teams larger than 6. As the number of hives increase, this time is increased, so at 3 hives there is no difference from respawn rate at 6 players.
• Combat wavespawn now takes a 5 seconds plus 2 seconds for every dead player, up to a maximum of 13 seconds.

Game mechanics

• Fixed a bug that would lead to valid weapons being 'redded out' (showing up as disabled).
• Waypoint system changes:
  - Group waypoints will now act like personal waypoints for each player (so when you reach the waypoint, it disappears for you, while remaining for all other players).
  - Reduced the size of the waypoint icons slightly.
  - Added 'weld target at waypoint' support for players and structures.
  - Added 'defend target' support for players and structures.

• If you are within 600 units of a marine spawn location, you will not be transported in by Distress Beacon.
• Added 'notready' command to reverse ready status in tournament mode.
• Equipment, med-packs, ammo-packs, etc. can again be dropped directly on players.
• Allowed item placement near resource towers.
• Made scanner sweeps deployable everywhere.
• Added a build restriction radius of 16,50 units around marines.
• Fixed a bug where a hive could not be dropped over a chamber.
• Changed player minimum build distance to the structure from 20 to 30 units.
• Knife knockback has been removed.
• Knockback from attacks reduced to 1/3 for ducking players on the ground.
• Tweaked xenocide/gore pushback behavior to eliminate weird flying marines and deaths by worldspawn.
• Limited how fast a player can re-join a team from readyroom. 3 seconds must pass before re-joining the game.
• Players no longer join a team in the 'dead' state.
• Recycling IP now triggers change of marine status in queue.
• A Phase Gate bug that allowed for the fast transportation of numerous marines has been fixed.
• Each Phase Gate now throttles the rate at which marines depart from it - One marine every 0.8 seconds.
• 'Pancake' prevention code. Limit on vertical component of lerk flight velocity to maximally 1000 units per tick upwards and 1200 down.
• Mines now do damage when the player who planted them leaves the team.
• You can no longer scan for free using hotgroups on observatories.
• Fixed bug where resupply wasn't effective for HMG or pistol. A resupplied weapon will never reload to less than a full clip.
• Changed the health bar around structures to more acurately reflect its health. Full bar is now exactly 100% health, empty bar is 0%.
• Reset room_type to 0 after being digested to avoid sound issue.
• Fixed bug that makes dead marines show up with a red health segment in the healthbar.
• Commander hints will not play if cl_autohelp is set to 0.
• Recycling observatories will no longer uncloak aliens.
• Set minimum time for alien gestations to one second to avoid instant gestation in combat.
• Fixed the 'research transfer' exploit.
• Fixed the 'late join timer' exploit.
• Fixed exploit where structures could be dropped near marines in water to avoid building restrictions.
• Hive Sight no longer draws the player we are spectating.

Cosmetic changes:

• New medpack (thanks Brigadierwolf!).
• New ammo clips (thanks Brigadierwolf!).
• New hand grenade (thanks Brigadierwolf!).
• Added Heavy Armor falling sound.
• Gave each alien a unique landing sound.
• Updated Jetpack sound.
• Updated LMG clip out and clip in sounds.
• Updated Pistol reload sounds.
• Reverted LMG firing sound back to sound from beta 4.
• Updated welder idle sound to be more obvious when not welding anything.
• Replaced raindrop sprites.
• Added a "player joined team" messages to HUD.
• Team join sounds now only play for the team joined.
• Increased volume of welder hiss when target is not being welded.
• Updated cat-pack commander menu icons to provide a consistent interface.
• Friendly parasited players no longer show up in hive sight, and are no longer notified that they are parasited (Parasite still does FF damage though).
• Added a separate sprite for parasited enemy structures (thanks gazz0zz!).
• Hive locations now always appears on Hive Sight.
• Unbuilt hives use a different sprite for easy detection.
• Commander Station always shows as closed in combat maps.
• Changed Hive Sight sprites to be better discernable for color-blind players (thanks JazzX!).
• Implemented third person reload animations.
• Added slightly tweaked xenocide charge and explosion sounds.
• Animations for the egg model now play, they were broken.
• New medpack skin and icons (thanks Supernorn!)
• Added all-new hivehealth indicators for the alien HUD.
• alien_hivedying2.wav now plays.
• Recycling Phase Gates are no longer visually active.
• Phase Gates don't light up until they have a valid destination.
• Included cool colored minimaps (thanks JazzX!).
• Updated tooltips.
• Jetpacked marines now show up as 'JETPACK' on the scoreboard.
• Unavailable alien upgrades are now grayed out in the pop-up menu.
• Voice comms can now be used during game start.
• Added a new, sanely-sized bilebomb model.

Map changes:

• Added co_niveus by drath
• Added ns_eon by Olmy
• co_angst
  - Completely reworked center area of map
  - Increased brightness in landing gear zone
  - Fixed several onos stuck issues
  - Various other changes around the map
• co_core (updates by Merkaba)
  - New ready room
  - New light in hive
  - New vent between hive area and upper marine start exit
• co_daimos
  - Full visual rework
• co_faceoff
  - Widened vents near marine start
  - Changed geometry behind comm chair to be more accessible
  - Hive can no longer be shot by jetpackers sitting in the side vents
  - Fixed performance issues
• co_pulse
  - Added a ramp to the hive room
• co_sava
  - Increased brightness level
  - Added cover in most rooms
  - Added more vents
  - Reworked the hive room
  - Tweaked some areas to allow easier Onos movement
• ns_altair
  - Added vent from Omega to Zeta with two exits into Phi
  - Massive Optimizations
  - New Surface Umbilical
  - Redid Upper MS
  - New Monitor Textures by Samejima
  - Covered up pit in Omega
  - Custom minimap with vents marked in red
  - Removed Diving Tanks
  - Connected Nanite Regulation to Settling Tanks
  - Connected Settling Tanks to Communications
  - Retextured Vents to be easier to distinguish
  - Removed door weldable
  - Added new vent weldables
  - Moved Parts Room rt to Sigma Test Site
  - Added new info_locations to help with navigation
  - Played with HLRAD settings to increase brightness
  - Added more light into sewer
  - Combined Station Monitoring and Sub Bay nodes into one
  - Divided sub bay into two rooms, Sub Bay and Sub Refueling
  - Removed upper hallway between Life Support and Parts Room
  - Reopened route between Lower Sub Bay and Parts room
• ns_bast
  - The broken door in MS is now closed
  - Marines have to go through Main Aft again to get to Engine
  - Added infestation in Refinery to block the line of sight to the hive from the ramp entrance
  - Added some cover in Refinery
  - Reworked and renamed Docking Storage (it's called Reactor Core Regulation now)
  - Removed one node from Atmospheric Processing
  - Moved column in Atmospheric Processing more to the center
  - Added vent from Engine to Water Treatment
  - Added vent between Feedwater and Steam Generation
  - Widened the corridor outside feedwater
• ns_eclipse
  - Redesigned marine spawn to a 1.0 / 3.0 mix
  - Moved horseshoe RT to T-junction
  - Added new vents to KeyHole
  - Moved maintenance RT
  - Added pillars to eclipse hive to prevent spawn camping
  - Made it easier to get on top of eclipse hive
  - Added vent from eclipse -> triad
  - Redesigned power sub junction
• ns_hera
  - Moved data core delta node into hive room
  - General bug fixes/cosmetic improvements
  - Onos can now leave through back door of delta hive (oops!).
  - Outside now has proper light level
  - Restricted movement outside even more so gorges can't build on tube
  - Skulks cannot climb the cliff walls or sky anymore. (might be slightly unaccurate
  - skulks are still able to stick to the ceiling but only if they manage to get through a trigger_push pushing them away with a force of 2000 units.)
  - Hanger bay doors now openable/closable (again). Added a twist whereby for a short moment (3 secs) when opening/closing, onoses aren't able to pass through.
  - A few general clipnode improvements
  - Minimap Sprite updated (sorry for not including that before)
  - Removed Systems and Fog Corridor nodes.
  - Fog Corridor now has a weld to turn on lights
  - Made the CC area more open/acessible to help alien attacks.
  - Minor bug fixes
  - Lighting returned to previous states
  - Fixed marine start door
• ns_metal
  - General updates
• ns_nothing
  - Sped up and fixed all elevators
  - Elevators can no longer be permanently blocked by players or structures
  - Widened most vents
  - Fixed several ladders to improve Onos navigability
  - Fixed railings in Ominous Kismet and improved general navigability of the area
  - Several trivial bug fixes
• ns_tanith
  - Fixed ramp in Central Access tunnels
  - Added structures to Waste and Satcom hives to reduce spawncamping
  - Added a vent between Satcom and Acidic Solution resource node
  - Fixed bugs with ceiling architecture in Fusion Reactor hive
• ns_veil
  - Fixed cargo -> double res vent
  - Added cover to outside of cargo
  - Changes to vent from dome/pipeline -> cargo
  - Redesigned pipeline hive
  - c12 connections changed
  - Redesigned areas directly surrounding pipeline
  - Visual changes to marine spawn
  - Vent from pipeline -> c12

v3.0 beta 6 build 5 - February 25th, 2005

• Added a cooldown for cloak. You have to wait 3 seconds after uncloaking before you begin to cloak again.
• Fixed bug that makes dead marines show up with 1 red health segment in the healthbar.
• Tweaked xenocide/gore pushback behavior to eliminate weird flying marines and cratering (WIP).
• Limits how fast a player can re-join a team from readyroom. 3 seconds must pass before re-joining the game.
• Included cool coloured minimaps from JazzX.
• Fixed bug where a dead IP would not reset its respawn queue
• Commander hints will not play if cl_autohelp is set to 0
• ns_metal
  - General updates
• ns_veil
  - Reverted to the earliest version without clipping issues.
• co_daimos
  - Full visual rework
• ns_eon
  - Made some minor aesthetic improvements.
• co_core
  - made the new vent wider
• ns_hera
  - minor bug fixes
  - lighting returned to previous states
  - fixed ms door
• ns_altair
  - extended rim around water in Submarine Bay to connect the doorway in the northeast corner with the eastern platform
  - combined two nodes to one in the center of the map
  - moved node in Settling Tanks closer to MS (back to its former location)
  - re-opened wall near Settling Tanks to allow faster travel between MS and the southern hive
• co_sava
  - General Updates

v3.0 beta 6 build 4 - February 21st, 2005

• Combat scan deploy time halved to 0.25
• Combat scan is now triggered by partially cloaked aliens. Note: Scan 'fires' every 3 seconds, so there is a window in which a fast alien can still close the distance.
• Alien flashlight tweaks: Marines in the alien's field of view are now lit up just like friendly structures and players.
• Hive drop check fix redux.
• Changed the health bar around structures to more acurately reflect its health. Full bar is now exactly 100% health, empty bar is 0%.
• Reset room_type to 0 after being digested to avoid sound issue.
• Recycling phasegates are no longer visually active.
• Fixed small bug from last revision where recycling wouldn't show on the health bar.
• Recycling IP now triggers change of marine status in queue.
• Knockback reduced to 1/3 for ducking players on the ground.
• Modified hive health sprite to indicate damaged hive at 99% health.
• Alien_hivedying2.wav now plays.

• Updated ns_eclipse
• Updated ns_veil
• Updated ns_nothing

• Changes to bast:
  - Fixed horrible stuck issues in Refinery (two of them)
  - Fixed not being able to wall-run on Feedwater-Tram tunnel vents
  - Sped up MS door (that one that leads to atmos)
  - Added vent from engine to water treatment
  - Fixed LoS issue in Engine hive
  Known issues:
  - New stuck issue in refinery in the pipe near the Water Treatment entrance
  - Minimap isn't fully shown (the new vent gets cut off)
  - The new vent out of engine is VERY dark at some points

• co_sava Aesthetical fixes
• ns_altair v7d (2/14/05)
  - Played with HLRAD compile settings a bit
  - Added a few new lights to sewer
  - Misc detail to parts room and Station Monitoring
  - Small tweek to fix minimap glitch till I have time to do a full sprite again
  - Added new vent weldables

• Changes to hera
  - Outside now has proper light level
  - Restricted movement outside even more so gorges can't build on tube
  - Skulks cannot climb the cliff walls or sky anymore. (might be slightly unaccurate
  - skulks are still able to stick to the ceiling but only if they manage to get through a trigger_push pushing them away with a force of 2000 units.)
  - Hanger bay doors now openable/closable (again). Added a twist whereby for a short moment (3 secs) when opening/closing, onoses aren't able to pass through.
  - A few general clipnode improvements
  - Minimap Sprite updated (sorry for not including that before)
  - Removed Systems and Fog Corridor nodes.
  - Fog Corridor now has a weld to turn on lights
  - Made the CC area more open/acessible to help alien attacks.

• co_core changes
  - New light in hive
  - Widened new vent

v3.0 beta 6 build 3 - February 12th, 2005

• Changed structure build restriction radius from 60 to 30 units (Means that you can now drop multiple structures within viewing range of each other.).
• Changed player build restriction radius from 25 to 16.50 units (Should reduce the amount of marines-standing-in-the-way to the bare minimum, makes medpack and ammo dropping easier.)
• Changed Scan cost from 25 to 20 energy units.
• Scan exploit fix improved.
• Fixed a bug where a hive could not be dropped over a chamber.
• Team join sounds now only play for the team joined.
• Fixed bug where resupply wasn't effective for HMG or pistol. A resupplied weapon will never reload to less than a full clip.
• Added all-new hivehealth indicators for the alien HUD. We had a so far unduplicable issue with this in an early test, please report irregularities in the forums.
• Replaced the old parasited structure sprite (thanks, gazz0zz!).
• Changed default combat game time to 15 minutes.

• Updated co_core. It now actually has a RR.
• Updated ns_eon
  - Lowered Marine Start roof considerably, and added a cc alcove.
  - Small aesthetic changes to N-Turn.
  - Centre console in Core Monitoring to reduce line of sight.
  - Vents rearranged in Core Monitoring to help aliens and a new vent added.
  - Vent in Core Power moved as part of the vent rearrangement.
  - New space added to Engineering Hive to increase space for spawn points and add more cover, and just make it cooler.
  - Other minor adjustments to Engineering Hive.
  - Removed vent doors from Bridge Hive, while blocking line of sight to hive created by their removal.
  - Increased usefulness of bridge vents (one exits from the cieling, the other is higher), and removed stickiness on one vent exit.
  - Decreased Bridge Hive vent weld time from 60 seconds to 20 seconds.
  - Increased lift speed from 70 to 90.
  - Fixed onos stuck issue at Core Monitoring.

• Updated ns_altair
  - Moved Parts Room RT to Sigma Test Site
  - Added new info_locations to help navigation and direction
  - Split up Life Support info_location
  - Split up Sub Bay info_location
  - Removed weldable door
  - Reopened path between Sub Bay and Parts Room
  - Moved some alien spawns into Life Support instead of being a bit outside the hive room.

v3.0 beta 6 build 2 - January 31st, 2005

• Fades can blink off ladders.
• Recycling observatories won't uncloak aliens.
• Players only beacon in if they are more than 600 units away from all spawn points.
• Reverted to beta5 hitboxes to get a lead on the hitbox issues.
• Fixed cloaking bugs (lerks no longer cloak when gliding quickly, etc.).
• Increased visibility for aliens moving at greater than normal moving speed (bunnyhopping, gliding, etc.).
• Mines now damage normally when the player leaves the team.
• More tweaks to pancake capping.
• New medpack skin and icons from Supernorn (thanks!).

• Updated ns_eon
• Updated ns_bast
• Updated co_sava
• Updated ns_altair - build 7
  - Added vent from Omega to Zeta with two exits into Phi
  - Added vent from Muck Pump to Parts Room RT
  - Rspeed optimizations
  - Adjustments to Surface Umbilical to reduce LOS
  - Adjustments to MS top entrance
  - New monitor textures by Samejima
  - Covered up pit in Omega
  - More details
  - Removed Diving tanks and connected Nanite Regulation and Settling tanks
  - Rerouted path from Settling tanks into Communications
  - Moved weldable to Muck Pump
  - Optimized Sub Bay
  - Moved node from outside Parts room into parts room

v3.0 beta 6 build 1 - January 9th, 2005

Gameplay changes

• Aliens have innate regeneration at a rate of 2% per second, this regeneration will always heal at least 1 point of health or armor and stacks with DC or hive healing, but doesn't 'stack' with Regeneration.
• Alien upgrades cost 0 resources.
• Gestating to skulk costs 0 resources.
• Sieges no longer damage players.
• Siege now does 330 Damage.
• Turrets now prioritize players over structures.
• Offense Chambers now priorities players over structures.
• Parasite now takes precedence over Scent of Fear image (allows players to see that their Parasite hit when using SOF to help teammates track enemies).
• Bile Bomb's range has been increased by 15%.
• Cat-pack cost has been reduced from 4 to 3.
• Marines near Sensory chambers show up as if detected by Scent of Fear.
• Acid rocket now does double damage to armor.

Game mechanics

• Hitbox code has been much improved, so shooting through the legs of an Onos will miss, while shots on edges of models will now hit.
• Players using Cloaking upgrade will no longer be fully visible at any time unless attacking or being attacked.
• Players moving faster than walking pace will gradually become more visible the faster they move, but only to a max visibility of 30%.
• Turrets will not fire at aliens with less than 10% visibility.
• Clicking on an enemy structure (visible, non-visible and cloaked) gives a 'move to' waypoint.
• Shotgun range begins to fall off at 500 units, and is then reduced by 1% for every 2 further units, resulting in 0 damage after 700 units, to stop shotgun sniping.
• If you are within 600 units of marine start, you will not be transported in by Distress Beacon.
• Group waypoints will now act like personal waypoints for each player (so when you reach the waypoint, it disappears for you, while remaining for all other players).
• Alien respawn time reduced for teams larger than 6. As the number of hives increase, this time is increased, so at 3 hives there is no difference from respawn rate at 6 players.
• Combat wavespawn now takes a 5 seconds plus 2 seconds for every dead player, up to a maximum of 13 seconds.
• Added 'notready' command to reverse ready status in tournament mode.
• Fixed exploit where structures could be dropped near marines in water to avoid building restrictions.
• Equipment, med-packs, ammo-packs, etc. can again be dropped directly on players.
• Knife knockback has been removed.
• Players no longer join a team in the 'dead' state.
• Phasegate bug that allowed for the fast transportation of numerous marines has been fixed.
• Changed player min build distance from 20 to 30.
• Pancake prevention code. Flapping no longer adds lift after speed exceeds about 900 ( or 1000 with celerity ). This seems to work well, forward movement is as normal, and diving is as normal.> o Pancake prevention code. Flapping no longer adds lift after speed exceeds about 900 ( or 1000 with celerity ). This seems to work well, forward movement is as normal, and diving is as normal.

Cosmetic changes:

• Added Heavy Armor falling sound.
• Gave each Alien a unique landing sound.
• Updated Jetpack sound.
• Updated LMG clip out and clip in sounds.
• Updated Pistol reload sounds.
• Reverted LMG firing sound back to sound from beta 4.
• Updated welder idle sound to be more obvious when not welding anything.
• Replaced raindrop sprites.
• Added a "player joined team" messages to HUD.
• Updated cat-pack commander menu icons to provide a consistent interface.
• Friendly parasited players no longer show up in hive sight, and are no longer notified that they are parasited (Parasite still does FF damage though).
• Added a seperate sprite for parasited enemy structures (placeholder graphics).
• Hive locations always appears on Hive Sight.
• Unbuilt hives use a different sprite for easy detection.
• Commander Station always shows as closed in combat maps.
• Changed Hivesight sprites to be better discernable for colorblind players (Thanks Jazz!).
• Partly implemented third person reload animations.
• Added slightly tweaked xenocide charge and explosion sounds.
• Animations for egg now play, they were broken

Map changes:

• co_faceoff
  - Widened vents near marine start
  - Changed geometry behind comm chair to be more accessible
  - Hive can no longer be shot by jetpackers sitting in the side vents
• co_pulse
  - Added a ramp to the hive room
• co_sava
  - Increased brightness
  - Added cover in various rooms
  - Reworked hive room to increase alien-friendliness
  - Added several vents
  - Increased brightness level
  - Added more cover for aliens
  - Tweaked some areas to allow easier Onos movement
• co_angst
  - Completely reworked center area of map
  - Increased brightness in landing gear zone
  - Fixed several onos stuck issues
  - Various other changes around the map
• Added co_niveus
• Added co_ether

• ns_tanith
  - Fixed ramp in Central Access tunnels
  - Added structures to Waste and Satcom hives to reduce spawncamping
  - Added a vent between Satcom and Acidic Solution resource node
  - Fixed bugs with cieling architecture in Fusion Reactor hive
• ns_ayumi
  - Gorge's Hideout and Oxygen resource towers removed
  - Windows in Cold Turn and Hamasaki Hive are now breakable
  - Fixed some snag spots in Eastern Entrance
  - Change entrance to AE35 so Onos can fit
  - Fixed spelling mistakes and invisible ledges
• ns_altair
  - Increased lighting variation and brightened up overly dark rooms
  - Various texturing fixes and improvements
  - Reworked geometry slightly in various rooms
  - Added vent between Omega Site, Phi Test Site, and Zeta Corridor
• ns_eclipse
  - Recreated Marine Start as a mixture between 1.0x and 2.0x versions and removed doors
  - Moved Power Subjunction, Horseshoe, and Maintenance resource nodes
  - Redesigned some hallways
  - Vent from Horseshoe to Marine Start removed
  - Various bug fixes
• ns_veil
  - Moved Emergency Nozzle C-12
  - Redesigned Pipeline hive
  - Added cover to east exit from Cargo hive
  - Fixed vents from Cargo to Nanogrid monitoring
  - Various bug fixes
• ns_bast
  - The broken door in MS is now closed
  - Marines have to go through Main Aft again to get to Engine (fixes the 15 second run)
  - Added infestation in Refinery to block the massive line of sight to the hive
  - Added cover in Refinery in a desperate attempt to make the hive more alien-friendly (and someone somehow convinced me to do it)
  - Reworked and renamed Docking Storage (it's called Reactor Core Regulation now)
• ns_nothing
  - Sped up and fixed all elevators
  - Elevators can no longer be permanently blocked by players or structures
  - Widened most vents
  - Fixed several ladders to improve Onos navigability
  - Fixed railings in Ominous Kismet and improved general navigability of the area
  - Several trivial bug fixes
• Added ns_eon
• Added ns_mineshaft

v3.0 beta 5 - September 4th, 2004

Gameplay changes:

• Players who issue the 'kill' command in console cannot restart the timer by issuing 'kill' again
• Commander can now click on switches to activate a door or elevator.
• "slowresearch" cheat now slows down recycling of buildings.
• Alien attacks apply a reduced knock-back effect. If a player is in the air and receives knockback damage the effect is 50% of what it was in beta 4a, if the player is in Heavy Armor (HA) the knockback is reduced an additional 50%.
• Changed knockback of Skulk Bite from 300 to 225.
• Increased jetpack maneuverability, jetpackers are now immune to stomp, and carried items/ammo affect lift less
• Knockback never affects friendly players.
• Parasite and Xenocide now get damage boosts from primal scream.
• Weapons reload exploit fixed.
• Marines are prevented from putting anything but Resource Towers on Resource nozzles.
• Reduced time it takes to throw hand-grenades (thanks BrigadierWolf!)
• Changed hand grenade so it is thrown gently when crouched.
• Movement chamber range increased from 400 to 500.
• Alien resource nodes don't play gurgling sounds until a minute into the game. (prevents commander from listening for starting hive)
• Movement chamber energy bonus increased from 10% to 25%.
• Changed healing spray effectiveness vs. players: changed from 16 to 13 + 4% of target max health. (both for healing friendly players and attacking enemy players)
• Increased Gorge armor from 40 to 50.
• Increased Onos carapace armor bonus from 150 to 350. (makes it closer 50% like all the other aliens)
• Changed hand grenade physics to make them more effective at attacking indirectly.
• Increased redemption chance from 35% per second to 45% per second. (still happens when at or below 40% health)
• Increased spit damage from 25 to 30.
• Grenade launcher cost lowered from 20 to 15.
• Ammo packs now drop when a weapons is dropped (intentionally or upon death)

Combat Specific Gameplay changes:

• Aliens always respawn as skulk, even if they were previously a higher lifeform.
• Dying with a larger lifeform gives you back the points spent on it.
• Unchained alien lifeforms, like regular NS:
  - Gorge costs 1 level
  - Lerk costs 2 levels
  - Fade costs 3 levels
  - Onos costs 4 levels
• Lifeform evolution times set to a smaller percentage of those in regular NS.
• Aliens can now only choose a lifeform once per life in Combat.
• Players spawn in waves, with a maximum wave size of 5 players
• A wave starts when there is no wave in progress and a player dies
• The wave finishes when 5 seconds + (number of dead players - 1)*4.5 seconds have elapsed.

Game mechanics changes:

• In NS:Combat, all weapon and armor upgrades will now be correctly assigned to the user who upgraded for them.
• When devolving from a higher alien lifeform to a lower lifeform it was possible to have 0 health but still be "alive". This has been corrected so you start with the correct health/armor for that class .
• Aliens no longer take negative damage (gain the damage back as health) when they have 4 or more hives.
• Parasite flag is now removed from players when they die instead of when they spawn.
• Aliens who are healing while evolving will emerge healed to the correct percentage. (Also goes for damage while evolving)
• Fixed flashlight so it’s no longer possible to run out of energy.
• Players can no longer enter a Comm Chair while it's recycling.
• Aliens can now evolve on slopes without having to jump.
• Fixed problem with alien regeneration, where aliens could sometimes get more health than they were supposed to.
• Alien players should now be able to always evolve provided there is enough room.
• Blast effect from Onos gore and Xenocide no longer affect teammates.
• Build circle restrictions no longer remain for mapper placed buildings that are destroyed.
• Fixed the bug with the ‘startbuilt’ flag for mapper placed offense chambers, they will now be fully functional when the round starts.
• Motion tracking blips no longer show on minimap when there are no more observatories.
• Fixed bug where players dropping straight into water are invulnerable.
• Turrets now track and fire at underwater aliens.
• OCs will no longer fire at digesting players.
• Walking aliens no longer uncloak while strafing or if they have upgraded to celerity.
• Resolved issues with the Phase Gate headroom checking routine.
• Multiple buildings can no longer be placed on the same physical ground-level location.
• All non-standard weapons (including LMG) dropped upon death.
• Tweaked the way gestation space checking works.
• Improved the way deployment of Phase Gates is handled (code-side).
• Issue with grenades being selected when you drop your other weapons resolved.

Cosmetic changes:

• The sound when an alien building is placed only plays if the building is successfully placed.
• Visual reference of a parasite will now be removed when a mapper placed building is destroyed.
• Known issue resolved where 'needs health' message was being spammed due to variable inconsistencies.
• Added new shotshell.mdl for shotgun ejection
• Aliens will no longer show up on motion tracking if they are dead.
• Use key has been disabled for commanders. (prevents phantom use sounds playing)
• Added new jetpack sounds
• Fixed bug where the hive take-damage animation interrupted itself
• Added new NSGuide icon (from amarc)
• lastinv no longer plays sound when used.
• Welder redone, its now possible to tell when you're not welding, welding or finished welding, just by listening to the sound.
• Alerts now play when a 'friendly' gorge attacks a building with FF on.
• Silence upgrade now prevents the primal scream response from players if they have silence.
• Added an offset shotgun crosshair, which correctly represents the center of the damage field for the current shotgun.
• Digesting sounds are now affected by the silence upgrades.
• It is no longer possible to place/keep a waypoint on a cloaked alien.
• Fixed a bug that stopped the sound that normally plays when an aliens spends points from playing.
• Hand Grenade no longer plays the same sound for different actions.
• Tweaked hand grenade sounds from MaDMaXX.
• New hand grenade model from BrigadierWolf.
• Motion tracking blips no longer appear on aliens that you can directly see.
• Digesting players no longer show up on SoF or Parasite.
• Digesting a jetpacker removes their ability to “fly” so trails won’t be seen.
• Phantom Phase Gate sounds will no longer play.
• Long server names will be truncated gracefully as opposed to abruptly on the scoreboard.
• Correct arm models will now be displayed when exiting the command chair as HA.
• Improved animation for hand grenade, including synching up grenade creation with throw.
• Aliens now display the correct amount of res they actually have. It was being shown (24/99) even though you had 25/100.
• Score is now calculated correctly for weighted kills.
• Lowered chat text visually on-screen.
• New ammo pack models

Server Changes:

• Game directory changed from "nsp" back to "ns", now that nearly everyone has moved to the beta
• STEAMIDs now appear on all applicable log messages.
• Updated method of locking cvars to be more efficient.
• Added missing newline character in log message.
• Fixed log messages for "Game reset started" and "Game reset complete" from sometimes having weird characters.
• Locked r_detailedtextures to 0 to prevent exploits.
• Changed mp_limitteams default from 2 to 1 (in server.cfg and listenserver.cfg)
• Added some sprites to mp_consistency precache.
• Numents and entityinfo commands now work with sv_cheats set to 1.
• Changed Linux development platform to gcc-3.2.

Client Changes (non-gameplay related):

• Removed ex_interp from cvar locks.
• Added lightgamma to locked cvars. Value cannot be set below 2.0.

Changes for those who Mod NS:

• Code for Chat box now sends strings as a single argument rather than multiple arguments.

Spectator changes:

• Spectators should be able to see cloaked alien buildings when spectating in first person.

Map Changes:

• Added ns_altair by KungFuDiscoMonkey
• Added co_sava by Mendasp
• Updated ns_nancy from Lazer
  - New route to Mother Interface. It's experimental right now and will probably changed around later.
  - Some corridor spacing issues resolved (example: Onos can not leave Mother without ducking)
  - Double door bug FIXED
• Updated ns_metal
  - More infestation/Tweaks
  - Optimized surface access
  - Fixed 3 build exploits
  - Removed weldable pipe (shortcut)
  - Added bulges in vents to allow passing
  - Lowered cieling in MS
  - Ladder weldable moved to Storage D promenade
  - Added resource node to Surface Access
  - Moved heating room resource to north end of room
• Updated ns_agora
  - Added two missing sounds
• Updated ns_bast
  - Reduced size of the vent on top of feedwater so marines have to crouch
  - Fixed button on the Engine Door
  - Fixed a lot of areas where the comm shouldn't build (this includes all the weird feedwater spots)
  - Raised Feedwater hive to avoid exploits and making the access to the vent easier
  - Moved the Feedwater resource a bit so you can get behind it
  - Moved engine and added a second exit to the hive
  - Moved the res outside of Refinery to Water treatment
  - Made the revolving door unusable (like the one on the other side)
  - Lowered Marine Spawn closer to the cargo level and removed the elevator
  - Added new area between the Marine Spawn and the Engine corridor
  - Moved the new res on the bottom of the main aft lift closer to Tram Tunnel.
  - Reduced excessive brightness in some areas (lights over the nodes, feedwater, marine spawn)
  - Added vent between Feedwater and Tram Tunnel
  - Tweaked the Tram so the Onos can fit without crouching
  - Fixed strange clipping holes and errors (this includes some stuck issues too)
  - Added lights to the underwater tunnel
  - Added vent in Refinery
• Updated ns_hera
  - Added missing titles
  - Added a resource node in north-west corner of the map, by the weld to the rock cavity.
  - Removed a node from Holoroom
  - Removed ground path from Cargo to Holoroom
  - Added in a balcony overlooking the Holoroom, accessible from the upper level of Cargo.
  - Moved the node in Cargo back to it's original place - down in the pit beneath the door.
  - Re-routed Maintenance Access' Cargo exit to beside the cargo life next to MS. (Just so the exit doesn't come out at the resource node)
  - Enlarged the general area around the CC, as well as fixed the getting stuck problem around it.
  - Fixed being able to see into the vent hive as commander with no marines around.
  - Added a vent between Archiving hive and North Corridor (heralocation_ncorridor).
  - Added a vent from broken security door to Cargo lift.
• Updated co_core
  - Enlarged marine start
  - Fixed small clipping\clipnode errors
  - Decreased water in hive room
  - Reduced overall elevation changes
  - Broke up line of sight in south hive exit
  - Enlarged hive room slightly
  - Decreased line-of-sight to hive from northeast hallway
  - Several minor geometry changes and fixes
• Updated co_ulysses
  - Fixed bug in Hive ramp
  - Changed and added detail at Cargo Bay, Marine Spawn and Hive.
  - Added a new window to space at Cargo Hive.
  - Modified some lights along the map to make it more atmospheric
• Updated co_daimos
  - fixed stuck issue in Lower Sewer (bug #0000590)
  - grates can now be shot through (bug #0000692)
  - added a vent from Hive Area to Upper Tram to allow Alien to fall into the Marines' back there.
  - added a vent from Hive Area to Exactly above the PG welding point.
• Updated ns_lost
  - Fixed crashing problems
  - Marine start redesigned to eliminate the CC pit
  - "Closet" resource node removed
  - Several weldable vents added
  - Window to siege room in Equilibrium now breakable
  - Los Paranoias resource node removed
  - Added a resource node on Beta Deck
  - Reworked weldable into Alpha Continuum hive
  - Fixed anomalous flooring outside Eternal Requiem
  - Fixed several exploit build areas

v3.0 beta 4a - May 2nd, 2004

• Combat changes:
  - Aliens no longer grow in experience over time (we didn't have time to test this properly last week)
  - There is now a time limit (like old Combat builds!), which by default is 10 minutes. Aliens automatically win after time expires, or if they take out the CC. Marines win by taking out the hive.
  - This time limit can be adjusted using mp_combattime
  - Moved game timer off of scoreboard and onto HUD
  - When there is less then a minute left, the game time readout blinks (both Combat and NS/tournament mode)
  - Focus cost increased from 1 to 2 levels
  - Because marines lose if timelimit is reached, sped marine spawning by 1 second to compensate
• Fixed demo recording crash
• Improved server performance (for programmers: we built using a debug version of STLport by accident). There may still be a problem with escalating pings we're still looking into.
• Reduced umbra power so it now blocks 1 out of 2 bullets (down from 2 out of 3)
• Grenades no longer teleport into the void before exploding when they are shot into vents (bug #530)
• Abbreviated "Natural Selection" in Steam server list so it's easier to filter by version
• Removed mp_gametime server variable as it is no longer needed
• Fixed gamma problems on map change for maps that didn't specify an env_gamma (usually custom maps)
• Fixed exploit where weapons can be nearly instantly reloaded (bug #334)
• Fixed bug where death messages overlapped spectator UI
• Rewritten structure collision detection from XP-Cagey should mean many less sinking items!
• Lerk flight costs energy again (1/2 the energy cost of beta 3)
• Fixed missing textures in beta 4 (goodbye random pink-checkerboards)
• Removed consistency checking of unnecessary files (mp_consistency 1) (thanks mahnsawce!) (bug #297)
• Updated ns_nancy (helpful for CAL)
  - You should no longer be able to siege Port/Subspace without spotting it.
  - In an attempt to add a little more balance to the map the vent outside of Port has been turned into a hallway and the stairs to Mother Interface from Messhall were removed.
  - Added a couple crates in the Mother Interface area for cover.
  - Removed unnecessary side room in the Marine Start area. All it did was add a chance of the commander spawning way too far from the CC and had no game purpose.
  - Misc. other smaller changes
• sv_restart now works with cheats on (so you can execute it via rcon by setting cheats first)
• Equipment is now easier to drop on players, buildings can no longer be dropped on players.
• Fixed bug where multiple res towers were allowed to be dropped on the same node (appeared in early versions of 4a)
• Rewrote EntityInfo and NumEnts printout formats to make them more useful to mappers.
  - EntityInfo was reporting the first N entity slots of information instead of the first N valid entities.
  - Marked several types of entities (player slots, bodyque, weapons) as "dynamic" - - for now at least, they don't count towards the mapping limit.

v3.0 beta 4 - April 23rd, 2004

• Combat changes
• Removed wave spawn to shorten game length (only one person spawning at a time).
• Increased unlock hive ability 3 cost from 1 to 2
• Bast is back!! Completely-remade ns_bast, with much better server performance/pings (thanks Mendasp and the entire crew!)
• ns_metal update from Quazilin (update 10)
  - New "Supply way"
  - Smaller "Storage D"
  - New res
  - More infestation/Tweaks
  - Added steam bursts with sfx
• Lerk gestation time lowered from 28 to 20 seconds
• Fixed bug where player angles weren't set properly on spawn (bug # 559, thanks XP-Cagey!)
• Phase 1 of the Big Unannounced System
• Fixed bug where joysticks weren't able to rotate the player view (thanks XP-Cagey!)
• Fixed voice comm labels so they can be read more easily (always black text).
• Changed commander voice comm label to white to differentiate him (soldiers are blue).
• Reduced number of entities in ns_tanith from 394 to 264 for improved server performance (thanks tommyd!)
• No longer play client-side sparks or bullet impact particles on client when shotgun pellets hit a player or water (graphical bug only)
• Fixed bug where lone marines tended to spawn at some spawns more then others (Combat)
• Fixed bug where pop-up menu costs weren't visible for alien players (NS mode, bug #471)
• Removed unneeded HL commands (third-person camera exploit, timerefresh, gl_monolights, gl_overbright, gl_clear, cl_nosmooth, cl_smoothtime). Bug #101.
• Fixed bug where marines could phase to a recycling phase gate (bug #554)
• Final version of ns_agora (thanks Kawak!)
  - Added more covers in Tunnel and Cargo
  - Added new vents
  - New Sewer Hive and New "Main Generator" (so there is some changes in the layout for this side of the map)
  - Added a ladder near "Freight Elevator Access" , but Marines need to weld a door to acces it.
  - The vent leading to "The Wedge" from tunnel is now weldable.
  - Fixed "Onos getting stuck" in "The Pit"
  - Added/modified lots of little things here and there..

• Removed energy cost for lerk flight (to encourage flight while using abilities)
• Lag no longer allows exploit where research is done on wrong building / current comm chair can no longer be recycled (bug# 199)
• New welder, machine gun, pistol, hmg, metabolize and shotty sounds from MadMaxx
  - Tweak welder ROF for variety
  - Hand grenade sounds

• Improved HLTV support. Blips still aren't drawing on the overview map, and some of the UI controls don't work very well, but it should be useable. More to come.

• Updated ns_eclipse (thanks KungFuSquirrel!)
  - New vent added between South Loop/Maintenance Vent and Keyhole
  - New vent added between South Loop and Computer Core
  - New weldable added on South Loop/Computer Core vent
  - Old Triad pits/effects restored
  - Old skylights near marine spawn restored
  - Restored ns_eclipse.wad
  - Various texture usage optimizations
  - Adjusted Triad layout to allow better res defense (experimental)
  - Restored doors in marine spawn
  - restructured active side of Marine Spawn
  - Moved Marine spawns closer to CC
  - CC moved out of alcove
  - Atmospheric adjustments to hives

• Updated ns_veil (thanks KungFuSquirrel!)
  - Expanded Marine Spawn
  - Lowered "Pink Monster" in Marine Spawn
  - Fixed embarrassing "Eclipse Logo Backwards in my Own Map" problem... Doh.
  - Removed North Loop
  - Texture usage optimizations
  - Repaired remaining Onos stick points (I hope!)
  - Removed all chairs in front of computer panels
  - New vents (find/learn them yourselves )
  - Some added infestation in hive areas
  - Layout/architecture tweaks near Pipeline
  - Weldables added to Nanogrid Status

• Updated ns_nothing (thanks KungFuSquirrel!)
• Elevators changed to func_doors
• Upgrading a turret factory no longer restores all its hit points (bug #539)
• Items no longer sink through the world when placed against slopes, items can now be placed at up to 45 degrees, on stairs, etc. (bug #291, bug #527)

v3.0 beta 3 - February 11th, 2004

• Combat respawning change: only 1/4 of the team can respawn at a time (waves last 5-11 seconds, depending on team size). This reduces Combat game length significantly, and gives much more importants to player death.

• All new ns_hera (massive server CPU optimizations and balance changes) (thanks Merkaba!)
• Data Core Alpha replaced with old Hera material which allows easier attack on the archive hive (no lifts)
• Marines can now go from the marine start to the warehouse without having to weld open anything.
• Warehouse is now connected to the holoroom via a small corridor.
• No more vents lead into marine start.
• Two more resource nodes added to the map. One in the fog corridor, and one in Systems Handling (where data core alpha used to be). The old node in that area has been moved into the Archiving hive.
• Archiving a little wider now, so the upper level isn't so cramped.
• Total entity count is now < 240
• Walkway no longer in an ineffecient U shape.
• Fog Corridor shortened.
• Various little fixes and touchups.
• Readyroom changes (shorter MS start, no egg)

• Added "Xfire" support to the installer (optional). This is an instant messenger for gamers, and will auto-update full NS support later this week. Visit http://www.xfire.com for more information.

• Updated hand grenade sounds (new explosion, bounce, prime, etc.)
• Fixed bug where grenade launcher grenades death messages used hand grenade sprite
• Sped up resupply time at armory slightly
• Reduced mine health to 20 (so gorges can easily take them out with spit and marines can detonate them in combat with FF)
• Purchasing mines now gets you 4 mines instead of 5
• Hand grenades now do less damage then grenade launcher grenades (100 instead of 125)
• Increased rate at which hives heal friendly players (from 6% per second to 15% per second)
• Fixed bug where heal spray wasn't working for many hives
• Removed preservation of experience when leaving the team because of abuse

• Updated co_kestrel (thanks DevilDog!)
  - Extended existing vent near subhangar to also allow access to MS
  - Added "Hangar 7 Control" room which sits above and looks into the MS. This provides another way into the MS for a total of 2 normal, 1 accessible by all but Ohnos, and 1 vent
  - Hive slightly moved and a vent added from the ladder that goes up to the escape pod that "looks" at the hive. This serves as a perch to allow gorges to heal the hive (they can't reach it from the ground).
  - Couple of texture fixes

• Updated ns_ayumi (thanks DrunkenMonkey!)
  - The elevator outside marine start is replaced with a ramp.
  - A new weldable just outside the "AE35" hive that open up a door to "Gorges Hideout".
  - A new ladder in "Star Child".
  - The rails are gone in "Eastern Entrance" to make the room more open, and also is the hallways that leads to that room remade.
  - The "Hamasaki" hive have gotten a new exit.
  - The hive in "Pressure Control" have been raised a little bit, so it can no longer be blocked by structures.
  - A new vent in "Pressure Control".
  - New sky.
  - New ambient sounds in all of the three hives.
  - Lots of tweaks all over the map, to make it easier and more fun to play.

• Updated co_ulysses (thanks Blueman!)
  - Fixed clip error at the hive
  - Added co_ulysses back into the mapcycle

• Fixed clipping problems on ns_nothing (thanks KungFuSquirrel!)

• Updated co_rebirth (thanks IAN!)
  - A big change with this version, because I built a new level just under the marine start, trying to encourage marines to get out.
  - Increased the size of corridors just next the rebirth room, built a little vent inside the MS for skulks and lerks (I enjoy the idea they could be hidden in the ms itself) and I built a place for gorges in the Hive room to heal the hive and perhaps will it help marines too.
  - Doors in general stay open longer

• Updated co_angst (thanks ChromeAngel!)
  - Revamped marine start
  - Other unlisted changes that were apparently favorably received by playtesters

• Fixed incompatibility with server mod menus (bug #482).
• Fixed cannot type text into the chat box while CTRL is pressed (bug #491)

• New co_daimos, to help fix problem where Oni have trouble spawning sometimes (thanks Hypergrip!)

v3.0 beta 2 - January 31, 2004

• Changed Combat respawn system. Players now respawn in bigger waves, and time to wait depends only on team size (so smaller games spawn faster). Spawn times vary from around 6 seconds (1v1) to 20 seconds (16v16).
• The return of the Gorge to Combat! This should address the problem where marines can heal their CC easily while the aliens cannot.
• Fixed bug in UTIL_SharedRandomFloat that fixes bug where bullet holes were firing with perfect accuracy for everyone but the shooter (bug #233)
• Changed catalyst packs so they no longer do damage to recipient
• Fixed bug where holding walk key while cloaked sometimes allowed you to move too fast and uncloak you
• Halved acid rocket damage and energy cost (to make rockets more fun to use)
• Fixed bug where lerk sometimes showed spike model
• Fixed bug where aliens sometimes spawned with the wrong weapon selected (bug #249)
• Increased Fade stats from 250/100 to 300/150 (+33% damage capacity)
• Increased Onos stats from 700/500 to 700/600
• Increased cost of heavy armor to 2 levels (Combat)
• Increased redemption chance from 30% per second per level to 35% per second per level
• Experience is again awarded for repairing the CC or healing the hive (currently 1/3 the amount). Removed faster hive healing in Combat to compensate.
• Changed welder to have a random ROF (gameplay effects should be unchanged)
• New welder sound
• Electricity damage reduced from 25 to 20 (to compensate for increased range)
• Scan upgrade can no longer be purchased multiple times in Combat (bug #478)
• Fixed bug where options on the pop-up menu looked like they were available before they actually were (also bug #478) (should also fix bug where prices weren't shown in NS mode)
• Fixed issues with alien pop-up menu in NS mode (bug #471)
• Fixed bug where aliens with level 3 movement upgrades were taking 1/2 damage from turrets (Thanks Fortuna Wolf!)
• Added missing credits list to ns_agora
• Fixed bug where Metabolize interfered with regeneration (bug #356)
• Fixed bug where Metabolize cost more energy to use then energy it gave back
• Changed hive healing so it now scales healing by the target's hitpoints (the hive now heals 6% of a player's hitpoints per second)
• Changed "kills" to be actual number of players killed, not adjusted for type/level of lifeform (thanks Lux!)
• Removed mp_spawninvul variable (it defaulted to 0 before so this won't change most servers)
• Installer fixes (WON/multiple Steam ids)
• Temporarily removed playback of intro movies until we figure out how to encode them properly
• Updated ns_metal (thanks quazilin!)
• Fixed crash bug when cheats were enabled

• Updated ns_nancy (thanks Lazer!)
  - Added ladder to vent outside of Marine Start. (the "death vent")
  - Port Hive lowered a little, south wall moved back in to be a little more like the 1.x version.
  - Made Subspace vent even more gorge friendly.
  - Better clipping on ceilings of hallways so getting into the ceiling vents becomes a lot more possible without leap.
  
  - Lowered r_speeds, and other assorted tweaks. - Added a few things to the readyroom... :]

• Updated co_pulse (thanks tommyd!)
  - Improved marine spawn point locations
  - Added more room to the marine start

• Updated ns_tanith (thanks tommyd!)
  - Removed welds near waste hive to prevent marine camping
  - Fixed in-the-void siege/building exploit near fusion hive
  - Fixed vent-siege-building in new vent by waste hive

v3.0 - (previously referred to as v2.1)

• New gameplay mode: NS Combat
• Removed XXX and XXX. Added XXX, XXX, XXX, etc.
• New upgrades : New Combat-specific upgrades like "resupply" and personal scanner sweep give you help when you need it.
• New look : Over 150 new textures and new NS maps give the game a whole new look. Fight in the claustrophic halls of ns_ayumi, catching a glimpse of snow falling outside a catwalk, or take control of the awe-inspiring and incredible ns_agora.
• Catalyst-packs : New "catalyst-packs" allow Commander to speed rate of fire and movement of marines for a short duration.
• New lerk : New flight model for the "Lerk", allowing smooth and precise flapping and gliding (he also has his bite back!).
• New spectator interface : All-new spectator mode is easier to use and ideal for match commentators.
• New manual : The manual has been totally re-written to include a "quick start" guide, and detailed information on every weapon, ability and structure.
• New chat and font system, the ability for mappers to pre-place structures in maps, 'votemap' command, new scoreboard, new alien "focus" upgrade, and much more.
• Native Steam support
• VALVe Anti-Cheat (VAC) and Cheating Death (CD) support
• Massive improvements : Over 200 bugs and exploits have been fixed in this version, along with dozens of other improvements. These include "sinking" structures, better hitboxes for players and structures (even for wall-walking skulks!), skulk prediction fixes, and hundreds more.

v2.01 - September 19th, 2003

• Lowered marine damage/armor upgrade costs from 30/40/50 to 20/30/40
• Increased grenade damage from 110 to 125
• Fixed problem where specs can be heard talking before game start in tourny mode
• Fixed problem where dead players could sometimes be heard
• Voice comm can no longer be heard for anyone during countdown (to allow safe demo recording)
• Fixed "Contacting www.natural-selection.org..." timeout problems when natural-selection.org is down
• Hide opposing team score in tournament mode so you can't see how many resources towers they have
• New collision code to lessens chances of players getting stuck in structures
• Fixed problem where hera holoroom double node couldn't be built properly
• Fixed bug where being webbed and then devoured pulls out your weapon while inside the Onos
• Each level of celerity now increases speed by 25, down from 35 (back to the 1.04 level)
• Electricity research time reduced from 60 to 30
• Electricity range increased from 90 to 120 (to prevent exploiting)
• Offense chamber health reduced from 1150 to 1000
• If an Onos redeems while digesting a player, the player is left behind
• Parasites and gorge spit can operate switches and buttons that take damage again
• Marine resource tower cost lowered from 20 to 15
• Healing spray is 16 (same as 2.0)
• Removed frame-rate dependence from leap and charge damage (Leap is 40 damage per second, Charge is 160 damage per second.)
• Increased hive cost from 35 to 40
• Reduced command station cost from 25 to 20
• Reduced command station build time from 20 to 15
• Umbra blocks 2 out of 3 bullets (down from 3 out of 4 in 2.0)
• Improved "lastinv" command so that your last weapno is preserved between gestations
• Shotgun clip and reserve reduced from 10/50 to 8/40
• Removed cloaking and uncloaking sounds via cloaking upgrade
• The cloaking upgrade now fades smoothly instead of becoming instantly invisible. The higher level of your cloaking upgrade, the faster you'll cloak.
• Aliens should be able to walk slowly cloaked via the cloaking upgrade.
• Each level of cloaking decreases time needed to cloak more.
• Sentries and offense chambers now do "light" damage. Light damage does half damage to heavy armor and Oni.
• Only allow resource towers and turret factories to be electrified (fix for exploit timing/selection exploit)
• Resupplying at armory can only go into reserve (addresses end-game grenade spam at marine start). It also now rounds up (so odd-sized clips like the HMG load intuitively)
• Made offense chambers less accurate against fast-moving targets (jetpackers)
• Fixed "super-hive" bug which allowed an invincible hive to be built
• Fixed alien resource exploit involving late-joining
• Fixed spawning exploit involving late-joining
• If you get disconnected while playing aliens, and you rejoin, your resources will be preserved
• Players can only become spectators from the ready room (fixes devour exploit)
• Building hives can now be healed
• Unbuilt marine structures can now be repaired with the welder
• Lowered armory cost from 20 to 15
• Electricity can now attack two targets at a time instead of one
• Lowered gorge armor from 75 to 50 (shouldn't affect gorge lifespan, as they usually have extra armor when they die)
• HMG cost reduced from 20 to 15 (marines should be able to attack at tier 2 without it being a make-or-break effort)
• Fixed bug where turrets could fire before they were built by recycling and building turret factories
• When you use a phase gate, it checks to see if there are any structures blocking the phase gate. If there are, it blocks the phase. It then checks to see if there are any players blocking the phase gate. If there are teammates that have phased within the last 2 seconds, it blocks the phase. If the phase succeeds, it kills any players that are on the phase gate. So teammates have a 2 second window to get off the phase gate; enemies are telefragged instantly. Structures however can still block a phase gate, though this will likely change in a future version.
• Removed frame-rate dependence when building structures (and fixed flashlight exploit when building structures)
• Fixed bilebomb exploit that could sometimes allow it to damage through walls
• Handicap can now be set in non-tourny mode. Message displays like active resource nodes message, every 20 seconds.
• Reduced siege cannon build time from 15 to 10
• Reduced siege upgrade time from 22 to 15
• Reduced heavy armor cost from 20 to 15

v2.01e Beta Changes

• Increase charge and leap effectiveness. Leap is still 40 damage per second, Charge was increased from 100 damage per second to 160 damage per second.
• Lowered armory cost from 20 to 15
• Electricity can now attack two targets at a time instead of one
• Lowered gorge armor from 75 to 50 (shouldn't affect gorge lifespan, as they usually have extra armor when they die)
• HMG cost reduced from 20 to 15 (marines should be able to attack at tier 2 without it being a make-or-break effort)
• Increased cloaking speed threshold so skulks don't wink in and out when using stairs
• Increased cloaking time a bit (one second divided by your current level of cloaking, ie 1 second, 1/2 second, 1/3 second)
• Fixed bug where weapon doesn't deploy after being rescued from a devouring Onos
• Fixed bug where turrets could be fire before they were built by recycling and building turret factories
• When you use a phase gate, it checks to see if there are any structures blocking the phase gate. If there are, it blocks the phase. It then checks to see if there are any players blocking the phase gate. If there are teammates that have phased within the last 2 seconds, it blocks the phase. If the phase succeeds, it kills any players that are on the phase gate. So teammates have a 2 second window to get off the phase gate; enemies are telefragged instantly. Structures however can still block a phase gate, though this will likely change in a future version.
• Removed frame-rate dependence when building structures
• Fixed bilebomb exploit that could sometimes allow it to damage through walls
• Handicap can now be set in non-tourny mode. Message displays like active resource nodes message, every 20 seconds.

v2.01d Beta Changes

• Electrical research cost is 30 (same as 2.0)
• Electricity research time reduced from 60 to 30
• Electricity range increased from 90 to 120 (to prevent exploiting)
• Offense chamber health reduced from 1150 to 1000
• If an Onos redeems while digesting a player, the player is left behind
• Added "parasite switch fun" back
• Marine resource tower cost lowered from 20 to 15
• Lowered marine upgrade costs from 30/40/50 to 20/30/40
• Healing spray is 16 (same as 2.0)
• Increase grenade damage from 110 to 125
• Fixed problem where specs can be heard talking before game start in tourny mode
• Fixed problem where dead players can sometimes be heard
• Voice comm can no longer be heard for anyone during countdown (to allow safe demo recording)
• Fixed CURL timeout problems (untested)
• Hide opposing team score in tournament mode to you can't see how many resources towers they have (untested)
• Fixed problem where hera holoroom double node didn't build properly
• Fixed bug where being webbed and then devoured pulls out your weapon while inside the Onos
• Removed frame-rate dependence from leap and charge damage
• Increased hive cost from 35 to 40
• Reduced command station cost from 25 to 20
• Reduced command station build time from 20 to 15
• Each level of celerity now increases speed by 25, down from 35 (it's now back to the 1.04 level)
• Umbra blocks 2 out of 3 bullets (down from 3 out of 4 in 2.0)
• Changed lastinv to that it's preserved between upgrade gestations
• Shotgun clip and reserve reduced from 10/50 to 8/40
• Removed cloaking and uncloaking sounds via cloaking upgrade (they are only a third as loud as they used to be).
• The cloaking upgrade now fades smoothly instead of becoming instantly invisible. The higher level of your cloaking upgrade, the faster you'll cloak.
• Aliens should be able to walk very slowly cloaked via the cloaking upgrade.
• Each level of cloaking decreases time needed to cloak more.
• Sentries and offense chambers now do "light" damage. Light damage does half damage to heavy armor and Oni.
• Only allow resource towers and turret factories to be electrified (fix for exploit timing/selection exploit)
• Resupplying at armory can only go into reserve (addresses end-game grenade spam at marine start). It alto now rounds up (to odd-sized clips like the HMG load intuitively)
• Gorge spit can operate switches again as well
• Made offense chambers less accurate against fast-moving targets (jetpackers)
• Fixed "super-hive" bug (from Uranium on the forums): Maintenance hive: if you as gorge stay there a build hive, from up there, as long as you Do NOT MOVE, the hive cannot die. I did it in 1.0 and its still there in 2.0 despite my efforts to get it fixed. It can easily be replicated. I have even died and as long as i do not move when i spawn the hive itself can never die. If you want me to show you ingame, just get a time/server and ill try to be there.
• Fixed alien resource exploit involving late-joining
• Fixed spawning exploit involving late-joining
• If you get disconnected while playing aliens, and you rejoin, your resources will be preserved
• Players can only become spectators from the ready room (fixes devour exploit)
• Building hives can now be healed
• Unbuilt structures can now be repaired with the welder

v2.01c Beta Changes

• New collision code to prevent players from getting stuck in structures (thanks Max!)
• Fixed problem where hera holoroom double node didn't build properly
• Fixed bug where being webbed and then devoured pulls out your weapon while inside the Onos
• Umbra now blocks 1 out of 2 bullets (down from 2 out of 3)
• Movement chambers can no longer be +used to teleport to hive
• Increased hive cost from 35 to 50
• Removed HMG piercing damage (now does full damage vs. structures)
• Each level of celerity now increases speed by 25, down from 35 (it's now back to the 1.04 level)
• Aliens can only change lifeforms when within healing range of an active hive

v2.01b Beta Changes

• Reverted skulk health changes back to 2.0 levels
• Lowered marine upgrade costs from 30/40/50 to 20/30/40
• Umbra now blocks 2 out of 3 bullets (down from 3 out of 4)
• Reduce healing spray from 16 to 13
• Increase grenade damage from 110 to 125
• Fixed problem where specs can be heard talking before game start in tourny mode (untested)
• Fixed problem where dead players can sometimes be heard (untested)
• Fixed CURL timeout problems (untested)
• Hide opposing team score in tournament mode so you can't see how many resources towers they have (untested)

v2.01a Beta Changes

• Skulk health decreased from 75 to 70
• Skulk armor decreased from 20 to 10
• Electricity cost reduced from 30 to 20
• Electricity research time reduced from 60 to 30
• Electricity range increased from 90 to 110 (to prevent exploiting)
• Offense chamber health reduced from 1150 to 1000
• Onos can no longer redeem while digesting a player
• Added "parasite switch fun" back

v2.0 - July 31st, 2003 (previously referred to as v1.1)

• More diversity of tactics, along with more play-time at the 2 and 3 hive stages
• Simpler resource model (multiple gorges will be viable)
• Faster and more intense gameplay (average game time in v1.04 is 22 minutes, v1.1 target is around half that, though epic games still possible)
• Commander improvements
• Hotgroups for soldiers and structures (soldiers are notified, "You are squad four"). Hotgroup icons blink when under attack.
• Warcraft III style "idle peon" messages
• Always draw player names for commander
• Much better hotkey support (fully customizable)
• Select all players button/bind
• Alien upgrade improvements (all paths viable)
• Sensory chambers are now automatically cloaked, and they cloak other alien structures in range (including hives, resource towers, offensive chambers, etc.)
• Movement chambers now give aliens energy, like defensive chambers give health. Unsure if teleport ability will stay.
• Silence upgrade now silences movement and attacks (it's incredibly eerie)
• HLTV support (including first-person view while waiting to respawn)
• Changes to tournament mode to support CAL
• Collision improvements (no "jittering" when crouching on structures, structure hitboxes much more accurate, etc.)
• Skulk bite and machine gun muzzle flash obscure view less
• Improved demo record/playback functionality (particles, scoreboard, etc.). Demos recorded before v1.1 will still work in v1.1.
• Improved alien pop-up menu is simpler and more intuitive, context-sensitive cursor
• All known exploits fixed (frame-rate advantage, etc.)
• Fewer "stuck" issues with Onos and blink
• New Onos abilities allow him to stomp the ground to stun nearby enemies, then devour enemies whole (they are slowly digested, during which time they can be saved by killing the creature)
• Skulk model orients properly when running on wall! Possible option for transforming first-person view
• Lerk physics changes to make him easier to control
• Huge server performance improvements (should be around half the CPU usage)
• New marine technology: electrified turret factory upgrade, does damage to enemies touching factory
• New effects: sentries smoke when they fire, alien structures splatter goo when destroyed
• Updated existing maps for balance, performance and flow, and new maps (at least three)

v1.04 - January 24th, 2003

• 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.

v1.03 - November 27th, 2002

• Fixed Adminmod compatibility problems. It should work great now under all configurations.
• Aliens now lose health when they no longer have any active or growing hives (damages every 2 seconds, all players hear countdown, ignores armor). This is done to speed up the end game and prevent llamas from hiding in vents to prolong game.
• Fixed readyroom bug/exploit while spectating (hitting F4 while REIN made you an invulnerable "ghost" player that could confuse others).
• Changed team join to not allow teams to have more then 1 player difference. Affects casual model only.
• Fixed armor bug where carapace protected aliens even after all armor was gone.
• Fixed explosion bug where siege cannons, bilebombs, grenades and xenocide weren't doing damage properly (this broke in v1.02).
• Added support for model and sound consistency checking. If you run your server with mp_consistency 1, it will require that all NS models and sounds are unchanged from the distribution. This allows servers to disable custom models or sounds, and exploits that can result from them. This is currently disabled by default. If you have problems connecting to a server with an error like "server is enforcing file consistency on file X", then delete your custom models or try connecting to a different server.
• Fixed infinite cloaking bug (occured when last sensory chamber lost while player was cloaked).
• Addressed alien leave/join resource exploit (joining a team you've already been on makes the player wait to respawn, as if he had been killed).
• Addressed early team-switch exploit to find hive (you can no longer switch teams after playing or observing, so choose carefully).
• Fixed various problems when building turrets, mines, offensive chambers, etc. then team-switching.
• Moved mp_drawinvisibleentities to debug builds only.
• Added mp_version variable for better filtering with All-Seeing Eye and other third-party programs and scripts.
• Fixed Onos charging crash bug.
• Reduced knife range from 50 to 35 (not balance, this was a bug).
• Changed siege cost from 15 to 25 (this was a typo, not meant to be a balance change).
• Fixed melee weapon problems in vents.
• Fixed lastinv command. Players can now bind a key to this (even though their menu will still say it's not implemented).
• Fixed bug where players did friendly fire damage to some world objects (ie, doing 33% instead of 100% to doors and switches).
• Fixed turret factory abuse, where turrets became active after recycling the nearby turret factory before turret was fully contructed.
• Fixed bug where siege turrets became re-activated after building a regular turret factory nearby.
• Default mp_timelimit is now 60 (even for listen server).
• Fixed bug where a vote could affect a commander that logged in after a vote had been started.
• Fixed bug where gorges evolving upgrades (usually temporarily) lost resources above the hive maximum. It will still count down to 33, but will immediately count back up to your resource count (this is just a visual problem on the client).
• Make sure current health and armor percentages are preserved when evolving.
• If a team has 5 or more players than another team, the team automatically wins. This lessens long periods of lop-sided teams but still gives victory when a losing team starts leaving.

v1.02 - November 16th, 2002

• Improved server performance by around 50%. You'll see lower pings, and servers with more players.
• Rename avhplayer to player (potentially better compatibility with Adminmod and other 3rd party programs).
• Change default vote percent from 30% to 40% and minvotes from 2 to 3.
• Fixed bug where parasite could hurt own team.
• Fixed bug which allowed players to damage their own structures with gunfire.
• Updated code to be more compatible with Adminmod under win32 (dynamic cast issues). It may still not work under some configurations and work continues on it.
• Enhanced hive sight changed so it's useful at upgrade levels 1 and 2.
• Updated NS to use the HL standard logging specification for server ops and for PsychoStats compatibility (http://www.hlstats.org/logs). More work may be needed for better Psychostats compatibility.
• Removed draw numeric damage events.
• Sighted buildings no longer show in hive sight (still show up with parasite, but prevents flood when alien views heavily populated area).
• Fixed exploit where +using a building could speed up research of a technology.
• Preserve health and armor percentages when evolving.
• Don't allow gorge to heal buildings before they are built.
• Reduced chance of server overflow (crash) when large games (24+ players) end.
• Fixed marine armor upgrades (previously, researching armor upgrades wouldn't give you that armor unless you were welded first).
• Added mp_logdetail (0-3).
• Changed the alien ability anti-exploit code to try to co-exist with scripters.
• Turned off team-balance when in tourny mode.
• Renamed ns_authicons to mp_authicons, renamed ns_eastereggchance to mp_eastereggchance for consistency.
• Defensive chambers now only heal up to three nearby buildings or players per tick (prevents undestructible Walls of Lame). Targets are chosen randomly.
• Cleanup babblers on game reset.
• Built with compiler optimizations (linux).
• Spectators now hear spectators, their observer target and teammates of their observer target.
• Networking changes that could result in CPU performance improvements (instead of tracking, storing and queuing network messages, they are sent immediately).
• All players can all hear all other players talking before countdown starts.
• Tournament mode start changes to make it easier to coordinate and start a game. It will only start when players are on both teams, when the teams are equal, and when both teams have said they are ready. A team is ready when one member of their team cheats "ready" (case important). All players can hear all other players before the countdown starts, so spectators and players and coordinate. Once the countdown starts, the map resets, and enemies can't talk to each other, like usual.
• Spectators get end-game victory sound and message.

v1.01 - November 6th, 2002

• Improved server performance by 20-30% (should result in slightly less lag, more changes still to come in this area)
• Moved all gameplay constants into server code, so economy and balance will be identical on all servers
• Added auto team-balance: you are not allowed to join a team if joining it would give that team more then 2 players more then the other team.
• Dropped health and ammo packs now expire after 30 seconds
• Sentry cost increased from 16 to 19
• Sentries and siege turrets now need a functioning factory to stay operational. They will power down and become inactive there are no factories nearby. If a new factory is built nearby, they will power back up.
• Offensive chamber health increased from 1100 to 1200
• Lessened siege damage from 350 to 330
• Acid rocket rate of fire increased from .66 to 1.0 (shots per second)
• Increased fade armor from to 90/125 to 125/150
• Increased acid rocket damage from 50 to 60
• Increased base speed of fade from 210 to 240
• Changed regeneration upgrade from fixed number to percentage of alien max health. Alien also emits regen sound when healing.
• Grenade damage reduced from 200 to 180 (still does blast damage), clip size reduced to 4, rate of fire decreased slightly
• Increased research time for heavy armor from 80 to 100
• Increased HMG cost from 23 to 25
• Increased grenade launcher cost from 27 to 33
• Increased cost of heavy armor from 20 to 25
• Lower cost for offensive chambers from 16 to 14, and build time from 40 to 30
• Friendly fire now does 33% damage instead of full damage (tournament mode only)
• Lessened HMG damage from 20 to 18
• Numeric indicator at resource towers now shows how many actual resources were contributed to your team (minimum 1)

v1.0 - October 31st, 2002

• Initial release

Release Candidate 10 Final Changelog

• Allow players to change name after game started, as long as they haven't left the ready room
• Fixed gamma correction for auth icons
• Slowed down particle propagation to fix timeouts?
• Missing door sounds
• Replaced pistol sound with beefier one
• Respawn with full energy instead of 0 energy
• Added alert for sensory chambers ("The enemy approaches")
• Added alert for builders. Now it only plays every 30 seconds and won't play if you have builders or players that are evolving to builders, or not enough alive players.
• Fixed bug where scanning also issues an order
• Look into network messages being sent on an endgame (redundant messages or something is causing overflows still)
• Updated spectator mode with new text and new camera distance for more cinematic feel
• Updated auth icons (thanks Relic!)
• Resized lerk
• MG, pistol and HMG muzzle-flashes now emit from the correct locations, new muzle flash sprites
• Update marine hud sprite
• Info_Location
• New mainhud.spr from Relic
• Limit # of buildings in an area (do generically)
• Fixed client-side crash on changelevel and removed all "no such sprite" errors
• Added new jetpack effects
• Improved welder effects performance
• New blink effect (better performance)
• Doubled grenade launcher rate of fire (improves feel and spam isn't an issue now)
• Skins are now working properly after a map change or reset
• Removed placeholder Q3 texture (nos_wall3) from ns_bast.wad
• New alien sounds for "structure under attack", "resource tower under attack" and "lifeforms under attack" (a bit calmer, less grating)
• New and final hera
  - All ladders should now be walkable on by skulks.
  - New weldable into the back entrance to Data Core Delta, accessable from the seizure corridor. (Tell me if there's any speed problems there, although there shouldn't be.)
  - New path from Maintenance to Processing. (Extention of the small corridor.) Level5s can only crawl through these corridors, mind.
  - Archiving Hive now has a 2nd entrance on floor level, accessable with a welder.
  - Marine Start Warehouse door can now be opened from the marine side, but only once the panel on the other side has been welded.
  - Floor panels in the Holoroom are now solid.
  - Marine Command Centre now very much protected, as you'll see. Commander can also build up there, although most of the floor is still invisible so he can see the area below.
  - Replaced all momentary_doors with normal doors because I'm suspicious that they might not be working satisfactorily. (I would recieve "found momentary_door 'labdoor03', firing." style messages constantly, for all the different doors.)
  - Not sure if this is new or not, but the Data Core Delta resource node has been moved much nearer.
  - Security Door welds have been cosmetically changed to fit in with the rest of the welds in the map.
  - New door textures for marine start. Woo!
  - Various tweaks here and there, as usual.
• Fixed all remaining server crashes
  - Minimap infinite loop
  - On endgame with 20+ people
  - New ready room
  - New weldables
  - More marine-friendly
• Make sure gamma level message is supressed normally
• Added ns_authicons server var
• Fixed CD key problem when hosting NS on a LAN (default variables weren't being set right, so sv_lan was 0)
• New countdown sound
• Custom muzzle flashes (rotate MG one by 90 degrees so it doesn't block small targets)
• (FEATURE DESCRIPTION DUE TO SECRECY)
• Fix skin color changing every time you spawn
• Fixed bug where muzzle flash played even when firing on empty
• Disabled useable and breakable icons, because I couldn't display them in a non-ugly fashion
• Fixed bug where sometimes two hives would support the same technology
• Removed ejected casings from grenade launcher
• Final tanith
• Removed skymap .bmps because software model isn't supported
• New heavy marine view models (thanks DefOne!)
• Increased cost of observatory from 16 to 25
• Acid rocket energy cost increased from .2 to .26
• Update titles.txt with grammatical pass from Jeff
• Final pass at listenserver.cfg, server.cfg, user.scr and settings.scr
• Make inactive hives show up on hive sight
• Remove F1/F2 and F3 from shipping config.cfg
• No longer draw "energy" or numeric data for alien energy
• Tooltips no longer intersect marine upgrades or alien energy
• Fixed up particle culling, should see better client performance and many less disappearing entities
• Moved help text to client (CPU and network performance)
• Make player ID visible in ready room and spectator mode
• New eclipse
  - Made a couple texture switches in accordance with the modified ns.wad
  - -wadincluded ns_eclipse.wad (so don't include that file anymore)
  - fixed a func_illusionary railing
  - and made the doors to marine spawn reset quicker.
• Removed extra textures in wall_lab.wad to reduce download size (thanks KFS and Merks!)
• Reduced welder damage from 14 to 10
• Removed upgrade resource tower button
• Fixed bug where hive kept playing wound animation after it died
• Clean up heavy armor and jetpacks at the end of the round
• Fixed marines health circle when dead (used to draw fully sometimes)
• Recycled IP doesn't reset reinforcing player
• Change self-damage to 50%
• Removed builder scoring. Score should be kills only (though commanders have a score equal to their average team score, rounded up). Sorry MonsE, your reign of terror is over. Builders now get points for their own turret kills.
• Make sure players spawn at random hive spot, so they can't be camped easiily, and also make sure the area isn't blocked by something
• Infantry portal and phase gate now kills any players too close to the respawning player
• Fixed blink effect playing multiple times
• Dead aliens don't receive hive sight updates, maybe this will fix occasional alien/death overflow
• Fixed possible cause of last alien client crash
• Updated ns.wad has Cory's last texture
• Lowered build time for alien resource towers slightly
• Fixed bug where players could get more then one upgrade of each category
• Fixed acid rocket and bilebomb projectile orientation
• Possibly fixed progress indicators sometimes not visible
• Tweaked selection to make it easier/possible to select buildings when close together
• Fix shotgun weirdness when reloading and firing
• Playing idle animation in middle of reload causing hitch (it's doing this because the reload is happening server side, so mSpecialReload isn't set on the client)
• Team resources label not visible when joining team
• Voting messages should now be sent properly
• New health/armor HUD sprites for low resolution, removed "CS" from an ammo sprite
• Revisit HUD in general, and layout everything properly (put all constants in one file)
• Fully integrated VALVe Anti-Cheat. Please report any weird problems you're having.

Release Candidate 9A Changelog

• Make weapon priorities for shotty/HMG/GG equal
• Don't allow skulk to use ladders
• Fixed mass alien client crash (there should be no other crashes except the occasional crash on changelevel, which I'll fix)
• Server optimizations (hopefully big)
• Onos getting stuck when evolving
• Fixed onos crouch bug
• ? Onos redemption fixed (untested, sadly)
• Retouched scan sweep assets in attempt to make it show up
• Added alert for sensory chambers ("The enemy approaches")
• Added "we need builders" alert when team has none
• Zero velocity of players going through phase (reduces chance of falling into hole after going through)
• New commander sounds when soldiers ask for orders

Release Candidate 9 Changelog

• Marine tower cost reduced from 50 to 25
• New ns_nothing (just info_location stuff)
• New voiceicon.spr from Relic
• Marine tower cost changed from 50 to 35
• Resources sped up just a hair
• Shotgun damage reduced from 20 to 18 per bullet
• Umbra lets through 1 in 7 bullets instead of 1 in 8
• Send detailed manual feedback to Jeff
• Revisit construction time and make sure it works (approximately) in seconds
• Touched up some alien and marine sounds (Onos footsteps, new alien death, mg and hmg upgraded shots, increased resource tower idle volume)
• Moved and removed many sounds, most of them duplicates or placeholders.
• Don't allow name changing mid-game (queue up changes and change when valid)
• Fixed bug where sometimes you couldn't switch to next player while spectating (happened when buttons were held down on death)
• Reduced leap and charge damage a bit
• Level 5 and alien health issues ("looping" past 0, make sure health color takes into account max health of player)
• Add damage ring for target building when close (doesn't work for alien resource tower, it's not working for reticle help either)
• Can no longer change skin via console unless cheats are on
• Alien energy problems (esp. with leap)
• Make sure alien abilities can't be abused by binding them
• Add "you need more resources" alert for aliens
• Health/build-status rings should display when pointing
• Fixed soldier looking like he's crawling through the floor
• New bast (updated sound locations, ladder to get out of breakable grate pit near furnace)
• Make sure console commands require cheats if needed
• Make sure keybinds match up
• Fixed bodygroup jetpack problem (thanks Necro!)
• Mines are now visible when dropped, but still oriented wrong
• New out of game UI sounds!! (I love you Scott)
• Go through mg and hmg sounds
• bite2.wav (rework to sound cohesive with bite.wav)
• bitekill.wav/blinkfail.wav
• Replace mine_charge.wav, mine_deploy.wav (send sounds and explain timing)
• select.wav (and select_node_forward.wav and select_node_backward.wav) should be less abrasive if possible
• Touchup hud/you_lose.wav and hud/you_win.wav (fade in/out or otherwise improve)
• New sounds for heavy and jetpack pickup
• All new fade sounds(all the role6 sounds except role6_spawn)
• All new alien sayings
• New xenocide explode
• Fixed precache error for team_advarmory
• Added eneral purpose particle event
• Add new xenocide effect
• Fixed MOTD.txt not propagating
• Remove mp_demoing
• Add generic sound when alien building dies (little squish/scream)
• Fixed refilling mines at armory bug
• Sensory chamber health increased
• Sensory chamber cost reduced, offensive chamber cost increased
• Removed the sound/ns_bast folder, integrated Relic's sound changes into the sound/ambience folder. You may want to verify that your map's sounds are still correct.
• New particle effect for bile bomb
• Movement chambers take 3 seconds instead of 2 seconds to become usable after being built (to lessen chance of gorges jumping through by accident)
• Building sizes: it is a problem with the engine, it'll be fixed in a future HL patch
• New sound and effects for distress beacon
• Reduced alien resource tower from 30 to 24 for less waiting around
• Reduced shotgun range from 1000 to 700
• X Worked with EricS on VAC and building problems (can't be fixed for v1.0)
• Fixed ammo/health alerts for soldiers, so the commander is notified (hit space to go to it)
• Added order requests as an alert for the commander (hit space to go to it)
• Pistol, welder, and tripmines are now secondary weapons (only allow one)
• Visibility tweak: enemies aren't "detected" unless they're moving. This means the commander can only see nearby moving blips, and marines with motion-tracking won't see still aliens that are detected because they're nearby. This also means webs won't show up when nearby.
• Fixed motion-tracking picks up unmoving players
• Added WON authentication IDs in scoreboard (must type "auth" in console for it to display an icon for you, auth again will toggle it off. Right now isn't preserved on a level switch)
• Change primal scream to not use green, but to draw blinking primal scream text
• Added "In umbra" indicator
• Verify that there aren't any broken or placeholder sounds anywhere
• Phasegate.wav in?
• Added marine resource tower sounds back in
• Replace bitekill.wav with bite2kill.wav
• Add bite2kill (uses bitekill.wav)
• Egg gestation sounds played more regularly
• Updated ns_nancy, ns_caged and ns_eclipse with info_locations
• Change launcher so it's multiplayer only
• Allow phase gates to be recycled
• Phase gate now plays looping sound
• Removed hotgroup support until it can be done properly
• Removed HMG slowdown, it can be fired from air again (too confusing and weird)
• New fade and onos models (anims tweaked)
• Removed upgrade sounds for weapons (unnecessarily confusing and doesn't warrant space/memory)
• Don't allow +using movement chambers while gestating. Are there any other exploits?
• Last remaining new sounds!
  - New alien vocals
  - New mine sounds
  - New pickup jetpack/heavy sounds
  - New blink sounds
  - New lerk bite sounds, new bitekill sounds
  - New fade sounds
• New particle system for phase in
• Increased scan duration
• Removed parasite projectile
• Fixed "Need ammo" and "need health" alerts, now they fire for commander
• Offense chamber health increased from 800 to 1100
• New scanner sweep effect (gorgeous Relic!)
• Valve Anti-Cheat fully integrated!
• Preserve model from previous game in ready room
• New Onos footsteps
• Fixed bug where gestating on elevators turned off collision
• Fixed acid rocket problems!
• Orienting and scaling temp entities (lerk spikes, added paralysis projectile)
• Allow hives to be hurt while building (bounding box issue)
• Fixed hive building exploit
• Fixed bug where ghostly view model appears after building and entering command station

Release Candidate 8 Changelog

• Final installer changes. Mini-tutorial, new way of doing gamma, etc. Please give feedback on the PT forums (thanks MonsE and Relic!)
• New main screen artwork (thanks Squeal!)
• Acid rocket and teleport effects updated (my bad, thanks Relic!)
• Don't allow commander to select units on other team (fixes health ring issues)
• Removed every last placeholder sound (most alien sayings don't play sounds right now, no pain/death sounds for marines, these will be replaced)
• Added new console backdrop (thanks Squeal!)
• Aliens with no hives have a max of 33 resources, not 0
• In an effort to shorten games and have less random node grabbing, resource nodes are now destroyable. If a tower is successfully built on a node and then destroyed, the node can no longer give resources to either side for the rest of the game. A node that's been destroyed in this manner will no longer allow towers to be built on them.
• Resource towers take longer to build, cost more, and are harder to destroy. This may be the right solution for the rampant resource trading we've been seeing.
• Healing spray no longer damages non-players
• Removed HL "flatline" sound on death
• Refactor hard-coded hive sight network message limit
• Turrets track closer to the way they used to
• Marines in heavy armor are slightly faster
• More HP for phase
• Swap spores and umbra
• Movement chambers now teleport you to the farthest hive (!)
• Toned down primal scream (rate of fire, energy acquisition, +30% damage instead of %40%)
• Lerk bite and fade swipe icons display properly (thanks Merks)
• Grenade gun max clip increased from 4 to 6
• Fixed problem where help icons weren't drawing
• Made voting percentage and min votes server variables (mp_votepercentneeded and mp_minvotesneeded)
• Added heavy view models! There are still some problems with the left hand and arm in some of these. (thanks Def and Cory!)
• Fix order giving once and for all (players always see them, they always draw the right type of waypoint, new sounds, they complete properly, etc.)
• Draw correct minimum resource amount on HUD (instead of 100 all the time)
• Flight/jumping and ladder issues (don't allow airborne lerks to use ladders)
• Distress beacon no longer needs armory, motion-tracking and phase gates now require armory (oops)
• New tech tree sprites
• Added knife flourish
• New soldier model strafes/twists properly (thanks Def One!)
• Removed all knockback, slowdown and forces applied from melee or ranged weapons
• Don't disable alien pop-up nodes that are too expensive (allows quick help)
• Put in tooltip that explains the object of the game
• Higher HP for siege (1000 to 2000)
• Moved alien death messages
• Allow people to move around server until countdown starts. When countdown starts, reset server so hive hasn't been discovered (good suggestion Merks, but it wasn't easy!)
• Draw alien energy max at 100, not max resource level
• Fix skin problems in release/online (setskin is now allowed by players for testing ("setskin 0" for white marine, "setskin 1" for black))
• Fixed bug where using alien abilities sometimes played the "illegal action" sound
• Addressed exploits where alien abilities could be bound to keys (player is immediately killed). Go ahead and try abusing this and let me know if you can still exploit the system. In fact, exploit NS as much as possible and let me know about anything you can do. It should be fairly cheat proof as far as the NS rules go.
• Move alien health into fuser2, alien energy is now fuser3, make sure gestation progress bar still works
• Don't draw health rings for enemies when you're a gorge
• Fixed alien building health not updating
• Fixed # sign in location text in non-official maps
• Final eclipse (thanks KungFu!)
• Soldier sayings and other HUD sounds increased in volume (they weren't normalized)
• Play "more resources" sound when not enough for building or evolving
• Dropping ammo at world origin when spawning
• Fixed shakiness while frozen before game start
• Allow right-click to cancel building in CM
• Added team sounds when game starts
• New hera (thanks Merks!)
• Beefed up turret acquisition time again (halfway between old and new)
• Hives can never be blocked by presence of resource nodes (the anti-llama tactic)
• Profiling code for Linux
• Linux build updated
• New skulk model (head turns properly when strafing, new death anim) (thanks Mojo!)
• New caged!
  - Fixed areas where players could get stuck in the Ventilation System Hive room and the Generator Stability Monitoring room.
  - Tweaked architecture and lighting in Central Hub, Sewer Vestibule and Freight Elevator areas.
  - Added some other bits n pieces of detail and visual niceness: coronas, some accent lighting blah blah.
  - Finally fixed Fam's floating button!
  - All new alien voiceovers! This is the woman who did such favorites as the dropship pilot in Starcraft, the "I sense a soul in search of answers" in Diablo and also the CC voice in NS
• Removed "fetch config from URL"

Before...

Stuff that was released, once the NDA (non-disclosure agency) was lifted

THE MARINES: The Trans-System Authority employs these highly trained troops exclusively for the extermination of any alien infestation discovered.

A marine spawns with 100 health, 50 armor, a knife, pistol, and light machine gun.

Marine Weaponry:
Knife
Pistol (10 round clip, 30 reserve)
Light Machine Gun (50 clip, 300 reserve)
Shotgun (10, 50)
Heavy Machine Gun (150, 450)
Grenade Launcher (6, 30)
Welder
Tripmines (pack of 5)

Marine Technology:
(Armory)
-shotguns
-welders
-upgrade to Advanced Armory
(Advanced Armory)
-HMG
-Grenade Launcher (with Arms Lab)
(Arms Lab)
-Grenade Launcher (with Adv. Armory)
-Armor upgrades levels 1-3
-Weapon upgrades levels 1-3
(Observatory)
-prevents nearby aliens from cloaking
-scanner sweep (similar to Starcraft's ComSat)
-Distress Beacon (respawn all dead marines at base instantly)
-Motion Tracking
(Prototype Lab)
-research and drop Heavy Armor
-research and drop Jetpacks

FEATURES!
-popup menu: allows extremely rapid communication between squad members and commander; everything from ammo requests to movement orders
-waypoints: Commander can issue waypoints to selected marines, including Move, Attack, Defend, and Build.
-multiple attack styles: siege a base with high-powered sonic weaponry, or load up on armor and heavy weapons and do it yourself. Take the long way, or build a phase gate for quick reinforcement.
-teamplay incentives: weld allies to repair their armor; move in mixed groups so each weapon's strengths compliment others' weaknesses.
-help on high: a commander looking ahead, scanning for hostiles, keeping you supplied with ammunition and health, upgrading technology to make you a more effective exterminator.

THE ALIENS: Rather than the human's evolutionary path of increased intelligence over physical ability, these strange life forms have extended their physical capabilities, adaptive power, and instinctive senses to almost unfathomable levels.

These weapons are available if you have 0, 1, 2, and 3 hives online (respectively).
Skulk:
0 bite (melee, will kill an unarmored marine in 2 bites)
1 parasite (used to tag marines and buildings at long range to keep tabs on them)
2 leap (rather like AvP2's pounce. Useful for both movement and attack)
3 Xenocide (powerful suicide explosion)
The Skulk can also climb walls and ceilings.

Gorge:
0 spit (ranged, slow moving, energy-inefficient, med-low damage)
1 healing spray (vital ability
- can heal allies and buildings. Will hurt enemy players)
2 webs (suspend webs between surfaces that slow movement and gum up weapons)
3 Babblers (spawn an AI-controlled skulk-bot with very low hitpoints. Good for attacking buildings and webbed marines)
The gorge is also the builder class, and can construct hives, upgrade chambers, resource nodes, and turrets.

Lerk:
0 bite (still dangerous, but not as much as the skulk's)
1 spikes (ranged spike weapon, ROF ~ 4/sec)
2 umbra (emit a stationary cloud that absorbs 6/7 bullets fired at anything within it)
3 spore cloud (a ranged attack that creates a noxious cloud, harming any marine caught within it. Does not affect buildings)
The lerk is the flying alien.

Fade:
0 swipe (a double-clawed slash. Nasty)
1 acid rocket (ranged, splash damage, painful)
2 blink (a teleport with a slash at the end. excellent for disorienting marines. cannot teleport through geometry)
3 bile bomb (similar to acid rocket, but a *large* splash and a shorter, ballistic trajectory. good base assault weapon)
The Fade is the soldier class.

Ohnos:
0 bite (Nice knowing you)
1 paralyze (ranged weapon that freezes a marine in place. Nice knowing you)
2 charge (trample marines like the speed bumps they are. Nice knowing you)
3 Primal Scream (provide damage, ROF, and speed upgrades to self and all nearby aliens. Nice knowing you)
The Ohnos is the Nice-knowing-you class.

Alien ability is closely tied to the number of hives online.
-0 Hives: Aliens may evolve to Skulk or Gorge, and have one weapon available. A gorge may build Hives and Resource Towers. No upgrade chambers or offensive chambers may be built.
-1 Hive: Aliens may choose the Lerk form. Two weapons are available, and the Gorge can now build offensive chambers (turrets) and one type of upgrade chamber (see below).
-2 Hives: Aliens may evolve to the Fade form. Three weapons are available for each class, and the Gorge may build an additional upgrade chamber type.
-3 Hives: Aliens reach their full power. All five classes may be evolved to, and each alien may use four weapons. The Gorge may build the final upgrade chamber.

UPGRADE CHAMBERS:
One upgrade chamber becomes available with each hive online; it is the decision of the Gorge (builder alien) which to build.

(Defensive Chamber)
-provides a remote base for attacking aliens to heal at, as well as healing nearby alien structures.
-Carapace (increases amount of armor and damage absorption)
-Regeneration (aliens may regenerate health without retreating to a Hive or Defensive Chamber)
-Redemption (an alien at low health has a chance of teleporting back to the safety of a hive)

(Movement Chamber)
-can be "used" to be instantly teleported to the farthest active hive on the map.
-Stillness (level3 completely silences footsteps, jumping, and falling sounds)
-Celerity (each level increases the alien's base speed)
-Adrenaline (each level increases energy - "ammo" - regeneration by 33%)

(Sensory Chamber)
-reveals any marines in sight to all aliens; parasites any marines that come in contact with it.
-Cloaking (level 3 Cloaking renders an alien completely invisible when motionless)
-Scent Of Fear (wounded enemies show up in hive sight with an orange aura)
-Enhanced Hive Sight (your "flashlight" will make both your teammates and enemies highly visible, even in dark rooms)

FEATURES!
-HIVE SIGHT: wordless communication - know instantly when any teammate or structure is under attack, and where! See what your allies see, and parasite marines to keep tabs on them even through walls!
-Be your own assault squad: Use the aliens' lethal weaponry - along with clever tactics - to gut an entire marine team single-handedly.

-Evolve to Skulk: Swift, maneuverable, and deadly in close range. Wall-climb to gain the upper hand, parasite teams of marines to keep track of them wherever they go, or suicide in a powerful explosive attack!
-Evolve to Gorge: Support your teammates by building new hives, upgrade structures, and turrets. Set clever traps with turrets and webbing. Or head to the front lines and back your teammates up with Healing Spray and a Babbler Swarm!
-Evolve to Lerk: Enjoy the freedom of maneuverable, high-speed flight. Rain spikes down on your enemies, choke them with a cloud of noxious spores, or close ranks and take them out with your razor teeth! Support your teammates with a bullet-absorbing Umbra cloud!
-Evolve to Fade: Strike fear in the hearts of your opponents; your massive armor and deadly weaponry will take down multiple marines with ease. Soften them up at long range with Acid Rockets, then teleport in with Blink and use your claws to rip them asunder!
-Evolve to Ohnos: a thousand pounds of muscle, armor plating, and *serious* aggression control issues. Fear nothing - trample marines and buildings alike, destroy pesky turrets with ease, and paralyze marines where they stand to be dealt with when YOU have time for it! And for the coup-de-gras, use a Primal Scream to give your entire team an insane boost to attack and movement!
-Individual resource management: *YOU* decide what class to evolve to, and what upgrades will best accompany that choice! Ambush squads as a cloaked, silenced, regenerating Skulk, or head to the front lines as a Fade armed with Carapace, Adrenaline, and Enhanced Hive Sight. Choose from FIVE THOUSAND (I'm not joking, we did the math) possible combinations!

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