Gaming News - January 2003

(January 27, 2003) - Natural Selection today announced a new version of their server software.

From Natural Selection:

The Natural Selection Half-Life team has released version 1.04 of the dedicated Windows and Linux servers! This lightweight yet meaty patch contains all sort of fixes and features, such as big Linux CPU performance improvements, better weapons balancing, tweaked point systems, removal of several nasty exploits, support for PsychoStats, and much, much more; check below for the full changelog. The patch is only needed by people running dedicated servers, and does not need to be downloaded by people wanting to play the client-based game.

In a related story, the NS 1.1 Client Update is currently under development and should be hitting the pale, clammy hands of our playtesters in a short while. The details of what will be in this update are still hush-hush, but there will be more news soon. I can say that 1.1 should allow the floodgates of league play to burst open and allow your favorite clan or crew to meet the enemy on the ladder of your choice. Stay tuned to www.natural-selection.org, and be sure to check out the forums for the future leaked tidbits.

NS 1.04 Server Changelog
-------------------------------------

- 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.


Download NS v1.04 now from Redphive.org: http://files.redphive.org/ns-v104.zip 

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