NS2 patch 278 going live today!

Obraxis

Hi all

Patch 278 got signed off last night and in my haste to finish some Subnautica work I forgot to hit 'send' on the server admin email, so my apologies for not getting it out sooner.

278 will be going live at around 12PM Pacific,3PM Eastern, 8PM UK, 9PM Euro, 7AM Sydney time today.

The preliminary changelog is below.

Thanks all of you for continuing to run your NS2 servers as we push forward with the future of NS2.

-Obraxis

TWEAKS

• NAT failure protection - the network protocol now survives if a NAT gateway drops the UDP binding - this should hopefully help with redplug problems.
• Made sure that the game remembers that you have played the Tutorial even when steam messes up.
• Hide tutorial servers from the server browser
• The player’s rookie state is now fully depending on his hive level. You are marked as rookie if you are below level 3.

MAPS

• Updated all maps to support Auto-Season themes. See ‘Tools/Editor’ section of changelog for more details.

BUG FIXES

• Word Wrapping is no longer causing infinite loop crashing the client.
• 5.1 audio will no longer make main menu music cut in or out, or change volume randomly.
• 5.1 audio will no longer be biased to the right channel in game, for certain sounds.
• Fixed alt-tab sound popping / volume burst on Windows 10 clients.
• Fixed that network snapshots were kept much longer than 8 seconds, which lead to complaints in the log about entities being created/deleted in same update.
• Fixed that first persons spectating send 6-8 times more network packages than needed to the server.
• Fixed that the multi-threaded physics wasn’t updating the collision boxes correctly. This caused all kind of jittering and other weird behaviors.
• Fixed minimap buttons being clickable for the Alien Commander with the big map open.
• Fixed Commander tag being misaligned in chat sometimes.
• Hydras are now able to hit MACs

SERVER

• We have added some log output to try and see if we can figure out why servers sometimes hangs (without crashing, aka “half-crash”). This may be due to the game running through all its available ids too fast.
• The server will now log if it detects an infinite loop when updating lag compensated memory.
• The server will also log if it churns through all available entity ids in less than 30s - this is an indication that the max# of entities needs increasing.
• If any of these log entries shows up, please inform us; a posting in the tech support forums (http://forums.unknownworlds.com/categories/technical-support will ll do fine)

TOOLS
Editor

• Fixed issue with Reflection Probe cube-maps not properly excluding any objects in Exclusion Groups. NOTE: You must use the “Update Reflection Probes” option from the “Tools” menu to properly update them. Moving probes to force an update does not exclude seasonal objects correctly. Think of it as a preview.
• Added a new tool to the editor: The Trim Tool. Rundown:
• Fixed a bug that would cause the texture tool’s “Align to longest/shortest edge” feature to sometimes give incorrect results.
• Fixed a bug that would cause faces with holes to not use texture-lock correctly, and sometimes crash.
• Seasonal changes to maps can be setup through groups (not layers) named “Seasonal[Season]” and “Seasonal[Season]Exclude”. Example: to make a winter ready room, place objects in a group named “SeasonalWinter”, and these objects will appear in-game during the special seasonal time-periods. Objects placed in “SeasonalWinterExclude” will be excluded during winter, but present in all others.

Overview
Builder

• Fixed that Builder created multiple unneeded folders when processing the level files in case your project’s path contained spaces.

SDK

• Upgraded FMOD (Sound System) to v4.44.58
• Added sv_setseason (Fall, Winter, None) console command

Maps

• Fixed default spawn points so you aren't looking at a wall on Eclipse and Docking
• Cleaned up overview on Eclipse and Docking

Known Issues
Editor

• Any time a face is re-triangulated, there’s a chance the texture will become mis-aligned again, same as before.

BabblerKing

That's not ninja patch release anymore that's straight out TROLLING. Love it.

Frozen

Do you think I'll be able to switch between sound devices mid game again via those sound changes? Always loved that feature and it got busted a few patches ago

Nordic

"Fixed that the multi-threaded physics wasn’t updating the collision boxes correctly. This caused all kind of jittering and other weird behaviors." This is an excellent fix.

DC_Darkling

damnit Obby. Just at a day im not even remotely next to a computer.
Still, well done for the patch. ^^
*goes to update*

BabblerKing

Never mind.

AussieKid

There's something seriously wrong with hit reg this patch, only seems to become apparent mid-game. Affecting every server I've been on and multiple people are noticing it. Accuracy stats seem to be a lot lower too overall for all players...... Hope you can fix it soon!

I realised that wasn't really helpful information but the best way i can describe it is this:
Prior to the patch if I was playing with a high ping on an overseas server, hits used to be delayed but they would register. Now hits are delayed but maybe 1 in 6 hits don't seem to register at all, 0 damage. I hope you don't dismiss this, lots of Australian players with over 3K hours playtime are reporting the same thing. Seems to be more severe when ping is high.

battlegorge

Its shocking trying to put a lvl 3 shotgun meat into a skulk thats not moving and its does no damage

Myx

Guys, just look at that: twitch.tv/myxxxx/v/28202305
twitch.tv/myxxxx/v/28203850 after 2:40
Pls fix it, impossible to play.

XoPhyte

Unplayable. Half the bites do not register, very frustrating.

Literally point blank bites are not registering. Lerk seems very affected.