A new Natural Selection update 342 is now available to download on PC. According to the official Natural Selection patch notes, the latest update added a Top Bar UI toggle to the advanced options menu, new Friends Group feature and much more.
Since the last patch, players are experiencing problems with the game. Today’s Natural Selection patch 342 will fix a few of these issues.
Check out more details below.
Natural Selection Patch Notes – June 27, 2022
Changelog
Tweaks / Improvements
- Added a Top Bar UI toggle to the advanced options menu.
- The Observatory’s scanned Status Effect icon will always show for Aliens within range, regardless of HUD detail settings. (Similar to the Parasite status effect icon for Marines.)
- Re-added the Railgun Exo’s target outline HUD effect on all Aliens and resolved the performance issues when looking at something far beyond the effect’s maximum range. (Thanks Axtel!)
- Three additional status effect icons added: Nerve Gas, Spores and Armor Healing.
- All status effects are now clearly marked as buffs/debuffs.
Matched Play Changes
- New Friends Group feature where you can invite up to 2 other friends before joining a public lobby, to end up on the same team! There is a maximum of two friend groups per public lobby, and one group per Team.
- New Private Lobby feature where only those whom you invite can play in your match! Note that Matched Play rewards are disabled for this mode.
- Penalties are temporarily removed until they can be administered in a more fair and accurate way in a future update.
- You should now be able to reconnect to an in-progress match after crashing, unless steam has gone offline or the lobby no longer exists.
- New and improved shuffle algorithm which ensures Friends Groups will stay together and evenly balance teams around them.
- Lobbies now robustly handle users leaving and joining after the lobby has reached 12/12 players. Lobbies will correctly roll-back the lobby state as long as the lobby has not reached the Planning Phase.
Matched Play Fixes
- Fixed known cases where player names and avatars would not show up in the Planning Phase screen. All players on the same team should now be visible to team-members after a short delay.
- Fixed known cases where a lobby would fail to spin up a server due to lobby authentication issues.
- Fixed known cases of users being assigned to Team 0 and thus kicked from the match.
- Fixed the lobby status UI (waiting for commanders) not updating properly in some scenarios.
- Fixed some instances where a client could get into a desynchronized state with the lobby UI.
- Fixed users who volunteered to command not being able to see their voted maps during the map voting stage.
- Fixed users not being able to see the Map Vote button after a lobby was rolled back to Waiting for Players.
- Fixed the volunteer to command button showing up after a map vote.
- Fixed a case where Waiting For Commanders timer could get stuck at 0 without progressing the lobby.
- Fixed an issue where players who left during the Map Vote stage would still appear to be in the lobby if the Map Vote screen was open when they left.
- Fixed several issues with player names and avatars being in an incorrect state in the Lobby screen after multiple players left/joined.
- Fixed ability to join a match that just completed using steam friends.
- Fixed ability to join a lobby that had progressed to or beyond the Planning Phase (the user would be kicked from the server when they joined).
- Fixed inconsistent behaviors with in game lobby invites and steam friends invites.
- Fixed numerous script errors and other scenarios that would break a lobby.
- Fixed multiple issues where clicking too fast on some UI elements caused script errors.
Mod System Changes
- Trigger reinstall of hotfix mods if they are failing consistency check.
- When a file fails consistency check the mod it belongs to is now listed in the log when failing to connect to a server.
- Force caching the current version of a hotfix mod if it was updated outside the game by steam to reduce chance of “mod out of date” errors connecting to a server.
- Switch to auto updated steam runtime libraries for the dedicated server to try and fix mod download issues.
Fixes
- Fixed that the Marine Flashlight rate was tied to moverate.
- Fixed Marine structures taking too long to build in some cases. They were affected by server performance or even latency. The TSF has issued a mandatory firmware update to all build tools to resolve this issue.
- Fixed Exo Crosshairs not being included in the default consistency exclusion list.
- Fixed Marine tutorial not progressing when asked to open Map if binding was set to toggle instead of hold.
- Fixed base tutorials not automatically progressing to the next tutorial after completion.
- Fixed Ambient Occlusion graphics setting being turned off on every client restart.
- Fixed Hallucinations not using the player skins of those they were copying. Hopefully they never learn how to copy Marines.
- Fixed player names that used certain special characters causing the Windows error sound during server joining, chatting, or death.
- Fixed Atmospherics graphics setting defaulting to 1.0 even though the UI reported 0.15, the intended default.
- Fixed seasonal throwables (snowballs and candy) causing console errors and not being rate limited. We’ll be sad to see the infinite streams of candy go.
- Fixed Bmacs getting hit with the Axe making flesh sounds. It creeps us all out just a little bit less now.
- Fixed weapons dropped upon death near an Armory still having a decay timer. (Thanks Axtel!)
- Fixed the Revert button not working correctly when making changes in the Options menu.
- Fixed old hooks\console commands of hot reloaded lua files not being cleared.
- Fixed the menu sometimes being restarted from Lua errors.
- Fixed hallucinated Drifters occasionally making Marine footstep sounds when they moved about. It was terrifyingly funny, but an unfortunate evolutionary dead-end.
- Fixed that Nano Shield could not be used on unpiloted Exosuits.
- Fixed Power Nodes not playing their critical sound effects for players who have left relevancy range and returned. You have no excuse for not welding the Power Node now.
- Fixed outdated Alien commander tutorial that required manually infesting tunnels.
- Fixed outdated Marine commander tutorial that blocked progress due to Robotics Factory size change.
Maps
- Descent (Thanks Salty!)
- Gravity Control – Fixed death trigger.
- Summit (Thanks psyk!)
- Fixed death trigger issues in Crevice and Crossroad
Tools
- Map editor workflow improvements (Thanks Axtel!)
- Added reliable transform gizmo planar handle selection.
- Added Ctrl-click and Alt-click to selection filter toggles.
- Fixed multiple editor state corruptions that could result in an unusable editor.
- Moved “select object layer” functionality to Alt-LMB with Select tool active.
- Negative texture scales are properly preserved when using the paint tool.
- Reduce unintended viewport freezes when manipulating objects.
- Improvements to supporting light placements in a level file when flipping rooms or entire maps. (Thanks Axtel!)
SDK
- Event.RemoveHook is now an engine function instead of Lua and the table of registered hooks can now be accessed from Event.HookTable.
- Scripts are now passed a hot reload depth as toplevel parameter if it’s being hot reloaded otherwise it’s nil.
Known Issues
- The Matched Play “Team Imbalance auto-concede” feature that is triggered when too many players have left one team, does not work well with reconnecting players just yet.
- Clicking the “Find Match” / “Cancel Searching” button in the Friends Group screen multiple times in quick succession can trigger script errors that require the group host to restart their client.
- When entering the planning phase the First Team splash screen may sometimes show up twice.
- There is currently no visual indication of which players in a lobby, if any, are in a friends group.
- Chat messages received while the Map Vote screen is open will not be visible after closing the Map Vote screen.