NOTICE There is a slight issue with the launcher for users updating from an older version. Until the launcher is fixed, unchecking "Keep custom files" in the launcher settings will fix the issue.

NOTICE For those updating from 3.3b7 or earlier:

• Change your Half-Life beta version back to "None" in its steam properties.
• This patch will overwrite your userconfig.cfg. If you've made any customizations to yours, back it up.
• - If you plan to keep using your userconfig, remove any entries related to pistol scripts, network rates, and gamma/brightness/lightgamma.
• Your game will look weird until you click one of the presets in the main menu or exec videodefaults.cfg because your previous graphics settings are getting mixed with new options.
• If you were previously using the pistol script, you will need to "bind mouse1 +attack" in console or bind it in options.

• 05/11/2024

  NS 3.3b9 is now available

  • Bot updates by @RGreenlees
  • - Bots are affected by cloak, with visibility determined by size, opacity level and movement. Bot skulks will sneak when cloaked to stay hidden.
  • - Bots can now hear enemies and will track enemy movement using sound.
  • - Improved general bot movement, especially when jumping and blinking.
  • - Improved bot lerk flight movement.
  • - Alien bots now attack in waves, gathering together first before attacking outposts to increase their chance of success.
  • - Fixed some stuck issues with lifts.
  • - Thanks Epicopy and Francis for help testing the bots!
  • Health and ammo HUD scaling
  • - The health and ammo HUD elements now scale with the screen resolution. Thanks @Toodles2You for sharing his code for this.
  • - Added commands for the position, scale, and minimum opacity of the heath and ammo. These all start with `hud_health` or `hud_ammo`.
  • - Health and armor can now expand to 4 digit numbers (when using the xmenu server plugin for instance).
  • - Fixed the sprites being blurry.
  • - Fixed the health cross art being cut off at the edges.
  • - Fixed other rendering and spacing issues with the health and ammo.
  • Weapon animation fixes
  • - Fixed numerous incorrect or broken alien weapon animations on every class.
  • - Fixed animation issues with the pistol firing from the last patch.
  • - Fixed reload animations not always playing.
  • - Added a transitional animation for when a gorge stops building.
  • Unbuilt structures on the minimap are now a darker shade than built structures, and recycling structures are now gray.
  • Fixed side mouse buttons registering as left click when commanding or in the popup menu.
  • - Mouse3/4/5 can now all be used as key binds when commanding, which is useful with the various impulse commands like go to med request or select all players.
  • Fixed bullet spark effects happening when shooting above some marine structures.
  • Jetpack research cost decreased from 45 to 35
  • - Since the cost of jetpacks was increased from 10 to 15 in v3.3b5, the cost and timing of getting the first jetpacks onto the field was slightly increased. This change will make it so the cost and timing of getting the first 2 jetpacks out are the same as NS 3.2.
  • - A bit of history on this: NS 3.1 jetpack balance was 15 res per jetpack, 35 res to research, and 60 seconds to research. NS 3.2 changed this to 10res/45res/75sec, but this change was widely considered to have made jetpacks too cheaply replaceable. The research time is still 75 seconds, as the timing from NS 3.2 remains well regarded.
  • Spectator updates by @RGreenlees and @pierow
  • - Added mp_freespectatormode, which controls when a player can enter the free spectator mode (free look / free roaming). 0 = never, 1 = only when spectator (default), 2 = Always.
  • - Free look will now be part of the cycle when pressing the jump key.
  • - The map overlay is now toggled with the crouch button.
  • - The cursor is now enabled when in an observer mode that locks the view, and the player selection UI can now be used.
  • - Strafing in free roaming no longer snaps to different players.
  • - Fixed a bug that would break spectating completely if returning to the ready room while in free roam.
  • - You can no longer enter free roaming using the "specmode" and "spec_mode" console commands if it's disabled by the server.
  • - Fixed bugs with the cursor when spectating.
  • - Fixed bugs/exploits where dead players could spectate the enemy team if all spectatable players on the team are dead.
  • Waypoint updates
  • - Fixed waypoints appearing again upon respawn if they were previously acknowledged.
  • - Waypoints on the HUD no longer blink by default.
  • - Added hud_waypoint_blink to change waypoing blinking behavior. 0 = don't blink, 1 = always blink, 2 = blink on the minimap only.
  • - hud_drawwaypoints has been renamed to hud_waypoint_draw.
  • Crosshair updates
  • - Added spectate crosshair.
  • - Fixed crosshair circle rendering issues.
  • - Added crosshair round dot option `cl_cross_dot_round` 0 = square, 1 = circle.
  • - Updated the shotgun and heal spray default crosshairs.
  • - Fixed readyroom crosshairs not applying.
  • Fixed small gaps in the hitboxes for the skulk, gorge, and onos models. In practice, these gaps were mostly too small to be an issue given the bullet width.
  • Slightly reduced the max volume of the randomized first person alien movement sounds.
  • Alien idle and primal scream sounds are now frame rate independent. The alien movement sounds were made frame rate independent a while back.
  • Fixed the intensity shader not working correctly on custom maps with no env_gamma entity
  • Added cl_teamcfgs, which changes the auto execution of alien/marine team configs to be 0 = off, 1 = if playing only, 2 = also in spectate.
  • Fixed an issue where letting go of attack with the pistol would briefly reduce the ammo count. This fix may also fix some incorrect attack behavior with grenades or welders.
  • The pistol binary triggering option is now purely client side.
  • Fixed typos with the video preset notifications. Thanks @lameos.

• 03/29/2024

  NS 3.3b8 is now available

  Bot integration and new lighting are here!

  Integrated Bot Support

  • Bots have been added to NS to enable a single-player experience offline, or help maintain player counts on servers.
  • Other bots such as RCBot and Whichbot will continue to work as normal and can play alongside the new bots.
  • New settings for enabling bot support have been added to the listen server menu in-game and the server config files.
  • Bots can be added and removed manually, or automatically to either maintain team sizes, or keep teams balanced.
  • The bot can optionally command for the marines.
  • Navigation files for the bots are held in ns/navmeshes, with support for all official maps (both combat and regular play).
  • A custom-built (Windows only) nav editor tool is included in ns/navmeshes/NavEditor to allow you to edit existing files or create new ones for custom maps. Documentation is included.

  Graphics and Audio Updates

  • Presets are now in the main menu for selecting from Classic NS, NS 3.3 (new default), and Competitive audio and visual settings.
  • - Classic NS: NS 3.2 lighting, audio mix, crosshairs, HUD, and view/weapon bobbing.
  • - NS 3.3: Brighter lighting with less shadows, reduced volume music and ambient sounds, new crosshairs, minimal marine HUD, reduced weapon bobbing, and no view bobbing.
  • - Competitive: At the moment these are just the settings from previous NS 3.3 releases, but with the Nine Legends HUD. This will likely be updated in the future to take advantage of the new lighting settings.
  • The previously disabled "gamma ramp" for NS that used a broken windows API has been rewritten as an openGL shader.
  • - This allows the for the graphics to be viewed as originally intended in the "Classic NS" preset.
  • - cl_postprocess toggles the shader (and any future postprocessing effects). It also clears the framebuffer between frames, so untextured areas (ex. outside the map) no longer retain pixels from previous frames.
  • - cl_intensity scales the image intensity, with 1 being the same as the original gamma ramp. Image intensity varies according to the map's settings for it.
  • - cl_intensityalt toggles using a new alternative env_gamma setting than the map's original for certain maps where the lighting was much darker or brighter than other maps (enabled in NS 3.3, disabled in Classic NS presets).
  • - Added alternative map env_gammas: ns hera 1.7 -> 1.55 (reduced intensity) , ns_lucid 1.6 -> 1.75 (increased intensity).
  • - Removed cl_gammaramp and ResetGamma.exe
  • - Special thanks to @bacontsu, @SamVanheer, and @admer456 for sharing their openGL work in HL and answering my questions about HL's rendering. They all make cool stuff, go check it out.
  • Added new default crosshairs themed for each team and weapon (cl_weaponcfgs 2) and fixed a few crosshair bugs.
  • - Added cl_cross_scaling so the new defaults are scaled up at resolutions above 1080p. When making your own custom crosshairs, you can turn this off so the values you set are equal to the amount of pixels.
  • - Crosshair outlines can now be non-integer values for soft edges and the values now represent the number of pixels. If your custom crosshairs look different, try halving the outline values.
  • - Box-shaped crosshairs are now possible.
  • HUD styles can now be swapped during gameplay without reloading the map.
  • Hivesight text labels are now less visible if the structure or player isn't currently being attacked.
  • The minimum lightgamma value has been reduced from 2 to 1.81 (the lowest the engine will go before crashing).
  • Updated the NS options menu. This is the best that can be done with HL's UI as a mod without completely replacing it.
  • Removed the NS title music track from the gameplay music, so it plays in the main menu only.
  • cl_musicdelay -1 plays a music track at the start of the round only (new default), instead of playing another after a random time.
  • Welder flickering has been removed from cl_dynamiclights 1. It can be turned on with cl_dynamiclights 2 and an epilepsy warning has been added to the options UI. (0 is NS3.3 default, 1 is Classic NS default)

  Other Changes

  • Pistol binary trigger added and can be toggled with cl_pistoltrigger. TSA command saw that their best marines were modifying their pistols to take advantage of the high rate of fire. Binary triggers are now standard issue on pistols.
  • - Added attack queueing to the pistol, so attacking again before it's ready to fire will make it fire when ready.
  • Lerk flap and Gorge heal spray can now be used via the +movement bind.
  • Reduced sticking to diagonal walls. Credit to @AltimorTASDK
  • Added network rate presets added to NS options. Much of the low level networking it handled by the engine, so setting these dynamically isn't feasible.
  • - Players can start at the top of the list for the lowest delay possible and try lower options until their connection feels stable and other players move smoothly.
  • - rate 100000 is now default (100KB/s max burst download speed from a server - engine limit, should prevent choke).
  • - updated default server values sv_maxunlag 0.3 (300 ms max network rewind, down from 500ms) sv_maxupdaterate 102 (engine limit, up from HL default of 30 if servers never set this in their config).
  • Added cl_bobview to toggle view bobbing (off by default) and separate it from weapon bobbing. View bobbing will only occur if both cl_bob (weapon bobbing) and cl_bobview are enabled.
  • cl_bob, lightgamma, and cl_showspeed settings are now saved.
  • Fix for typing another key in chat before releasing the enter key causing it to send the message.
  • Resources received from kills are no longer random by default (sv_randomrfk 0).
  • The building cancel button is now the second to last hotkey slot (C) by default, instead of the last (V), to prevent accidental recycles. This can be changed back with cl_cmcancellast 1.
  • Fixed commanders not being able to heal at an armory if they had previously gotten into the chair with low HP and did not need to restock ammo.
  • Fixed mouse centering not working correctly with non-native fullscreen resolutions.
  • Fixes to bugs from the HL 25th anniversary update. NS is now built for this version of HL.
  • - Forced sv_rollangle 0
  • - Replaced NS's widescreen method with HL25's and ported over the exploit prevention and commander fixes.
  •    - Added sv_widescreenclamp to limit fov expansion to 16:9 aspect ratios in tournament play if desired. It is disabled by default to support ultra-widescreen displays.
  • - Fixed view spinning when closing the popup menu.
  • - Fixed menu button sounds being HL's, but the button rollover sounds no longer work since the update.
  • Fixes to bugs from the previous patch:
  • - Fixed health rings showing on gorges being spectated when waiting to respawn.
  • - Fixed func_nobuilds underneath the map preventing commanders from dropping structures in eternal requiem on ns_lost.
  • - Webs placed on the floor now correctly connect with marines walking over them.
  • - Allies and structures no longer block the web's effect if they're between the enemy and the web origin point.
  • mp_blockscripts is now off by default.
  • Adjusted default zoom_sensitivity_ratio (for the increased fov with gorge and skulk) to be closer to targeting the same sensitivity at center to vertical monitor distance, instead of center to edge of a 4:3 monitor.
  • Fixed a possible crash when player completes a commander order. Credit to @RGreenlees.
  • Fix crash in debug mode when spectating aliens. Credit to @RGreenlees.

• 09/16/2023

  NS 3.3b7 is now available!

  Pierow and Neoptolemus have been squashing those bugs 🤜🐜

  • Fixed the game hanging on exit!
  • Added ns_askr_b6 by Animelol
  • Fixed gorge web hitboxes not matching their visuals
  • The cursor should now center properly when using the scoreboard mute menu or entering the command chair
  • - Fixed the popupmenu mouse centering sometimes spinning players' views
  • - Fixed mouse centering not working correctly in windowed mode
  • Minimap player names update
  • - It is now enabled by default
  • - Fixed text transparency
  • - Performance optimizations
  • - Renamed the cvars to start with `hud_mapnames`
  • Onoses no longer get stuck at the top of ladders
  • Fixed turrets and offence chambers not firing from the correct height
  • Fixed the player's view angle not resetting to the correct position when leaving the command chair
  • Tooltips update
  • - Players should see a big performance gain, especially when tooltips are showing, but also when they're not
  • - Fixed the border around tooltips not rendering colors correctly
  • - Duplicate help tooltips no longer are displayed simultaneously
  • The commander building placement preview will now show red when trying to place buildings on a func_nobuild surface
  • Fixed players warping when touching func_weldable and func_nobuild entities
  • Audio changes
  • - Ambient sound and music track mp3s handled by FMOD are now scaled with with the game sound effects `volume` command so they're not ridiculously loud if you turn down the volume
  • - `cl_ambientsound` and `cl_musicvolume` scale their respective volumes with `1` being the original audio mix `0.5` being half volume, and `0` being off.
  • - The FMOD API no longer loads onto the client if `cl_ambientsound` and `cl_musicenabled` are 0

• 08/31/2023

  NS 3.3b6 is now available!

  • Add ns_askr_b5 by @animelol
  • Add hud_drawwaypoints to control hiding the waypoint overlay on the HUD. The waypoint icon will always show on the minimap. 0 never draws the waypoint, 1 always draws it, and the new default of 2 shows it until the player uses the acknowledge saying. It's also in advanced options. Effectively replaces the popular /clearwp plugin.
  • Players can now send two different sayings/requests in quick succession. This is useful for requesting both meds and ammo without having to wait for the request cooldown.
  • Spectators can now see the hive info and research tracker UI elements. Previously these were only seen from spectate if you were dead and watching a teammate.
  • Bug fixes for issues introduced in the last patch.
  • Cheats is no longer checked by default when starting a listen server.

• 08/23/2023

  NS 3.3b5 is now available!

  • Updates to accommodate the new Evobot custom built for NS. Go check it out!
  • - Reverted a change to weapon solid state that could cause a crash from certain interactions with plugins.
  • - Fixed fake clients not having random weapon spread. (Thanks @RGreenlees)
  • Added ns_askr_b4 by @animelol
  • Jetpack cost increased from 10 to 15 res by popular demand.
  • New server playtest commands
  • Weapon and item dropping rework
  • - Added cl_weaponswap, which adjusts player preference for automatically dropping the LMG for a better weapon. (Thanks @EterniumDev for initial code)
  • -- 0 - Never swap 1 - Always swap 2 - Only swap if the replacement weapon isn't empty. Also adjustable in advanced options.
  • - Items now spawn slightly offset from the weapon when a player dies. (Thanks @RGreenlees for initial code)
  • - Improvements to anti-stuck code for falling weapons and items.
  • Updated health rings to always show when you have a welder in your inventory or are a gorge and teammates are below 95% armor/health.
  • - The percentage can be adjusted via hud_teamhealthalert or advanced options.
  • - Added [Welder] and [Parasited] indication to teammates' names when looking at them or as commander.
  • - Text length adjustable via `hud_nameinfo` `0` - off `1` - full length `2` - short `3` - one letter. Also in advanced options.
  • - Parasited text and color change for players from commander view is now always shown, instead of only when that player is selected.
  • Added player names to minimap (Thanks @EterniumDev aka Alien Bird)
  • - `hud_minimapnames` adjusts length with `0` being off, `1` full name, and anything higher being the character limit.
  • - `hud_minimapnamesComm` toggles the names when in commander view.
  • - Text color adjustable via `hud_minimapnamesRed` `hud_minimapnamesGreen` `hud_minimapnamesBlue` 0-255
  • - It's off by default currently because the black background on the text can cover sprites on the map.
  • Fixed the lerk flying animation not playing if a lerk walked off a cliff before flying.
  • Fixed reload animations not showing on clients if walking over an ammo pack while holding reload with no ammo.
  • Fixed being stuck reloading if reload was still held while shooting the shotgun or grenade launcher.
  • Fixed the research tracker not showing correctly in demos or HLTV.
  • - This should change the data structures for demo files. Watch demos on the appropriate version of the game to minimize bugs.
  • Added `echodev` for printing to the top left corner when `developer 1` is enabled. Useful for config execution.
  • Removed NS 3.2 backwards compatibility checks and some unused playtest cvars. This fork is now too different to maintain compatibility.