Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop 
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Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Hotfix - April 20, 2024Apr 19, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsFixed an issue that was causing dedicated servers to crash when a player connected.Mapping Competition 2024: "Space Station"Apr 19, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsIt's Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop's 7th birthday, which means it's time for our second annual mapping competition! The theme this year is Space Station. Create a standalone mission (of any type) that takes place on a space station or other large spaceship. Here are some ideas to get you started: A deathmatch mission with hazards that can be activated via panels scattered around the ship. An endless mission where civilians must be rescued from a derelict space station while keeping life support active. A mission where marines must fight their way through enemy soldiers to stop the ship's reactor from melting down. A mission where marines clear out a space station that is still being affected by the portal storms that preceded the seven hour war, full of warring Xen creatures. A mission where marines need to download critical data from computers on a space station that is actively falling apart. A mission where marines investigate the ruins of a space station that has reentered the atmosphere of a planet and crashed. Missions can be submitted via the Steam Workshop using the SpaceStation2024 tag between now and June 1st, 2024 at 00:00 UTC. Entering will earn you a medal unique to this contest once submissions close, and the winning entry will receive an additional medal unique to that entry. High quality entries may also be featured in Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces. Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop's 7th BirthdayApr 19, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsIt's Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop's 7th birthday, and that means a week of double experience points from missions, our second annual mapping competition, and the possibility of cake. 2023 in Review Since Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop's 6th birthday last year, the game has gained improved shaders, better weapon readability, additions to Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces including mission bounties, better lag compensation, and an in-game reporting system. You might also notice some changes to the main menu if you haven't played for a while. In April 2023, we started tracking the causes of marine deaths, and between April and December, 12,734,965 marines died in missions. The most common cause of death? Good old drone claws, with 5,147,736 confirmed kills. Other interesting deaths in 2023, selected at random: 194,240 marines died to self-inflicted damage in deathmatch game modes. 30,097 marines were kicked to death by boomers. 6,136 marines were run over by a rogue forklift in Lab Ruins. 18,857 marines were blown up along with a destroyed sentry. 929,538 marines were lost to infestation. 113,511 marines were shot to death while infested. 346,432 marines were blown up by grenades fired from a grenade launcher, and an additional 962,861 marines were blown up by grenades fired by their own grenade launcher. Marines aren't the only ones who die in Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop missions! In 2023, player-controlled marines killed: 1,156,620,313 (that's right, over a billion) drones. 59,404,675 parasites. 51,839,565 xenomites. 31,888,835 rangers. 30,038,781 eggs. 28,923,205 buzzers. 20,908,814 grubs. 6,392,125 biomass. 6,199,796 boomers. 5,692,301 harvesters. 4,105,397 menders. 4,012,723 shieldbugs. 3,534,646 mortarbugs. 29,210 queens. 2,208,733 antlions. 254,967 zombies. 176,539 headcrabs. 190,592 Combine soldiers. 18,187 hunters. In 2023, you completed 7,489,163 missions... and failed 14,054,778 missions. After the November 2023 update added support for duplicate marines in custom game modes, you completed 3,890 missions with 9 or more player-controlled marines (39,932 missions if we count each player separately like we do for other stats) in November and December. Mapping Competition 2024: "Space Station" This year's theme is "Space Station". See the announcement of the contest for more details. Changes in this update Weapons Weapons (other than the M868 Flamer Unit and the Grenade Launcher) in first person now fire from the center of the camera, similar to how other first person games work. M868 Flamer Unit: Fixed the firing animation continuing to play on the client after running out of ammo if the fire button is held and auto-reload is disabled. Grenade Launcher: The friendly fire crosshair is now activated based on the grenade's predicted location of impact instead of pretending the grenade launcher shoots bullets. Grenade Launcher: Fixed the grenade launcher attempting to aim for the inside of the marine's head in first person. Official Missions Area...Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Hotfix - March 6, 2024Mar 6, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsWe've updated the game client with a fix for bug reports written in Chinese only sending the first half of the text.Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Hotfix - March 1, 2024Mar 1, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsWe've fixed a few issues reported by the community. Fixed a crash on the main menu when hovering over the public lobby list or list of friends. The Season 20 Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces medals were given out with the wrong numbers. These have been revoked and re-issued. Fixed the Report a Problem text box only allowing English letters. Fixed the Maximum Game Bandwidth setting showing the number in kilobytes per second while the description said kilobits. Added an icon to the main menu that can be used to access the legacy server browser. Additionally, some late notes for the release earlier today: Tears for Tarnor: Oasis Colony Spaceport: Made auto-aim target Fred (the colonist who dies at the beginning) to keep a speedrunning trick working. Reduction: Fallen City: The box car door no longer collides with aliens and physics objects. Fixed the chainsaw idle sound starting after having fired the chainsaw when rd_chainsaw_idle_sound is 0. Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Update - March 1, 2024Feb 29, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsNext month (April) is Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop's 7th anniversary. We're not planning on having a huge update this year because we've decided it's better to release new content as soon as it's ready instead of waiting for an arbitrary time of year. March (this month) brings with it some new menus, fixes for various problems reported by the community, and some updates to an infrequently used NPC for mappers. Reporting Added a button to quickly report or commend players in the player list (by default, F9, or the thumbs-up icon in the lobby). Reports go to the Reactive Drop Team. Added a new option to the pause (ESC) menu: "Report a Problem". Entering the pause menu now takes a screenshot that can be attached to the report. This feature can be used for anything you think the Reactive Drop Team should know about. (Let us know through some other method if you get errors sending a report.) Once a report is started, you can resume the report at any time until you close the game, or throw it away and start a new one. You can start a report on any player you played with or the last dedicated server you were on for up to an hour afterwards. You can also file a report that is not tied to a player or server (for example, a bug report or asking for help with a problem related to your account) at any time. Fixed the "Automatically report players I mute or vote for" checkbox on the player list always appearing to be unchecked when the menu loads. Deathmatch Infection Deathmatch Challenge: Prevented Onslaught from being activated in these modes. Infection Deathmatch Challenge: The railgun now pushes zombies with much more force. Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces servers no longer filter deathmatch challenges. Colonists (for mappers) Colonists are no longer an auto-aim target by default. (Can be adjusted in Hammer.) Colonists now show the friendly fire warning on the crosshair unless they are marked as an aim target. The colonist behavior that makes them follow marines when interacted with can now be disabled in Hammer, and the colonist now has a glowing outline to indicate that this action is allowed. Added "spawn with weapon" option for colonists in Hammer. However, many weapons act strangely with colonists; this will be addressed in the future based on what mappers need. Combine soldiers now use asw_weapon_pdw_single rather than being hard-coded to use a custom model and animations. asw_weapon_pdw_single becomes an asw_weapon_pdw with special settings once it spawns, so scripts that manipulate asw_weapon_pdw do not need to be updated. Colonists now support ai_goal_actbusy. All Half-Life 2 citizen busy actions are available. Additionally, Drone_WallPound and Ranger_Sleep busy actions are now available. Aliens now make "sounds" that humanoid NPCs can hear whenever they complete or loop an animation. Other Bug Fixes and Tweaks Jacob's Rest: Cargo Elevator (all variants): Fixed some graphical oddities based on camera position on the metal plating after the ...Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Hotfix - February 2, 2024Feb 2, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsWe've released a hotfix with the following changes: Fixed a crash related to bounty notifications on the main menu. (hotfix went out shortly after midnight UTC on Feburary 1st) Fixed bounty notifications duplicating the first mission in a group instead of showing all missions together in one notification. (hotfix went out shortly after midnight UTC on Feburary 1st) Fixed low frame rate or stuttery alien animations. Fixed aliens being affected by incendiary mines more often than they should be due to lag compensation. Fixed parasites moving much more than intended while infesting. Fixed cl_alien_extra_interp being able to be set to a negative value. Grubs no longer block movement for entities such as doors. Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Update - February 1, 2024Jan 31, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsThis month's update includes some large changes to Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces, as well as some balance changes for the Infection Deathmatch mode and several other fixes. A note on Lag Compensation The internet doesn't transmit information instantly. Information can only travel at the speed of light, and sometimes the speed of light is just too slow. For example, if a player from Frankfurt joins a lobby hosted in Beijing, even if their computers were directly connected by a very long wire, information would take 50 milliseconds to get from Frankfurt to Beijing and back. In reality, the information needs to travel much further than the 15500 km round trip because the information doesn't move in a straight line. When you fire a bullet, the information travels a long distance through complicated circuits before it even leaves your computer, and then it spends time traveling through a series of other computers before it finally reaches the one hosting the lobby. But that's not the end of the journey. Once the lobby host has figured out what your bullet did, that information needs to travel back to you and every other player in your lobby. By the time your bullet reaches the lobby host, the alien you were shooting might have moved! But game engines have a few tricks up their sleeves to hide this from you, and because they can't shorten the physical distance the information needs to travel, they do something easier: time travel! The information about the bullet you fired doesn't wait until it gets to the host and back before it shows something on your screen. First, the game running on your computer pretends the information about the bullet made a round trip to the host instantly. This is called "prediction" because the game "predicts" what the host will say happened. Prediction is shown in red in the images below. Second, when the information about the bullet reaches the host, the characters in the game move back in time to check where your bullet would have hit. This is called "lag compensation", and is shown in blue in the images below. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27357479/425a4e8d4330cc9628e3e924dfab3cab575580ae.png Alien Swarm and Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop (prior to this update) lag compensation algorithm, shown with 300ms simulated round trip ping and default settings. That's not good! If the drone hadn't been moving toward Vegas, he would have completely missed the shot! The lobby host rewound time, but it didn't do a very good job. Here's what that shot will look like after this update: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27357479/c7440efa1232f45764d0970537c88ac1f7cf9e63.png Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop (as of this update) lag compensation algorithm, shown with 300ms simulated round trip ping and default settings. Much better! If you have a configuration that sets cl_lagcompensation 0, we recommend removing that command as it means the lobby host won't time travel at all when you fire a bullet. The hotfix a week ago inadvertently marked cl_lagcompensation as ...Upcoming changes to Heroes of the Interstellar Armed ForcesJan 25, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsStarting in Season 20 (February 2024), Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces is gaining two new sources of points. Additionally, we are updating the score multipliers of nearly every mission and many challenges. What's Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces? Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces (HoIAF) is a monthly competition to complete as many difficult missions as possible on participating servers (marked with an 🏅 icon in the lobby list). You earn more points for harder missions, difficulty settings, and challenges, and for marines in your squad surviving to the end if hardcore friendly fire is enabled. At the end of the month, everyone who participated receives a medal, with special medals going to the players in the top 20 and top 100. You can display medals on your Steam profile the same way you would display any other item in your inventory, as well as equip up to 3 medals on your Commander Profile in-game. Medals are also available from many other sources. Check out the guides on the Steam Community Hub to find out more! Scoring Multiplier Updates 109 of the 133 rated missions and 28 of the 76 rated challenges have received scoring changes. In most cases, the difference between challenge score multipliers has been reduced and the difference between mission score multipliers has increased. The full list of modifier changes is available on the Reactive Drop developer website. Personal Best Scores Starting in Season 20 (February 2024), your personal best score for each mission will earn you bonus points towards your season score. Your 5 best scores contribute the most, with each group of 5 scores afterwards contributing half as much. The point bonuses are generous. For example, if your best single mission score is 500 points, you'll gain nearly one hundred thousand points towards your season score. If you manage to beat your score by 100 points (600 total), you'll gain an additional nearly forty thousand points. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27357479/83fc55da8a9fbd1a27944ded1eace01072c5379f.jpg If you want to stay ahead in future seasons, you'll need to hone your skills at a multitude of missions, and super-high scores in endless missions are now worth far more than the points they give directly. Mission Bounties It's not just the high-scorers who are getting a bonus this season! A few times per day, the Interstellar Armed Forces will provide bounties for completing specific missions. You can find these in the notifications area on the main menu, and the missions with bounties you haven't claimed are also marked in the mission chooser while you're connected to a participating server. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27357479/ad9e1daae38ecf329438a2cfc09cded461cdd6e4.png Bounties grant points for the successful completion of a mission regardless of difficulty settings or challenges. That means that if you were previously getting a measly 1 point per mission on Easy, you can now earn hundreds or thousands of points a few times per day. Bounties are created ever...Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Update - January 1, 2024Dec 31, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHappy new year! This month's update contains fixes for controller issues, updates to the Infection deathmatch challenge, and a few miscellaneous fixes and new features. Official Missions BioGen Corporation: Operation X5: Fixed a door that was inadvertently classified as a ladder. BioGen Corporation: Invisible Threat: Fixed speedrun time being incorrectly calculated. Controller Fixed doubled cursor movement inputs on in-game menus such as computer hacks and the briefing lobby. Fixed extra inputs being generated when switching action set. This was causing the Override command to close and re-open the hack. Fixed an issue where after starting the game with Steam in Big Picture mode or using the controller, selecting a marine with the mouse would always select Sarge. Added convars rd_input_controller_mode_mouse and rd_input_controller_mode_keyboard to lock the input mode to not-controller (0) or controller (1). Menus Fixed non-English letters not being enterable into the lobby name field. Fixed 7.1 surround sound missing from 2010 audio settings menu. Fixed incorrect name for Order Specific Marine in the 2010 keyboard settings menu. Fixed download campaign button being obscured by the filters button. Fixed memory leak related to player avatars. This could sometimes lead to a "CUtlRBTree overflow" crash. Infection Deathmatch Challenge Reduced the amount of bonus maximum health that comes with Last Stand. Reduced the DPS of the chainsaw when using Last Stand. Slightly increased the DPS of the chainsaw when not using Last Stand. Freeze Grenades can no longer be used. (They were already unselectable.) Significantly increased Trip Mine damage against zombies. Significantly increased Gas Grenade damage against zombies. Significantly increased Incendiary Mine damage against zombies. Electro-stunned zombies now take double damage. Medic zombies now begin regenerating health sooner after taking damage. Fixed players falling through terrain when turning into a zombie. Updated custom edits for dm_deima. Added Classic variant: Last Stand mode is disabled. Prime Zombies no longer have shields. Improved bot marine pathfinding across all deathmatch game modes. Fixed sometimes seeing glows for weapons or ammo that have despawned. Scripting Added a new method to rd_hud_vscript: PaintPolygon(vertices, red, green, blue, alpha, texture). vertices is an array of tables, each containing x, y, s, and t coordinates. There must be at least three vertices and they should form a convex shape in clockwise order. x and y are screen coordinates. s and t are texture coordinates, from 0 to 1. Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Update - December 2, 2023Dec 2, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsSpectators will now see the full length laser pointer for the marine they are spectating. Using the healing ability on a medic weapon now dims the laser pointer in the same way that firing any other gun does. Lobbies with no ping information now sort to the bottom of the list by ping instead of the top. Fixed the Create Lobby screen not loading the saved lobby name from the previous lobby you created. Fixed reservations not being properly cleaned up when a player who played a marine in the previous mission fully connects and automatically selects their marines. Fixed sg-servers #2 not appearing as a ranked server (this fix went out as a hotfix yesterday). Custom main menu layouts can now use the commands for the top bar. Fixed a crash related to Steam avatar image handling in some custom layouts. Updated the Infection deathmatch challenge:Attempt to fix a bug that sometimes instantly regenerates all players' health to maximum when another dies. Last Stand users now gain bonus maximum health that scales with the number of zombies left. Fixed a bug that sometimes resets zombie grenades to zero charges when a player dies. Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Update - December 1, 2023Nov 30, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsMenus We're testing the new main menu layout that will be officially launching on April 20, 2024. The main menu has been redesigned, with information about the current Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces season, recent major updates, and trending Steam Workshop addons. To revert to the previous layout, enter the console command rd_legacy_ui 2017; host_writeconfig. This console command will continue to work after the new UI officially launches. Fixed the 2024 main menu partially showing up when rd_legacy_ui 2017 is set and the resolution is changed without closing the game. Lobby filters have returned, along with new convars: See cvarlist rd_lobby_filter_ for a list. cvar list -------------- rd_lobby_filter_always_friends : 1 : , "a", "cl" : always show lobbies with Steam friends in them rd_lobby_filter_challenge : -1 : , "a", "cl" : challenge preference for searched lobbies. -1=don't care, 0=only off, 1=only on rd_lobby_filter_dedicated : -1 : , "a", "cl" : dedicated server preference for searched lobbies. -1=don't care, 0=only listen, 1=only dedicated rd_lobby_filter_difficulty_max : 5 : , "a", "cl" : maximum difficulty for searched lobbies. 1=easy,2=normal,3=hard,4=insane,5=brutal rd_lobby_filter_difficulty_min : 1 : , "a", "cl" : minimum difficulty for searched lobbies. 1=easy,2=normal,3=hard,4=insane,5=brutal rd_lobby_filter_distance : 3 : , "a", "cl" : maximum distance for player-hosted lobbies. does not affect lobbies on dedicated servers. 0=only own region, 1=nearby regions, rd_lobby_filter_hardcoreff : -1 : , "a", "cl" : hardcore friendly fire preference for searched lobbies. -1=don't care, 0=only off, 1=only on rd_lobby_filter_installed : -1 : , "a", "cl" : installed mission preference for searched lobbies. -1=don't care, 0=only non-installed or version mismatch, 1=only installed rd_lobby_filter_onslaught : -1 : , "a", "cl" : onslaught preference for searched lobbies. -1=don't care, 0=only off, 1=only on -------------- 9 convars/concommands for The public lobby count on the main menu no longer includes lobbies on dedicated servers. Fixed the server list in the lobby browser being empty on the first refresh. Fixed dedicated servers showing as separate entries in the lobby browser from the lobby made on the dedicated server. Fixed wire hacks being interrupted if another tech started hacking. Controller Controllers should be recognized by the game even if it was started with no controllers plugged in. Aiming with the mouse no longer changes button prompts to keyboard mode. Pressing buttons on the keyboard or controller now changes button prompts. Mouse buttons do not affect button prompts (pressing a keyboard key will cause mouse button prompts to be displayed). You can also controller aim while doing everything else with keyboard keys and mouse buttons if you want. Missions Tears for Tarnor: Oasis Colony Spaceport: Fixed a ceiling remaining opaque between the hangar and the baggage claim when it was not intended to. Reduction (all miss...Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Update - November 7, 2023Nov 6, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsThis patch addresses some issues in the November 1st update. Reduction: Silent Station: Increased speedrun time limit from 4:40 to 4:50. Reduction: Silent Station: Removed a dialogue trigger with no associated dialogue. Reduction: Operation Sandstorm: Increased speedrun time limit from 3:00 to 3:15. Reduction: Operation Sandstorm: Fixed a missing objective description. Reduction: Operation Sandstorm: Fixed the guide bot getting stuck when the last node is activated within 3 seconds of the previous node. Reduction: Operation Sandstorm: Moved some spawners to avoid aliens falling through the ground. Reduction: Fallen City: Increased speedrun time limit from 1:38 to 1:40. Reduction: Inevitable Escalation: Increased speedrun time limit from 6:00 to 6:30. Reduction: Inevitable Escalation: This mission is no longer eligible for the Hardcore achievement. Fixed a medal being awarded to all players in the lobby rather than just the player who performed the required action. Fixed screen-space motion blur being enabled. Fixed a crash when viewing materials using certain proxies in -tools mode. Additionally, since the release on Wednesday, we have released hotfixes for the following issues: Fixed favorited game servers appearing on the lobby list even if they aren't Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop servers. Fixed certain graphics settings not being saved after being changed in the Advanced Settings screen. Fixed Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces scores not being updated on the leaderboard. Fixed an advanced setting for marine names using the wrong labels for each option. Fixed gas grenade particle effects disappearing for players far away from the grenade. Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Update - November 1, 2023Oct 31, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsThis month's update contains many features requested by the community. New Campaign: Reduction A remastered version of the Reduction campaign is now available in the game. Official Missions Tears for Tarnor: Oasis Colony Spaceport: Fixed specific walls becoming invisible after aliens spawned from certain locations. Tears for Tarnor: Oasis Colony Spaceport: Improved graphics when playing in first or third person. BioGen Corporation: BioGen Labs: Updated the graphical style of the mission. Weapons ML30 Laser Trip Mine: Mines are no longer triggered by invulnerable NPCs, such as scanners. Chainsaw: Fixed firing sound persisting after marine death. Grenade Launcher: Shots aimed far below the marine will now arc differently to avoid hitting the edge of the platform the marine is standing on. Aim-assisted weapons no longer target scanners. Marines can now safely roll through all bullets, even those fired by non-marines. Added a cl_loadout_random console command. It randomises primary, secondary and extra weapons for you and your bot marines. Menus Many graphical advanced settings, including precipitation, dynamic lighting, and alien shadows, are now stored only on your machine and are no longer synchronized to the Steam Cloud, matching the behavior of the main shader quality, texture quality, and antialiasing options. Commanders can now equip up to three medals at once. Updated the main menu public lobby preview to show all servers regardless of Steam group. Added icons for Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces servers. Items with multiple styles, such as medals from recent seasons of Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces, can now have their appearance changed in the Collections screen. Lobby hosts can now lock various settings via the convars rd_lock_difficulty, rd_lock_onslaught, rd_lock_hardcoreff, and rd_lock_challenge. Improved interaction targeting for computers and panels so it is easier to hack while a dropped weapon is nearby. Mapping / Modding Added six new convars that allow co-op challenges to control the maximum number of marines in a squad: asw_marines_max (default 8), asw_marines_max_per_profile (default 1), asw_marines_max_officer (default 2), asw_marines_max_special_weapons (default 2), asw_marines_max_medic (default 2), and asw_marines_max_tech (default 2). Fixed the SecondaryBullets Hammer keyvalue affecting primary ammo on asw_weapon entities. Added support for $tintmasktexture to VertexLitGeneric and UnlitGeneric. Added support for $blendtintbybasealpha to UnlitGeneric. Added rd_drone_flinch_resets_attack for use in challenges. It returns drone flinching behavior to how it was in Alien Swarm, where it would cancel attack animation timers. Added asw_filter_incapacitated for use in Hammer. Marines can now display health up to 8191 (previously, the limit was 511). Added an option to asw_jukebox to make it not interrupt player-supplied combat music, for use in multi-part combat music. Marine skill points can now be reassigned via c...Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Update - September 18, 2023Sep 17, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHere are some fixes for recently-reported bugs and a few map and workshop improvements. IAF HAS42 Devastator: Increased firing sound volume for the player firing the weapon. Fixed end-of-mission stat graph lines being unexpectedly far apart in some cases. (Thanks SJAS) Updated how the Mission Complete screen is rendered to allow supporting more languages. Addons with an autoexec file are now listed on the workshop under the "Config" tag. Going forward, uploading addons with config files in them to the workshop will be limited to autoexec_.cfg to avoid collisions between different addons and between addons and user files. Fixed an issue that caused the "help" command to limit descriptions to 80 characters. (Thanks 法克*尤尔*马泽尔 and Zero) Fixed Bastille only playing one of his two death sounds. (Thanks Beka and krtek2k) Fixed a bug where sv_memlimit would sometimes fail to exit. (Thanks Mithrand) Fixed the asw_vehicle_jeep entity being unintentionally disabled. (Thanks jhheight) Tears for Tarnor: Insertion Point Changed how some invisible walls are defined to allow drones to jump over certain rocks but not through cave walls. Increased the height of some invisible walls intended to keep players from being thrown out of the playable space by shieldbugs. (Thanks kubaaa015) Reduced lighting complexity for areas far from the playable space. Accident 32: Lab Ruins Changed some materials in the starting area. Fixed being able to hear the boss doors closing when the mission starts. The sewer now deals damage over time instead of killing instantly. Added ladders to allow climbing out of the sewer. Added stairs to the area where the harvester spawns in the beginning. Added an area to the west of the big bridge with additional supplies. An ammo stash on the main path has been reduced from 100% full to 60% full to encourage seeking optional supply areas. Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Update - September 1, 2023Aug 31, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsFixed the previous user's Workshop addon enabled state being used on the first game launch after switching Steam accounts. Fixed controller icons in hints rendering incorrectly for non-XInput controllers. Reduced volume of some frequently played sound effects: Officer Leadership skill activation sounds Xenomite (Harvester spawn) sounds IAF Tesla Sentry Coil zap sound IAF HAS42 Devastator firing sounds Fixed an issue that caused some dedicated servers to not update their Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces configuration data. Fixed a generator model being rotated 90 degrees. (For real this time!) Fixed F9 menu showing incorrect text for how many players have voted yes during a map vote. Precision Rail Rifle: Base damage increased from 75 to 105. Now kills drones in a single shot on brutal difficulty on any marine. Paranoia: Crucial Point: Fixed drones refusing to climb upwards in the last holdout. Accident 32: J5 Connector: Fixed drone pathing in the last holdout. Accident 32: J5 Connector: Added a ladder to the sewer area and removed the kill trigger. Added support for $parallaxmap and $height_scale in the LightmappedGeneric shader. This allows the alpha channel of a $bumpmap to "push" a material into a surface. See nature/snowwall006a.vmt for an example. Disabled texture lighting interaction with the Flesh shader for now as it was causing crashes. Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Update - August 16, 2023Aug 15, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsMissions Operation Cleansweep: Storage Facility: Removed tech marine requirement. Added a chainsaw near the first door and twin pistols near the last door. Research 7: Illyn Forest: Removed "Melee" game instructor hint from blockade. (thanks Dmitriy!) Research 7: Illyn Forest: Generator no longer takes damage from marines or explosions. Research 7: Illyn Forest: Adjusted boss bar graphics. Tilarus-5: Cold Catwalks: Fixed a misaligned railing. (thanks WTF-8!) Paranoia: Crucial Point: The satellite dish no longer takes damage from marines. (It could previously be damaged with the Tesla Cannon.) BioGen Corporation: Operation X-5: Fixed a spot where marines could fall out of the map. (thanks Blueberry!) Accident 32: Information Department: Fixed reactor hack area sometimes being disabled. Accident 32: Information Department: Made aliens move slower in water. Accident 32: Powerhood: Changed eggs objective to clearing out any eggs rather than eggs in specific rooms in the map, for challenges that spawn additional eggs. Accident 32: Powerhood: Unwelded supply room door and added more ammo types. Accident 32: Research Center: Added a button to blow away the fog. Accident 32: Research Center: Adjusted spawns. Accident 32: J5 Connector: Made aliens move slower in the shower. Accident 32 (all missions): Improved reflective surfaces. Bugfixes Fixed the crosshair not rendering correctly for some users. This was most noticeable while hacking. Fixed the mission chooser no longer showing bonus, endless, or deathmatch missions after viewing the missions in a campaign and then backing out. Fixed a crash in the new PBR shader. Fixed the L1/LB button ceasing to function after using the radial menu to activate equipment. This also fixes the marine swap radial menu sometimes dropping commands. Reverted dedicated server workshop changes as they were causing unreasonably increased server load. Fixed tech weapons requiring the ability to hack rather than specifically the ability to use tech weapons like weapons for other classes did. Bots can no longer fire medic guns, the mining laser, or the tesla cannon after a mission has ended. Misc Voting to change the mission during briefing or after the mission has ended now only requires a majority of the voters to agree, not a majority of the players in the lobby. Repeatedly calling unsuccessful votes will result in a temporary cooldown. Voting to change the mission during gameplay is unchanged. Muting a player in a lobby, voting to kick a player, or voting to make a player the lobby leader will now send a mini-report to our ticketing system if you have not performed that action on that player recently. We're using this to test our reporting server while we work on a more versatile in-game reporting system. The convars r_flashlightdepthres (1024), rd_max_depth_texture_shadows (1), r_flashlightdepthreshigh (2048), and rd_max_depth_texture_highres_shadows (0) can now be changed while the game is running (or added to autoexec.cfg)...Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Update - August 1, 2023Aug 1, 2023 - Community Announcements2023 Mapping Competition Congratulations to the winner of the 2023 mapping competition: The Gauntlet: Arctic! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27357479/e686fb7ba8743375c03bec9e970bb62347b1f35f.png All participants have also received the 2023 Mapping Competition Participant medal. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27357479/a27f367a656f185e4c2344d2df3df9458a356031.png Texture Anti-Aliasing Anti-aliasing now affects alpha-tested materials like grates and foliage. Examples shown below are all at 8x MSAA, with how it was previously on the left and how it will be after this update on the right. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27357479/7f252c363893ba3578b8ce51570e0d63ff13e42e.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27357479/630dd2b5f1420a3ba33620c383a617bb954b9ab1.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27357479/36586ac8d81286b392be54ac0afe4f5a3fd617ff.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27357479/e3e0310767f2fb3ee70109bcf07cb2849693963e.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27357479/788de3c66d6e2eeea8bf5105ea0afac51074900e.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27357479/e275320fb5c6bbbb906bde7c0c8e587ca69acb7f.png New Material Shaders For mappers: LightmappedGeneric now supports parallax-corrected cubemaps and we've also added the PBR shader. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3012996135 More Materials and Models We've added more materials and models for mappers to use. These are used by an upcoming campaign remaster we're working on, but can also be used for your own maps. Dedicated Server and Challenge Workshop Fixes We've once again tweaked how dedicated servers load Workshop addons to try to fix an issue where addons are sometimes outdated for extended periods on dedicated servers. Challenges that are required on clients (for custom materials, models, particles, sounds, translations, etc.) should now more reliably load in time for the mission to start. We've also fixed the challenge list not loading images or author names for challenges you didn't have installed locally and fixed console variables not being reset when a challenge is deactivated if they would have been set to an empty string. Weapons Ceilings (func_asw_fade) now collide with grenades that were thrown from above them and do not collide with grenades that were thrown from below. Expanded grenade custom collision logic to also apply to mines, beacons, rockets, and flares. Fixed flares bouncing off of non-solid objects like fire mine trigger areas. Fixed v45 Electric Charged Armor disappearing immediately when its last charge was activated. Misc The mission chooser is now all shown on one scrollable screen. rd_draw_minimap can now be set to a value between 0 and 1 in order to draw the minimap image semi-transparently. Added EmitSoundTable VScript function to entities. Fixed missing "Ignite" input on Biomass in Hammer. Fixed female colonists with randomized models occasionally appearing as the word "ERROR". Fixed leadership sound coming from the wrong location. Added a warning message if certain networking-related variables are changed to dangerous values. Fixed a several second game fr...Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Update - July 1, 2023Jun 30, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsWe made changes to how Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces servers receive their mission list so it can be modified without requiring a full game update. Added a new command rd_hoiaf_debug to view information about the current ranked server configuration and loaded addons. We are also adding HoIAF's first three endless missions starting today: Infinite Landing Bay by jhheight IAF Marine Academy by jhheight The Gauntlet: Arctic by Stral and Synmachus A higher score inside an endless mission will increase the number of points you receive for completing it. As always, we are looking for feedback on scoring if we accidentally rated anything too high or too low. View the full list of Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces changes on the developer website. Additionally, we've fixed some bugs and added two new advanced configuration options and some features for modders. Fixed remote turret model appearing much higher than intended. Fixed Queen health bar being visible during debriefing. Fixed singleplayer non-campaign lobbies being limited to 4 marines. Accident 32: J5 Connector: Fixed shower water causing on-damage effects like L3A Tactical Heavy Armor losing charges and aliens moving slowly. In game modes that allow reviving, knocked-out marines in the escape area no longer count towards finishing a mission and knocked-out marines outside of the escape area now count as dead for the purpose of finishing a mission. Added a new ConVar: rd_represented_country. By default (empty), this will be set to your country based on the IP address you use to connect to Steam (the same as before). Can be set in autoexec.cfg to a different 2-character country code, or to XX if you do not wish to represent a country on leaderboards. Added a new ConVar: rd_movement_relative_to_aim. If set to 1, your marine's forward direction in top-down view will be based on the marine's angle rather than the camera's angle. Intended for players who want to bind +forward to a mouse button. Added new challenge ConVars: asw_marine_gun_offset_x, asw_marine_gun_offset_y, and asw_marine_gun_offset_z. For example, to make marines shoot out of the center of the first person camera, a challenge can set these to 0, 0, and 70. Added a new challenge ConVar: rd_grenade_gravity. It affects the gravity of the assault rifle's grenade. Default value is 0.05. Added two new VScript methods to triggers: GetNumTouching() and GetTouching(index) Added a new entity: rd_hud_vscript. Reduced storage and memory usage for inventory item icons like medals. They also load faster the first time they are displayed. The ForcePickUp and ForceDrop inputs and the OnPickedUp and OnDropped outputs are now available on all weapon entities, not just rd_weapon_generic_object. The Swarmopedia model viewer now supports bone merge, pose parameters, and animation blending. As a final note, there is one month left before the entry deadline for the 2023 mapping competition. There's still time to get an entry in, even if it's...Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Update - June 3, 2023Jun 3, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsA hotfix has been released with the following changes: Fixed a crash related to a server becoming empty mid-mission. Made changes to addon loading to hopefully address some servers not showing challenges they should have enabled. Marine bots now remember if they were infested or on fire before the bot took over for damage calculations. Removed the restriction on "take a break" while infested.
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