Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop Update - July 4, 2019

An update for Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Steam. The major changes include:

• Three new achievements
  
• New enemies: Antlion, Antlion Worker, Zombie, Fast Zombie, Headcrab. These are not directly available in official maps and challenges, but modders can create new maps and challenges that use them.
  
• Optional numerical health and ammo indicators for marines
  
• Stats and leaderboard support for Bonus Mission 6 and 7
  
• Improved modability for marine model skins. Add-ons can now have 8 different skins, each for every marine character.
  
• Russian subtitles
  
• Fire mines no longer cause huge decrease of frame rate which happened on some maps
  
• New convars, VScript functions, bug fixes
  

• Added three new weapon Achievements
  
  
  
  • Chemical Warfare
    Kill 500 Swarm with Gas Grenades.
    
    
  • Heavy Assault Specialist
    Kill 500 Swarm with the Heavy Rifle.
    
    
  • Combat Medic
    Kill 500 Swarm with the Medical SMG.
    
  
  
  
• Fix new Achievements appearing as already unlocked
  The affected Achievements will be cleared if they were unlocked prior to 2019.01.01
  
  
• Added new Convars
  
  
  • rd_draw_marine_health_counter
    Display a numeric counter for marine health on the HUD
    
    
  • rd_health_counter_under_marine
    Draw a counter of the marine's current health under the marine?
    
    
  • rd_health_counter_under_marine_alignment
    Aligns the health counter under the marine. 0 - Left, 1 - Center, 2 - Right
    
    
  • rd_health_counter_under_marine_show_max_health
    Should the health counter under the marine also show max health?
    
    
  • rd_ammo_counter_under_marine
    Draw an ammo counter of the marine's active weapon under the marine?
    
    
  • rd_ammo_counter_under_marine_alignment
    Aligns the ammo counter under the marine. 0 - Left, 1 - Center, 2 - Right
    
    
  • rd_ammo_counter_under_marine_show_max_ammo
    Should the ammo counter under the marine also show max ammo?
    
    
  • rd_allow_afk
    If set to 0 players cannot use asw_afk command or Esc - Take a Break
    
    
  • rd_leaderboard_enabled
    If 0 player leaderboard scores will not be updated on mission complete.
    Use this for modded servers or for testing your in-development challenges or maps.
    
    
  • rd_director_max_awake_aliens_for_horde 25
    If there are more awake aliens than this number director will not spawn new hordes
    
    
  • rd_director_max_awake_aliens_for_wanderers 20
    If there are more awake aliens than this number director will not spawn new wanderers
    
    Director spawns hordes and wanderers depending on several conditions, where number of awake aliens is one of them. That is if there are 25+ awake aliens, no new hordes and wanderers will spawn, until those aliens are killed or they go to sleep state.
    
  
  
  
• Increase director limits for awake aliens for ASBI challenge
  Set both rd_director_max_awake_aliens_for_horde and rd_director_max_awake_aliens_for_wanderers to 45
  
  
• Set asw_fire_glow to 0
  Setting asw_fire_glow to 0 to prevent framerate drops from 200 to 45 fps from fire mines on maps like Deima(near the first hack), Arctic Infiltration(near the airlock), dm_desert.
  Lots of asw_dynamic_light entities cause huge framerate decrease when this light lights surfaces with normal maps, especially displacements with two normal maps.
  
  
• Prevent clients from calling rd_enable_workshop_item on server
  
  
• Add Bonus Mission 6 and 7 to list of official maps
  
  
• Fix aliens with order AOT_MoveToNearestMarine get stuck in wait for PVS condition
  Aliens with AOT_MoveToNearestMarine will follow nearest marine until they rich them or until their schedule fails for whatever reason. In 2nd case they don't go to sleep state and no longer follow the nearest marine. They wait for PVS, for marine to get near them.
  Which is what sleep state does too. But since they are awake they prevent director from spawning hordes if there are more than 25 aliens awake.
  
  This needs to be researched more, since AOT_MoveToNearestMarine may degrade server performance, aliens constantly fail to find route to marine.
  For now we let the sleep and wait for marines to get near them.
  
  
• Add SpawnAlienAtWithOrders() C++ function
  It will be used to spawn aliens using prespawn functions with order AOT_SpreadThenHibernate.
  
  
• Fix ASW_ActivateExtra not triggering weapon_offhand_activate event
  
  
• Improve npc_antlion implementation
  
  
• Implement npc_antlion_worker
  
  
• Add npc_antlion and npc_antlion_worker into spawn manager
  
  
• Fix npc_antlion prints errors in console and doesn't unborrow properly
  
  
• Implement zombie NPCs
  Current Issue: Killing an npc_poisonzombie will crash the game.
  
  
• Update alien_selection.txt comments with new NPCs
  
  
• Fix hordes and wanderers spawning infinite number of aliens
  In Alien Swarm both hordes and wanderers were set to spawn asw_drone.
  If there were more than 25 awake drones no new hordes would spawn.
  If there were more than 20 awake drones no new wanderers would spawn.
  
  In Reactive Drop both hordes and wanderers can be set to spawn non-drone aliens.
  This can lead to director infinitely spawning non-drone aliens since 20 and 25 limits only check for awake drones.
  
  For example setting wanderers to shieldbugs, will lead to 100 shieldbugs spawned in a few minutes.
  
  With this fix, the 20(25) check checks for awake aliens(not only drones).
  
  
• Fix asw_grenade_vindicator not using m_flDamage
  
  
• Improve modability for marine models
  
  
  • Make Sarge and Crash use femalemarine.mdl
    
  • Make femalemarine.mdl be the same size as marine.mdl
    
  
  
  Now modders can create mods with 8 different marine skins, each for one character.
  
  
• Fix medic bot doesn't prioritize infested and burning marine over the lowest health marine
  Medic bot heal priority is to firstly heal infested marine, then burning marine, then lowest health marine.
  
  
• Fix medic bots get stuck in fire trying to heal themselves
  
  
• Update Russian subtitles' translation
  
  
• Add cheat flag to several vscript related console commands
  
  
• Add mission_failed game event
  
  
• Added new VScript functions
  
  
  • Changed the parameters and return type of a couple functions in favor of performance.
    
    
    • ResponseCriteria
      
      void GetTable( handle entity, table )
      
      
    • CASW_Marine
      
      void GetInventoryTable( table ) //Fills the passed table with the marine's inventory
      
      
    • Added warning when GetInvTable() is used
      
    
    
    
  • Global
    
    void LocalTime( table ) //Fills in the passed table with the local system time
    
    
  • Add OnGameplayStart() Callback when all marines have spawned and players start to play. Simply define function OnGameplayStart() { ... }
    in your challenge and it will be executed on mission start.
    
    
  • Added timer_system.nut file
    This is a library that manages timers.
    

Here's an example of the new Timer System:

// Include Timer System
IncludeScript( "timer_system" );

function StopHoldout( args )
{
	Director.StopHoldout();
}

function StartHoldout( args )
{
	Director.StartHoldout();

	// Stop holdout 30 seconds after starting
	Timers.AddTimerByName( "EndHoldoutTimer", 30.0, false, g_ModeScript.StopHoldout );
}

function OnGameplayStart()
{
	// Start holdout 10 seconds after spawning
	Timers.AddTimerByName( "BeginHoldoutTimer", 10.0, false, g_ModeScript.StartHoldout );
}