It's December, and that means it's time for the monthly update!

• There's a message here, addressed to you.
  
  
• M868 Flamer Unit: Adjusted friendly fire damage and duration on normal friendly fire difficulty. (Thanks, ModdedMarionette).
  • Hardcore friendly fire is unchanged.
    
  • Friendly fire with a flamethrower now once again ignites immediately.
    
  • Damage now scales up linearly rather than slower at the start and faster at the end of the burn duration.
    
  • Afterburn duration is decreased by the amount of time since the previous friendly fire incident, minus two seconds.
    
  • Maximum afterburn duration is 100%, and minimum is 18.75%.
    
  • This means the minimum burn time for friendly fire with default game rules is: Easy: 1.125s, Normal: 1.5s, Hard: 2.25s, Insane and Brutal: a little over 2.8s.
    
  • Afterburn from friendly fire is now counted as friendly fire in mission statistics.
• Chainsaw: Lag compensation is now disabled by default. (Suggested by WTF-8).
  
• Bot marines will use guns rather than melee when they have been damaged by multiple enemies in quick succession. (Suggested by WTF-8).
  
• Sentries that have ammo remaining now revert to box form when they are destroyed rather than being completely lost.
  
• Added several functions to the Director VScript interface for querying the list of NPC types. See the Valve Developer Community wiki for details. (Suggested by ModdedMarionette).
  
• Entities that push such as doors and trains now deal damage to non-boss aliens they are unable to push.
  
• Fixed a texture reference count issue with the LanguagePreference material proxy. (Reported by mutezero).
  
• Marine reservation time is now 2 seconds after an instant restart rather than the 30 seconds that a full map load provides. (Suggested by WTF-8).
  
• Added a new main menu background themed after the Nam Humanum campaign. (Thanks, mfz).

Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop will always be free, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take a lot of work from a lot of talented volunteers to make. If you can, consider making content for the Steam Workshop, reporting bugs, proposing code[github.com] improvements, translating[github.com] the game into your language, or sending a dollar to one of the people who made Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop possible. The IAF thanks you for your continued service, Commander.

• 22A7-Z Prototype Assault Rifle: Removed damage falloff from alternate fire. Now does 1 damage regardless of distance for any target it hits rather than some fraction of a point of damage.
  
• IAF Incendiary Sentry Gun: Fixed a 2010 era bug causing this sentry to consume 2.5 ammo per shot.
  
• Fire Extinguisher: This item can now always be picked up both in the temporary slot or in a normal weapon slot, rather than being decided per map location. Change rd_fire_extinguisher_force_temporary if this breaks your challenge.
  
• Mining Laser: Fixed a visual issue where the beam would appear to follow the player's aim direction when the laser was being fired by a bot added by that player.
  
• Increased the default size of the fast reload indicator (rd_fast_reload_under_marine_scale) from 1x to 3.5x.
  
• Guns will now consistently start their automatic reload immediately after becoming empty rather than waiting for the primary fire button to be released or the shot interval timer to complete.
  
• Lowered the damage threshold where Harvesters will not spawn Xenomites on death from 135 damage to 125 damage. The requirements that the damage dealt is more than double the Harvester's remaining health and that the damage type was blast remain the same. This means direct hits from rifle grenades should more consistently be able to cleanly kill wounded Harvesters.
  
• Fixed the lobby creation max players dropdown resetting to 4 when the menu is reloaded after changing a setting that moves to a different screen.

Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop will always be free, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take a lot of work from a lot of talented volunteers to make. If you can, consider making content for the Steam Workshop, reporting bugs, proposing code[github.com] improvements, translating[github.com] the game into your language, or sending a dollar to one of the people who made Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop possible. The IAF thanks you for your continued service, Commander.

Downed Station by legomanas

• Removed the cl_interp convar. The game will now act as if it was set to 0.
  
• Improved the error message that is shown when attempting to connect to a server that hasn't updated yet.
  
• Fixed a particle related crash due to the "emit noise" operator being broken in this engine build.
  
• Fixed a possible crash when navigating the controls menu using a keyboard.
  
• The sound for a marine being burned but not ignited now plays for other players as well.
  
• Slightly increased how lenient the friendly fire ignite timing is when hardcore friendly fire is disabled.
  
• Fixed a case where TF2 workshop item icons could appear in the challenge selection screen for manually installed challenges.
  
• Added an AddTime input for countdown objectives.
  
• Fixed a crash when standing near a strange weapon dropped by a disconnected player.
  
• Added support for guns having a separate laserpointer attachment from their muzzle attachment.
  
• Moved camera-related convars to the server to make them available to challenges.
  
• Fixed some small text being displayed in Times New Roman on Linux.

Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop will always be free, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take a lot of work from a lot of talented volunteers to make. If you can, consider making content for the Steam Workshop, reporting bugs, proposing code[github.com] improvements, translating[github.com] the game into your language, or sending a dollar to one of the people who made Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop possible. The IAF thanks you for your continued service, Commander.

This month's update is mainly related to weapon quality of life improvements.

• X-33 Damage Amplifier: Fixed a carried beacon not reliably connecting to the gun of the marine carrying it.
  
• X-33 Damage Amplifier: rd_buff_grenade_attach_sw_auto can now be set to 2 to restore the old behavior of allowing a special weapons marine to carry multiple damage amplifiers. You can still only pick one up from the ground if you are not already carrying one. Persistent damage bonuses still do not stack, so this is only useful if you want to bridge the gap between two damage amplifier durations by slightly overlapping them.
  
• X-33 Damage Amplifier and IAF Heal Beacon: Added an extra ring to the animation of the beacon to show remaining duration. Custom particle effects can use this information from the control point 1 y coordinate, which scales from 0 on a freshly deployed beacon to 1 when the beacon expires.
  
• v45 Electric Charged Armor: Added a convar rd_electrified_armor_fx which can be turned off to disable the electrical effect in case it looks bad on custom models.
  
• TG-05 Gas Grenades, FG-01 Hand Grenades, and CR-18 Freeze Grenades: Added a visual representation of equipped grenades to marines.
  
• TG-05 Gas Grenades, FG-01 Hand Grenades, and grenades from the Grenade Launcher now use separate models for easier modding.
  
• M868 Flamer Unit and M478 Proximity Incendiary Mines: Friendly fire with incendiary weapons now ignites marines immediately on all difficulty settings. Instead, afterburn damage on normal friendly fire takes a few seconds to ramp up to its full damage. This is an experimental change intended to make friendly fire with incendiary weapons more apparent without changing the effective difficulty much and to ease the transition between playing on normal and hardcore friendly fire. As always, we are collecting feedback and will make changes as needed.
  
• Fixed consumable weapons appearing to float in the air for a fraction of a second after being used up.
  
• Fixed a crash related to memory corruption when switching challenges after restarting the mission.

This replaces the VertexLitGeneric shader and the AlienSurfaceFX and NightVisionSelfIllum material proxies for characters in Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop.

• If your mod does not contain VMT files for characters, you do not need to make any changes.
  
• If your mod's VMT files for characters start with the word "patch", you are likely already using the updated shader.
  
• If your mod's VMT files for characters start with the words "VertexLitGeneric", see below.
  
• If your mod's VMT files for characters start with any other words, you are on your own.
  
• If you do not update your VMT files, your materials will continue to work as they have prior to this update, but the models with those materials will not have access to the new features of this shader.

• Replace "VertexLitGeneric" at the start of the file with "RDCharacter".
  
• Remove any line starting with "$detail". (If you want to use $detail for something else, it is no longer reserved for status effects in the new shader.)
  
• If there is an "AnimatedTexture" proxy for "$detail", remove "AnimatedTexture" and everything from the following { to the next }.
  
• Replace the "AlienSurfaceFX" proxy with "RDCharacter". If your material does not have a Proxies section, instead add Proxies { RDCharacter {} } before the last } in the file.
  
• Remove any references to night vision (for example, the NightVisionSelfIllum proxy, any LessOrEqual proxy connected to it, helper variables like $one, $zero, and $selfIllumTint_dark).

• The $detail variables are no longer used for status effects, meaning they can be used for other purposes.
  
• Night vision no longer uses $selfillum, meaning changes to the $selfillum settings do not alter night vision's effects.
  
• On systems with Shader Model 3.0 support, the fire, ice, and shock status effects no longer cause each other to scroll at different speeds.
  
• The fire status effect now consistently animates on all character types.
  
• Added a "team highlight" border similar to the "Character Highlighting System" added to Warframe in Update 34: Abyss of Dagath.
  
• Any new character shader effects added in the future will not require mandatory VMT changes.
  
• It took 10 hours, 43 minutes, and 26 seconds to compile the 21,900 variants of the new shader.
  
• Note: On systems lacking Shader Model 3.0 support, $detail is disabled when a status effect is active to reduce shader complexity.
  
• Note: On systems lacking Shader Model 3.0 support, $rimlight is disabled when a team highlight is active to reduce shader complexity.

• rd_highlight_active_character, rd_highlight_allies, and rd_highlight_enemies can now be set to show colored borders on characters for easier identification.
  
• rd_highlight_active_character continues to show a border surrounding the marine as it did before in addition to the new border.
  
• rd_highlight_allies_color defaults to a grayish blue, and rd_highlight_enemies_color defaults to a more saturated red.
  
• The highlight ConVars can be set to higher values to highlight more of the character's model. Setting the ConVar to 1 (recommended) highlights the edges of the character's silhouette, and setting it to 2 highlights almost the entire character. Fractional values like 2.5 and 0.8 are also accepted.
  
• Set rd_deathmatch_team_color_highlight to 0 to revert to the previous system of tinting marine models in Team Deathmatch.
  
• This system is intended to decouple the accessibility aspect of many alien reskins from the artistic aspect, making it so players don't need to choose between being able to see the aliens and having the aliens look how they want.
  
• For those familiar with the game's codebase, rd_highlight_ignore_class is also available to exclude specific character types from the team highlights system. For example, rd_highlight_ignore_class 27,40 would omit highlights from drones and marines.

Added a ConVar to make Special Weapons marines pick up X-33 Damage Amplifiers automatically.

• rd_buff_grenade_attach_sw_auto (default 0; set to 1 to pick up damage amplifiers automatically.)

This also affects bots added by the player. This setting is stored in config.cfg. Use host_writeconfig to save your changes.


Added convars to give jumping and/or flying aliens vertical shadows like the Half-Life 2 crane to make it easier to tell where they are in 3D space.

• rd_alien_vertical_shadow_jumping (default 1; set to 1 to give Drones, Parasites, and Xenomites vertical shadows when they are jumping)
  
• rd_alien_vertical_shadow_flying (default 0; set to 1 to give Buzzers vertical shadows)
  
• rd_alien_vertical_shadow_distance (default 4096; the maximum distance above the ground a vertical shadow can be cast from)
  
• asw_alien_shadows being set to 0 now affects Buzzers as well

The three new ConVars are currently not stored in config.cfg. They may be added later, but for now, use autoexec.cfg for these settings.

• Mapper-placed Xenomites (whether placed as asw_parasite_defanged entities or spawned via a spawner) no longer expire after 60 seconds.
  
• Xenomites from a Harvester still expire after 60 seconds of not finding a marine as before.
  
• Fixed npc_cscanner not respecting its "neutral" flag, causing it to be an attack target for bots and aliens in Paranoia: Hostile Places.
  
• Over 100 commanders have signed the contract.
  
• NPCs now cancel their current movement intent when they are frozen. This fixes the "drifting" that some aliens exhibited.
  
• Fixed unexpected jigglebone behavior when a frozen enemy is forced to move (such as by standing on a moving platform).
  
• Fixed marines with CR-18 Freeze Grenades equipped having an extra shadow between their feet.

We've extended the deadline for submissions to the 2024 mapping competition until the end of July, so you have two extra months to make your mission.

An update has been released with the following changes:

• Reduced the attack speed of drones that are on fire by 40%. (Or 28.6%, depending on how you do the math. It now matches their normal attack speed.)
  
• Retrying the first mission of a campaign now resets eligibility for Outstanding Execution achievements.

• Added the Magnum Opus campaign by vq.
  
• Added the Downed Station bonus mission by legomanas.
  
• Added the ASBI Veteran challenge and its variants by ModdedMarionette.
  
• Removed the Absolute Madness campaign.
  
• A full list of changes to Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces can be found on the developer website[developer.reactivedrop.com].

• Valve has added a patch to Proton Experimental that greatly improves text legibility on Linux devices like the Steam Deck.
  
• Added an alternate icon for dedicated servers known to be running a unofficial server code in the lobby list.
  
• Fixed special event timers not appearing on the main menu.
  
• Fixed certain buttons incorrectly showing a hint to use the B button on a controller when not connected to a lobby.
  
• Added an inventory tab for non-medals. Perhaps something you can find on the beta branch?
  
• Inventory items that automatically stack now show a quantity in the inventory screen.
  
• Added an icon for campaigns and missions downloaded from the Steam Workshop in the mission chooser.
  
• Fixed the Workshop publishing interface not allowing edits if the preview image has not loaded.
  
• Increased the size of tooltips for better readability.
  
• Changed the "dim" text color in the legacy server browser from black to light gray for readability.
  
• Fixed opening notifications while not on the main menu resulting in stacking menu items.

• Fixed Swarmopedia article unlocks showing garbled text.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when restarting a mission while viewing a computer screen in-game.
  
• Fixed the formatting of the player voting panel when more than 8 players are in a lobby.
  
• Added the speedrun time to mission briefing.
  
• Improved formatting of dynamic objective names like "Destroy Swarm Eggs".
  
• "Download data" objectives now show a completion percentage.
  
• Fixed zombies splitting in half from sources of damage that do not have associated ammo types.

• asw_objective_triggered now has support for percentage-based formatting of objective progress.
  
• Changing rd_override_alien_selection_challenge no longer writes a message to chat.
  
• Fixed missions with no version number defined not being able to be played in multiplayer lobbies.

Fixed an issue that caused alien corpses to fade slower than intended.

It'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[stats.reactivedrop.com] 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.