Sliders! (publicbeta v101)
Ever since the dawn of time mankind has yearned for sliders to control the map generation settings on Survivalist: Invisible Strain - and now, here they are!
So if you want to generate a map with no rivers, or with only white strain, or where all the zombies start off with leg injuries, just go to the World tab and (if you're in publicbeta) you can do it ːsteamhappyː
I've also changed the difficulty dialog you get shown when you click Start:
Difficulty levels can now be thought of as presets for all the sliders on the World tab. So you get "Slightly Easier", "Normal" and "Hard" as presets, but if you play with the sliders on the World tab yourself then your difficulty level is considered to be "Custom" and the above difficulty dialog is just skipped.
Previously, "Save Tokens Required" and "Invisible Strain" were extra checkboxes on the difficulty dialog, but now I've folded them into the difficulty levels, so on "Slightly Easier" you can save whenever you like and there's no invisible strain, whereas "Normal" and "Hard" require save tokens and have invisible strain (with more of them on "Hard"). I also reduced the loot on "Hard". I may play with these more as time goes by.
But again, "Slightly Easier", "Normal" and "Hard" are just presets - you can mix and match whatever settings you want on the World tab.
I've also added a concept called "Loadouts" on the Equipment and Skills tabs. This sets the player up with a standard preset set of equipment and skills, i.e. select "Archer" to get a bow and arrows and high Archery skill, or select "Trapper" to get the equipment and Construction skill necessary to dig traps right from the start:
The idea here is to benefit new players who don't know the game well by always starting them off with a set of equipment that makes sense, for a particular strategy. So they don't get dumped into a hostile world with arrows but no bow, advanced Farming skill and some flint. These are also just presets, similar to the difficulty settings. You can override them by selecting any starting equipment or skills that you want.
Both the Difficulty levels, and the Loadouts, are completely customizable by mod makers - in the Edit Story Settings section of the Editor.
Finally, I've added another music track, this one by a new author called Richard Camo. You'll hear it sometimes when you are managing your base.
Here's the full changelist:
As with the previous patch, all this stuff is still going to stay in publicbeta, until I feel sure all the bugs from the big change to props have been ironed out (I fixed some more crashes from that in this patch, hopefully they're the last but we'll see).
[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v101 will be in the "publicbeta" branch for a while, before pushing it to the main game. If you want to try the latest features as they come out (and help test them!) it's a good idea to start using this branch. But keep in mind:
To use publicbeta, just right-click on Survivalist: Invisible Strain in your Steam library and go to Properties, then Betas and in the drop-down select "publicbeta".
So if you want to generate a map with no rivers, or with only white strain, or where all the zombies start off with leg injuries, just go to the World tab and (if you're in publicbeta) you can do it ːsteamhappyː
I've also changed the difficulty dialog you get shown when you click Start:
Difficulty levels can now be thought of as presets for all the sliders on the World tab. So you get "Slightly Easier", "Normal" and "Hard" as presets, but if you play with the sliders on the World tab yourself then your difficulty level is considered to be "Custom" and the above difficulty dialog is just skipped.
Previously, "Save Tokens Required" and "Invisible Strain" were extra checkboxes on the difficulty dialog, but now I've folded them into the difficulty levels, so on "Slightly Easier" you can save whenever you like and there's no invisible strain, whereas "Normal" and "Hard" require save tokens and have invisible strain (with more of them on "Hard"). I also reduced the loot on "Hard". I may play with these more as time goes by.
But again, "Slightly Easier", "Normal" and "Hard" are just presets - you can mix and match whatever settings you want on the World tab.
I've also added a concept called "Loadouts" on the Equipment and Skills tabs. This sets the player up with a standard preset set of equipment and skills, i.e. select "Archer" to get a bow and arrows and high Archery skill, or select "Trapper" to get the equipment and Construction skill necessary to dig traps right from the start:
The idea here is to benefit new players who don't know the game well by always starting them off with a set of equipment that makes sense, for a particular strategy. So they don't get dumped into a hostile world with arrows but no bow, advanced Farming skill and some flint. These are also just presets, similar to the difficulty settings. You can override them by selecting any starting equipment or skills that you want.
Both the Difficulty levels, and the Loadouts, are completely customizable by mod makers - in the Edit Story Settings section of the Editor.
Finally, I've added another music track, this one by a new author called Richard Camo. You'll hear it sometimes when you are managing your base.
Here's the full changelist:
- Difficulty/World Generation Sliders
- Loadouts
- Added a new music track for base management
- Fix for bug where characters would try to walk to the centre of the map when giving eulogies
- Crash fixes
As with the previous patch, all this stuff is still going to stay in publicbeta, until I feel sure all the bugs from the big change to props have been ironed out (I fixed some more crashes from that in this patch, hopefully they're the last but we'll see).
[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v101 will be in the "publicbeta" branch for a while, before pushing it to the main game. If you want to try the latest features as they come out (and help test them!) it's a good idea to start using this branch. But keep in mind:
- Because it's the bleeding edge it could be less stable
- If you want to be able to play online co-op with someone you'll need to be on the same version as them
- If you go back from the "publicbeta" branch to the main branch you may not be able to load savegames created on "publicbeta".
To use publicbeta, just right-click on Survivalist: Invisible Strain in your Steam library and go to Properties, then Betas and in the drop-down select "publicbeta".