Survivalist: Invisible Strain News

Hey everyone, I've added chickens to the game, in the publicbeta branch :) If you start a new map, some of the settlements will have chickens which you can buy, or possibly steal. They're kind of cute, the hens will lay eggs for you which you can boil, or they'll breed if you happen to have a rooster. You can build a chicken coop and a feeding trough and a water bowl, and assign someone to feed them.
The roosters will crow in the mornings.



I realized last weekend that there was a bug introduced in v143 which is causing NPCs to attack you more often than they should do. Basically if anyone gets hurt, they'll start attacking you. This patch fixes that bug. But because I wanted to get the patch out and fix the bug, I haven't finished everything I wanted to do with the chickens yet - I just got them to a playable state. So they're in the game, but they don't serve much purpose yet. That will come.

Besides chickens there's a pretty major change to farming: corn, pumpkins, cucumber and chili peppers aren't plantable but have separate seeds which aren't edible, like the other crops. This just makes it simpler, I hope, because you don't have to tell people not to eat your corn so you can plant it. I also think it will make it simpler for the AI. I'm trying to fix some bugs where the AI communities often starve to death after a couple of winters, this patch has another possible fix for that as well. But I'm not sure it's fixed yet as it's a difficult thing to test. I'll be working some more on that problem in the coming weeks as well.

Loading old savegames will populate your inventory with some of the new seed types. This might be a good time to start a new savegame though, if you're in the publicbeta branch.

Here's the full change list:

• Chickens
  
• Separate seeds for maize, pumpkin, cucumber and chilli pepper
  
• Fix for NPCs often blaming you for injuries where the culprit was actually known to them already (bug introduced in v143)
  
• Fix for NPCs sometimes getting stuck on insides of your gates if you haven't given them permission to enter
  
• Fix for traders not spawning in re-occupied bases
  
• Possible fix for AI communities not having enough food to last the winter
  
• Only add possessive suffix in English and German, and some other spelling and grammar fixes
  
• Marked fetch and loyalty quest items as not destroyable
  
• Characters can always sleep at night if they are in a building, even if they aren't tired
  

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v146 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".

Hello, I've put a new patch into the publicbeta branch. The Turkish and Italian translations have been updated and improved, many thanks to those translators!

There's a major fix for the framerate when you fast-forward, and especially when you fast forward at x4 speed. I really should have realized this before now but it looks like it has never worked correctly since the beginning (of Survivalist: Invisible Strain). It has always caused a framerate spike, and in multiplayer it has always caused players to keep pausing and waiting for each other. With the fix it might feel a bit slower than what you're used to, but it's actually the correct speed - and the framerate is much smoother.

The rest of this patch is just various miscellaneous fixes:

• Stop AI from throwing molotovs/pipe bombs if friendlies are in the way and unable to dodge (i.e. because they are grappling a zombie)
  
• Fix for framerate being terrible and multiplayer being almost completely broken when you fast-forward
  
• Fix for Paper Trail quest immediately failing
  
• Fix for rogue FEMA raiders never having helmets
  
• Fix for not being able to target enemies who activate invisible strain
  
• Fix for NPC communities not rebuilding for a long time (if someone died)
  
• Fix for Lost Item quests breaking if items are combined, and made friendship quests fail if the quest giver leaves your community
  
• Fix for tracker squad in Loyalty quest sometimes feuding with quest giver
  
• Some small AI fixes and translation fixes
  
• Italian and Turkish translation updates
  
• Crash fix
  

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v144 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".

Hello, patch time again! This patch focuses on a few different things. Firstly I've always thought molotovs and the throwing code needed some love - it used to be impossible to throw them over walls, for example. Now you can, and you can see a graphic showing the arc of your throw when you do so:



I've also always thought it looked silly that you can throw a molotov or pipe bomb at someone directly in front of you, and any enemies nearby would die while you and any friendlies would be completely unaffected. This game has never had friendly fire for bullets because when I first got shooting working on the original Survivalist I immediately realised it was too chaotic to have to worry about not shooting your allies. And I think it looks okay when you shoot bullets through your friends, but for area of effect weapons it just looks a bit crap.

So I've added friendly fire for splash damage - you can however turn it off in the difficulty settings, and it's off by default on the easiest setting. Also, your community members will generally jump out of the way if you throw a molotov or pipe bomb at them. But they might not be able to if they're grappling with a zombie, or something. The hud will show the area of effect for the damage, and will go red if there are friendlies in it, or yellow for friendly buildings.



The other new feature is when you click Set Policy on an item of equipment, you can assign people to Auto Collect that type of equipment from bodies, so for example you can make them automatically collect gold from nearby corpses.



And on the crafting screen I've made it possible to assign someone to rip up clothes to make rags on a recurring basis (i.e. they'll go looking for clothes from corpses). This should make the process of making bandages or molotovs less labor intensive.

Lastly I've increased the amount you can carry without a backpack! That amount dates back from the original Survivalist, but in that game you never had to make campfires. As many people have pointed out, it's weird that you need a backpack to make a campfire, so this fixes that. (I also decreased the weight of a unit of wood slightly).

All of the above may need some refinement so let me know how it goes. It'll be in publicbeta for now. Here's the full list:

• When throwing something you see a parabolic path displaying where it will go, and if not targeting someone you can aim the camera up to throw over walls. If targeting someone a higher angle will be used if the lower angle is blocked.
  
• Molotovs and pipe bombs can deal damage to friendly characters and structures (if set by a difficulty setting). Characters will try to dodge out the way.
  
• Increased the amount you can carry without a backpack and reduced the weight of wood a bit, so you can more easily make a fire without a backpack. Removed wood from the recipe for rabbit traps and tripwires.
  
• You can now assign someone to rip up clothes without manually doing each one, same as other types of crafting
  
• Added Auto Collect from bodies option to equipment policy dialog
  
• Reduced the frequency of raider bands and hordes a little
  
• If you destroy equipment that is stacked, you get a dialog asking how many you want to destroy
  
• Fix for satphones being spawned in long-dead bodies whose graves have disappeared
  
• Fix for character highlights not working in online co-op
  
• Fix for deer taking too long to respawn
  
• Fix for savegame screenshot sometimes being incorrect
  
• Turkish translation (still work in progress)
  
• Sledgehammer
  

Meanwhile I'm moving the previous patch, v142, to the main branch. This contains the friendship quests.

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v143 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".

Hello, I've released a new patch in publicbeta. This is one of those "fixing bugs in the previous patch" patches, along with other miscellanea:

• Stop graves with satphones in them from being deleted
  
• Fix for hugs not working through locked gates when trying to bribe a guard with them
  
• Don't say such and such are a great couple if one is dead. Say they
• were* a great couple.
  
• You have to hold the button when kicking someone from your community
  
• Limit approval/disapproval gained from cannibalism
  
• Fix for breakup speech triggering with the wrong people
  
• Fix for farmers depositing gifted stew in buildings
  
• Error message if you try to cook manually without emptying your pot first
  
• Some tweaks and fixes to the friendship quests
  
• Default to High graphics quality setting
  
• Another action menu optimization
  
• Gender option on equipment, for languages with gendered nouns
  
• Korean and Brazilian Portuguese translation updates
  
• Crash fix
  

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v142 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".

Hey everyone, it's March - my first month of working full time on this! In this patch I'm introducing friendship quests. When you ask your community members "What's up?", and if they like you, they'll ask you to go on these little side missions with them. There's 3 types of quest so far, and once you've done them you'll become friends next time you ask what's up, and the time after that they'll suggest some future plans, the same as your romantic partners would. This means it's a bit easier to reach the end of the game (as you can do it either by 'romance' or 'friendship'), and also there's just more stuff to do that lets you get to know your community members :)



Here's the full change list:

• Friendship quests
  
• Some fixes for crafters saying they don't have enough space in their inventory to carry something, when they really do
  
• Fix for traders starting a war by attacking our walls when trying to attack a passing enemy
  
• Fix for crash that occurred when a remembered speech got deleted from a mod
  
• Some usability improvements to the script editor - e.g. made different object types different colors, and use names like Speaker and Quest Giver depending on context instead of Actor, Target etc.
  
• Some small fixes to the flirt quests
  
• Show ellipses instead of going to more than 2 rows on Take All
  
• Make Take All require hold if there's a large amount of stuff, as can be annoying if you take them all by accident
  
• Some menu optimizations
  
• Some new menu sounds
  
• Hungarian translation update
  

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v141 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".