Survivalist: Invisible Strain News

Hello, it's announcement time - the game will leave Early Access on the 25th of April! That means I consider it finished, though I'll keep on fixing any bugs that crop up, and updating translations as needed. I'll be moving on to my next project, which could be a sequel or could be something else. It'll be a while before I figure that out, but if it is something else it'll have a lot of Survivalist's DNA still in it.

And it's also coming out on XBox Series S/X on the 25th of April! The page on the XBox store is now live. The original Survivalist started life on XBox Live Indie Games - the junior sibling of the old XBox Live Arcade - and I still sometimes get people telling me they played it back then and followed its development and Invisible Strain onto Steam. So it's pretty cool for the sequel to be able to return there!


It's also patch time! This one is all bug fixes and translation updates. The European Spanish translation is now complete, mostly by copying the Latin American Spanish translation to fill in the gaps, and changing "ustedes" to "vosotros" in a number of places. Thanks to SheamusHD for advising on that! Here's the full changelist:

• Some fixes for bits of terrain in Story Mode where you can get stuck sliding for a few seconds
  
• Bullets use the ricochet effect when hitting helmets instead of the smoke effect
  
• Use the language selected in Steam as the default language the first time you play
  
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Hungarian, Latin American Spanish and European Spanish translations
  
• Fix for being able to continue targeting someone's head if you switch weapons even if you don't have the required skill with the new weapon
  
• Fix for your camouflage meter dropping when zombies hear a radio that you threw
  
• Fix for situation where someone kept trying to vault a fence that was just next to a car door they were trying to get into
  
• Fix for save tokens being found on the map in Story Mode if you start a new game in save anytime mode, or on new players (they will be replaced with equivalent gold)
  
• Fix for situation where people would give using the toilet higher priority than roles set to Urgent
  
• Fix for enemies reacting differently if you're crouching in a building or vehicle, from if you're not crouching
  
• Fix for not being able to hover over invader icons on the map page with a gamepad when zoomed out
  
• Fix for rare crash in brain scan page
  
• Fix for fog of war covering everything for a few frames after you load a game
  
• Fix for crash when roads are deleted
  
• Fix for crash when a large number of objects was added to the world in a mod map
  
• Fixes for compatibility with 'SIS Extended: Regrow', 'SIS Extended: Adaptive Combat' and 'SIS Fishing' mods
  
• Possible fix for you being unable to escape a zombie bite if they bite you at the same time as you start to choke or assassinate someone
  
• Close crafting dialogs etc when someone joins or leaves a network game (fix for various bugs caused if they are open)
  
• Out Of Sync fixes
  

That's in the publicbeta branch now, as v239. I've promoted the previous patch, v238, to the main branch.

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v239 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, a few announcements today. I've released another small patch to publicbeta, v238, with the following bug fixes:

• When someone starts a feud with a player avatar character, the player automatically equips a melee weapon if they have one (similar to how they automatically equip fists for a boxing match)
  
• Possible fix for Carter's squad sometimes killing you after you agree to work with them
  
• Fix for player accidentally starting a war by hitting a nearby neutral character with a melee weapon while in a feud with someone
  
• Fix for crash when snowball fights take place near the edge of the map
  
• Fix characters pointing rifles/shotguns at the ground when crouching and aiming
  

Secondly the previous patch, v237, is now in the main branch.

Thirdly, I made this post a "regular update" to make it more visible and give some warning: I'm going to do a small price increase soon to $11.99. That's 48 CNY, 11.79 euros, 14,000 JPY, £9.99 GBP, 13,500 KRW, etc. I need to do this 30 days before I release the game out of early access so that I'm allowed to do a launch discount (which will probably be 25%, probably in late April). After that there'll be the usual periodic sales. But if you want to get the game at its current price, now is the time. I'll do the price increase on Monday so this weekend will be the last chance to get it at the old price.

Lastly, this game will be coming to XBox Series! Once I've locked down a launch date with them I'll announce it and that will probably also be the date that it leaves early access on Steam (or around the same time, at least).

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v238 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, it's patch day! I've been playing through the game in anticipation of releasing it out of early access soon, so this is mostly a bunch of minor bug fixes that came out of that. Here's the change list:

• Fix for PiP flickering when dragging the screen with the mouse in Command Mode and hovering over a character
  
• Fix for movie theater side entrances not being correctly aligned with where you actually come out
  
• Fix for carried body being left in mid-air in some cases when characters drop a body in multiplayer
  
• Fix for characters who are carrying bodies wandering off and dropping them in order to auto-collect/deposit/get ammo/use toilet
  
• Fix for characters who are carrying bodies keeping hold of them while entering buildings
  
• Fix for not being able to toggle Builder role Urgent/Not Urgent using the sprint button while playing the building animation inside a building under construction
  
• Fix for target switching after you throw something at a neutral character
  
• Fix for player community members not repairing their armor at nearby workbenches that don't belong to you
  
• When opening a Character sheet from a character in a building with the gamepad, select the button the goes back to the building by default instead of the skills tooltip
  
• Changed missing animation error to a warning, to stop a mod from crashing
  
• Tweaked vehicle wheel slip values to slide less on dry grass
  
• Updated Czech, Indonesian, Latin American Spanish and Thai translations
  

I haven't had any more problems with the previous patch, v236, so that's being promoted to the main branch. That includes the new Hit The Road features and the change to let you get achievements with mods active.



[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v237 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 another small publicbeta patch. This adds Thai support and fixes a bug introduced a couple of versions ago where you couldn't stash bodies in buildings/vehicles. But the biggest change probably is that achievements are now allowed when mods are active! I've found that a lot of people play the game with mods - and there are a lot of good ones now - and it's a shame not to allow achievements just because someone is playing with SIS Drop Loot enabled, for example.

I thought it might be a controversial change so I asked the discord folks to run a poll about it, and the poll was in favor by 64% vs 36%, which I felt was enough. One of the objections raised was that you could join a multiplayer game that had mods enabled, and accidentally get some achievements too easily. To address this I've added a tooltip to the Join Game screen so you can see what mods are active in a game when you join it. It shows a green tick if you've downloaded them already, and a red cross if you haven't.



Admittedly this is kind of stretching my definition of "no changes except bug fixes from now on" but the achievements stuff I started asking about before then, and I'm gonna call the "Active Mods" tooltip a bug fix because it feels pretty broken that you can try to join a game and get a loading screen for ages while you download 20 mods or something... yeah I'll go with that.

I know some people would like achievements to be enabled in some mods but not others, but that would mean maintaining a whitelist (which I don't think I can do) or making it a setting for the mod author to maintain (which has other issues such as mods by authors who have moved on would be missed out), and anyway it's hard to imagine what the exact criteria would be. Other Steam games don't seem to have a consistent rule for this, with some doing and it and some not, as far as I can tell. Achievements are always an honor system - it will always be possible to release a cheat mod that just gets you all the achievements, if someone wanted to do that. So I think this is the simplest and best solution.

Here's the full change list:

• Achievements allowed when mods are active
  
• Show what mods are active on multiplayer games on the Join Game menu
  
• Added support for Thai translation
  
• Updated Czech, Hungarian and Latin American Spanish translations
  
• Fix for player avatar characters giving each other the Lost Item quest, which doesn't make narrative sense for them
  
• Fix for Chicken Heist quest being given by characters who already have a relationship with the player
  
• Fix for stashing bodies in buildings/vehicles
  

v234 won't go to the main branch because of the Stash bodies bug.

EDIT - I've released another small publicbeta patch with a few crash fixes, 236.

• Fix for crash when medic has a wound bandaged with a rag that doesn't heal for 6 days
  
• Fix for rare crash when AI investigates damage to a building
  
• Fix for incompatibility with SIS Clothing Durability
  
• Updated Thai and Latin American Spanish translations
  

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v236 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 small patch in publicbeta with some hotfixes for crashes that were reported in the last few days. There's also a fix for the map size setting not being retained when you Hit The Road - it should keep using the map size you originally chose. Here's the change list:

• Fix for crash when trying to bandage self while unconscious in Command Mode (also fix for various actions appearing enabled while unconscious)
  
• Fix for camera sometimes going crazy when dragging it in Command Mode
  
• Fix for rare crash when trading
  
• Fix for map size not being remembered when hitting the road
  
• Updated Czech, Hungarian, Indonesian, Latin American Spanish, Lithuanian and Russian translations
  

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v234 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".