Survivalist: Invisible Strain News

Hey everyone, it's patch day! This one's just a big old list of fixes for various bugs that have been reported since launch, with one minor difficulty tweak of not requiring a specific amount of fuel at the end of Story Mode. Here's the change list:

• Don't require a specific amount of fuel at the end of Story Mode
  
• Fix for Liam warning a chicken that Carter has gone crazy
  
• Added 'ignore_gamepads' command line (launch option) as someone had a bug where it kept showing gamepad button prompts
  
• Possible fix for occasional hang when saving after you find the item in a Lost Item quest
  
• Fix for situation where lumberjacks wouldn't chop trees that fell entirely on impassable terrain
  
• Fix for some situations where raiders and hordes pathfinding would get stuck if you put your base in certain locations in Story Mode
  
• Fix sometimes pressing OK on crafting dialog with keyboard sometimes just playing a block/parry animation and not crafting
  
• Fix for people not zombifying if you kill them in one hit with an infected weapon
  
• Fix for people with invisible strain only turning into regular zombies if they die by infection
  
• Fix for people continually filling up and depositing water bottles when they have Carry Amount set for water and a crafting role for something involving water like Cement
  
• Fix for It Begins quest not being activated if you walk away from Morgan Harding at particular points when she's asking for help
  
• Fix for being able to cancel some important speeches by pointing a gun or bow at the person talking
  
• Fix for co-op players being able to break surrender by moving in some situations in Story Mode when you're supposed to be locked in place
  
• When joining a co-op game try sending all game state packets at once instead of one by one, maybe this will be faster on XBox
  
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Latin American Spanish, Persian and European Spanish
  
• Copied UI and BaseStory sections from Latin American Spanish to European Spanish, except for lines containing 'ustedes'.
  
• Fix for Asian languages not appearing in drop-down boxes and input fields on XBox
  

EDIT - released a hotfix for a crash in the editor, so it's v249 now.

Also, v247 went into the main branch and XBox (a few days ago actually).

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v249 will be in the "publicbeta" branch on Steam for a while, before pushing it to the main game and to XBox. 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 everyone, it's patch time! This one is mainly aimed at reducing the difficulty of Story Mode, particularly for newcomers. It turns out that if you release a game on Steam you suddenly get a lot more feedback about it, and one of the main trends is everyone saying Story Mode is too difficult. It's supposed to be easier than Sandbox Mode, at least at the beginning, as it's supposed to be the way people get introduced to the game. So, oops.

The biggest change is I've simply reduced the frequency of spawning raiders and suchlike, as I found one of the most common complaints was people didn't have enough time to do stuff as they kept having to defend their base.

Secondly I've stopped your Constitution from dropping over time (in Story and Sandbox) so you can get your recruits up to 1 star more quickly and avoid them dying so often. When I added Constitution originally I thought it needed to drop so you had an incentive to get the better food types like eggs and meat. But you still have that incentive - you'll gain points quicker if you eat better food. And it was confusing for newbies and annoying for everyone else to keep seeing the message saying someone's Constitution has dropped. (A lot of people gave me that feedback in the time since it was introduced so I'm hoping no one will be upset that it doesn't happen anymore).

Besides that I've added a bit more loot early on (e.g. I put a watering can in the Gas Station, as I've seen people thinking they need to fill their farmer's inventory with water bottles), slightly reduced the number of zombie spawnpoints in the early areas, and added more bushes in enemy bases for you to hide in (these won't take effect unless you start from scratch though). I've made the quest arrows on the minimap slightly bigger as I think people sometimes didn't notice them. And I've fixed some bugs that meant traders weren't restocking properly.

Part of what people were complaining about is that the game mechanics aren't all explained enough. This doesn't really address that (which would take a bigger patch with more translated text), but hopefully it gives people more room to discover them in their own time. If you're a new player who found something specific wasn't well explained early on I'd be interested to know what that was, as I might try and add a little bit more tutorially stuff later.

Lastly as well as the difficulty tweaks there have also been some more bug fixes - here's the full change list:

• Don't reduce Constitution over time
  
• Reduced frequency of roaming hordes, raiders, and especially mercenaries, in Story Mode. Slightly reduced zombie spawn points and looter skill in early areas, slightly increased loot. Also tweaked endgame.
  
• Added Dead Zone setting for gamepads
  
• Made quest arrows on minimap slightly bigger
  
• On XBox if you don't have GamePass show the GamePass sign-up screen when you click Join Game, not on startup
  
• Fix for Field of View not being saved on XBox
  
• Fix for We Have Cookies achievement being awarded too soon
  
• Fix for Place Map Marker button not being changeable in Controls Settings
  
• Fix for not finding name of community extorting you because you molotoved them during the speech that tells you their name
  
• Fix for FEMA sometimes not allowing you to surrender, and reduced minimum time between surrender attempts
  
• Fixes for Lost Item quest in map with no towns
  
• Fixes for traders sometimes not restocking
  
• Crash fixes
  
• Support for Brazilian Portuguese and Persian
  
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Indonesian, Japanese, Latin American Spanish, Persian, Spanish and Turkish translations
  

EDIT (15th May) - released a hotfix for a crash in the above, so it's now v247:

• Small tweaks to early game hints
  
• Crash fix
  

And of course the previous patch, v245, is now on the main branch and XBox.

EDIT (22nd May) - I've now moved v247 to the main branch and XBox, the next patch isn't quite ready yet but I think v247 has been in publicbeta for long enough.

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v247 will be in the "publicbeta" branch on Steam for a while, before pushing it to the main game and to XBox. 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 realized there was a problem with v244 - when you join someone the host can now hit cancel, which sent them back to the title screen (potentially losing their unsaved progress) while the joiner was stuck on the progress screen saying "host has left" until they pressed cancel which looked a bit janky. So I decided I need to fix that - now if the host hits Cancel while someone is joining, the host returns to their game and the joiner gets a message box saying the host left, and returns to the title menu.

While I was doing that a few more things turned up and got rolled into the patch. The biggest of them is that when playing in Japanese the characters' names are all translated now! Here's the full list:

• If the host presses the cancel button on the Uploading screen when a player joins, return them to the game (by themselves) not the title menu
  
• If the host leaves a network game while loading screen is up, other players get a message box and returned to title menu (instead of stuck on the screen until they press Cancel)
  
• Fix for the name Bob being censored on XBox in multiplayer
  
• Fix for rare crash when changing role priority in multiplayer
  
• Fix for sometimes being able to assign more than 10 roles to one person
  
• Fix for crash in SIS Extended Regrow mod (and others that use its DLL) when completing a building with more than one builder
  
• Possible fix for names of buried NPCs being incorrectly censored on XBox
  
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Japanese, Lithuanian and Turkish translations. (Names translated in Japanese now!)
  
• Fix for names of some members of The Survivalists in Story Mode not being translated in some languages
  
• Support for languages with gendered adjectives when 'Empty' or 'Not Investigated' is displayed
  

I won't put v244 on the main branch or XBox yet, for the above mentioned reasons, it'll be v245 instead, after it has been in publicbeta for a little while.

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v245 will be in the "publicbeta" branch on Steam for a while, before pushing it to the main game and to XBox. 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, and thanks to everyone who bought the game or helped spread the word after the launch last week! As you might expect with the influx of new players there have been some bug reports, so this is mainly about addressing those.

The biggest ones were probably on XBox - you weren't able to save your characters on the character creation screen, and people have been having trouble joining online games. As regards the latter when I tried joining someone myself I found that it worked but took a long time, and other people kept joining me while I was doing so, and each time they did the progress bar reset to the beginning. The first time you join someone in a Sandbox game it has to send their whole terrain over to you which can take a while (after that the static part of it is cached, so should be faster). And this transfer seems to take longer on XBox, so it's more noticeable. If you start from scratch each time someone joins you, and randos keep jumping in and then leaving, you can get stuck into a loop of it never finishing. So my fix was to stop it resetting just because someone joined you. Note to any XBox players reading this - this patch will be in publicbeta on Steam for a little while first before making its way to XBox.

Here's the full change list:

• Fix for people set to cook a particular type of meal and set to auto-deposit wood getting stuck in a loop when their campfire is out of fuel
  
• Fix for Probability of Infection shown by Brain Scanner for a character changing after hitting the road
  
• Fix for saving characters not working on XBox
  
• Fix for Morgan Harding sometimes informing a chicken that there are infected raiders on the way
  
• Fix for showing the F2 prompt for Community Screen on XBox in a couple of places
  
• Fix for your community members remembering 'you knocked someone out like a light' when you knocked out a zombie
  
• Fix for being able to target Kelly for 1 frame with the bow when she's playing dead
  
• Fixed some props around Wishkey Falls Militia belonging to other groups
  
• Some fixes for Charlie Gant
  
• When NPCs leave their original communities to form new ones the new ones names are known the player if they know the NPCs names (so they aren't shown as 'Unknown Community' forever)
  
• If you happen to move the camera close to an invisible strain character while they are moving towards someone to secretly attack them, they will stop and act like nothing is happening
  
• On the character creation screen, disable Start button if first name or surname is blank (or Community name, unless joining a network game)
  
• Possible fixes for getting stuck on Receiving Game State screen while trying to join a game on XBox
  
• Changed 'Lumberjack' option on action menu to say 'Set Role: Lumberjack' for consistency with other roles
  
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Japanese, Indonesian, Italian, Latin American Spanish, European Spanish and Turkish translations
  

In addition, v243 is now on the main branch, and on XBox!

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v244 will be in the "publicbeta" branch on Steam for a while, before pushing it to the main game and to XBox. 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".

[p]It's done! Welcome to my game! I put zombies in it.

[/p][p]To celebrate the game leaving early access, some of the youtubers from the discord have been making videos or will be streaming over the course of the week, keep an eye out for them at the top of the store page![/p][p][/p][p]Yes, I intended the Early Access period to last "approximately one year" but it went on a bit longer than that! A lot has happened in that time - Story Mode, vehicles, friendships and relationships, chickens, constitution and rescuing, extortion squads, surrendering, alliances, infected weapons, hitting the road, numerous quality of life features (remember when you had to manually loot every corpse and sort your loot into buildings, or could only assign one role per person?), 11 complete translations, greatly expanded mod support, etc. Plus it's now on XBox Series![/p][p] [/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]What does the future hold? As mentioned before I still haven't decided yet - one option would be to make another sequel, as I still have a long wishlist of ideas I would have dearly loved to put in this game. The other option is a new project that I have in my head which would really like to get out. It would share a lot of DNA with Survivalist though so, either way, Survivalist will continue in some form.

Meanwhile, the relentless march of publicbeta continues with the latest patch, v243. This concludes a playthrough and bug sweep I've been doing leading up to launch - here's the change list:

Fix for Morgan Harding staying stuck on the spot after she returns home after warning Tent City
Fix for kicking not causing damage in fisticuffs against allies
Fix for NPCs saying they know their leader would pay you to bring them food, when their leader is dead
Fix for characters getting stuck in a loop searching for containers if you set Carry Amount to 1 for cooking pots
For modders, if you set up a recipe to build a vehicle, it will be driveable once built
Don't show Abandon action for under-construction buildings (just demolish them instead)
Fix for Out Of Sync error when adding wood to a fire while having both wood and charcoal in inventory
Fix for NPCs getting stuck continually shooting and missing a camping stool
Fix for vehicles taking full damage when parked touching the dump truck
Fix for you losing approval if you loot the corpses of NPCs from the 'Turned' community
Fix for incorrect speech when sending Emma to the safe zone
Fix NPCs from a settlement with no campfires repeatedly picking up unconscious bodies to try to rescue them, but then dropping them immediately
Fix for character spinning round on the spot trying to pay respects to a corpse they are carrying
Fix for wrong backpack sometimes being equipped after you hit the road
Fix for Out Of Sync error on character creation screen when hitting the road sometimes
Updated Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, German, Hungarian, Latin American Spanish, Russian and Spanish translations
And the previous patch, v242, has made it to the main branch!

Some people have asked whether publicbeta will end now that Early Access is ending. The answer is no, it will continue to be the way I release patches :) And there will continue to be patches in future, at least because there are several translations being actively worked on.

[/p][h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3][p]v243 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".[/p]