Survivalist: Invisible Strain News

Just a small patch with a bunch of bug fixes :)

• Fix for crafters not being able to use sugar if you set the policy to Don't Eat (instead of Don't Craft With) and related errors
  
• Fix for incorrect amount of liquids shown on craft amount dialog box when metric is enabled
  
• Fix for warning message sometimes wrongly being shown when you try to craft something, saying you can't because of the policy against certain ingredients
  
• Fix for a saltpeter crafter getting stuck in a loop depositing empty plastic bottles and getting them again, in order to fill with urine
  
• Fix for people eating stuff out of allies houses if they are in them (which is treated as theft by the allies)
  
• Fix for your community members often lugging one or two pumpkins around
  
• Fix for some town buildings, and wooden chests(!) being invulnerable
  
• Stop communities from burying their leader while you have a quest to take their body to someone
  
• Some editor work for story mode
  
• Disabled snoring sound
  
• Crash fixes
  

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v186 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 new patch in the publicbeta branch. This one is partly me reacting to feedback from a few people that the mercenaries are making things too difficult in the earlier game stages (the ones that looter bases can sic on you if you go to war with them) - I've reduced the frequency of their raids and made them less well armed. I've also made it possible to surrender to looters and raiders, so hopefully the surrender mechanic is more consistent and understandable to new players. And I've added the ability to pay supplies instead of gold when surrendering. Plus I've added a bit of extra dialog with the extortion squads to give new players a better sense of what will happen if they decide to go to war with them.



The rest of it is bug fixes and small quality of life improvements. I've moved the speech bubble upwards when someone is talking to you, so it's less likely to overlap stuff like combat going on in the middle of the screen. And I've made it so when you run towards a door in a building, with zombies chasing just behind you, you'll get into the door as soon as you are in range of it, without having to waste precious milliseconds turning to face the door. Here's the full list:

• Made it possible to surrender to raiders and mercenaries (note: will not affect raider groups spawned before the patch), and tried to reduce their difficulty a little when your base is at an early stage
  
• Added a hint that you can use Set Zone to stop your community members wandering off in search of food
  
• When entering a building, be a bit more forgiving about getting through the door fast if you are currently under attack
  
• Moved PiP speech bubble a bit further up so it's less likely to overlap other screen elements, e.g. during combat
  
• Fix for character assigned to capture a building and also auto-deposit wood from getting into a loop
  
• Fix for trade screen bug/exploit where pressing left and right mouse button at the same time will appear to duplicate an item and get you extra gold
  
• Fix for bug/exploit where you tell someone to scavenge a building, then switch character before they reach it, allowing the character you switched to to eat/drink stuff in the building
  
• Some fixes for infected weapons
  
• Out Of Sync fix
  
• Crash fixes
  

EDIT - released a follow-up patch with a crash fix, v185

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v185 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".

In order to make the map for Story Mode I felt it was necessary to do a bit of a visual pass on the towns and vehicles, so that's what I've been up to recently. I've improved the house models and added more variation to them, I've added much more variation to the stores, restaurants and gas stations, and I've added strip malls! There is now color variation on most of the cars and town buildings, so it doesn't feel so much like you keep encountering the same white house and red pickup over and over again. I've also added utility poles, lamp posts, mail boxes and traffic signs to the road sides, so it looks more like a real cohesive place.

















Almost looks like a new game! I should mention that the size footprint of some of the houses has changed slightly with the new models, so if you had a fence adjoining them you might need to add an extra post. As a side note, I've tried to make them so they line up better so if you put a fence next to them, in most cases it should join on visually, except on the more elaborate fronts with balconies etc. I do recommend starting a new game with this patch so you'll generate a new map with all the new types of buildings and props in it.

Gameplay-wise all this doesn't change much of course, but I've also added the ability to use those chunks of meat you can cut out of zombies to infect arrows and sharp melee weapons (dependent on medical skill). Which adds a whole new tactic to assassination missions. And there's few more tweaks and bug fixes, here's the full list:

• Visual pass on town buildings and vehicles, replaced house models with more detailed ones, added strip malls, randomly varying colors and signs, new gas station pumps and roofs, motel signs and ice boxes, utility poles, lamp posts and road signs
  
• You can infect sharp melee weapons and arrows with zombie meat. Dependant on medical skill.
  
• If someone set to be a chef is hungry, they will try to cook food rather than walking to other communities looking for it
  
• Increased time between extortion squads, and made mercs have less armor and weapons when your presence is low
  
• Fix for buildings in towns not being capturable if they are near another building that you already captured
  
• Fix for getting stuck in fisticuffs state if you get into a war with the community of the person you were fighting
  
• Fix for salad crafters who are set to auto deposit sealed containers getting stuck in a loop taking them in and out of chests
  
• Fix for slowdown in mod where you can destroy graves with pipe bombs
  
• Fix for memory leak that caused slowdowns, particularly after generating a new map
  
• Updated French, Hungarian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Ukrainian, Brazilian Portuguese and Lithuanian translations
  

That's all in v183, which is in the publicbeta branch right now. The previous patch that was in publicbeta, v182, has now been moved to the main branch for everyone.

Lastly - I mentioned earlier I was planning to raise the price soon. I'm intending do that next week, probably Friday the 26th of May (unless something happens to delay it), so fair warning if you were thinking about buying and want to do so at the current price - you've got a week! The new price will be $9.99 USD (that's ¥42, or €9,75, £8.50, according to Steam's pricing tool). There will of course continue to be sales pretty regularly.

The reasons for this are: (1) people keep saying it's too cheap, (2) inflation, and (3) Sandbox mode has evolved enormously since launch and now feels like a full game in itself. But I will continue to make new additions and tweaks to Sandbox mode, as I work on Story mode, though. I'm also going to adjust the price of the original Survivalist game in some currencies (but not USD), as it hasn't changed since launch and some of the recommended prices have gone wildly askew since then.

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v183 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, here's another patch that's mainly bug fixing but with a nice new feature: on the equipment policy settings box, you can tell people the number of something you want them to carry. For example, carry 40 iron arrows, or 2 bandages. You can tell everyone you want them to carry 1 axe, 1 hunting knife, and a plastic bottle (which helps when new people join your community in the later game and you tend to find you are always handing out the same stuff to people).



They'll get the items from your community buildings, and other members if they have an excess. If you set auto-deposit on, they'll deposit any more of those items that they get over that amount. If you set auto-collect from corpses on then they'll continue to do that even if it makes them exceed the limit, since they might auto-deposit them or give them to someone else later.

Oh, and on that same dialog, there's also a new "Can Add to Campfire" option for charcoal and wood, so you can tell people not to waste charcoal on campfires. Here's the rest of the change list:

• Added field to equipment policy where you can specify how much of something you want people to try to carry, e.g. for ammo or bandages
  
• Added 'Can Add to Campfire' field to equipment policy for wood and charcoal
  
• You don't have to hold down the Brain Scan key if using a keyboard connected to a Steam Deck
  
• Made it possible to vault over a fence while carrying a chicken or human body
  
• Fix for overlapping text on inventory when scavenging a building with a long name
  
• Show icons for raiders who have surrendered as gray on the map
  
• Added a Can Repair Armor flag to workbenches in the prop editor so modders can make workbench types that don't repair armor
  
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese, French, Italian, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Lithuanian, Simplified Chinese and Ukrainian
  
• Fix for exploit where you can use a skill book to start crafting something, then give it to someone else and keep crafting even if you lack the skill
  
• Some fixes for overlapping text in different languages
  
• Fix for bug where switching between characters on the community screen doesn't change the one shown on the tab above
  
• Fix for gates not closing when someone is sitting near them
  
• Fix for scenario where a crafter with multiple roles would sit in front of a kiln for a while before moving to the next task
  
• Crash fixes
  
• Out of sync fixes
  

EDIT - Small follow-up patch, v182:

• Made selection highlights around sorting icons red to be more visible
  
• Fix for characters picking up items with their personal carry amount set to zero but the community carry amount set to non-zero
  
• Crash fixes
  

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v182 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".

This is mainly just a follow-up patch to fix some bugs reported in v178, but there's a new feature too - you can now specify, for a particular bottle or sealed container, what kind of liquid or substance you want people to put in it. So you can set one bucket to be your saltpeter bucket, one to be your gunpowder bucket, and so on. And you can set bottles to be for water only, so people don't go filling them up with pee from the outhouse.



The rest of the patch is fixes and tweaks from the previous patch - here's the full changelist:

• Option to designate what liquid you want a particular container to be storing
  
• Auto-collect will pick up arrows
  
• Increased tolerance for building on slopey ground
  
• Made chicken wire more common
  
• Fix for mouse not working to switch targets or target body parts on Steam Deck
  
• Fix for crash if a memory type is removed from a mod
  
• Fix for crash on loading some savegames
  
• Fix for occasional crash when confirming a trade in multiplayer
  

EDIT - Released a small follow up patch, v180 with some fixes for the above:

• Setting Roles and Equipment Policy will always be available immediately if you have hints turned off. Otherwise they appear once you have multiple community members.
  
• Fix for characters filling bottles designated for water with snow
  
• Fix for crash when auto collecting items
  

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v179 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".