Survivalist: Invisible Strain News

There's a lot of stuff in this patch but the biggest change is that I've been working on the AI to make characters run inside their bases when under attack, if the base is nearby. This applies to both the player's community and the AI settlements. (In the player's case, it obviously doesn't apply if you set the gates to Always Closed or Always Open). I also fixed some bugs that made the NPCs in the AI settlements run outside their bases to fight the enemy.



Along with some farming fixes, the aim is to try and make AI settlements less vulnerable to zombie attacks or dying of cold or hunger if you play for a long time. I'm not 100% sure if I've fixed it yet, but hopefully it helps. From my playthroughs, they seem to be managing so far, but let me know if you have a playthrough from v150 where you see a lot of AI communities dying.

Besides that there's a lot of fixes for various different glitches, particularly involving chickens and AI:

• Added AI for characters in combat near their bases to run inside the gates, also fixed a bug that made NPCs run out of their settlements
  
• Ensure AI Farmers have farming skill level 3
  
• Fix for characters inside a base continually shouting 'we're under attack' because enemies are outside the gates
  
• Stop NPCs with recurring crafting or cooking role from saying 'finished' each time, as it gets annoying
  
• Korean, Hungarian and Brazilian Portuguese translations updated
  
• Some fixes for chickens talking etc
  
• Added an option to slaughter chickens
  
• Made picking up and dropping living chickens less glitchy-looking
  
• Made chickens cheaper, and improve NPC detection of you stealing them
  
• Added policy option for whether food can be fed to animals
  
• Delete roaming hordes if they get stuck for a long time
  
• Fix for some roaming hordes spawning at any road junction instead of just map entrances
  
• You can only pay respects at graves of characters whose name you knew
  
• Made it possible to walk over grave so you can't use them as walls
  
• When saving manually from the menus, don't allow overwriting of quicksave, autosave or token save slots
  
• Fix for invisible strain NPCs attacking activated zombies
  
• Allowing talking to characters who are walking somewhere to ask someone for food etc
  
• When someone appears in the PiP who is not of your community, pressing Tab will control the person they are talking to if possible, or take you to them in fly mode if not
  
• Re-equip previous equipment if you automatically changed equipment to skin a deer, chop down a tree, etc
  
• Prefer to go round waist high walls instead of over them, if the path isn't too long
  
• Stop playing panting sound when game is paused
  
• Some grammar fixes
  
• Added colored biohazard symbols to antigen icons to try to make them more easily distinguishable
  
• Fix for crash when loading some pre-v146 savegames
  

I wanted to move v149 to the main branch but it turns out it had a crash when upgrading some pre-v146 savegames, so it'll have to wait. Chickens will have to stay out in publicbeta for a while longer :-P

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v150 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".

Another small patch, mostly bug-fixing:

• Italian translation updated
  
• Fix for leg armor on green strain zombies taking almost no damage
  
• Fix for ambient zombies not spawning sometimes when you start, particularly when you have few settlements
  
• Fix up old savegames so NPCs don't blame you for molotovs they threw at their own fences, before that was fixed in v148
  
• Fix for chickens being assigned roles in AI settlements
  
• If chickens in AI settlements die, the NPCs will skin them rather than burying them
  
• Fix for enemies not surrendering if they have chickens
  
• Fix for not being able to hit people with snowballs
  
• Crash fix
  

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v149 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 a small bug-fixing patch to tidy up some issues with the chickens, and fix a few of the causes of NPCs attacking you seemingly for no reason. Here's the changelist:

• Fix for people not taking eggs from chicken coop
  
• Fix for pumpkins still being plantable
  
• Fix for case where farmers sometimes got into a loop trying to deposit harvest
  
• Fix for NPC getting stuck digging grave
  
• Stop NPCs from blaming you for the death of someone nearby who died of hunger/thirst/cold/sleep deprivation
  
• Stop molotovs and pipe bombs thrown by AI from damaging friendly buildings even if splash damage is on
  
• Fix for chickens in AI settlements dying of thirst
  

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v148 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, 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".