Survivalist: Invisible Strain News

It's patch time! This one's got a few different bits in it. I realized after the last one that there were still some problems with the ways NPCs reacted to their buildings being burned by a stealthy player (for example, if you threw a molotov at their fence, they would have a negative memory for each tile of fence that got hit, and any crops nearby, and would repeatedly shout "What the...?" for each one), so I had to work on that a bit.

After that I started working on trying to improve some of the problems with selecting characters and equipment. You can now press 1, 2, and 3 as shortcuts to equip your best melee weapon, ranged weapon, or thrown weapon. (Press it again in quick succession and it equips the second-best one, and so on). The other number keys can be assigned to characters, i.e. hold down 4 for 1 second to assign that key to your current character - then whenever you press 4 it will select that character.

You might ask, why didn't I make it so you can choose which weapon to assign 1, 2, and 3 to? It's because you can control a lot of different characters in this game, I worry it would get confusing if they all had individual weapon assignments, so I thought I'd try this first. That said I guess I might add that later in some form if people still found it necessary.

I've also made it so when cycling between characters, a bar with their faces appears temporarily on the bottom of the screen to hopefully give you a better idea of who you're selecting:


I've also increased the size of the character boxes shown on the character screen, and included some info like what skill they're best at, and what their best equipment is. I've always felt that screen becomes a bit of an indistinguishable sea of faces, hopefully this makes it easier to recognize the characters. (It does mean fewer can fit on screen at a time though.)


Let me know if you have an opinion about these UI tweaks! Here's the full changelist:

• Added shortcuts to select best melee ranged and thrown weapons (on 1,2,3 keys by default)
  
• Added ability to assign NPCs to number keys (from 4 onwards, by default) for quick selection
  
• When drag-selecting NPCs in Command Mode, you can now hold shift to add to your current selection instead of replacing it
  
• When you switch selection between NPCs, a bar appears at the bottom of the screen showing their faces
  
• Increased the size of the NPC buttons on the Community screen so their names are all visible without hovering, and you can preview their best skills and equipment
  
• Various fixes for how NPCs react to their buildings being damaged
  
• Warn if you play a Story that was made with a later version of the game than you are using
  
• The UsedHumanIngredients memory is only triggered if you use them in food
  
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese translation
  
• Lowered hammer sound volume
  
• Make it possible to display and edit building entrances using Prop Editor
  
• Fix for not being able to scroll equipment shown in buildings on the map screen
  
• Crash fixes
  

EDIT - released a few new patches (v104, v105, v106) to fix some crashes that I introduced.

This is all still in publicbeta.

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v101 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".

Okay Steam is doing this awards thing so... this is for all the people who thought the game was too difficult at first because the zombies all pile on you at once, but who kept playing anyway ;)

I got sucked into a couple of rabbit holes these last few weeks. First I spent some time trying to fix glitches in the terrain generation that would often result in some weird bits of terrain around houses that characters tend to get stuck on. Then I fixed a longstanding bug with stealth, where if you choke-hold someone without them detecting you, they would still somehow remember that you did it. In the process of testing that I kept uncovering and fixing more and more bugs with stealth and choke-holds, assassinations, etc. It should be much improved now, I think!

The behavior I've settled on when you choke-hold or assassinate someone, or attack them in some other way without being seen, is:

• They investigate the body, or go into the alert state (generally running around looking for you with ? above their heads). If they find someone (either you, or pretty much anyone from a different community) while in this state, they'll attack them.
  
• Once out of the alert state, if they see someone they don't like (including sometimes their own community members) they will get suspicious of them.
  
• If they're very suspicious they might attack (this is influenced by their overall approval of you)
  
• After about 10 minutes, they will no longer be suspicious of the next person they see, and you can go about your business as before.
  

It hasn't changed massively from before, but it should be more consistent and less buggy now.

Other major additions in this patch are the Lithuanian translation (thanks Audrius Vaidalauskis!), and all the sounds have been remastered (thanks to Gevin Campos!). And I've changed the click sounds to be less annoying... hopefully! ːsteamhappyː

Besides that there's also a bunch of other miscellaneous fixes.

• Added Lithuanian, updated Chinese and Japanese
  
• Remastered Sounds
  
• New button click sounds
  
• Options in debug menu (under Utils), and World tab when starting a game, to save/load world gen settings (this includes the seed, which means you can regenerate the same map you are on, if you lost your initial save)
  
• Added an indicator of how much resources are needed to repair or capture something
  
• Fix for not being able to repair or take over tents and wells
  
• Fix for NPCs magically remembering you knocked them out even if they never saw you
  
• Fix for not being able to choke hold/assassinate NPCs who are cooking or crafting
  
• Lots of stealth fixes - if you attack/choke-hold someone without being detected, they will search for you and attack whoever they find. If they finish searching without finding anyone, they will be suspicious of the next stranger they see (but won't necessarily attack), for a while.
  
• Stopped wandering hordes having white strain if it's turned off in the world settings
  
• Fixes for various world generation issues that caused terrain glitches
  
• Made loading screen backgrounds black as apparently the brightness gave some people migraine
  
• Fix for limping zombies moving at run speed in some situations
  
• Fix for crafters sometimes building up empty containers in their inventories
  
• Crash fixes
  

This patch is in publicbeta and I'm not moving v101 the main branch, because I felt that the terrain glitches were exacerbated by the new buildings and sliders, so I needed to fix that before going mainstream with those features. Next time!

I know you might be wondering, "what's the long term plan, am I ever going to get to such-and-such?" My first aim right now is to make the editor usable to modders (enough so people who want to create content for the game aren't blocked on me). After that a couple of other big things that need to happen are optimization and fixes for out-of-sync bugs in online co-op. And then there's... everything else. I've just updated the very rough roadmap in the FAQ so take a look. That said, this patch is a pretty good example of how things may not always go according to plan, as I didn't expect to spend the last couple of weeks looking at terrain and stealth issues.

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v101 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".

Ever since the dawn of time mankind has yearned for sliders to control the map generation settings on Survivalist: Invisible Strain - and now, here they are!



So if you want to generate a map with no rivers, or with only white strain, or where all the zombies start off with leg injuries, just go to the World tab and (if you're in publicbeta) you can do it ːsteamhappyː

I've also changed the difficulty dialog you get shown when you click Start:



Difficulty levels can now be thought of as presets for all the sliders on the World tab. So you get "Slightly Easier", "Normal" and "Hard" as presets, but if you play with the sliders on the World tab yourself then your difficulty level is considered to be "Custom" and the above difficulty dialog is just skipped.

Previously, "Save Tokens Required" and "Invisible Strain" were extra checkboxes on the difficulty dialog, but now I've folded them into the difficulty levels, so on "Slightly Easier" you can save whenever you like and there's no invisible strain, whereas "Normal" and "Hard" require save tokens and have invisible strain (with more of them on "Hard"). I also reduced the loot on "Hard". I may play with these more as time goes by.

But again, "Slightly Easier", "Normal" and "Hard" are just presets - you can mix and match whatever settings you want on the World tab.

I've also added a concept called "Loadouts" on the Equipment and Skills tabs. This sets the player up with a standard preset set of equipment and skills, i.e. select "Archer" to get a bow and arrows and high Archery skill, or select "Trapper" to get the equipment and Construction skill necessary to dig traps right from the start:



The idea here is to benefit new players who don't know the game well by always starting them off with a set of equipment that makes sense, for a particular strategy. So they don't get dumped into a hostile world with arrows but no bow, advanced Farming skill and some flint. These are also just presets, similar to the difficulty settings. You can override them by selecting any starting equipment or skills that you want.

Both the Difficulty levels, and the Loadouts, are completely customizable by mod makers - in the Edit Story Settings section of the Editor.

Finally, I've added another music track, this one by a new author called Richard Camo. You'll hear it sometimes when you are managing your base.

Here's the full changelist:

• Difficulty/World Generation Sliders
  
• Loadouts
  
• Added a new music track for base management
  
• Fix for bug where characters would try to walk to the centre of the map when giving eulogies
  
• Crash fixes
  

As with the previous patch, all this stuff is still going to stay in publicbeta, until I feel sure all the bugs from the big change to props have been ironed out (I fixed some more crashes from that in this patch, hopefully they're the last but we'll see).

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v101 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".

I don't know that anyone was crying out for this but it always bothered me that there are no markings on the roads! Well, I've started to rectify that with the latest patch in publicbeta, behold its double yellow liney glory:



This patch also introduces the Path Editor, for people who are making their own maps ːsteamhappyː This means you can finally lay down rivers, and of course roads with double yellow lines down the middle. (It's in F8 / Terrain Editor / Path Editor).

Here's the full changelist:

• Path Editor
  
• Road center markings
  
• Fix for flint not being pickupable
  
• Fix for resuming buildings under construction sometimes resulting in the building disappearing
  
• Updated some translations
  
• Crash fixes
  

All this stuff is going to stay in publicbeta for a while longer, until I feel sure all the bugs from the big change to props have been ironed out.

[h3]What's this publicbeta thing?[/h3]
v100 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".