Hello, it's the weekend again which means new patches! This time we've got work in progress translations into both Simplified and Traditional Chinese by Cleave Jiang, thankyou very much for that! (This is a first for Survivalist games! I was never able to get Asian fonts working in the original due to annoying technical issues with XNA and the large character sets). As with all translations there will be bugs so let us know if you want to help improve them in any way (my email: ).
I have made Chinese available in the "publicbeta" branch so far. You can play it by right-clicking the game in your Steam library, going to "Properties...," clicking the Betas tab, and selecting "publicbeta" in the drop-down there.
All new features will be available in the "publicbeta" branch for a while first, before pushing them 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 that branch. But keep in mind:
Because it's the bleeding edge it'll 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".
The other kind-of big change in this patch is I've removed sugar from the recipe for gunpowder. In terms of realism it wasn't that necessary as you can make gunpowder without it (though ideally you need sulfur but that's hard to source in the zombie apocalypse). I had some feedback that getting to the point where you can make bullets was taking too long so you'd probably have defeated everyone on the map by the time you managed it, this will make it faster.
So here's the changelist for v84 (publicbeta):
Added Simplified and Traditional Chinese translations (WIP) and updated Spanish
Removed sugar from gunpowder recipe, so it's easier to make bullets
If not using save tokens, don't overwrite autosaves when someone with invisible strain turns
Fix for unconscious zombified traders spawning infinite food
Fix for farmer getting stuck in loop trying to deposit crops in a chest or building
Fix for refugees failing to occupy dead communites if they'd already been occupied once, and had a grave somewhere
Fix for wandering groups sometimes not spawning on medium maps due to the presence of traders
Fix for rabbit traps catching rabbits even when they aren't baited
Crash and Out of Sync fixes
Meanwhile the previous patch, v83, is moving into the main branch. Here's the changelist for that:
Added menu to change language, with Spanish translation (WIP)
Clickable links in credits
Crash fixes
Spanish Translation in "publicbeta" branch
A lot of people have been asking for translations in their own language and several have been offering to help, so I decided I need to start supporting it officially! Thanks to Leonardo aka System Tech for doing the first translation, into Spanish ːsteamhappyː
I have made this available in the "publicbeta" branch so far. You can play it by right-clicking the game in your Steam library, going to "Properties...," clicking the Betas tab, and selecting "publicbeta" in the drop-down there.
In future I'll probably be making all new features available in the "publicbeta" branch for a while first, before pushing them 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 that branch. But keep in mind:
Because it's the bleeding edge it'll 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"
P.S. If you want to help with translating into another language, send me an email:
New patch (v82)
It's... another stability patch. With a few bug fixes thrown in :)
Fix for body not disappearing for a few seconds when burying a corpse in online co-op
Fix for character getting into a weird animation state when assassinating someone who turns out to have invisible strain
Fix for vehicles juddering endlessly when hit by an explosive
Fix for traders getting stuck in a loop between burying someone and going for a drink
More crash fixes
New patch (v81)
Hello, I've released another stability patch. This one is mainly about fixing a bunch of different crashes and some out of syncs that were reported to me since the game shipped. Hopefully with these out the way I'll be able to work on more interesting things soon :) Here's the changelist:
Fix for terrain from previous co-op games sometimes being left visible when you start a new one (I think)
Fix for character showing idle pose all the time instead of animating in some situations on online co-op
A lot of crash and out of sync fixes
New patch (v80)
I've released another a new patch, this one's purely for stability as it fixes a bunch of crashes and out of sync errors that people have reported to me since the game launched. Let me know if you get any more crashes once you're running v80!
New patch (v79)
Hello everyone! It's been a mostly successful launch, I think! ːsteamhappyː I do have a lot of new feedback and bug reports to process and I'm going to be doing that over the following weeks.
First on my list is the difficulty, which a number of people have complained about. I kind of knew this would be the case as I got a number of similar comments during the beta, and had spent some time trying to make it easier in subtle ways (yep, it actually used to be even more difficult lol).
If you're wondering why make it so difficult, well it serves a purpose which is to try and encourage you to tackle things in more varied ways than just going in and hitting or shooting everything. Such as using stealth, hiding in buildings, digging traps, throwing meat as a distraction, and making use of the NPCs in the world. I find that once people are familiar with the mechanics, they don't generally find it too hard at all. I probably need to be messaging some of that stuff better though.
I think the biggest problem is that because there's no story mode as yet, there isn't a nice tutorial to introduce you gently to the game systems and you're kind of thrown in at the deep end in Sandbox mode. Story mode is going to take a long time to make, though, so to address the issue in the short term I'm adding difficulty modes!
When you start a game you'll now be presented with this dialog:
Your options are "Normal" and "Slightly Easier". The only difference currently is that in Slightly Easier mode, half the zombies will be spawned with leg injuries which means they limp and don't move fast. If you're a beginner let me know if you think that helps or if it's still too hard.
I also added an option to set where you want your saves to go, as some people have been having mysterious problems with access violation errors when using the normal place.
Here's the full changelist:
Added slightly easier difficulty setting
Make it possible to change the directory the game saves to by putting 'savedir c:\\foo' or suchlike in your launch parameters
New patch (v77)
I've released a new patch as I found some people are getting an issue where they're stuck in "aim" mode with their button prompts all showing ps4 button icons. Basically the game was thinking a controller was plugged in (though I'm not sure why) and treated it as a ps4 controller, this should stop that. Here's the full changelist:
Fix for trader followers starving to death
Fix for 'stuck in aim mode' issue
Survivalist: Invisible Strain is out now!
It's out now, I've just clicked the button to release it ːsteamhappyː Take advantage of the launch discount!
This is a game about building a community in the zombie apocalypse. You can talk to anyone and they all have their own mood and opinion of you based on what they remember you did. You can also build anywhere, RTS-style, plant crops, chop down trees, craft stuff, etc. It's got stealth, you can hunt rabbits or people, skin them and throw the meat to distract zombies, set traps, lots of choices besides combat. Also online co-op!
I've been working on this game since about 2016, it has been in beta testing for almost a year and it'll continue to be worked on for at least that long again I expect as I need to write the story mode. Buy it and help shape the development over the next year or so!
[previewyoutube="oziHsAsiVBk;leftthumb"]
New patch (v76)
Here's another way of detecting if people have invisible strain, plus a way to turn it off if you don't want the paranoia :)
Option in World tab on character creation screen to toggle invisible strain off, for people who want a more chill game
Certain What's Up? dialog paths will give you questions you can ask people in future, to try and detect if they have invisible strain by watching their facial reactions
Better eulogies for people that got invisible strain
Fix for people (and rabbits!) randomly talking about traps sometimes when none are around
Fix for people near the edge of the map not chopping down trees
New patch (v75)
New patch as I just realized there's been a bug in online co-op for the last few weeks where if you swing a melee weapon everything basically stops working:
Fix for online co-op being completely broken since v70!
Fix for bug where characters wouldn't build anything if you saved game while placing a building
).