It's alive.. it's alive! I've finally made the online co-op patch (which has been available in a beta-testing branch for the last six months) live in the main branch!
This update brings a ton of other changes, I'll list here the bigger ones (and some smaller ones that were reported to me as bugs by various people):
Added Online Co-op
Added Log Screen (F5)
Changed savegame interface to support more than 8 savegames
Added AI for characters following someone who is gathering supplies, or getting water from a well, to do the same
Added ability to import translations from TSV files
Added Alternate Action shortcut (middle mouse button) to inventory controls for things like Eat, Drink, etc
Fixed raiders bodies getting deleted immediately after they die
Fixed issue where characters in your community would dislike you for threatening looters
Fixed bug where 'There's too many of them out there' awardment was not awarded if you abandoned then re-occupied your bunker.
EDIT: Some people were reporting problems on Windows XP so I had to issue another quick patch.
Online Co-op Beta - Getting even closer to making it official!
I've released another patch for the online co-op beta. This one's pretty minor, just what I hope will be some last fixes before I move online co-op to the main branch.
I've added one small new feature - the ability to import translations from a .tsv file, such as could be exported from Google Docs, without needing a new build of the game as was previously the case. This should make translating much easier. I'm going to make translations of the game available on Google Docs to allow multiple people to collaborate on them.
Here's the change log:
Added ability to import translations from TSV files.
Added Progress counter when waiting for someone to receive game state.
Fixed some ragdoll prediction glitches.
Fixed crash when walking away while swapping supplies.
A few other crash fixes and translation fixes.
If you haven't tried the beta test yet, you can test it by doing the following:
Right-click on Survivalist in your Steam library and click Properties
Go to the Betas tab
Select publicbeta on the drop-down where it asks you what beta you want to opt in to
PLEASE NOTE: any savegames you make with this branch will not be compatible if you switch back to the main branch. So don't overwrite anything that's important to you!
If you find any problems, let me know! You can post a reply to this news post or email me or post in the forums.
Online Co-op Beta - Getting close to making it official!
I've released the latest patch for the online co-op beta and I think I'm pretty close to being able to move it into the main branch. This one's basically a grab bag of different fixes, many of which are too obscure to list here. I'm in that final stage of a project where you just keep thinking you're finished and then finding bugs and fixing them and introducing new ones in the process, but hopefully it should all be over soon!
I did manage to work on a commonly requested feature for the AI though: if you have NPCs following someone who is bringing supplies home, they will help bring more of the same supplies if they have room in their backpack. They should also be better at getting food for themselves etc while the leader is sleeping.
Here's the change log:
Added AI for characters following someone who is gathering supplies, or getting water from a well, to do the same.
Added Alternate Action shortcut (middle mouse button) to inventory controls for things like Eat, Drink, etc.
Added ability for online co-op games to run at 60 fps, if all players have the option ticked.
Changed autosaves to split between Single Player and Multiplayer so your progress can't get over-written by trolls
Changed 'Don't allow anyone to join' mode to 'Invite Only'
Fixed bug introduced in earlier online co-op beta versions where quicksaves or autosaves could get overwritten
Fixed raiders bodies getting deleted immediately after they die
Fixed a bunch of small bugs and occasional crashes
People who bought the game on XBox 360 might be interested to know I've pretty much got online co-op working on there as well, so I should be able to release that soon.
Oh yeah and I changed the colour of the menus too!
If you haven't tried the beta test yet, you can test it by doing the following:
Right-click on Survivalist in your Steam library and click Properties
Go to the Betas tab
Select publicbeta on the drop-down where it asks you what beta you want to opt in to
PLEASE NOTE: any savegames you make with this branch will not be compatible if you switch back to the main branch. So don't overwrite anything that's important to you!
If you find any problems, let me know! You can post a reply to this news post or email me or post in the forums.
Online Co-op Beta - Prediction added!
I've finally got prediction into the online co-op beta test build! For those that don't know, prediction is what online multiplayer games use to cover up the lag from slow or unreliable network connections - if you haven't received a network message from someone yet, you just guess what they would have done. So this should make the game appear smoother on slower connections, at the cost of some glitches when the prediction guessed wrong.
Here's the change log:
Added Prediction
Fixed Fort Kohai characters incorrectly talking about Bud Anderson when asked to join you
Fixes for some pathfinding bugs introduced in earlier online co-op beta versions
If you haven't tried the beta test yet, you can test it by doing the following:
Right-click on Survivalist in your Steam library and click Properties
Go to the Betas tab
Select publicbeta on the drop-down where it asks you what beta you want to opt in to
PLEASE NOTE: any savegames you make with this branch will not be compatible if you switch back to the main branch. So don't overwrite anything that's important to you!
If you find any problems, let me know! You can post a reply to this news post or email me or post in the forums.
Online Co-op Beta - Voice Chat
Hi everyone, the latest patch for the Online Co-op beta test is now out. Here's the change log:
Added Steam Voice Chat (hold ALT to talk, by default)
Changed quest marker to be settable per-player in online co-op instead of the same for all players
Upgraded to Steamworks SDK 1.34
Possible fix for Out of Sync error
Fixed footstep sound not playing sometimes
Fixed issue where characters in your community would dislike you for
threatening looters
Fixed some errors when two players join or leave at the same time
Fixed bug where 'There's too many of them out there' awardment was not awarded if you abandoned then re-occupied your bunker.
Incomplete German translation
If you haven't tried the beta test yet, you can test it by doing the following:
Right-click on Survivalist in your Steam library and click Properties
Go to the Betas tab
Select publicbeta on the drop-down where it asks you what beta you want to opt in to
PLEASE NOTE: any savegames you make with this branch will not be compatible if you switch back to the main branch. So don't overwrite anything that's important to you!
If you find any problems, let me know! You can post a reply to this news post or email me or post in the forums.
EDIT - reverted for now as it was crashing for some people. You can play the latest version in a new branch called publicbeta_unstable for now.
Online Co-op Beta - Up to Four Players Enabled!
I've pushed out the latest patch for the Online Co-op Beta test! Here's what's in it:
Raised max online player limit to 4
Improved savegame interface to allow more than 8 saves, separated Quicksaves and Autosaves
Added Log Screen (press F5)
Try to avoid characters talking while using their inventory
Fixed various crashes
The changes to the savegame system and the new log screen should benefit people playing single player too - I've had quite a few people asking for them.
If you haven't tried the beta test yet, you can test it by doing the following:
Right-click on Survivalist in your Steam library and click Properties
Go to the Betas tab
Select publicbeta on the drop-down where it asks you what beta you want to opt in to
PLEASE NOTE: any savegames you make with this branch will not be compatible if you switch back to the main branch. So don't overwrite anything that's important to you!
If you find any problems, let me know! You can post a reply to this news post or email me or post in the forums.
Online Co-op Beta - Joining Friends Fixed
I've updated the online co-op beta test to fix the biggest problems people were seeing in the first week. Here's my change list:
Added Invite button and ability to join from Steam UI
Fixed 'Friends Only' mode not working
Fixed hang when switching characters
Fixed floating point 'Out of Sync' error
If you haven't tried the beta test yet, you can test it by doing the following:
Right-click on Survivalist in your Steam library and click Properties
Go to the Betas tab
Select publicbeta on the drop-down where it asks you what beta you want to opt in to
PLEASE NOTE: any savegames you make with this branch will not be compatible if you switch back to the main branch. So don't overwrite anything that's important to you!
If you find any problems, let me know! Or if you don't have any problems, that's useful to know as well :) You can post a reply to this news post or email me or post in the forums.
Online Co-op - Early Beta Test
I've uploaded my work-in-progress implementation of online co-op! It's in the publicbeta branch, where I imagine it will be staying for the next few months as I add improvements and bug fixes.
This is the first time I've made this available to the public! So bear in mind it may turn out to be completely broken on your PC for some reason or another. You can test it by doing the following:
Right-click on Survivalist in your Steam library and click Properties
Go to the Betas tab
Select publicbeta on the drop-down where it asks you what beta you want to opt in to
PLEASE NOTE: any savegames you make with this branch will not be compatible if you switch back to the main branch. So don't overwrite anything that's important to you!
If you find any problems, post a reply to this news post or email me or post in the forums. Here are some of the likely common problems:
Lag
All network games have lag but most cover it up using prediction. That's where the game guesses ahead of time what's going to happen, so it can display it to you without waiting to receive inputs from the online players.
I haven't added prediction to Survivalist yet, so it may be pretty laggy. I'm not quite sure how bad this will be in real world conditions, it could range from mildly annoying to completely unplayable.
Out of Sync errors
Survivalist's online co-op works by running an identical simulation of the world on each PC, so the only network messages it sends are the buttons you've pressed each frame. This is different from most network games such as CounterStrike which would typically send the actual positions of the players.
If there's a bug which causes something slightly different to happen in the simulation on one PC from another, the games will get out of sync. And due to chaos theory, one small difference will lead to larger differences, and so on.
Therefore, every 1 second I serialise the entire game state and send the hash to the server to check it's the same. If it isn't it has to send the entire game state from the server to the client again. If this happens to you you'll see the game reload saying "Out of Sync Error". The server will also have the two game states dumped into their "Documents" folder, in a directory called "OutOfSync". It would be helpful if you could email these to me so I can track the problem down :)
On lower-spec machines there might also be a performance hit from constantly serialising the game (basically, equivalent to doing a quicksave every 1 second). Later I will increase the interval.
Other Stuff
There's a lot of things that could be improved that I'm already aware of and will be working on for the next beta releases. For example:
There needs to be a log so you can see a history of all the things people have said, quests that have been started, players joining and leaving, etc.
The notification messages that pop up when you start a quest can be quite annoying as they take control away from you but don't pause the game any more.
There need to be some options to control things such as whether other players can pause the game, or how many can join you. (Currently the maximum player limit is 2, I hope to raise it to 4 but I haven't tested that at all yet so I decided to limit it to 2 in the first release).
Chat
There is a chat button in the game so you can talk to each other, by default it's bound to ENTER.
EDIT: There was also a minor update to the main branch, which was mainly just corrections to the Russian translation.
Survivalist заговорил на русском! (Survivalist has a Russian translation)
Someone called Александр Кулаков got in touch with me recently and kindly provided a translation of the game into Russian, which I've now made available in the latest patch! So, if you happen to speak Russian, go check it out.
(Note: It's possible this isn't the final version, we may make corrections and improvements over time).
If you're a fan who is interested in translating the game into another language, do get in touch. Be aware it's quite a big job though - about 45,000 words, or 4300 lines.
Meanwhile work continues on online co-op :)
Survivalist now has Spanish and Hungarian translations!
In this update the Spanish translation is complete, so Survivalist now officially supports three languages: English, Hungarian and Spanish!
I've also made one small change that has been requested - if you are fast-forwarding the game and someone in your community comes under attack, it will automatically slow down to normal play speed so you have a chance to react.
