A Survivalist mostantól magyarul is elérhető Steamen!
The changes that have been sitting in publicbeta for the last few months are now live!
This includes the Hungarian translation by Zsolt "lostprophet" Brechler, new music tracks by Sounds of Circumstance, and a bunch of smaller changes. The Spanish translation is currently being checked for errors but it's so close to complete that I'm including it in this release as well.
Here's the full list:
Added option to repair damaged buildings, take over vacant ones (To use this, equip Toolbox and target the desired building).
Added Hungarian translation
Added Spanish (nearly finished)
Added new music tracks from Sounds of Circumstance
Added 60 fps option
Changed font to Open Sans (to support special characters in those languages)
Changed fail conditions for certain quests that tell you to go to a building to get insulin, to not fail if Alice dies, as the insulin could still be useful to sell
Changed pathfinding to give up less easily in certain situations
Fixed crash in melee attack AI code
Fixed crash when trying to place fences outside the confines of the world
Fixed zombies spawning from spawn points that have been built on
Fixed hunters spawning in enclosed areas
Fixed people saying they can't afford treatment for wounds when you offered it for free
Fixed crash when no sound device is found (show an error message instead)
Full Hungarian Translation in Beta
The first of the translations is now finished - it's Hungarian, by Zsolt "lostprophet" Brechler! It's now available in publicbeta, I'll leave it there for a few days and if there aren't any problems I'll finally make this beta live for everyone.
You can use the public beta by right-clicking on Survivalist in your Steam library, clicking Properties, going to the Betas tab, and selecting publicbeta on the drop-down.
(Please note: savegames from the latest publicbeta version will not be playable in older versions of the game, so it might be worth backing up your saves before switching.)
Here's the publicbeta changelist so far:
Added option to repair damaged buildings, take over vacant ones (To use this, equip Toolbox and target the desired building).
Added Hungarian translation
Added Spanish (nearly finished)
Added Polish (incomplete)
Added new music tracks from Sounds of Circumstance
Added 60 fps option
Changed font to Open Sans (to support special characters in those languages)
Changed fail conditions for certain quests that tell you to go to a building to get insulin, to not fail if Alice dies, as the insulin could still be useful to sell
Changed pathfinding to give up less easily in certain situations
Fixed crash in melee attack AI code
Fixed crash when trying to place fences outside the confines of the world
Fixed zombies spawning from spawn points that have been built on
Fixed hunters spawning in enclosed areas
Fixed people saying they can't afford treatment for wounds when you offered it for free
Fixed crash when no sound device is found (show an error message instead)
60 Frames Per Second Option in Beta
Survivalist was originally released for the XBox 360 and I had it running at 30 fps on there as I just wasn't able to make it go fast enough for 60. When I ported it to PC I was focusing on other things like the controls and the screen resolution, and I just left the framerate how it was.
Recently due to some comments in the forums I decided to revisit that, and it turns out it wasn't all that hard to switch it to 60 fps. I thought it would introduce a load of bugs but as far as I can tell there weren't that many - guess my code wasn't as bad as I thought.
I'm making it available via the publicbeta branch. There is an option to switch it off in the Settings & Info / Graphics menu. Let me know if you think it is causing any problems. Some low end PCs might not be able to run it fast enough - I'd be interested to know how many people that is the case for, if any.
So check it out! It makes a pretty big difference - I never used to feel there was anything wrong with it at 30, but having used it at 60 for a while, if I go back to 30 it's really quite jarring.
You can use the public beta by right-clicking on Survivalist in your Steam library, clicking Properties, going to the Betas tab, and selecting publicbeta on the drop-down.
(Please note: savegames from the latest publicbeta version will not be playable in older versions of the game, so it might be worth backing up your saves before switching.)
Here's the publicbeta changelist so far:
Added option to repair damaged buildings, take over vacant ones (To use this, equip Toolbox and target the desired building).
Added support for different languages. There are now partial translations of the game in Spanish, Hungarian, and Polish!
Added new music tracks from Sounds of Circumstance
Added 60 fps option
Changed font to Open Sans (to support special characters in those languages)
Changed fail conditions for certain quests that tell you to go to a building to get insulin, to not fail if Alice dies, as the insulin could still be useful to sell
Changed pathfinding to give up less easily in certain situations
Fixed crash in melee attack AI code
Fixed crash when trying to place fences outside the confines of the world
Fixed zombies spawning from spawn points that have been built on
Fixed hunters spawning in enclosed areas
Fixed people saying they can't afford treatment for wounds when you offered it for free
Fixed crash when no sound device is found (show an error message instead)
New Music Tracks in Beta
The latest version in publicbeta now has four new music tracks! They are composed by a guy going by the name of Nawdrum, or more officially the band name Sounds of Circumstance, who was a fan of the game and offered to contribute. I was impressed by his work, which you can listen to here, so I took him up on the offer.
I've also fixed a few more bugs. As with the other public beta stuff, this will at some point make it into official version of the game, once I feel confident it's had some good playtesting and I haven't accidentally broken anything.
EDIT (01 May 2015): Also updated the Spanish translation.
You can use the public beta by right-clicking on Survivalist in your Steam library, clicking Properties, going to the Betas tab, and selecting publicbeta on the drop-down.
(Please note: savegames from the latest publicbeta version will not be playable in older versions of the game, so it might be worth backing up your saves before switching.)
Here's the changelist so far:
Added option to repair damaged buildings, take over vacant ones (To use this, equip Toolbox and target the desired building).
Added support for different languages. There are now partial translations of the game in Spanish, Hungarian, and Polish!
Added new music tracks from Sounds of Circumstance
Changed font to Open Sans (to support special characters in those languages)
Changed fail conditions for certain quests that tell you to go to a building to get insulin, to not fail if Alice dies, as the insulin could still be useful to sell
Changed pathfinding to give up less easily in certain situations
Fixed crash in melee attack AI code
Fixed crash when trying to place fences outside the confines of the world
Fixed zombies spawning from spawn points that have been built on
Fixed hunters spawning in enclosed areas
Fixed people saying they can't afford treatment for wounds when you offered it for free
Fixed crash when no sound device is found (show an error message instead)
Repairing and Taking Over Vacant Buildings in Beta
I noticed quite a few people were wanting to set up bases in different parts of the map, so I decided to make that a bit easier by adding the ability to take over buildings (such as houses and restaurants) that don't belong to another community. This is now available in the publicbeta branch.
It's been a pretty common feature request ever since I released the game. I was never quite sure how to implement it as I always felt there needed to be a 'cost' to it - you shouldn't just be able to click on every house you see and take it over (apart from being a bit silly, it would cause some problems for the AI).
In the end I decided that taking over a building means you have to board up the windows, which requires wood. So get some Wood Planks, go up to the building, equip the Toolbox, and press the Alternate Action button and the character will get to work boarding up the windows.
Repairing is another feature that gets requested from time to time so I've taken the opportunity to implement that in a similar way, using the same code, except it removes the damage scorch marks instead of boarding up the windows.
You can use the public beta by right-clicking on Survivalist in your Steam library, clicking Properties, going to the Betas tab, and selecting publicbeta on the drop-down.
(Please note: savegames from the latest publicbeta version will not be playable in older versions of the game, so it might be worth backing up your saves before switching.)
Here's the changelist so far:
Added option to repair damaged buildings, take over vacant ones (To use this, equip Toolbox and target the desired building).
Added support for different languages. There are now partial translations of the game in Spanish, Hungarian, and Polish!
Changed font to Open Sans (to support special characters in those languages)
Changed fail conditions for certain quests that tell you to go to a building to get insulin, to not fail if Alice dies, as the insulin could still be useful to sell
Changed pathfinding to give up less easily in certain situations
Fixed crash in melee attack AI code
Fixed crash when trying to place fences outside the confines of the world
Fixed zombies spawning from spawn points that have been built on
Public Beta
One problem with making a game like this is, as it has such a huge scope, it's very easy to accidentally break something while trying to fix something else. I've done that many times over the last year, several in just the last month.
So I decided to run a public beta testing branch of the game and put all my latest fixes and updates into there so people who want them can play them, but if I screw something up it won't affect everyone else. Every so often I'll migrate them to the main game.
You can use the public beta by right-clicking on Survivalist in your Steam library, clicking Properties, going to the Betas tab, and selecting publicbeta on the drop-down.
So if you're feeling helpful it would be great if you could switch to that branch and just keep an eye out for anything that seems broken.
Here's the changelist so far:
Added support for different languages. There are now partial translations of the game in Spanish, Hungarian, and Polish!
Changed font to Open Sans (to support special characters in those languages)
Changed fail conditions for certain quests that tell you to go to a building to get insulin, to not fail if Alice dies, as the insulin could still be useful to sell
Fixed crash in melee attack AI code
Fixed crash when trying to place fences outside the confines of the world
Fixed zombies spawning from spawn points that have been built on
Another bug-fixing update
I released another update, v32. It contains a couple of very minor new features but is mostly just about fixing bugs that got reported to me via email or the forums over the last couple of weeks. Here's the changelist:
Added Buttons to cycle through your current followers on PC (bound to T and Y by default)
Added option to unload ammo from guns on the Info screen
Fixed crash when decrypting awardments (PC)
Fixed crash when no storage device is specified (XBox 360)
Changed targeting code slightly to try to make you less likely to start a war with looters by accidentally targeting them while fighting zombies
Fixed prison gates being accidentally opened by communities that own them, if they happen to bump into them
Fixed everyone saying 'what the hell happened?' at once when Charlie Cashman dies
Fixed not being able to buy backpacks from traders if they are encumbered
Fixed followers attacking sparring partners if you go into command mode
Fixed farmers getting water from wells before they are built
Fixed headshot/legshot hints appearing even if you don't have a gun equiped
Fixed 'Internal workings of the mind: Follow the south road' quest not being marked complete if miss the first way-point
Fixed scripted assassinations not working if you have used shakedowns to take their guns (turns out they were hiding a pistol somewhere)
Fixed 'I'm out of ammo' sometimes getting spammed if enemy is inaccessible
Updates
So it turns out that when your game is released on Steam it suddenly gets massively playtested - and this can throw up a few bugs! Over the last two weeks I released three patches for the PC version, v28, v29 and v30. They don't add any exciting new features, they just fix a few bugs and sources of confusion that got discovered by all the new players. If you're one of those players then thanks for reporting them!
Here's the combined list of changes for all three patches:
Added quest arrows to point to the next regional threat, if you are at war, when you select a Complete The Game quest.
Fixed 'Sarah Slaughter has an easy quest for you' mission not going away if you chose 'au naturel'.
Fixed being able to activate cheat mode before you were supposed to.
Fixed being able to get Jim Gallager to join you before Cassie is dead.
Fixed being able to trade negative items and get free stuff if you are over-encumbered.
Fixed being able to transfer items to your inventory by dragging them across in the 'Bring Supplies Home' inventory page.
Fixed fire and zombie sounds not being affected by the effects volume slider.
Fixed game crashing on startup on PCs using the Turkish language.
Fixed crash involving maize and multithreading
Reading the forums now it seems that a few other bugs have turned up, not as serious as the game crashing but still needing to be fixed, so I'm going to be working on a patch to address those. That'll take a bit longer though. I'm also looking at getting the game translated into some other languages as some folks have offered to help with that. So, that's my plan for the near future.
