Hello, I've released a small patch with improvements for the Brazilian Portuguese translation. Arthur the translator has been diligently playtesting it and making corrections over the last couple of months, and these are the results :) Happy New Year! ːJoeWheelerApprovesː

Well, you wait years for an update and then two come along at once. The game now has a Brazilian Portuguese translation! Many thanks to the translator, Arthur 'Loki' Nunes for producing what looks like a a very comprehensive translation, e.g. with good support for gender agreement when names get inserted into the text and suchlike.




ːJoeWheelerApprovesː

I should probably mention, because I know someone will ask, that unfortunately I still can't translate it into Asian languages with large character sets like Chinese, Japanese or Korean. This is because it uses a very old fashioned font rendering system as part of XNA. I've tried before, and I couldn't make it work. Sorry about that. (Survivalist: Invisible Strain, on the other hand, uses Unity and has translations for all of the above)

It turns out that the latest Proton patch for Steam Deck (Proton 9.0-3) broke Survivalist again. I didn't realize that for a while as I stupidly didn't twig where some crash reports people sent me had come from, but I've now released a new patch to fix it - many thanks to those who reported it! ːJoeWheelerApprovesː I also found some Out of Sync errors playing online co-op between a PC and a Steam Deck and fixed those.

Look, it works! ːGreenStrainː



So it's now working on Proton 9.0-3. Previously I had it working on Proton 7.0-6 and I believe it still did on Proton 8.0-5. I have some concerns about the current "Experimental" Proton build so I advise you not to use that. If you read this news post in the future and you have a problem with the game on Steam Deck, try going to Settings -> Compatibility and switching to one of the above versions of Proton (and let me know at http://mailto:survivalist.game@gmail.com).

I've also added some command line arguments, which might be of interest to people running the game with Proton on a Linux PC or Steam Deck. You can enter those by right cicking the game in your Steam library and putting them in the general tab under Launch Options.

• force_steam_deck - This makes the game pretend it's running on Steam Deck, which enables all the various hacks I added to get it working (which normally would only be enabled if the game detects it's on Steam Deck). So in theory it might also run on Linux with Proton on a PC.
  
• force_not_steam_deck - This disables all those hacks even if it detects it's on Steam Deck.

To be clear though, this game doesn't officially support Linux as a platform, I'm just trying to ensure it works on Steam Deck and if that means it also runs on Linux with Proton that's just a nice bonus.

It has come to my attention that Survivalist crashes on Steam Deck as soon as you start a new game - or at least it used to, as I've now issued a patch which fixes that. Hooray!

I've tested that you can at least start a new game and get as far as Fort Kohai on Proton 7.0-5 and Proton 7.0-6. As it turned out there were multiple issues, and they were all a bit weird and arbitrary, maybe Valve will fix them in a later version of Proton - or maybe they'll introduce more bugs, who knows. If you read this news post in the future and you have a problem with the game, try going to Settings -> Compatibility and switching to one of the above versions of Proton (and let me know at survivalist.game@gmail.com).

It's a pretty great game for the Steam Deck, being originally designed around a gamepad and all. Hopefully I can get it green tick verified now.

I've released a new version of Survivalist, v72, which greatly improves the Italian translation. Michela, who did the Italian translation for Survivalist: Invisible Strain has gone over it and carefully re-written most of the lines to be more fluent. We've also taken a few features from Invisible Strain which allow the game to handle gender suffixes, pronouns, and suchlike correctly in a bunch of situations where it wasn't before. For example, the line "You saved me/Alice/Bob from being bitten" could be translated variously as:

Mi hai salvata quando mi stavano per mordere
Mi hai salvato quando mi stavano per mordere
Hai salvato Alice quando la stavano per mordere
Hai salvato Bob quando lo stavano per mordere

depending on the gender of the person who got saved, and whether or not they are the person speaking. (Hope I got that right).

There's also a number of typo fixes for the English. And I've added a feature to specify the savegame path in command line arguments (aka Steam Launch Options), e.g. -save_game_path c:\\SurvivalistSaveGames. This is useful to fix a rare error that crops up occasionally.

If you liked Survivalist you'll probably like Invisible Strain even more ːsteamhappyː It has the same basic mechanics - talking to anyone you meet, recruiting survivors, building a base, battling the infected and human enemies, online co-op, etc.

But there are a huge number of improvements and new features! Much better graphics, a new third person view, stealth, melee weapons, hunting rabbits, chopping down trees, building fires to keep warm, setting traps, skinning dead bodies and throwing the meat to attract zombies, lots of choices besides combat! And of course there's the scary new invisible strain itself. It currently takes place on a randomly generated world map, so there's a huge amount of replayability. I'm going to be writing a story mode while it's in early access.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1054510/Survivalist_Invisible_Strain/

I've been working on this 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! And there's a launch discount if you buy it this week.

https://youtu.be/oziHsAsiVBk

It's happening! The sequel to Survivalist, "Survivalist: Invisible Strain" has been in beta for nearly a year and it's time to make it available for everyone. Early Access starts on 1st June 2020! Of course, early access is just the beginning - it'll be in there for a pretty long time, at least a year I would say, while I add more stuff and work on story mode.

I've posted a new gameplay trailer, which is basically a cut-down version of a playthrough I did last week. The somewhat tragic adventures of Brody Cantu and his gang, the Ugly Snakes:

As you can see, it has been almost completely rebuilt with a ton of new features - stealth, melee weapons, rabbit hunting, traps, better graphics and a more traditional first person camera (though still including the same RTS elements), weather, character customization, the disturbing threat of invisible strain itself, and more. It's launching with Sandbox Mode, which means every game will take place on a randomly generated map. While it's in early access I'll work on a story mode, and the editor too so people can make their own stories if they want.

The early access price will be $6.99, but there'll be a 25% launch discount so you can get it for around $5.25 in the first week.

Many people know I've been working on a sequel to Survivalist for the last few years, called Survivalist: Invisible Strain. But I realize it has now been a very long time since I posted about it here! So I figured it's time for a quick re-introduction.

Survivalist: Invisible Strain takes place about a decade after the events of Survivalist and is set in the mountains and forests of the Pacific Northwest. Graphics have been greatly improved, the camera angle in direct control mode is a more traditional 3rd person camera, and there's a ton of new features such as melee weapons, stealth, hunting, traps, character customization, and much more! Early access will start with Sandbox Mode which randomly generates a map for you, while I work on the story mode which will be released later.

The game has been in beta testing since last summer and I think I'm getting pretty close to being able to do an early access launch. I don't have a release date yet, but I believe I will have one pretty soon. So if you like the sound of that, head over to the store page and add it to your Steam Wishlist, and/or Follow it so you won't miss out on any updates.

In the meantime, here's some videos that people in the beta test have been making:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfQeVk9wMc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbpAQWLgunU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpOKnc3ycyQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeVezVMG8Jo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuF3Ri15-Q4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX49k8Bhhy0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2qVT0I16RQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An3quZ7v8vQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrdGE5EM7j4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7OAeTtL_Zs&list=PLUqk5MQcTtIPMYKHKjBBODlgfXGKINlLH&index=3&t=0s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scaPTU02TYw

Hello, I've now finally added the Steam store page for Survivalist: Invisible Strain!. So you can click Follow on it to make sure you get informed of news updates - though I'll probably post them here as well for the forseeable future.

There's actually now a bunch of different places you can subscribe for Survivalist-related stuff:

• The community have created a Discord channel: https://discord.gg/P8aMp4X
  
• I've got a Youtube Channel where I post gameplay videos every now and then
  
• I also have a mailing list, you can email me if you want to be added to it.

I've also posted a very minor patch for Survivalist, here's what's in it:

• Stop traded backpacks from being deleted
  
• Fix for not being able to complete the game if you don't get the quest from Alice before the Missing storyline ends
  
• Small fixes in French translation

Hello again, I've uploaded another video of the upcoming sequel, which I'm now calling Survivalist: Invisible Strain.

This video is a playthrough that I did of Sandbox Mode (i.e. a randomly generated map), starting from the title screen and going through character customization, exploring, doing quests, recruiting people and starting to build a base. It's a pretty long video! It shows a bunch of new features like stealth takedowns and generated quests.

I'm at a stage now where I'm playing the game, finding bugs that need fixing or things that don't quite work and need to be changed, restarting and playing again, rinse and repeat. I thought by now I'd be starting beta testing but it looks like I'm not quite there yet, still got a list of things that need work. Hopefully it won't take too much longer.

Anyway check out the video!

P.S. To make this post prettier, here's a screenshot from one of my outtakes: