Patch time! This one is mainly about two things - giving you some dialog options to control who comes into your gates (in case they have invisible strain), and stopping the map from being overrun by graves or corpses. Here's the changelist:

• Dialog options to set whether characters from other communities can come into your base (by default they won't enter gates now)
  
• Fix for traders not moving on when you tell them to
  
• More dialog variations when interrogating people to try and find out if they have invisible strain
  
• Graves deteriorate and disappear over time, but you can keep them around by "paying respects" to them from time to time
  
• AI communities bury bodies from other communities that die near their base (not zombies etc as those disappear anyway)
  
• Make feuding less likely if people fear each other
  
• Don't plummet morale because fences got destroyed
  
• Some deer spawning fixes
  
• Moss Effect on cars, rocks, old buildings etc
  
  
• Hungarian and Brazilian Portuguese Updated
  
• Fix for characters sometimes stealing stuff in non critical situations
  
• Fix for crash when deer became infected (which isn't supposed to happen)
  
• Fix for character circling around someone forever in MoveAdjacentTo goal
  
• Fix for surrender dialog not working because the Alert goal was taking higher priority than the conversation goal
  
• Fix for some towns being set to no infection when they should have been white strain
  
• Fix for people being able to slide around when getting up after being depressed
  
• Fix for dark past speech not playing after hug because another queued speech about approaching invaders was blocking it
  
• Fix for zombies grappling with someone not being visible in pip
  
• Fix for "subgoal not possible" error in FleeFromAllEnemies

All this took rather longer than I would have liked. I did a bit of a playthrough to try and make sure it was having the desired effect, and found and fixed a number of bugs along the way.. but for that and other reasons it ended up being a bit of a time sink. There's some good news coming on that front though - I'm quitting my day job and I'm going to work on this game full time, starting from March!

Having this game on Steam is something really special - one and a half years after the early access launch it has good reviews, people are still buying it, and there's a whole community of people waiting for updates and even making mods! But it's clear that at the current rate of progress it would have taken me years to finish it properly. Hopefully now (from March onwards) I'll be able to fully dedicate to it the time it deserves.

It's still gonna take time, and I don't have a specific completion date in mind or anything, I've just got a long wishlist of features including of course Story Mode, and this should really help me get through them properly :)

In the meantime, the above patch (v138) is now in the publicbeta branch, and I have moved the previous patch (v137) to the main branch.

v138 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".

Hello, it's patch time! This one is mainly about addressing a bunch of bugs people have reported, and adding some small Quality of Life improvements.

The biggest change is that the tracks you leave in towns will time out after a while. Up until now after you entered a town you would be told you'd "left some tracks" there which resulted in hordes of zombies spawning from the town and coming to your base at intervals over the course of the rest of the game. Now those tracks will "disappear" after a while and the zombies will stop spawning.

I think having done this I also need more ways to attract you back to the towns after the tracks fade away, so there's an element of risk/reward. They do have resources you might need, but I probably need to add some quests or something that will make you keep wanting to return from time to time and brave the hordes again, but in a more controlled way. But the current rate of horde spawning was causing problems for some people in the late game so I've done this step for now. Hopefully it doesn't get too easy as a result, but in any case there are probably better ways of adding challenge. Let me know how it goes.

(P.S. for existing savegames the fade-out timer will just start from the moment you start playing with the new version, so it'll still take a while for them to fade. I didn't save the time you entered the town originally, so I wasn't able to base it on that)

Here's the full changelist:

• Tracks in towns time out after a while
  
• Stop characters from drinking water immediately after give them a direct order (such as chop a tree)
  
• AI characters equip armor if you sell them it and they don't have any on already
  
• Option to turn hints off (under Settings/Graphics, for now)
  
• Set Farm Zone option is available in action menu when highlighting your crops, and now shows all crops you have already planted, not just the ones you currently have seeds for in your inventory
  
• Only play the peeing sound for the currently controlled character
  
• Fix for bug where tree stumps were cleared when a group were set to follow a lumberjack
  
• Fix for invisible strain bites triggering a war if they come from someone in another community
  
• Fix for a case where characters got stuck trying to deposit items they'd crafted, if the desired depot was inaccessible
  
• Crash fixes

v137 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".

This patch has several new features in it. First of all, deer! I've always wanted to add more animals, so deer are just the beginning - I intend to add more down the line. Their AI is quite similar to the rabbits, which is why I started with them. They're nervous and very fast, but you can creep up on them in bushes. Shoot them in the legs to slow them down a bit. If you can catch them, they'll provide a good food source in those early stages of the game before you've got farming up and running.



Next, leg armor! Ever since launch, many NPCs have been protected with body armor and helmets, but they've always been vulnerable to being knocked over by shooting them in the legs. But not anymore as some characters will have leg armor now, so you'll have to vary up your tactics.



I've also changed the way armor works, a little. Previously when armor was damaged a few times, it disappeared, and was instantly replaced by another piece of armor if you happened to have one in your pocket. I've changed it so the armor doesn't disappear now, and you can't change armor in the middle of combat. Instead, it stays on you and can be repaired afterwards at workbenches. (NPC communities now have workbenches as well.) Idle characters will automatically repair their armor at the nearest workbench.

Why do this? I want to cut down on the amount of busywork you need to do to manage a community, and picking up every piece of armor and helmet you see on corpses, in order to use them as spares, felt like busywork to me. Now, once you've kitted a character out once you can just leave them to it as they'll repair their own armor when it gets damaged. Admittedly it wasn't the biggest problem but I figured I might as well do it while I was adding the leg armor. (Probably the biggest source of busywork imo is collecting gold from corpses, I do aim to address that at some point too.)

The next new feature is these cool blood effects:



Because it's a zombie game.

The rest of the patch is some small tweaks to this and that, Here's the full change list:

• Deer
  
• Leg Armor
  
• Armor can be repaired at workbenches, but you can't change your current armor while in combat
  
• Fancier Blood Effects
  
• Recover faster from damaged animations
  
• Aiming penalty when target is moving sideways or away from you
  
• When highlighting a campfire, workbench, etc, show recipes in a separate section at the bottom of the action menu if you have no ingredients for them
  
• Need less vodka to make bandages
  
• Some tweaks to the action menu
  
• Some crash fixes

The above will be in publicbeta for a time, as usual. I've also moved v135 to the main branch! v135 contains the (optional) new hud layout and optimizations, nicer grass, and some improvements to the action menu.

v136 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".

Just doing a quick patch in publicbeta today because I wanted to fix some crashes, here's the changelist:

• Brazilian Portuguese Update
  
• Fix for lumberjacks filling everything with wood in defeated settlements which are later re-occupied
  
• Crash fixes

v135 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".

So it turned out the last experiment with the HUD was kind of controversial, about half the people who replied liked it and the other half didn't - particularly those who were used to the old UI. In this patch I'm making it an option in the Graphics menu so you can choose the old one or the new one if you prefer, and I've also added options to turn the grass and tree quality up and down. Grass and trees are big contributors to the frame time.

Previously these grass and tree options were available in the F8 debug menu (and they still are), but they weren't saved when you changed them - now they will be. You can also now turn the grass and trees up higher than you could before, so that the grass looks lush and thick like a proper post apocalypse.

Here's the default grass setting, with the old sidebar back:


Here it as at the highest grass setting, and with the new HUD:


Here it is with grass turned off, and the tree quality turned down:


I've made the PiP background and the sidebar layout independent settings. (The thing that's expensive is the PiP background. The sidebar layout is more a matter of taste)


I've also made some changes to the action menu - in general you won't have to equip things like the axe or wood in order to see options like "Chop Tree" or "Add Wood to Fire".




Here's the full change list:

• Options in Graphics Settings menu for Sidebar, PiP Background, Grass Density, and Tree Quality
  
• For options in action menu that require equipment, such as using an axe to chop a tree, show them whenever the equipment is in your inventory, even if it's not currently equipped
  
• Korean Update
  
• Fixed some crashes

EDIT - released a patch to fix a crash, v133. Here's the changelist for that:

• Added tooltips to Graphics Settings menu
  
• Fix for crash when holding a sealed container in snow

EDIT - another one, v134, to fix a crash and to fix the ordering of the grass and tree quality tooltips.

v134 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".

Two major changes this weekend. First, I've moved all the changes I've been putting in the publicbeta branch for the last few months onto the main branch! I won't try to list it all out again here but the summary is it was about trying to give you more long term goals in Sandbox mode, and I'm still working on that, but it has been in publicbeta long enough.

Next, I took a break from that to work on optimization for a bit recently, and came to a shocking conclusion.. ;) the window in the top right where you can see your character and others talking (which I call the PiP - Picture in Picture) is quite costly to the framerate and would be hard to optimize. Unity just isn't really designed to draw the whole scene twice like that.

As it happens, I've noticed that people often complain about the PiP, or ask why it's necessary. There's even a mod to remove the sidebar. To me, I think it's important because it shows everyone's faces, and hopefully helps establish a bond with the characters. But that doesn't mean it needs to be visible all the time.

So I decided on an experiment. I've re-arranged the HUD, shrinking the minimap and putting it on the bottom left, and only showing the PiP when people are talking, or when you're targeting a person. When I do show the PiP, I just draw the character in a stylized comic-book way, without trying to draw the rest of the world (which was the most expensive part).

So, er, tell me what you think. This experiment is currently in the publicbeta branch, v129. Here's the basic view:



When you highlight stuff now the name is shown at the top of the action menu, so the PiP isn't needed:



When you highlight characters or corpses they are shown in the PiP in stylized form:




Or when someone talks:



I also show it when you target enemies in combat. I'm less sure about this, I like seeing them when I'm at a distance or stealthing around, but when I'm deep in combat I guess some might feel it gets in the way:



Anyway here's the full changelist:

• Removed sidebar! Only show PiP when someone is talking or you're targeting someone. Don't try to draw the whole scene in the PiP, just use the stylised comic look. Moved the minimap to the bottom left.
  
• A bunch of minor optimizations
  
• Fix for radio sometimes not attracting zombies when you're hiding in a building
  
• Reduce number of chops needed to mine trees or rocks
  
• Made it possible to purchase mining rights from looter communities, they will stop shaking you down once you do this. Also changed the formula to make mineral deposits a bit more common.

EDIT - released some quick patches to fix bugs in the optimization work. Plus, the Japanese translation is all caught up now!:

v131

• Japanese Update
  
• Fix for crash when throwing something in multiplayer
  
• Fix for crash after pausing and unpausing for a long time
  
• Fix for characters sometimes getting stuck on camping chair props

v130

• Fix for crash after someone recovers from being unconscious, related to optimizations in previous patch

v129 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".

Patch time! I've been looking a bit into how I can optimize the game better, it's going to need more work but I found one thing that can shave a few milliseconds off how long it takes to draw the trees. Also the Brazilian Portuguese translation is now up to date! And there's some general bug fixing as usual - here's the changelist:

• Upgraded Unity to v2021.1.22f1
  
• Trees Optimization
  
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese translation
  
• Fixes for satellite phone refund bugs
  
• Fixes for unknown characters in feuds appearing in PiP
  
• Fix for character getting in a kind of stuck state if you go to scavenge a prop, then open your inventory before they reach it
  
• Fixes for some bugs when NPCs take over a dead community
  
• Crash fix

v128 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".

This is a pretty small patch to fix a few crashes and work on translations. It does however have a fix for that annoying issue where you go into a building and open your inventory and your character immediately leaves the building because they've got a task to perform. No more reflexively pressing pause immediately after entering a building!

Here's the full changelist:

• Stop characters from exiting a building immediately after you made them enter it (when they have a role)
  
• Added debug tool for translators to print out all the speeches and how they would appear using different combinations of speaker and listener names
  
• Updated Chinese and Korean translations
  
• Fix for exploit where you could tell what's in a building by clicking Enter on it in command mode
  
• Fix for crash when hovering over maps in character creation menu in mods
  
• Various crash fixes

v127 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".

One thing I've been feeling in my playthroughs is there isn't a lot of strategy to the mining system - you generally just plonk down a mine in your base and you've got everything you need. This patch aims to make it more interesting by making the mineral deposits much more scarce and having a lot of them owned by friendly NPC settlements. You have a dialog option to buy (or sometimes acquire by force) rights to use their mines.

There are still patches of mineral deposits in the world outside of NPCs bases, so look out for the rocks with ore in them. You can also use the geological maps to find them. However, the world map and geological map items always felt overpowered to me as well, so I've split them into 4 quadrants - you need to collect 4 maps with different quadrants to see the whole world. (This only applies to the Large map size though btw).

In case it's a bit too scarce now, there are sliders in the world creation screen to make ore more common. Also btw this system only applies to newly started games, old savegames will continue to use their old geological map.

Here's the full changelist:

• Made rich mineral deposits much more scarce and often owned by an NPC settlement - added mines to the settlements, and dialogue to negotiate mining rights
  
• Various crafting tweaks - get less wood from trees, less minerals from 'poor' mines, can make arrows from steel as well as flint, iron ore and steel weigh less
  
• Tweaks to the envy formula to make it slightly less likely NPCs will start fighting purely over gifts. Also when you give people gifts they will comment if others are getting jealous.
  
• When feuding, characters will say the things they're angry about
  
• Your community members will warn you as a group of raiders or zombies is approaching
  
• Split world maps and geological maps into 4 quadrants, so you have to collect all 4 to see the whole area (on the Large map size only)
  
• Fix for chef not fetching rabbits from traps if they're far away
  
• Fix for being able to pour stew out of other community's pots without them detecting that you are stealing from them
  
• Fix for characters sometimes getting into a loop of continually exchanging items with each other
  
• Fix for characters sometimes getting into a loop of continually jumping over a tree stump

v126 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".

This is primarily a quick patch to fix some bugs people have reported, but it also adds one sort-of new feature - the number of fences you can queue up while building has been increased to 32 (it used to be 8). It also makes them passable while under construction, i.e. you can walk through them, so you can't use it as an exploit, which was the original reason the limit was so low.

Ultimately the goal is to be able to queue up different types of buildings, so you could queue up some fencing and a gate and a shack or suchlike in one go and then leave them to it - this is just a stepping stone to that.

Here's the change list:

• Fix to make it possible for modders to add bows
  
• Increased maximum number of fences builders can queue up, made props under construction only become obstacles when resources start being used in them
  
• Fix for community buildings being deleted after a dead community is re-occupied, and then that community also dies
  
• Fix for rabbits and zombies saying 'hey!' when you throw a snowball at them
  
• Fix for crash after using a mod with a story that contain the same asset bundle
  
• Updated Chinese translation

EDIT - I've released another quick patch with a few more things, after someone reported a crash. So it's now v125:

• Fix for zombies jittering sometimes when a pack of them is attacking you in online multiplayer
  
• Updated Korean translation
  
• Crash fix

v125 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".