So, here's what I've been up to for the last few months! This patch is about a few different things.


You can now negotiate an alliance with other settlements, either by getting them to like you, or fear you, or (in some cases) just giving them a lot of gold. If you have an alliance you can tell them to "Follow Me" and get them to help fight on your behalf, and they won't shake you down anymore if they are looters. You'll inherit their enemies and they'll inherit yours. You can use their mine if they have one - this replaces the dialog that let you negotiate mining rights, as it was very overlapping functionality. You can go inside their buildings and take their stuff, but they won't be happy about it and might end the alliance if you do it too much. Or you can give them stuff of course. Making alliances counts towards the progression bar if you are trying to complete the game by taking over the whole area, so you don't have to destroy everyone else.




Looters will now send out enforcers from time to time to shake down you and the other settlements. The largest looter community on the map will also get suspicious of you as you grow your community and make alliances. They may demand you hand your guns over to them, or they may execute someone as a warning. Communities that are short of food may come asking you for some - you can give them it for free as a goodwill gesture, ask for the normal price, or gouge them for double the price. So with this and alliances my hope is you'll feel a bit more engaged with the communities around you, and they'll feel a bit more active.

You can also now surrender to people you accidentally started a war with. Target an enemy as if to attack them and press H (for Hands Up). They'll take your gold and supplies though.



It's also easier to identify looter communities as you approach them, because they'll have piles of skulls and gibbets outside.



One common slightly cheesy gameplay pattern is that people dump most of their gold in a nearby car before entering a looter base so they don't have it all taken off them. You now have a dialog option to pretend you only have 5 gold on you. (I realized recently that surrendering to people has the same issue though, I will sort that out in a later patch).

Lastly, you can "restrain" community members who are feuding with each other! It works similar to Choke Hold etc - you have to be strong enough. Oh, and you can knock on unknown communities gates to try and get someone to notice you.


Long-requested, now implemented, you can assign multiple roles to the same person. When you do a Set Role action it adds it to a list of roles instead of replacing what was there. The roles are performed in priority order from the top of the list. So for example you can set someone to be a Chef with top priority and a Lumberjack below that. As the Chef, if there's food to cook they'll cook it and leave it on the fire until someone eats it. While there's no food or no one has eaten it, they'll chop wood. You can manage the roles' priority order on the character info screen:



As another example, you could also set someone to be a Lumberjack with top priority and a Flint Miner second, and set the Wood limit for your community to be 50. They'll chop wood while the community has less than 50, and then they'll mine for Flint. In other words, they'll do the top priority thing until they can't, then they'll do the next priority thing, and so on. (What they won't do is schedule their time equally between roles or anything like that - just something to be aware of.)

Besides being convenient, this means you can get by with smaller communities than before.


I've added a dialog called Set Storage Policy that allows you to select what a equipment you prefer to store in a particular building. I've noticed a lot of people try to organize things manually, hopefully this comes as a relief to them.



This replaces the option you had on roles such as Lumberjack, Miner, etc where you could select "Store Supplies Here" to store the output of that role in a particular building. Now they will store it according to what you set in this dialog. But I've also added an Organizer role which will automatically look for stuff that's in the wrong building and take it to the right one. So you can just dump stuff in any building and someone will sort it out. (This is a good use for the multiple roles thing mentioned earlier).

I've also added an Auto Deposit function on the Equipment Policy dialog. It complements the Auto Collect setting I added previously, so for example you can now set people it automatically pick up gold and automatically deposit it in the "Gold" chest next time they are near it.




When I started the beta for this game I introduced save tokens, but it never really worked out the way I wanted it to. It's supposed to make the game feel more like a story where mistakes, twists and tragedy are part of the plot, and you don't just reload a recent savegame if something tragic happens or you select a dialog choice with unexpected consequences. Instead it mostly just meant that the crucifix save tokens are another resource you have to farm by killing a few zombies from time to time. I didn't feel that it really stopped me from save scumming, most of the time.

In this patch I've changed it so, if you are using save tokens, the game saves automatically to a special "current" save slot (without using up a save token) whenever you open the menu. So whenever you exit the game, it will be saved - but it's always saved, you can't choose not to. Save tokens still exist and allow you to make occasional checkpoints you can go back to, but they are much more rare than they used to be. (I think this system is like the one in Kingdom Come: Deliverance which was a bit controversial. But as before, you can choose not to use it at all when you start your game, or from the F8 debug menu).

One issue with this is that the game is quite unforgiving - characters can die very easily due to small mistakes or accidents. To mitigate this, I've added a new skill called Constitution. A character's constitution skill gives them little extra chunks on their Blood Loss bar. If Constitution is higher than 0, when their blood loss hits the limit, instead of dying, they will fall unconscious and keep bleeding out until they fill those extra chunks. This gives you time to rescue them, more time if their constitution is higher. Constitution also controls their susceptibility to damage (previously Fitness did that) and it slows down the speed with which infection takes hold.

There is one caveat - White Strain and Invisible Strain still have no cure. I am not sure if that's too unforgiving, or if it's good that there's still something that dangerous out there to gives the game more tension.

So you want to make sure your community members have high Constitution. How do you do that? By giving them good food. Better food will increase their Constitution skill more, while rotten or gross food will reduce it. It will also reduce a little by itself over time. So you now have more of a reason to ensure your community members are well fed, e.g. by raising chickens. There will also be a little trade-off between morale and constitution as some foods like cookies are great for morale, while others are better for constitution. (I think this isn't quite all there yet but that's the idea). I always felt food and farming wasn't relevant enough to the gameplay, so this should help with that.

Another thing I've done to make the game more forgiving is, if you fall unconscious from blood loss and you have no community to rescue you, the screen will fade to black and you will be "rescued" by a nearby settlement. You'll wake up in their base, and if they're looters they will have stolen something, and you'll have lost 1 star of the Constitution skill. You start with 2 stars by default, so it sort of functions like a "lives" system - if you run out then you're really dead.



Lastly, if "you", the main character and community leader, dies, the game doesn't end anymore! Your community can continue without you and there are dialog options to vote for a new leader, who will then become the new "you" ;) So that's a bit more like State of Decay or a Roguelike I suppose.

So those are the main changes, sorry about the wall of text there. To test it I did a full playthrough, which always takes me a really long time as I tend to find bugs or just something I don't like every five minutes. I do think there will probably be a lot of bugs in this because I was still finding them and fixing them up till the end, and every time I fix something there's a danger it will affect something else that I wouldn't immediately notice. But it's time to get it out there as people have been wondering where I've been ;) It's only in publicbeta for now of course, so be aware that it might be more "beta"-y than normal for a while. I do strongly recommend starting a new playthrough for it.

Here's the full changelist:

• Alliances
  
• Ability to assign multiple roles to the same person
  
• Added a dialog to choose which buildings people prefer to store different types of equipment. Added an Organizer role which will just go around putting stuff in the right place. (Removed the old way of setting which building to put harvested resources in)
  
• Added auto deposit if nearby base option to equipment policy
  
• Looter communities will send enforcers to harass other communities
  
• Communities low on food can give you quests to find more for them
  
• Surrender to AI enemies that you provoked a war with, by targeting one and pressing H
  
• Ability to restrain people who are feuding
  
• If you carry an unconscious human body to a community they ask you to drop it, but will consider you to have rescued it. But if you pick up a body in their own base they'll consider it stealing.
  
• Looters have piles of skulls and gibbets outside their bases so you'll have some forewarning that they're going to shake you down if you go there.
  
• Looters are less likely try to shake you down if they're outnumbered
  
• Non-looter communities are less likely to have asshole personality flags
  
• You can knock on unknown communities gates to try and get someone to notice you
  
• Changed the quest where you have to burn someone's living quarters so you only have to destroy one building instead of all of them, also increased the gold payments for all of those quests
  
• Added Constitution skill, which lets you fall unconscious instead of dying of blood loss, if it's greater than 0
  
• If you fall unconscious and have no community members to revive you, other communities will 'rescue' you - this reduces your constitution
  
• Constitution reduces over time but is increased by eating healthy foods, so there's more incentive to get good foods like meat and eggs
  
• Can use kiln to bake corn cookies which reduce fitness, and don't help constitution, but greatly improve morale (so there's a trade-off between health and morale)
  
• Show more info about nutrition and tastiness on food action menu
  
• Added German and French translations, and updated Chinese
  
• Split Spanish translation into separate European and Latin American sheets
  
• Added theoretical support for Ukrainian language, in case anyone is able to work on a translation, and Danish
  
• Fix for AI getting stuck between retreating to base and attacking if leader of a funeral squad is attacked and starts fleeing
  
• Fix for Lost Item quest giver continually saying it should be here, if you keep it for yourself
  
• Fix for action menu going off the bottom of the screen
  
• Fix for chickens triggering pit traps when you are carrying them
  
• Fix for miners of poor deposits not eating anything once they start mining
  
• Fix for NPCs walking a long distance from their base to skin a dead dear
  
• Fix for ex not being visible in Dark Past quest
  
• Fix for NPCs getting stuck on traps unable to pathfind over them even if they are aware of them and wouldn't be killed
  
• Fix for chickens getting stuck continually drinking from bowls until they are empty
  
• Fix for speech animation repeating
  
• Fix for raiders sitting in cars or buildings for ages trying to get warm
  
• Made it possible to clear dead crops
  
• Made it cheaper to pay for bandaging
  
• Added memory for feeding human meat to chickens, so people disapprove of the person who did it, not the chickens themselves
  
• Added dialog to give or sell people water if they are thirsty
  
• Don't automatically recruit looters who surrender, and enable the options to take their stuff and/or make them run away
  
• Adjusted skill progression for building things
  
• When saying something's too heavy to carry, say the name of the thing
  
• You can now only place mines on rich mineral deposits. (Look out for rocks and boulders with the desired mineral type)
  
• Make sure chefs in AI settlements have axes, so they don't go wandering into towns to find wood
  
• Reduce immoral characters preference for human meat
  
• Allow characters to move while narrating about stuff like a deer they just found
  
• Can right click on equipment in inventory as shortcut to transfer whole stack without showing the dialog box
  
• Make cooking pot and watering can at forge
  
• Fix for not being able to set names of crafting props such as kilns etc
  
• Show some text when placing a gate to tell you which is Inside and which is Outside
  
• If an equipment prototype is deleted from a mod, allow savegames to load, just delete any instances of that equipment
  
• Fix for crash while carrying something in multiplayer
  
• Fix for crash when deleting a feeding trough
  
• Fix for crash when savegame is missing thumbnail

v155 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".

Wow, it's already the second anniversary of this game's launch! (I better hurry up and finish it) I thought I'd celebrate by pushing v154 out of publicbeta and into the main branch. This means everyone will now be on the same version for now. The biggest changes in this branch were probably the addition of chickens, and the AI changes that mean people run inside their bases when under attack. But there are also a ton of bug fixes and tweaks.





It's going to take me a while to get the next patch released. The main thing I'm currently working on is interactions with other communities, including alliances! The idea is the largest looter communities will harass you a bit more than they currently do, but you'll be able to ally with other communities in order to fight back and overthrow the looters (and help people out generally). This will hopefully help give you more goals and feeling of progression as you build your network of alliances.

There will also be some other long-requested features such as being able to surrender to the AI if you started a war with them, and being able to knock on their doors to attract attention, and of course more bug fixes. Anyway, I think it'll be easier for me to work on all these things together and release them in one go, rather than a patch per week, so that's why it's going to be a while before the next patch. But when it does come, it'll be a big one :)

Thanks everyone for buying the game and sticking with it for two years, sending feedback, making mods and adding translations!

Hello, it's patch time - this is one of those "fix random things" patches for publicbeta. I found there was an out of sync error in v150 so I still can't move it to the main branch, fingers crossed for next time. I also worked some more on the AI changes from last patch.

I've tried to make it so building stuff is a little bit faster, particularly fences. People have been asking me for a long time to make your characters get multiple resources at a time when putting up fences (e.g. get as much wood as you can before making the journey back, instead of just getting one piece of wood, returning to the fence and building one fence piece, then going back to get another piece of wood), so I've done that. Also I've just reduced the time it takes in the building animation for a lot of buildings.

There are some things in this game that I think are a bit too unforgiving, you might see me tweak those over time. One is how invisible strain converts everyone in your community before turning, I've changed it to only convert half of them, which is still pretty brutal ;)

Here's the full change list:

• When building fences, characters will be able to collect the resources they need for multiple fence pieces (as long as they fit in their inventory) instead of just doing it one by one
  
• Reduced time to build most buildings, and slightly lowered skill requirements to build Nitrary and pistol/shotgun ammo
  
• Make vehicles capturable, damageable, and repairable, with steel ingots
  
• Fix for crafters taking flint from cooks who need it to light fires
  
• Fix up savegames that used mods where crop types were deleted
  
• Changed invisible strain to activate when over half your community are converted, instead of all of them
  
• Added some extra bits to the Lost Item quest
  
• Fixes for AI often staying in your base when you order them to attack someone
  
• Try to stop NPCs from being attracted too easily outside their bases by using dead comrades as bait
  
• Added debug option in custom map editor to control infection type in town markers
  
• Fix for not being able to see healthbars of damaged fences in command mode
  
• Fix for animal feeders harvesting crops when policy is set to not feed to animals
  
• Picking up drinking bowl always returns it to your inventory
  
• Fix for angle slider not working in path editor
  
• Fix for guards in watchtowers sometimes continually shooting the wall in front of them
  
• Out of sync fix

EDIT: a quick follow-up patch, v153:

• Fix for NPCs going to the edge of the map sometimes when alerted
  
• Fix for stealth damage multiplier being applied when AI enemies damage the player
  
• Fix for guards not reacting to arrows shot at them from stealth but missing and hitting their watchtower
  
• Added Crafting Station Type field to recipes
  
• Crash fix in edit story settings menu

v153 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".

There's a lot of stuff in this patch but the biggest change is that I've been working on the AI to make characters run inside their bases when under attack, if the base is nearby. This applies to both the player's community and the AI settlements. (In the player's case, it obviously doesn't apply if you set the gates to Always Closed or Always Open). I also fixed some bugs that made the NPCs in the AI settlements run outside their bases to fight the enemy.



Along with some farming fixes, the aim is to try and make AI settlements less vulnerable to zombie attacks or dying of cold or hunger if you play for a long time. I'm not 100% sure if I've fixed it yet, but hopefully it helps. From my playthroughs, they seem to be managing so far, but let me know if you have a playthrough from v150 where you see a lot of AI communities dying.

Besides that there's a lot of fixes for various different glitches, particularly involving chickens and AI:

• Added AI for characters in combat near their bases to run inside the gates, also fixed a bug that made NPCs run out of their settlements
  
• Ensure AI Farmers have farming skill level 3
  
• Fix for characters inside a base continually shouting 'we're under attack' because enemies are outside the gates
  
• Stop NPCs with recurring crafting or cooking role from saying 'finished' each time, as it gets annoying
  
• Korean, Hungarian and Brazilian Portuguese translations updated
  
• Some fixes for chickens talking etc
  
• Added an option to slaughter chickens
  
• Made picking up and dropping living chickens less glitchy-looking
  
• Made chickens cheaper, and improve NPC detection of you stealing them
  
• Added policy option for whether food can be fed to animals
  
• Delete roaming hordes if they get stuck for a long time
  
• Fix for some roaming hordes spawning at any road junction instead of just map entrances
  
• You can only pay respects at graves of characters whose name you knew
  
• Made it possible to walk over grave so you can't use them as walls
  
• When saving manually from the menus, don't allow overwriting of quicksave, autosave or token save slots
  
• Fix for invisible strain NPCs attacking activated zombies
  
• Allowing talking to characters who are walking somewhere to ask someone for food etc
  
• When someone appears in the PiP who is not of your community, pressing Tab will control the person they are talking to if possible, or take you to them in fly mode if not
  
• Re-equip previous equipment if you automatically changed equipment to skin a deer, chop down a tree, etc
  
• Prefer to go round waist high walls instead of over them, if the path isn't too long
  
• Stop playing panting sound when game is paused
  
• Some grammar fixes
  
• Added colored biohazard symbols to antigen icons to try to make them more easily distinguishable
  
• Fix for crash when loading some pre-v146 savegames

I wanted to move v149 to the main branch but it turns out it had a crash when upgrading some pre-v146 savegames, so it'll have to wait. Chickens will have to stay out in publicbeta for a while longer :-P

v150 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".

Another small patch, mostly bug-fixing:

• Italian translation updated
  
• Fix for leg armor on green strain zombies taking almost no damage
  
• Fix for ambient zombies not spawning sometimes when you start, particularly when you have few settlements
  
• Fix up old savegames so NPCs don't blame you for molotovs they threw at their own fences, before that was fixed in v148
  
• Fix for chickens being assigned roles in AI settlements
  
• If chickens in AI settlements die, the NPCs will skin them rather than burying them
  
• Fix for enemies not surrendering if they have chickens
  
• Fix for not being able to hit people with snowballs
  
• Crash fix

v149 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 small bug-fixing patch to tidy up some issues with the chickens, and fix a few of the causes of NPCs attacking you seemingly for no reason. Here's the changelist:

• Fix for people not taking eggs from chicken coop
  
• Fix for pumpkins still being plantable
  
• Fix for case where farmers sometimes got into a loop trying to deposit harvest
  
• Fix for NPC getting stuck digging grave
  
• Stop NPCs from blaming you for the death of someone nearby who died of hunger/thirst/cold/sleep deprivation
  
• Stop molotovs and pipe bombs thrown by AI from damaging friendly buildings even if splash damage is on
  
• Fix for chickens in AI settlements dying of thirst

v148 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".

Hey everyone, I've added chickens to the game, in the publicbeta branch :) If you start a new map, some of the settlements will have chickens which you can buy, or possibly steal. They're kind of cute, the hens will lay eggs for you which you can boil, or they'll breed if you happen to have a rooster. You can build a chicken coop and a feeding trough and a water bowl, and assign someone to feed them.
The roosters will crow in the mornings.



I realized last weekend that there was a bug introduced in v143 which is causing NPCs to attack you more often than they should do. Basically if anyone gets hurt, they'll start attacking you. This patch fixes that bug. But because I wanted to get the patch out and fix the bug, I haven't finished everything I wanted to do with the chickens yet - I just got them to a playable state. So they're in the game, but they don't serve much purpose yet. That will come.

Besides chickens there's a pretty major change to farming: corn, pumpkins, cucumber and chili peppers aren't plantable but have separate seeds which aren't edible, like the other crops. This just makes it simpler, I hope, because you don't have to tell people not to eat your corn so you can plant it. I also think it will make it simpler for the AI. I'm trying to fix some bugs where the AI communities often starve to death after a couple of winters, this patch has another possible fix for that as well. But I'm not sure it's fixed yet as it's a difficult thing to test. I'll be working some more on that problem in the coming weeks as well.

Loading old savegames will populate your inventory with some of the new seed types. This might be a good time to start a new savegame though, if you're in the publicbeta branch.

Here's the full change list:

• Chickens
  
• Separate seeds for maize, pumpkin, cucumber and chilli pepper
  
• Fix for NPCs often blaming you for injuries where the culprit was actually known to them already (bug introduced in v143)
  
• Fix for NPCs sometimes getting stuck on insides of your gates if you haven't given them permission to enter
  
• Fix for traders not spawning in re-occupied bases
  
• Possible fix for AI communities not having enough food to last the winter
  
• Only add possessive suffix in English and German, and some other spelling and grammar fixes
  
• Marked fetch and loyalty quest items as not destroyable
  
• Characters can always sleep at night if they are in a building, even if they aren't tired

v146 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, I've put a new patch into the publicbeta branch. The Turkish and Italian translations have been updated and improved, many thanks to those translators!

There's a major fix for the framerate when you fast-forward, and especially when you fast forward at x4 speed. I really should have realized this before now but it looks like it has never worked correctly since the beginning (of Survivalist: Invisible Strain). It has always caused a framerate spike, and in multiplayer it has always caused players to keep pausing and waiting for each other. With the fix it might feel a bit slower than what you're used to, but it's actually the correct speed - and the framerate is much smoother.

The rest of this patch is just various miscellaneous fixes:

• Stop AI from throwing molotovs/pipe bombs if friendlies are in the way and unable to dodge (i.e. because they are grappling a zombie)
  
• Fix for framerate being terrible and multiplayer being almost completely broken when you fast-forward
  
• Fix for Paper Trail quest immediately failing
  
• Fix for rogue FEMA raiders never having helmets
  
• Fix for not being able to target enemies who activate invisible strain
  
• Fix for NPC communities not rebuilding for a long time (if someone died)
  
• Fix for Lost Item quests breaking if items are combined, and made friendship quests fail if the quest giver leaves your community
  
• Fix for tracker squad in Loyalty quest sometimes feuding with quest giver
  
• Some small AI fixes and translation fixes
  
• Italian and Turkish translation updates
  
• Crash fix

v144 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, patch time again! This patch focuses on a few different things. Firstly I've always thought molotovs and the throwing code needed some love - it used to be impossible to throw them over walls, for example. Now you can, and you can see a graphic showing the arc of your throw when you do so:



I've also always thought it looked silly that you can throw a molotov or pipe bomb at someone directly in front of you, and any enemies nearby would die while you and any friendlies would be completely unaffected. This game has never had friendly fire for bullets because when I first got shooting working on the original Survivalist I immediately realised it was too chaotic to have to worry about not shooting your allies. And I think it looks okay when you shoot bullets through your friends, but for area of effect weapons it just looks a bit crap.

So I've added friendly fire for splash damage - you can however turn it off in the difficulty settings, and it's off by default on the easiest setting. Also, your community members will generally jump out of the way if you throw a molotov or pipe bomb at them. But they might not be able to if they're grappling with a zombie, or something. The hud will show the area of effect for the damage, and will go red if there are friendlies in it, or yellow for friendly buildings.



The other new feature is when you click Set Policy on an item of equipment, you can assign people to Auto Collect that type of equipment from bodies, so for example you can make them automatically collect gold from nearby corpses.



And on the crafting screen I've made it possible to assign someone to rip up clothes to make rags on a recurring basis (i.e. they'll go looking for clothes from corpses). This should make the process of making bandages or molotovs less labor intensive.

Lastly I've increased the amount you can carry without a backpack! That amount dates back from the original Survivalist, but in that game you never had to make campfires. As many people have pointed out, it's weird that you need a backpack to make a campfire, so this fixes that. (I also decreased the weight of a unit of wood slightly).

All of the above may need some refinement so let me know how it goes. It'll be in publicbeta for now. Here's the full list:

• When throwing something you see a parabolic path displaying where it will go, and if not targeting someone you can aim the camera up to throw over walls. If targeting someone a higher angle will be used if the lower angle is blocked.
  
• Molotovs and pipe bombs can deal damage to friendly characters and structures (if set by a difficulty setting). Characters will try to dodge out the way.
  
• Increased the amount you can carry without a backpack and reduced the weight of wood a bit, so you can more easily make a fire without a backpack. Removed wood from the recipe for rabbit traps and tripwires.
  
• You can now assign someone to rip up clothes without manually doing each one, same as other types of crafting
  
• Added Auto Collect from bodies option to equipment policy dialog
  
• Reduced the frequency of raider bands and hordes a little
  
• If you destroy equipment that is stacked, you get a dialog asking how many you want to destroy
  
• Fix for satphones being spawned in long-dead bodies whose graves have disappeared
  
• Fix for character highlights not working in online co-op
  
• Fix for deer taking too long to respawn
  
• Fix for savegame screenshot sometimes being incorrect
  
• Turkish translation (still work in progress)
  
• Sledgehammer

Meanwhile I'm moving the previous patch, v142, to the main branch. This contains the friendship quests.

v143 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, I've released a new patch in publicbeta. This is one of those "fixing bugs in the previous patch" patches, along with other miscellanea:

• Stop graves with satphones in them from being deleted
  
• Fix for hugs not working through locked gates when trying to bribe a guard with them
  
• Don't say such and such are a great couple if one is dead. Say they *were* a great couple.
  
• You have to hold the button when kicking someone from your community
  
• Limit approval/disapproval gained from cannibalism
  
• Fix for breakup speech triggering with the wrong people
  
• Fix for farmers depositing gifted stew in buildings
  
• Error message if you try to cook manually without emptying your pot first
  
• Some tweaks and fixes to the friendship quests
  
• Default to High graphics quality setting
  
• Another action menu optimization
  
• Gender option on equipment, for languages with gendered nouns
  
• Korean and Brazilian Portuguese translation updates
  
• Crash fix

v142 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".