This is a small follow-up patch to v187 which introduced drivable vehicles in the publicbeta branch. I discovered a crash which could happen if you knocked over a fence and then left it for a while, then restarted the game twice - that's fixed now. I've also removed the excessive explosion noise you heard when knocking over a mailbox or similar, and tweaked the amount of damage taken to your vehicle generally to be a bit less. If you bump lightly into a neutral community's building they won't take damage and start attacking you.

I also increased some menu font sizes as I'm trying to get a green tick for Steam Deck. And I've added a link to the game's discord channel on the title menu. Here's the full list:

• Tweaked damage taken when crashing vehicles into things, and removed demolition explosion sound when they destroy mailboxes etc
  
• Crashing into neutral communities property at slow speed in a vehicle won't damage them or make them attack you
  
• Nudging a gate with your vehicle will open it (if you would be allowed to open it by hand)
  
• Added Discord link to title menu
  
• Increased font sizes in some menus
  
• Fix for chickens saying 'Wow' when someone is executed
  
• Crash fix

v188 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".

Ever since I released the original Survivalist people have been asking if I could add drivable vehicles... I always figured it would be awesome but technically difficult and might unbalance the game in various ways, so it was better to focus on other things. Survivalist is primarily a game about people, and community building so I that's what I put most effort into. However recently I started to realize that, having ported the game to Unity and added physics for ragdolls and thrown objects, a lot of the technical issues with vehicles might be solved now.

So anyway I'm focusing on Story Mode mainly at the moment, but after doing that for about a month I wanted a break of sorts, and I decided to give drivable vehicles a try! It actually just took one fairly intense week, or so.



I haven't done extensive playthroughs with this, so I'm not sure of all the implications. You can't just get into any vehicle and drive it, of course. You have to find "Car Parts" scattered around the towns - garages are a good place to look, and other cars, and traders might stock them. (Note - you'll need to start a new Sandbox game for this loot to be spawned, so I recommend doing that!) You will probably find it takes a while before you can get together enough car parts to repair the vehicle you want. You also need a toolbox and high enough construction skill.

There seems to be a general consensus that petrol.. I mean gasoline would expire about a year into the zombie apocalypse as it breaks down into its component parts, though you can find examples of people saying they started a car or lawn mower after X years standing idle and it was still okay. I've added the ability to make fresh gasoline from maize using the Still, but I figured it would be a bit limiting if you had to get all that production up and running before driving any vehicle.

So, drawing on my deep knowledge of chemistry and mechanical engineering *cough* I decided maybe there would still be a small amount of usable gas in the tanks of these abandoned cars, and in jerry cans you might find in gas stations and houses, etc. (Currently everything runs on gasoline, but probably a few of them should use diesel, for which you can substitute vegetable oil, which could be a reason to bring back the sunflowers - I just didn't get round to that yet).

I was initially afraid that vehicles might be a super weapon, so as well as the above-mentioned need to find car parts to get them working I made them take a little damage from running over people (or zombies), and from bullets. People and zombies will also try to dodge out their way, so it's not all that easy to run over all your enemies. Zombies will be attracted to vehicles with running engines (but can't hurt you while you're inside them), while animals will flee. NPCs will shoot or chuck molotovs/pipe bombs at them. In practice I don't think they're a super weapon now, if anything I might have made them too fragile but let's see how it goes.



There are a few caveats:
- The AI won't use them
- The game takes place on a grid of 1x1 meter squares, and every prop or building (including vehicles) must be a rectangle on that grid. So if you park diagonally, it can make a rather ugly collision box around the vehicle.
- You can drive any 4 wheeled vehicle if you get it working, but you can't drive the tank
- You can't do fancy things that require nice animations that you often seen in games with vehicles like GTA, such as leaning out of the window and shooting, or sliding across the hood, or standing on the roof

Sometimes a vehicle will roll upside down or get stuck in a river or something. For those situations, if you get out and highlight the vehicle, there's a feature on the action menu called "Park" which will try to revert it to a more sensible location (and align it with the grid).

There's likely to be a lot of refinements needed, which I'll hopefully be able to add slowly over time. It could use some hud elements showing a speedometer, rev counter, etc. There should probably be a friendship quest where someone in your community wants you to help them fix up an old pickup truck or something. The engine should emit smoke when heavily damaged. The grass draw distance could be improved. Etc. But it's in, and it's fun!

One other new feature of note is an experiment where I made some of the zombies in towns start off lying on the floor, as if dead, only to rise up and start chasing you if you get very close to them, or make a noise. I thought it might add more variation to town encounters, give you more of a chance to use stealth and possibly give you a jump scare or two.

Here's the full list of stuff in this patch (v187):

• Driveable vehicles
  
• Incorporate code for the Revised Crop Safety mod code into the game for AI so they don't waste their seeds planting crops when it's likely to be too cold. For the player, this is still a manual decision to risk it or not.
  
• Increased some font sizes to try to help Steam Deck compatibility.
  
• Mapped Voice Chat Push to Talk to the Start button on Steam Deck and game pads by default - hold it to talk, or click it to open the title menu. (I am seriously running out of buttons)
  
• New tent types (to make camps more varied in story mode, but also usable in Sandbox)
  
• Various small bits of editor work for story mode
  
• As an experiment, allow NPCs from AI communities to level up their skills the same as player community members do. So you have more incentive to help them survive.
  
• Fix for characters who tried to flirt with you, but who you turned down, getting negative morale due to jealousy anytime you hug your partner, forever afterwards - that will now happen for one day only.
  
• Moral and Prudish characters won't try to flirt with you if you are taken.
  
• Fix for exploit where you can extract more gunpowder from shotgun shells than it takes to make them
  
• Removed some old code that stops farmers from tending crops more than 64 meters from where they started, you can use zones for that now
  
• Get fatigued a little less quickly when running
  
• Some Zombies in towns play dead, so you can creep past them if you don't make any sound or get too close
  
• Helicopter taking off animation

That's in publicbeta now, and I've moved the previous patch, v186, to the main branch! The main new thing in v186 is the art pass with the new style houses:



Anyway, back to working on Story Mode.

v187 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 a small patch with a bunch of bug fixes :)

• Fix for crafters not being able to use sugar if you set the policy to Don't Eat (instead of Don't Craft With) and related errors
  
• Fix for incorrect amount of liquids shown on craft amount dialog box when metric is enabled
  
• Fix for warning message sometimes wrongly being shown when you try to craft something, saying you can't because of the policy against certain ingredients
  
• Fix for a saltpeter crafter getting stuck in a loop depositing empty plastic bottles and getting them again, in order to fill with urine
  
• Fix for people eating stuff out of allies houses if they are in them (which is treated as theft by the allies)
  
• Fix for your community members often lugging one or two pumpkins around
  
• Fix for some town buildings, and wooden chests(!) being invulnerable
  
• Stop communities from burying their leader while you have a quest to take their body to someone
  
• Some editor work for story mode
  
• Disabled snoring sound
  
• Crash fixes

v186 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 small new patch in the publicbeta branch. This one is partly me reacting to feedback from a few people that the mercenaries are making things too difficult in the earlier game stages (the ones that looter bases can sic on you if you go to war with them) - I've reduced the frequency of their raids and made them less well armed. I've also made it possible to surrender to looters and raiders, so hopefully the surrender mechanic is more consistent and understandable to new players. And I've added the ability to pay supplies instead of gold when surrendering. Plus I've added a bit of extra dialog with the extortion squads to give new players a better sense of what will happen if they decide to go to war with them.



The rest of it is bug fixes and small quality of life improvements. I've moved the speech bubble upwards when someone is talking to you, so it's less likely to overlap stuff like combat going on in the middle of the screen. And I've made it so when you run towards a door in a building, with zombies chasing just behind you, you'll get into the door as soon as you are in range of it, without having to waste precious milliseconds turning to face the door. Here's the full list:

• Made it possible to surrender to raiders and mercenaries (note: will not affect raider groups spawned before the patch), and tried to reduce their difficulty a little when your base is at an early stage
  
• Added a hint that you can use Set Zone to stop your community members wandering off in search of food
  
• When entering a building, be a bit more forgiving about getting through the door fast if you are currently under attack
  
• Moved PiP speech bubble a bit further up so it's less likely to overlap other screen elements, e.g. during combat
  
• Fix for character assigned to capture a building and also auto-deposit wood from getting into a loop
  
• Fix for trade screen bug/exploit where pressing left and right mouse button at the same time will appear to duplicate an item and get you extra gold
  
• Fix for bug/exploit where you tell someone to scavenge a building, then switch character before they reach it, allowing the character you switched to to eat/drink stuff in the building
  
• Some fixes for infected weapons
  
• Out Of Sync fix
  
• Crash fixes

EDIT - released a follow-up patch with a crash fix, v185

v185 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".

In order to make the map for Story Mode I felt it was necessary to do a bit of a visual pass on the towns and vehicles, so that's what I've been up to recently. I've improved the house models and added more variation to them, I've added much more variation to the stores, restaurants and gas stations, and I've added strip malls! There is now color variation on most of the cars and town buildings, so it doesn't feel so much like you keep encountering the same white house and red pickup over and over again. I've also added utility poles, lamp posts, mail boxes and traffic signs to the road sides, so it looks more like a real cohesive place.

















Almost looks like a new game! I should mention that the size footprint of some of the houses has changed slightly with the new models, so if you had a fence adjoining them you might need to add an extra post. As a side note, I've tried to make them so they line up better so if you put a fence next to them, in most cases it should join on visually, except on the more elaborate fronts with balconies etc. I do recommend starting a new game with this patch so you'll generate a new map with all the new types of buildings and props in it.

Gameplay-wise all this doesn't change much of course, but I've also added the ability to use those chunks of meat you can cut out of zombies to infect arrows and sharp melee weapons (dependent on medical skill). Which adds a whole new tactic to assassination missions. And there's few more tweaks and bug fixes, here's the full list:

• Visual pass on town buildings and vehicles, replaced house models with more detailed ones, added strip malls, randomly varying colors and signs, new gas station pumps and roofs, motel signs and ice boxes, utility poles, lamp posts and road signs
  
• You can infect sharp melee weapons and arrows with zombie meat. Dependant on medical skill.
  
• If someone set to be a chef is hungry, they will try to cook food rather than walking to other communities looking for it
  
• Increased time between extortion squads, and made mercs have less armor and weapons when your presence is low
  
• Fix for buildings in towns not being capturable if they are near another building that you already captured
  
• Fix for getting stuck in fisticuffs state if you get into a war with the community of the person you were fighting
  
• Fix for salad crafters who are set to auto deposit sealed containers getting stuck in a loop taking them in and out of chests
  
• Fix for slowdown in mod where you can destroy graves with pipe bombs
  
• Fix for memory leak that caused slowdowns, particularly after generating a new map
  
• Updated French, Hungarian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Ukrainian, Brazilian Portuguese and Lithuanian translations

That's all in v183, which is in the publicbeta branch right now. The previous patch that was in publicbeta, v182, has now been moved to the main branch for everyone.

Lastly - I mentioned earlier I was planning to raise the price soon. I'm intending do that next week, probably Friday the 26th of May (unless something happens to delay it), so fair warning if you were thinking about buying and want to do so at the current price - you've got a week! The new price will be $9.99 USD (that's ¥42, or €9,75, £8.50, according to Steam's pricing tool). There will of course continue to be sales pretty regularly.

The reasons for this are: (1) people keep saying it's too cheap, (2) inflation, and (3) Sandbox mode has evolved enormously since launch and now feels like a full game in itself. But I will continue to make new additions and tweaks to Sandbox mode, as I work on Story mode, though. I'm also going to adjust the price of the original Survivalist game in some currencies (but not USD), as it hasn't changed since launch and some of the recommended prices have gone wildly askew since then.

v183 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, here's another patch that's mainly bug fixing but with a nice new feature: on the equipment policy settings box, you can tell people the number of something you want them to carry. For example, carry 40 iron arrows, or 2 bandages. You can tell everyone you want them to carry 1 axe, 1 hunting knife, and a plastic bottle (which helps when new people join your community in the later game and you tend to find you are always handing out the same stuff to people).



They'll get the items from your community buildings, and other members if they have an excess. If you set auto-deposit on, they'll deposit any more of those items that they get over that amount. If you set auto-collect from corpses on then they'll continue to do that even if it makes them exceed the limit, since they might auto-deposit them or give them to someone else later.

Oh, and on that same dialog, there's also a new "Can Add to Campfire" option for charcoal and wood, so you can tell people not to waste charcoal on campfires. Here's the rest of the change list:

• Added field to equipment policy where you can specify how much of something you want people to try to carry, e.g. for ammo or bandages
  
• Added 'Can Add to Campfire' field to equipment policy for wood and charcoal
  
• You don't have to hold down the Brain Scan key if using a keyboard connected to a Steam Deck
  
• Made it possible to vault over a fence while carrying a chicken or human body
  
• Fix for overlapping text on inventory when scavenging a building with a long name
  
• Show icons for raiders who have surrendered as gray on the map
  
• Added a Can Repair Armor flag to workbenches in the prop editor so modders can make workbench types that don't repair armor
  
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese, French, Italian, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Lithuanian, Simplified Chinese and Ukrainian
  
• Fix for exploit where you can use a skill book to start crafting something, then give it to someone else and keep crafting even if you lack the skill
  
• Some fixes for overlapping text in different languages
  
• Fix for bug where switching between characters on the community screen doesn't change the one shown on the tab above
  
• Fix for gates not closing when someone is sitting near them
  
• Fix for scenario where a crafter with multiple roles would sit in front of a kiln for a while before moving to the next task
  
• Crash fixes
  
• Out of sync fixes

EDIT - Small follow-up patch, v182:

• Made selection highlights around sorting icons red to be more visible
  
• Fix for characters picking up items with their personal carry amount set to zero but the community carry amount set to non-zero
  
• Crash fixes

v182 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 mainly just a follow-up patch to fix some bugs reported in v178, but there's a new feature too - you can now specify, for a particular bottle or sealed container, what kind of liquid or substance you want people to put in it. So you can set one bucket to be your saltpeter bucket, one to be your gunpowder bucket, and so on. And you can set bottles to be for water only, so people don't go filling them up with pee from the outhouse.



The rest of the patch is fixes and tweaks from the previous patch - here's the full changelist:

• Option to designate what liquid you want a particular container to be storing
  
• Auto-collect will pick up arrows
  
• Increased tolerance for building on slopey ground
  
• Made chicken wire more common
  
• Fix for mouse not working to switch targets or target body parts on Steam Deck
  
• Fix for crash if a memory type is removed from a mod
  
• Fix for crash on loading some savegames
  
• Fix for occasional crash when confirming a trade in multiplayer

EDIT - Released a small follow up patch, v180 with some fixes for the above:

• Setting Roles and Equipment Policy will always be available immediately if you have hints turned off. Otherwise they appear once you have multiple community members.
  
• Fix for characters filling bottles designated for water with snow
  
• Fix for crash when auto collecting items

v179 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 have a done a patch :) This one is such a mishmash but I guess the biggest new feature is there can be multiple ammo types for the same weapon. For bows you have flint arrows (which are easiest to make), iron arrows (which do more damage), and steel arrows (which do more damage and are better at piercing armor). For assault rifles and sniper rifles I've also added armor piercing ammo. You need both lead and steel to make them, so there's more incentive now to get one of each of the different types of mines.



There's a lot of quality of life stuff, like you can demolish picnic tables and barricades, you can press Tab to switch to the person you're talking to, you can see who is currently assigned to a crafting prop, you can assign one person to make charcoal in multiple kilns, you can stop the minimap from rotating. I gave the character boxes more space on the community screen so it's easier to see people's roles now:



Besides that there's a bunch of bug fixes, and just doing stuff that felt unfinished, like making snowballs and snowmen melt, allowing multiple characters to occupy fire lookout towers, fixing glitches in the way terrain is modified and resetting it if you demolish a trap.

Several translations have been updated. There has been a longstanding effort to translate the game into Russian, which is now finished, so I've added it. I'm going to be sending any income I get from Russian Federation to the National Bank of Ukraine though.

Here's the full list of updates in v178:

• Make it possible to demolish props like picnic tables or barricades using the toolbox
  
• If you take over a defeated community's gate, or build a new one connected to their fences, the fences will become yours too
  
• Some fixes to how buildings modify the terrain underneath them
  
• Reset terrain height when you demolish a pit trap, or a building that construction hasn't started on
  
• Looters can blow up uncovered traps, otherwise it's an exploit as you could surround your base with them and stop anyone from getting in
  
• Allow up to 4 characters to occupy the fire lookout tower and weather radar, facing in 4 directions
  
• Option to stop minimap from rotating
  
• Stop your character from walking off while you're scrolling the action menu
  
• Made the character icons on the community screen bigger with their roles always shown on a bottom row
  
• Put cooking and crafting options for campfires, workbenches, etc on a submenu
  
• On the action menu for a crafting prop, show all the workers currently assigned to it and allow you to select them
  
• Allow you to assign someone to craft the same recipe at different crafting stations - e.g. make charcoal using 2 different kilns
  
• Allow you to click Craft on crafting stations that someone is already using
  
• Gunpowder is now made at a workbench, not a campfire
  
• Disabled sunflowers and corrugated iron as they weren't serving much purpose
  
• If you are facing someone in your own community, pressing Tab (or right stick click) switches control to them. Moved Brain Scan/Notes to RT on gamepads.
  
• Support multiple ammo types for guns and bows, including armor piercing varieties
  
• Blunt melee weapons do some damage to armor, some to body. Sharp ones mostly get absorbed by armor but do some damage to body
  
• Different melee weapons have a different fatigue penalty when attacking, and bows cost some fatigue to aim
  
• Recipes only become visible once their ingredients have been discovered, and/or you have someone with high enough skill and the required crafting station. You get notifications when this happens.
  
• Made eating, drinking and opening gate sounds fall off more quickly with distance, so they're less obtrusive in large communities
  
• Added sounds for planting, watering and harvesting crops
  
• White markings on edges of roads
  
• If you leave your damp clothes in a building they will dry over time
  
• Snowmen, snowballs and snow in containers all melt
  
• Added Russian, updated French, Italian, Latin American Spanish, Lithuanian, Turkish and Ukrainian
  
• If you die and replace community leader with someone who is already married, sleeping with or friends with someone, you can trigger the satphone quest with them
  
• NPCs won't abandon their settlement while their leader is still conscious, as doing so breaks Rebellion/Turf War/Intimidation quests that require you to kill the leader
  
• Added a Spared Life memory type for when someone surrenders and you let them go without further consequences
  
• Added a Started Fight memory so people will remember a feud even if they get restrained from hurting anyone
  
• Added a Died memory type for when someone dies of zombie bites or natural causes like thirst etc
  
• If you give someone a gift and they like/don't like it, you learn that aspect of their personality
  
• Allow bunny feeding quest to be finished if either participant feeds the bunny
  
• Fix for clothes getting wetter than they should while walking across frozen rivers
  
• Fix for winter food stocks mission paying you too much for food
  
• Fix for NPCs thanking you for bringing unconscious strangers to their base
  
• Fix for controlled character often being slow to do things (like rip up clothes) when indoors
  
• Fix for camouflage icon taking ages to go green when you move away from an AI settlement
  
• Fix for your characters instantly joining an allied community if you declare war on them
  
• Fix for biggest looter community extortion squad sometimes getting stuck trying to force other communities to ally with it
  
• Fix for issue where people kept picking up and dropping bodies in older savegames with square bases, possible fix for bug where the bodies sometimes teleported to the edge of the map in multiplayer
  
• Fix for situation where someone exited a watchtower surrounded by zombie, also if someone surrenders to you when you are in a watchtower you can answer them without leaving it
  
• Fixes for opinion graph showing incorrectly on some speeches
  
• Prevent player from starting war by accidentally punching a chicken to death during fisticuffs
  
• Crash fixes

That will be in the publicbeta branch, meanwhile I've moved v177 to the main branch so everyone will have diagonal fences and polygonal AI settlements, the Log page and Steam Deck support, the Basket and Checkout on the trading screen, the Character Notes/Brain Scan screen and relationships matter when recruiting, etc.

About six months ago I made myself a list of all the stuff I felt Sandbox mode really needed if it wasn't to feel "unfinished". It wasn't the most glamorous new features, more like a lot of stuff I'd just been putting off like the Log screen, a lot of Quality of Life stuff and so on. Well, with this update I'd say I've now - pretty much - got through that list!

What that means is it's time for a new phase of Survivalist: Invisible Strain development. I need to start focusing more on Story Mode. I always said there'd be a Story Mode and the game won't get out of Early Access without it. It will serve as an introduction to the game (which is still pretty challenging for newcomers) as well as being the best showcase for the role-playing elements and letting me build some more clearly defined environments and characters. Sandbox Mode kind of grew to accommodate its own loose story and I think some of the missions I added (such as relationship quests) will also be side quests in Story Mode. Over the course of making it, I became a lot more interested in procedural story generation. But the intention was always to use Sandbox Mode to get the game mechanics straight and then use that accumulated knowledge to make Story Mode.

Now I say I "pretty much" got through the list, because I've been doing some playthroughs and there are still things that bug me, like the way your crafters can still sometimes end up full of unwanted containers and you have to sort their inventory out for them. The morale system needs some more tweaking, and I feel that your community members ought to do more emergent stuff, like start relationships and friendships with each other as well as "you", the player. I'll be working on those as I go.

There will probably always be more stuff like that cropping up. I haven't got Story Mode all planned out and I think as I work on it, I'm likely to still be adding more features that will be part of Sandbox Mode too. So you'll keep getting updates but they might be a bit further apart.

I also think once this v178 update has bedded down I'm going to be raising the price to $9.99 USD (that's ¥42, or €9,75, £8.50, according to Steam's pricing tool). People keep telling me it's too cheap, and we're living in inflationary times. And as I alluded earlier, Sandbox Mode has come a long way since launch. I'll give some more warning before I do though, so there'll be plenty of chance to buy it before that happens, if you haven't already. And of course there will always be Steam Sales and Weeklong Deals.

v178 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".

It's patch day! Say goodbye to those perfectly square AI settlements, because (if you start a new game in v176) the AI communities in the world will all be different randomized polygonal shapes. The game now supports diagonal fences as well - whereas previously if you put two fences on diagonally adjacent tiles they would technically block pathfinding, but would just be rendered as single fence posts and look a bit silly - now a fence will be drawn between them. I've also added some sloping fence pieces so they look a bit more natural on hillsides. And you can build fences (but not other buildings) over rivers, which is really useful.



Aside from the fence stuff I've also done some work on the combat AI, trying to make your followers stick with you better if you run away from a fight or into a building. I've made NPCs a bit less likely to all run away in situations where they outnumber you. And when they do abandon their bases, they'll be less likely to keep returning after a minute or so - instead, they can become vagrants who wander the map looking for a new base. Also I did a playthrough to test all these changes and basically ended up fixing a lot of other things along the way (as always happens).

Finally, there's now a Ukrainian translation by youtuber Survager! And Simplified Chinese has been updated with all the latest dialog.

Here's the full change list:

• Diagonal and sloping fences
  
• Give AI settlements varied shapes instead of all being square
  
• Player can build fences over rivers
  
• If everyone in an AI settlement under attack runs away from their base, they will form a new nomadic community and wander around, trying to occupy a new base if there is one, instead of continually running back home and getting killed
  
• If you run away from a fight, people following you should run to catch up with you instead of backing slowly away
  
• Made NPCs less likely to run away from a fight if they outnumber you
  
• Don't gossip with nearby characters if crouching
  
• Added a hint that you can surrender to people you started a war with
  
• Show morale on brain scan screen (if you have the brain scanner), some tweaks to how it is calculated
  
• Reduced likelihood of earlier game raiders having guns, which I accidentally increased in v171
  
• Made toolboxes more common in vehicles and axes more common in stores
  
• If a builder doesn't have the right tool (e.g. shovel or toolbox) for some buildings in the queue, work first on buildings they do have the tool for
  
• Ukrainian translation added, and Simplified Chinese updated
  
• Fix for rifle animation not holding the gun in their left hand properly
  
• Fix for Dark Past quest not progressing sometimes when the ex dies
  
• Fix for guard duty taking priority over organizer for NPC that you gave winter food stocks to, so they don't put the food away
  
• Fix for repairers trying to repair damaged crops
  
• Fix for characters sitting round an unlit fire with half-cooked food on it, waiting for it to be finished, with no one attempting to light it
  
• Fix for NPCs sometimes not blaming anyone if a friend was recently murdered
  
• Fix for cursor jumping around when adding/removing things to basket on trade screen when using a gamepad
  
• Fix for mercenaries showing on the map sidebar if they've been deactivated and killed, but bodies not yet deleted
  
• Fix for crafter giving up because they couldn't fit a cooking pot in their inventory, when they should have been able to dump some food to make space
  
• Fix for gunpowder crafter filling up their inventory with un-needed containers
  
• Several fixes for extorters speech sometimes not triggering correctly
  
• Some fixes for relationships being set up incorrectly
  
• Optimization for slowdown when you have lots of guns in your inventory
  
• Crash fixes

EDIT - I released a quick follow-up patch to fix a crash, v177:

• Show options on the action menu (when not aiming) for both assassinate and choke hold if you have a knife in your inventory, but not equipped
  
• You have to hold the button to assassinate or bludgeon an unconscious person
  
• Latin American Spanish, Italian, Lithuanian, Korean and Hungarian updated
  
• Fix for people sometimes not following you when they first join you
  
• Fix for chickens sometimes not keeping warm in a nearby chicken coop
  
• Fix for occasional crash when miners don't have enough space in their backpack

v177 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, happy 2023! Here's what I've been up to for the latest patch:

• Steam Deck - support for 1280x800 resolution without black bars (except in menus), better support for controllers navigating menus, and suchlike
  
• Added options to show metric weights and fahrenheit
  
• Added Power Nap button on character inventory page in multiplayer, which you can use once per day to fast forward a character's sleep. Because using the actual fast-forward button for that can be a bit awkward for co-op players.
  
  
  
  
• Added caffeine drinks (old cans of soda) that reduce your sleep deprivation
  
• Added sleeping snoring sound
  
• Increased insulation on puffy jackets and beanies, and reduced on camo jackets, to try and make it more of a trade-off and encourage more clothing variation
  
• Added policy to clothing dialog to not strip particular items of clothing (e.g. when trying to find warmer ones). You may need to set this now if you want to stop them changing their helmets for beanies when it's cold.
  
  
  
  
• Added separate option for vsync count in Graphics Settings, and made graphics quality settings save to registry rather than settings file so they can be different on different machines
  
• Implemented Log Page
  
  
  
  
• Changed the way morale is calculated so the effect on morale of a particular memory fades more quickly over time (trying to stop people from moping around forever just because something bad happened 3 weeks ago)
  
• Less figdetty idle holding rifle animation
  
• Tweaked some of the clothing models
  
• Italian and Latin American Spanish updated, fixes for some wine criticism translation bugs
  
• You can build on top of bushes and tree stumps, which automatically clears them. You can also build on top of fences to upgrade them to different types of fences.
  
  
  
  
• If someone falls unconscious from body temperature falling below 28°, they will need to get above 30° to recover (fix for bug where they get into a loop of recovering, walking away to get clothes, and immediately falling over)
  
• If you set raider percentage above 25%, this reduces the cooldown time between raiders of that type
  
• Added Load Favourite button in debug menu character editor
  
• Fix for NPCs telling you someone dead or unconscious is looking for a fisticuffs challenger
  
• Fix for bug introduced last patch where equipment amounts on character creation screen are all red zeros
  
• Fix for bug where allying with a community that was previously at war with another community, that was defeated, causes the defeated community to send mercenaries against you
  
• Fix for builder getting stuck in a loop going in and out of a building just outside their zone
  
• Fix for other communities sometimes buying seeds from your characters even if you have ticked Don't Share
  
• Fix for being able to view NPCs inventory by pressing F1 on the Notes/Brain Scan page
  
• Fix for extorters waiting at your gates sometimes not talking to you when you come out to them
  
• Crash fixes

EDIT - I've added a mini-patch (v175) to fix a few crashes, here's the change list for that:

• Some more menu navigation fixes
  
• Italian translation updated and typo fixes
  
• Crash fixes

v175 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".