A couple of people reported a crash in the last build, so this is a patch to fix that. But it includes a few things I was working on in the meantime! Raiders will sometimes now spawn with infected weapons (melee weapons, bow with infected arrows, or pipe bombs). Higher level raiders can have higher level infections on their weapons. And I've added a handbrake to the vehicles.



On keyboard controls I moved handbrake to Space and horn to Shift, by default. I also played around with the tyre friction on the vehicles a little bit in hopes of improving the handling. Hopefully made it better and not worse, I think they brake faster now regardless of if it's handbrake or footbrake.

I've changed the targeting with throwing weapons so it doesn't lock on until your crosshair is a little closer to the enemy, this should make it easier to target the ground around them. Also if you do lock on you can nudge the mouse left or right to unlock, if there is no other enemy to the left or right. (This is only for throwing weapons.)

Here's the full list:

• Some enemies spawn with infected melee weapons, arrows, and pipe bombs
  
• Added HandBrake on vehicles
  
• Increased tyre friction slightly
  
• Made it slightly easier to target the ground near enemies when throwing molotovs etc
  
• Slightly nerfed how much Constitution slows down the rate at which you bleed out
  
• Made catering bucket and jerry can very slightly lighter so they are slightly more efficent carriers than the plastic bottle
  
• Possible fix for AI settlements starving when you start in early spring, again
  
• Fix for Field of View setting not being remembered
  
• Crash fix

I'm currently trying to get a suitable release candidate to push everything from publicbeta into the main branch, but need to make sure there are no crashes to be able to do that. Let me know if you get any.

v204 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, there's a new patch out! This one's the result of me doing a playthrough of Story mode and sort of trying to fill in the gaps and finish up all the dialog and text. Also generally fixing bugs people reported to me. So there's a lot of smallish story stuff and bug fixes. Plus, I've added achievements! (But I haven't done the icons yet) I think story mode is basically done, I'm hoping to move it all to the main branch soon and not be adding a lot of new text from now on. Here's the change list:

• A quest to get to know Cooper McClure (Emma's husband) a bit more
  
• Added a dialog path for if Carter dies but you complete the Stranger quest anyway
  
• Added a path for Liam to trigger some of the late game stuff instead of Kelly if she isn't around
  
• Emma wants cookies mini-quest
  
• Kelly directs you to Utopia Park to find more supplies
  
• Invisible Strain percentage increases over time (except for the Sandbox Mode Easy difficulty level where it's always 0%)
  
• Story Mode starts a bit later in the Spring so your crops don't die of frost
  
• Reduced requirement to stock up on gasoline or vegetable oil at the end of Story Mode
  
• Added achievements (placeholder icons, not fully tested)
  
• Added hint for the first time a community member is unconscious and needs bandaging
  
• Added hints for crops dying of frost
  
• Added hints for drag-selecting and group assignment
  
• Added hint message for when you assign someone to a role while they are taking a break
  
• Added a minimum delay between friendly snowfights among community members
  
• Added a quest when you first get to FEMA to take Kelly with you if you haven't already
  
• Added a little extra dialog if you talk about hitting the road out of Moose Valley to someone who isn't in your community
  
• Added threatening dialog used by more aggressive characters instead of begging when trying to get an item from someone
  
• Added ability to make car parts using forge
  
• In the rivalry quests you can kill the target, but the quest giver won't always thank you for it
  
• Crafters can automatically pick up flint that's on the ground
  
• Cap the number of times you can get fake FEMA helicopter teams in Sandbox Mode
  
• Stop people from attacking people they are in love with if their opinion of them drops, instead they just get over them (via gossip dialog with a third person)
  
• NPCs don't declare war on people if they just kicked them out of their community
  
• Corpses are shown on the map in the fog of war if you have investigated them already
  
• Prevent drinking caffeine if you aren't sleepy enough, as it's annoying to have to check how sleepy you are
  
• Prevent Cameron Hines from declaring war on FEMA
  
• Prevent hitting the road with corpses or zombies in the vehicle
  
• Possible fix for refugees etc spawning behind the entrance gates to the map sometimes
  
• Some fixes for Charlie in Ritzville
  
• Updated Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Russian and Simplified Chinese translations
  
• Fix for characters with zones set getting stuck trying to make food for others using campfires that are out of their zones
  
• Fix for NPCs getting stuck while vaulting while offscreen
  
• Fix for bodies flying a long distance when dropped while offscreen
  
• Fix for getting stuck in stream in Story Mode
  
• Fix for getting stuck unable to use controls while trying to assassinate someone who is walking away at the same speed as you
  
• Fix for red strain hordes getting stuck forever in Ritzville if the gates are closed
  
• Fix for plantable crops models being perpendicular to the ground
  
• Fix for radio/world map not being recognized immediately if you capture a building with them in it
  
• Fix for a miner not depositing stone because they also had a lower priority crafting role that used it
  
• Fix for characters in snowfights shooting each other with ranged weapons after they get interrupted by combat with real enemies
  
• Fix for animation glitch when starting to chop wood or similar activities
  
• Fix for glitch where hair goes bright yellow when by a campfire
  
• Fix for people burying Martin Steele so you can't complete a quest
  
• Fix for Emma getting stuck not reacting to anything while in labor
  
• Fix for characters such as Kelly who aren't supposed to be able to join you doing it via a chain of their friends or relatives
  
• Fix for Kaleb being able to join you which means his dialog involving the dump truck doesn't make sense
  
• Fix for dialog option asking Kelly what she wants gold for not disappearing if she trusts you enough to tell you first time
  
• Fix for communities not starting off with enough food if you start Sandbox Mode in late winter or early spring
  
• Fix for people (or chickens) being able to get into buildings they are close to even if there is no allowable path
  
• Fix for being able to teleport through walls by exiting from a car door next to them
  
• Fix for being able to remotely open/close other communities gates from across the map in command mode (e.g. to let zombies in)
  
• Fix for quest failing if Morgan Harding can't pathfind to your community, or if she dies
  
• Fix for FEMA declaring war on Cameron Hines after Emma plants the bomb
  
• Fix for homeless community occupying Pilot's Union helicopter
  
• Fix for being able to demolish supposedly indestructible edge fences with tool boxes
  
• Fix for sometimes not being able to give Cameron the valid green pass if you are evacuating yourself
  
• Fix for Story Mode saves from different new games having the same id and overwriting each other (if you're using save tokens)
  
• Fix for captives getting annoyed at you for attacking their captors (or their base)
  
• Fix for exploit where you could view another community's Community tab by stashing a body in a building and viewing their inventory
  
• Fix for equipment transfer amount dialog allowing you to transfer more items than an NPC wants to sell (e.g. if they have 2 molotovs but only want to sell 1)
  
• Fix for bug in mods where builders need a pot to building something, and they would try to get other containers instead of getting a pot from a campfire

EDIT - released a quick follow-up patch (v203) to fix a bug where people were being awarded the achievement for making vodka when they crafted any liquid:

• Fix for some bridge road tiles in story mode being marked as having water on them
  
• Fix for Liam being annoyed at you for attacking FEMA on his advice
  
• Fix for vodka achievement being unlocked when you craft any liquid

v202 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".

New patch! This introduces the ability for characters in your community to flirt with each other or hang out and make food or have snowball fights with each other, leading to them becoming friends or lovers. Of course they might also get jealous of each other if two people fall in love with the same person.



Alongside this there's a new quest where two team members who have fallen out and had a fight can go on a bit of a journey and make up. (It might be quite rare to trigger it as it's quite a specific sequence of events, we'll see). I've also added more varied items for the fetch quests, so it's not always an "antique katana" or "gourmet cookbook" that someone lost.

In general I've been trying to get in any new features I wanted that might need a lot of dialog, so the translators have time to translate it, with an eye to releasing the game out of early access hopefully a bit later this year. I'm also hoping to move Story Mode out of publicbeta pretty soon, though it'll continue to have an "Unfinished" tooltip in the menu for a while after that.

Here's the full list:

• More varied items for lost item and fetch quests
  
• More dialog possibilities in fetch quests
  
• NPCs within your community can start relationships or become friends with each other
  
• In the Track down the Stranger quest in Story Mode, NPCs will accuse community members they don't like of being infected
  
• Added a new procedurally generated quest that can trigger after two of your community members have a fight
  
• Added Turf War, Rebellion and Intimidation quests to Story Mode
  
• You can't keep using the same lines to encourage depressed community members (cooldown of 3 weeks), you can threaten them or tell them to take some down time instead
  
• Guards who run out of ammo while shooting enemies can run to get some more
  
• Higher level raiders, and guards in settlements, have higher firearm/archery/hand2hand/fitness skills
  
• Infected melee weapons run out of infection after 10 hits
  
• If a character in your community would probably already know someone's name (e.g. because they came from the same original community) they don't say 'What's your name?'
  
• Possible improvement to followers getting stuck a long way behind their group leader when the camera isn't near them
  
• Some optimizations for slowdown when you aim a throwable weapon over a fence
  
• Don't show notifications in savegame thumbnails (as they take over the whole screen), but do show dialog options (so you can see what you were about to say)
  
• Seperated possessive and objective form of 'her' for translators
  
• In Chinese, when showing someone's full name, put the surname before first name with no space between them, unless they are translated from the default English names
  
• Some fixes for glitches in road generation in Sandbox mode
  
• Updated Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Simplified & Traditional Chinese, Latin American Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian translations
  
• Fix for you not getting credit for killing raiders in It Begins quest
  
• Fix for infected melee weapons infecting people even if their attack is absorbed by armor
  
• Fix for not being able to gift green passes in Sandbox mode
  
• Fix for Pilot's Union buildings being capturable
  
• Fix for grass not showing if you use the old style UI
  
• Fix for grass sometimes appearing in mid-air after you dig a pit trap
  
• Fix for NPCs not being able to sell you their favourite melee weapons even if they have more than one of them because the entire stack is hidden on the trade screen
  
• Fix for Kelly continually trying to attack the zombies trapped in the patrol base
  
• Fix for miners in a mine building stopping work if you have the info screen open
  
• Fix for farmers not depositing seeds
  
• Fix for freckles not being saved
  
• Crash fixes

v201 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, it's patch time! I got a few bug reports from the last patch about characters with the auto-deposit items policy or the organizer role being overly eager to deposit stuff in buildings when they actually need it for other roles. This should be fixed now.

I've started to work on morale and community interactions, which is what I want to focus on next. Not much to say about it so far though, as I decided this patch needed to come out now to fix the above issue :-P There's also some other serious bug-fixes, e.g. the satphone quest in Sandbox mode wasn't working which would have stopped you from completing the game. So this is mostly a quick bug fixing patch. Here's the full change list:

• When your characters gossip with each other they can use some of the What's up? lines, and will have memories of people praising or bad-mouthing each other
  
• Memories decay exponentially instead of linearly
  
• Reduced the morale impact of some more minor negative actions like hurting or threatening someone (but not changing how much we disapprove of the person who did it)
  
• Added ability to translate surnames differently for female and male characters, for languages that do that
  
• Shortened time to make sunflower oil
  
• Auto-collect item from bodies respects community crafting limit
  
• Fixed some conflicts between organizer role, auto deposit items policy, and other roles
  
• Fix for satphone quest in Sandbox mode not activating
  
• Fix for characters asking each other for more equipment (e.g. ammo) than their policy allows them to give
  
• Fix for traders losing useful items such as armor that you sold them and they wore, when they restock
  
• Italian translation updated
  
• Crash fixes

v200 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 is mostly a quality of life and bug fixing patch. The main change is that your community members who you've assigned roles to can deposit more items in buildings to free up space.

Previously anything accumulated as part of the role would be marked with a little icon of a guy with a backpack, and those marked items could be deposited to free up space. That still happens, and if they need to free up space they will prefer to drop those marked items over anything else, but now if they don't have any marked items they will be able to drop other things as well. They'll try to be smart about it, avoiding dropping their best melee weapon, and any ranged weapon unless they have more than one of it. They'll prefer not to drop bandages, antigen, throwable weapons and skill books. They'll prefer to drop heavier stuff first. If you want to ensure they don't drop something, set the Carry Amount on the equipment policy dialog (which is populated automatically for ammo).



Hopefully it balances the possibility of being annoying because they dropped something you wanted them to hang on to, with the nuisance of them constantly running out of inventory space for their roles (which seemed to be happening a lot before).

Among other things I added are a Select All items option when assigning someone a supply run to a building, which should make that a bit less fiddly. I added a recipe to cook 5 ears of corn at once, and chefs will prefer that if that have enough corn, which makes them a lot more efficient. I made characters with "urgent" roles not sleep or eat for a bit longer.

You can now use a forge to make glass bottles from flint, so there's finally a way to make as many molotovs as you want to, plus it makes flint mines more useful. I always thought you'd need sand to make glass, but wasn't keen on adding another resource that had limited value - this is perhaps a bit of a fudge and I'm not too sure of the science behind it but flint is silica, like sand, and there's also a such a thing as "flint glass" although technically it isn't made of flint itself but rather lead deposits found in flint. So I don't know, but maybe it makes sense.

Here's the full list:

• Made it possible for AI to dump more excess inventory items if they don't have enough space to carry out a role.
  
• Option to Select All items in a building when setting a character to do a supply run.
  
• Added recipe to boil 5 ears of corn at the same time (or fry 3)
  
• Added forge recipe to make glass bottles from flint
  
• Show greyed out option to refuel vehicles even if they are not repaired, so you can see what fuel they take.
  
• When roles are set to Urgent, characters will go for longer before eating/drinking/sleeping etc
  
• New recipe unlock notifications show when you complete construction on a building, not when you first stamp it down
  
• Show equipment notifications when taking and depositing stuff
  
• New icons for repairing and taking over stuff, to distinguish it from building
  
• Allies who have been told to follow you will stop and seek food/water/sleep/warmth if they get very desperate
  
• Characters switch to jogging if they're running somewhere a long way away, they're getting tired, and are not under attack
  
• If you have followers and you move a significant distance outside of their zones, a warning message will show
  
• Dialog to intimidate extorters doesn't work so well on nemesis communities. Dialog to beg extorters to let you off is a little more likely to succeed.
  
• Fix for Cabin People fighting each other
  
• Fix for hungry characters taking food from allies that you have a Don't Eat policy on, so filling up their inventory because they can't eat it.
  
• Fix for being able to steal from allies by letting them follow you into a building then taking their stuff
  
• Fix for Emma not being able to sleep.
  
• Fix for Emma and Kelly's introduction repeating.
  
• Fix for Joe not actually giving you the key if you persuade him.
  
• Fix for Malachi accidentally locking himself in quarantine
  
• Fix for characters still holding equipped item while in repair armor animation.
  
• Fix for way to get to Ritzville without passing through Guardians.
  
• Fix for characters being able to capture buildings from infinitely far away
  
• Fix for NPCs building graves in inaccessible places
  
• Crash fixes
  
• Translations updated - French, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese

v199 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 2024 :) I've released a new patch in publicbeta. This one is mainly about fixing bugs and addressing feedback for story mode, though there's a few little experiments in there as well.

There's also a lot of new translations, including for story mode which now appears to be complete in Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. It's close to complete in Korean, Italian, Russian, and Lithuanian. Big thank you to all the translators!

One experiment: If you have a top medical skill, you can make something called a biohazard cocktail, which is like a molotov cocktail but instead of burning it infects nearby people. Might be a bit OP, I'm not sure.

Another: when you assassinate or choke hold someone, it makes a sound in a small radius which NPCs can hear (though zombies ignore it). This makes it harder to assassinate extortion squads as they walk home with your gold. Sorry I know a lot of people use that tactic but it felt too easy. I've also added dialog options to beg them to let your off (if they like you), or to intimidate them into leaving you alone (helps if you have a larger community).

I've tweaked the combat AI to make characters with ranged weapons able to aim for the head or legs (previously they could only hit them by chance). Ranged and melee characters will be more likely to attack the legs of zombies who haven't been crippled, and don't have leg armor. Not sure how noticeable it'll be - maybe they'll seem a little smarter. There's still an element of randomness.

Here's the full list:

• Dialog for if you find out the mystery guy has gone before you talk to Carter
  
• Dialog for interrogating Tim in later game
  
• Dialog for interrogating Charlie if you got him out after already finding the treasure
  
• Dialog for ending an alliance
  
• Various small dialog tweaks and fixes
  
• Kelly introduces everyone as assholes
  
• Fix for Tim's group not walking around together in story mode
  
• Fix for quest to talk to Martin not progressing if he dies before you meet him
  
• Stop Cameron Hines from joining the player's community while he still has his helicopter
  
• Made it possible to stash dead or unconscious bodies in vehicles and buildings
  
• Recipe for infected pipe bombs and biohazard cocktails
  
• Tweaked throw trajectory calculation so you can't throw absurdly high to get over walls
  
• Gave Ritz Creek Gang and Guardians wells so they can survive if the river freezes
  
• Stop FEMA from changing leadership away from Malachi due to feuds
  
• Stop people from starting dialog that disables character controls while there are enemies around, unless it's critical
  
• Stop farmers from watering crops if it's raining heavily
  
• Attempted fixes for things that can go wrong with Liam Franks
  
• Increased crops and seeds for AI settlements in story mode
  
• Allowed AI settlements in new Sandbox mode maps to plant sunflower seeds so they're a bit easier to find
  
• Tweaked the way Carry Amount policy works for ammo to try to make it clearer
  
• Some tweaks to combat AI that make NPCs more likely to aim for head and legs of zombies, and make enemies less likely to dodge if you have a high hand 2 hand skill
  
• Fix for rare case where someone could get stuck vaulting over a rock next to a tree and a wall
  
• Possible fix for Kelly sometimes getting inside the highway patrol compound
  
• Possible fix for Carter sometimes not killing all the highway patrol zombies
  
• Fix for stone mines not being available in story mode
  
• Made fences that block entrance and exit roads invulnerable
  
• If an inventory is large, wait till you scroll down before creating icons for everything in it, so it doesn't stall for so long on opening
  
• Fix for lumberjacks trying to chop trees that are inaccessible
  
• Added recipes to melt down tools such as axes or knives for steel, added a 'Disassemble...' section of the action menu for them to be less cluttered
  
• Gates of active (non-hostile) communities open automatically as vehicles approach
  
• Wishkey Falls Militia won't shake you down for a while after asking for your help
  
• NPCs (but not zombies) can hear choke sounds within a small radius, so it's not so easy to assassinate extortion squads on their way home
  
• You can try to intimidate or beg extorters using dialog checks to avoid paying
  
• Increased firearms skill of FEMA guards and others, and gave them better guns
  
• Crash fix
  
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Lithuanian, Russian, Simplified & Traditional Chinese and Ukrainian translations

v197 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 another small patch to fix some of the bigger issues people have been reporting to me in story mode, especially some bugs that block quests from progressing. Hopefully I got all of those now, and hopefully the next patch will be about more than just hotfixes, but we'll see... Thanks again for reporting them! Merry Christmas!

• Slightly nerfed the infected raiders who appear after 2 weeks
  
• Fix for Ava sometimes never giving you the information in the drinking game, also added more dialog options to make it clearer how to get it (you both need to get drunk)
  
• Fixes for Carter Moreno's squad not taking over the Long Patrol base properly
  
• Possible fix for Tim Arnold quest not proceeding
  
• Fix for dialog not triggering when you enter the cabin
  
• Fix for Joe not giving you a key if you threaten him
  
• Fix for White Hills Gang not having enough outhouses
  
• Fix for backpacks not being auto-worn in mods that have other worn items that increase your carry weight
  
• Fix for not being able to get reward for betraying Paul
  
• Possible fixes for excessive internal fighting in area gangs
  
• Crash fixes

v196 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".

People have been finding that certain character won't talk to you at a critical moment in story mode, this should now be fixed. I've also tried to fix some issues with NPCs getting overly hungry or thirsty due to pathfinding failures.

Thanks for all the feedback on story mode! This was the most egregious bug so far but I think this will not be the last of the hotfixes. Looks like there might be some more bugs that are stopping quests from progressing sometimes, and a lot more general issues - that's what I'll be working on this week.

Here's the change list:

• Fix for characters sometimes going hungry or thirsty when they shouldn't
  
• Fix for a character not talking to you at critical moment
  
• Set limit on wood needed for story mode communities
  
• Crash fixes

v195 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 follow-up patch to v193 which added a first pass of Story Mode to publicbeta. Thanks to everyone who gave me bug reports! Some of them haven't been addressed yet, but this fixes a few crashes that have so far been discovered so I thought I better get it out asap.

• Tried to make automatic player surrendering more robust during the bit where someone in Story Mode decides you need to be neutralized
  
• Fix for Kelly getting stuck in an animation if you try to assassinate her at the beginning
  
• Fix for characters going repeatedly into attack state then out again when enemies are visible but inaccessible
  
• Fix for characters hovering in mid air for a second after the watchtower they are in explodes
  
• Fix for character not shooting a zombie because one of the zombie's former team mates was surrendering
  
• Stop characters retreating inside picket gates when attacked
  
• Added more outhouses to Tent City
  
• Out of sync fix
  
• Crash fixes

v194 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".

For the last few months I've mainly been working on Story Mode, and I've now finished and done a full playthrough of it! - or at last what I'll call a "first pass" of it. If you want to play story mode as a completed final product I wouldn't recommend playing this just yet, but if you want to play an early draft and help out with testing, here it is! :) I'm not quite sure how much I'll add or change of story mode in future, we'll see how it goes.



Reading people's comments about the game, I see a bit of a split between people saying "When is Story Mode coming?" and people saying "It doesn't need a Story Mode!" When I first started making the game I thought Story Mode would be the main thing and I just added Sandbox Mode as a quick way to playtest the game mechanics without having to write a full story. Over time, however, I got to be more interested in procedurally generated storytelling and decided I wanted to spend more time developing Sandbox Mode. Part of the early access pitch was that I would do a Story Mode though, so I figured after 3 years it is Time! But I would say now that I no longer think of Story Mode as the "main" mode - they have about equal status in my mind.

There's been a bit of a blurring between them anyway - you'll see a lot of the procedural quests from Sandbox mode such as the relationship/friendship quests showing up in Story Mode as well. But having a defined map does allow for more realistic and interesting locations, and more complex plots. I also threw in a fun little special feature for Story Mode that would have probably been too unbalanced on a Sandbox map :)

Besides Story Mode I also got stuck for a while trying to do some optimizations. I'm not sure how much difference it will make to the average player in the end but there's quite a few new CPU-side improvements under the hood now, hope it helps. And as usual I've fixed a bunch of bugs. Here's the change list:

• Story Mode first pass
  
• Optimizations
  
• Decreased the amount of time and corn needed to make enough biofuel to fill a vehicle's tank, but made sunflower oil take longer so they are more similar to each other. Also increased the beet sugar yield.
  
• Added Steel Lockbox
  
• World maps and geological maps will be deleted from your inventory if you take them on Hit The Road, so they don't remove the fog of war immediately from the new map!
  
• Another fix for chefs getting stuck sometimes
  
• Reducing Raiders slider (et al) in the difficulty settings will affect their cooldown time, previously it didn't
  
• Made it possible to hold down button when stamping fences instead of clicking for each tile individually
  
• AI allies can take food from the player without it being considered stealing, unless it has a Don't Share policy set. But it's still stealing if the player takes equipment from allies without them, as that's too much open to exploits.
  
• Chefs pick at random between most tasty and most healthy recipe instead of just any available recipe
  
• Fix for thousands of raider instances being created on the map sidebar possibly due to mod configuration
  
• Fix for character getting stuck in loop between surrendering and rescuing someone
  
• Fix for changing names on the character creation screen having no effect unless you press Enter
  
• Fix for not being able to use the dialog to finish the Rebellion quest if you kill everyone and bring the body of the leader back
  
• Fix for skill caps not being transferred when you take people to a new map using Hit The Road
  
• Fix for not being able to manually pour water into an animal feeder bowl
  
• Fix for farmers not going for the nearest crops, and issues when you have different bases and Always Closed gates
  
• Fix for hungry chef sometimes not eating the food they just cooked and just staying there continuing to stir it
  
• Fix for NPCs knowing you skinned a team mate's corpse even if none of them saw it
  
• Fix for characters getting stuck in a loop auto collecting arrows if they don't have space for them in their inventory
  
• Fix for characters being able to get into, or repair, vehicles from a long way away if they are moving
  
• Fix for not being able to bind scroll wheel to target head/legs
  
• Possible crash fixes and out of sync fixes
  
• Translation updates to French, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Lithuanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Ukrainian

Note for mod-makers and translators: I have taken a bunch of quests from the "Sandbox" mod and put them in a new mod called "Common" which is used by both "Sandbox" and "MainStory" (which is story mode of course). So there are two new mod folders, "Common" and "MainStory". Old savegames and mods should still load fine.

Looking ahead to the next patch(es), the two things I want to focus on are (1) that annoying habit crafters have of stopping crafting because they filled up their inventories with random stuff they can't dump, and (2) morale and opinion balancing.

v193 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".