Hello, it's patch time :) This one's a bit technical. I've upgraded to a more recent version of Unity in the hopes of fixing an intermittent bug where gamepad controllers stopped working after a while. There's fixes for some recently discovered crashes, a few small optimizations, and fixes for mods such as SIS Locked Buildings (which I broke in a previous patch).
In terms of new features there are two main ones, which are both things I should probably have done a long time ago. The game will now autosave every 10 minutes or so. This is an often-requested feature but I've always held off on it because saving always means a small hitch in framerate and I didn't want that to interrupt combat or just the flow of the game. To get round this I've made it so it will try to wait until you're not in combat or in dialog, and you haven't pressed a button (or moved a joystick or mouse) for 1 second. Hopefully that way it'll be less obtrusive. If it still hasn't autosaved after 20 minutes it'll just save regardless though.
The other new feature is a Respawn button for online co-op players who die. I avoided doing that for such a long time because I always wanted there to be a cost for dying, so that you feel invested in your character and there's a sense of tension and weight to your decisions. Since you can always recruit new NPCs - or reload a savegame - it doesn't stop the co-op player from playing.
The problem with that is, as I've now made it possible for co-op players to start relationships and friendships with other community members, if their character dies they lose all ability to do that. That isn't the case for the "main" player, because you can get the community to elect a new leader who then becomes the main player's "avatar" and can do all the stuff they could. There's no equivalent for co-op players.
That sucked because although I want there to be a cost for dying, I don't want to close off any options permanently. Secondly, saying "well you can reload a savegame" goes against the philosophy of living with the consequences of your decisions and embracing the darkness (TM). So I think it's better to allow them to spawn a new character. There still is a cost to dying anyway - you lose your dead character's progression in skills and relationships.
So I added a Respawn button to the pause menu, if you are a co-op player whose original avatar is dead. (I called it Respawn because that's an easily recognizable word to gamers - it's not really respawning though as it creates a new character with starting skill levels).
Here's the full changelist:
- Autosave automatically every 10 minutes or so, if the player is not in combat and doesn't touch the controls for 1 second
- Added a Respawn button the Pause menu for online co-op players whose avatar dies
- Reinstate the ability to bandage unconscious zombies to raise your medical skill
- Made NPCs with high hand to hand skill change their blocking stance more often
- Updated French, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Latin American Spanish, Lithuanian, Simplified Chinese and Turkish translations, made game recognise Czech.tsv files
- Upgraded to Unity 6000.0.35f1 in attempt to fix bug where gamepad would stop working after a while
- Fix for some situations where you couldn't move the cursor with the gamepad in the menus because it continually returned to the button the mouse was hovering over even though you weren't using the mouse
- Fix for sometimes getting an error message when you try to save save if you join a multiplayer game in Story mode and then the host leaves
- Fix for former members of Survivalists or FEMA being able to have the Loyalty quest, which would break canon
- Fix for allied followers not filling water bottles or sitting round fires when you do
- Fix for crafters sometimes not dumping their heaviest containers when they are full of the thing they are crafting
- Fix for out of sync error when getting jumped by zombies
- Fix for crash in mod with prop that wasn't set up to have a model
- Fixes for the SIS Locked Buildings mod which I broke in a previous patch
- Possible fix for error message taking you back to the menu when starting a game with mods that have the same asset bundle
- Crash fixes
- Optimizations
EDIT - I've released a hotfix, v230, to fix a crash in the SIS Fishing mod that I introduced. A few other fixes also got rolled into it:
- Dialog option to tell traders to move along can also be used with other travelers
- Fix for crash when SIS Fishing mod is active
- Fix for red damage indicator on edge of screen sometimes staying on after switching to a different character
- Possible out of sync fix
I've also promoted v228 to the main branch. There are some problems in v228 which are fixed by the "crash fixes" etc above, but they weren't introduced by v228 and it seems otherwise solid.
What's this publicbeta thing?
v229 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".