Hello, Survivalist: Invisible Strain has been out of early access for one year! Well actually that was two days ago. Anyway, seems like a good time for a sale, so Survivalist: Invisible Strain is participating in the Post Apocalyptic Festival on Steam from April 27th to May 4th, with a 50% discount! This festival was instigated by Red Rover Interactive the developers of the upcoming EngineFall, and includes some awesome games like Pacific Drive.
There's also a new patch in publicbeta today, v277. I'm working on a new unannounced project these days but I'm still doing bug fixes, translation work where needed, and some gameplay tweaks on Invisible Strain (more info in the FAQ). This has some bug fixes but also some more hint messages telling people about how to deal with enemies with body armor (i.e. use armor piercing ranged ammo, or blunt melee weapons) as I've noticed a few people finding that difficult.
I've also added a few more resources to the map in Story Mode, like lead, steel and iron in dumpsters, and given traders some gunpowder to sell you, in the hopes that that will enable people to start making ammo - and armor piercing ammo - sooner. Most significantly, Wishkey Falls Militia now have a lead mine instead of a flint mine so you don't have to go so far afield for it (if you can persuade them to team up with you, or if something were to happen to them, that is). Here's the full change list:
Fix for occasional crash in New Game menu when clicking on multiple different mods
Fix for required fuel amount not being shown correctly in litres when hitting the road
Fix for approval/respect/morale being badly aligned on brain scan page
Always show Community tab on inventory screen in Sandbox Mode, and once Kelly joins you OR you are out of the starting area in Story Mode
Added some more tutorial/hint messages about how to deal with armor and ranged weapons
Added a little more explanation about save tokens and don't overwrite both saves in the specific case where Lost Item quest spawns some zombies
Pause game if gamepad gets disconnected (only in single player)
Changed Wishkey Falls Militia to have a Lead mine instead of Flint, gave the Guardians a Flint mine
Added some more crafting resources around Story Mode so it's easier to start making ammo
Enabled some parts of the debug menu on XBox (it's still jank though, and needs a mouse + keyboard)
Updated Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese translations
Finally the previous patch, v276, is now on the main branch and XBox. This means that v275 and v274 are also now live, which gives us the complete Ukrainian and Indonesian translations, as well as some big updates to the Russian, and a lot more bug fixes.
What's this publicbeta thing?
v277 will be in the "publicbeta" branch on Steam for a while, before pushing it to the main game and to XBox. 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".