Yo it's patch day! This month I upgraded to the latest version of Unity, which was a pain as they made a lighting change that caused a lot of problems, but has to be done from time to time. Working on the rendering inspired me to try a new graphics option called Supersampling. This draws the entire scene at double the resolution, then shrinks it down and also does a little blurring on the black outlines. As you can imagine that's pretty intensive so only for higher end graphics cards - it's off by default but you can find in the Graphics Settings menu. The result of it all is that you get less aliasing and the black outlines appear smoother and less flickery. Here's a before and after screenshot for comparison (you'll probably need to open them in another tab and zoom in to see what I mean):




This screenshot also shows something else I added - walking and running animations where they actually hold the rifle in both hands!

The rest of the patch is a variety of different quality of life improvements, bug fixes optimizations and small tweaks. I've added a text search box to the mods list when you start the game, and I've moved My Recent Downloads to an option in the drop-down box instead of being a list you have to scroll past to get to the new and trending mods. So many great mods have been added recently, this should help you find them better!



I've changed the way weapon stats are shown so you can actually see which weapons are better than each other:



I've stopped NPCs from declaring war on you on behalf of their whole community, if their opinion of you drops below a certain level (If you start shooting them up they'll still declare war of course, I'm just talking about when they say "I've had about enough of you!" due to low approval from dialog or whatever). This was something I heard a few complaints about from time to time - people felt only the leader should be able to declare war so easily. Instead they'll start "feuding" with you (i.e. fighting with a melee weapon while others watch), which also means the player can be involved in feuds sometimes instead of just being a passive bystander.

This patch will go in publicbeta. I would have liked to move the previous one, v213, to the main branch but unfortunately it introduced a bug to the clothing screen which while not game-breaking feels a bit gross for new players, so I think I'll hold off.

Here's the full list of changes in v214:

• Improved workshop mods list UI - moved My Recent Downloads into the dropdown menu, added text search and paging
  
• Added a few memories for important events in Story Mode
  
• Stopped Kelly saying 'at least Emma has my back' before she's joined you, instead she'll say 'I wish Emma was here'
  
• Added two more soldiers to Carter Moreno's squad
  
• Added achievement icons
  
• Added difficulty slider for Survivor Repopulation time (i.e. how many days between new survivors spawning in NPC camps that have lost members)
  
• Added button to randomize Community Name on character creation page
  
• Added book model for reading animation
  
• Added stand/walk/run animations holding rifle with both hands
  
• Added Supersampling option in Graphics Settings, reducing aliasing in outlines particularly, for people with high end graphics cards
  
• NPCs, who are not the leader of their community, just start feuding with the player character if they don't like them, instead of declaring war on behalf of their entire community
  
• Changed weapon damage stats and food stats in action menu to be more readable
  
• Changed the Eat action to Steal & Eat when stealing from someone else's campfire pot to make it clearer
  
• Characters with the Moral personality type will not eat human meat unless they are very hungry (it seemed weird before that they would eat it themselves, but get annoyed at others for doing so)
  
• Slightly reduced time before you can attack invisible strain zombies after they turn
  
• Make lumberjack less likely to keep pulling their axe out and swapping it for another weapon while chopping trees
  
• Chefs should replenish fire when fuel drops below 50% instead of waiting till it dies (don't worry it doesn't waste wood, just goes to 150%)
  
• Don't show dialog option for letting people in your gates unless the gates actually enclose something, and they are near your base buildings (not including campfires)
  
• Upgraded to Unity 6000.0.14f and fixed a lot of issues arising from the upgrade
  
• Updated French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Latin American Spanish, Turkish, Russian and Simplified Chinese translations
  
• Possible fix for NPCs getting stuck making food for friends
  
• Fix for roaming raiders/traders/refugees never having invisible strain (!)
  
• Fix for mercenaries sometimes seeming to keep finding you even if you have no base and are hiding (they should be able to find you once but not keep doing it)
  
• Fix for delay where nothing appears to happen for a while if you enter a building and start ripping up clothes
  
• Fix for AI leaders who happen to be traders dumping their entire inventory after you give them food for the food quest
  
• Fix for people on supply runs sometimes stopping after they collect the final items and staying there instead of returning to base
  
• Fix for NPCs introducing themselves to you twice if you threaten them the first time
  
• Fix for Organizers not depositing special (starred) equipment, brain scanners and knives even if they have the guy with backpack icon
  
• Fix for Rebellion and Turf War quest givers not giving you the full reward if they told you to do it stealthily but you actually killed everyone
  
• Fix for clothes not being visible on the character creation screen clothes page
  
• Fix for neutral characters damaging you if you are in the crossfire when they are shooting a zombie who used to be your teammate
  
• Fix for zombies getting trapped forever on flat bits in the middle of slopes
  
• Fix for minimum delay between friendly snowfights not applying to all dialog paths
  
• Fix for tooltip on trading screen showing original item amount, not amount after pending trades
  
• Fix for overwork memories not fading
  
• Added Infection setting for equipment spawned from templates in scripts (for modders)
  
• Added setting for zombies to be crippled when spawned from templates in scripts (for modders)
  
• Optimizations to memory and personality code
  
• Crash fix
  

What's this publicbeta thing?

v214 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".