The long awaited audio update is out! Here is the feature list:


FEATURES:
-Audio! Sound! Music! Sound effects will be added to further in future updates.
-Armour crafting
-Overhaul to armour and stats.
-11 new hats and helmets.
-New game start-off: "Rock Bottom"
-New character orders:
-Non-combat mode: Character only fights for self-defence
-Taunt mode: Character attracts more of the enemy attackers
-Chase mode: Disabling this stops a character from chasing after fleeing enemies

BUGFIXES
-Fixed the bug with the inventory auto-arrange button permanently changing your character stats
-Fixed blueprints loading/saving properly in your inventory
-Fixed removing items from inventory not reducing encumbrance
-Fixed the discrepancy in displayed research times
-Improved crafting item delivery bugs
-Fixed neck thickness bug in the character editor
-Fixed GUI clipping on the crafting and research windows

The long awaited audio update is out! Here is the feature list:


FEATURES:
-Audio! Sound! Music! Sound effects will be added to further in future updates.
-Armour crafting
-Overhaul to armour and stats.
-11 new hats and helmets.
-New game start-off: "Rock Bottom"
-New character orders:
-Non-combat mode: Character only fights for self-defence
-Taunt mode: Character attracts more of the enemy attackers
-Chase mode: Disabling this stops a character from chasing after fleeing enemies

BUGFIXES
-Fixed the bug with the inventory auto-arrange button permanently changing your character stats
-Fixed blueprints loading/saving properly in your inventory
-Fixed removing items from inventory not reducing encumbrance
-Fixed the discrepancy in displayed research times
-Improved crafting item delivery bugs
-Fixed neck thickness bug in the character editor
-Fixed GUI clipping on the crafting and research windows

The next update will be out within about a week. The game will actually have sound! You can follow the progress of our audio designer, Kole Hicks, on his blog: http://kolemusician.com/blog/

After the next update the game is going to go up in price again, to $20. So if you are on the fence buy now before it goes up! And don't think you can wait for the Christmas sales, Kenshi won't be taking part in any sales...

I've also spent a bit of time recruiting, looking for the finest artists in the land. I'm still conducting interviews for a 3D environment artist, but we now have a new concept artist, Sergey Musin. He will work on designing the new world map and biomes, here's his first days work:

<img src="http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/15/14814/thumb_620x2000/DunesArea_Concept.jpg" alt="dunes" width="560" />


Sergey will design them, 3D dude will try to replicate them in-game (backed up by our 3D freelance team), and Sam will improve the lighting and graphics code to allow it. That's the plan anyway, all resulting in a huge interesting world map full of adventure and stuff.

Sam is now working on character code, to boost the frame-rate and enable female characters.

Kole is working on more sound effects, at the moment we just have footsteps and combat sounds.

I'm still deciding what feature to do next. Maybe bandit raids and kidnapping. Maybe ranged combat.


<b>Upcoming release: 0.50.0</b>

- Audio! Sound! Music! More sound effects will be added in future updates.
- Armour crafting
- Overhaul to armour and stats.
- 11 new hats and helmets.
- New game start-off: "Rock Bottom"

The next update will be out within about a week. The game will actually have sound! You can follow the progress of our audio designer, Kole Hicks, on his blog: http://kolemusician.com/blog/

After the next update the game is going to go up in price again, to $20. So if you are on the fence buy now before it goes up! And don't think you can wait for the Christmas sales, Kenshi won't be taking part in any sales...

I've also spent a bit of time recruiting, looking for the finest artists in the land. I'm still conducting interviews for a 3D environment artist, but we now have a new concept artist, Sergey Musin. He will work on designing the new world map and biomes, here's his first days work:




Sergey will design them, 3D dude will try to replicate them in-game (backed up by our 3D freelance team), and Sam will improve the lighting and graphics code to allow it. That's the plan anyway, all resulting in a huge interesting world map full of adventure and stuff.

Sam is now working on character code, to boost the frame-rate and enable female characters.

Kole is working on more sound effects, at the moment we just have footsteps and combat sounds.

I'm still deciding what feature to do next. Maybe bandit raids and kidnapping. Maybe ranged combat.


Upcoming release: 0.50.0

- Audio! Sound! Music! More sound effects will be added in future updates.
- Armour crafting
- Overhaul to armour and stats.
- 11 new hats and helmets.
- New game start-off: "Rock Bottom"

The new update is out, and it's a pretty good one:

0.47.0 "Blueprints"
-Inventory now has a handy "Auto arrange" button
-Various research can now be bought at shops in the form of blueprints. You have to buy the basic blueprints in order to build a base now. Get them from the construction trader, the guy who sells the building materials
-New shops for the construction trader.
-You can now craft medkits
-Researching the next Technology level now costs money.
-Different weapon types for crafting must be obtained via blueprints, available at weapon shops.
-Equipment shops vary based on the local faction. For example, The Holy Nation specialises in cleavers.
-Crafting benches now have their own separate crafting queues, rather than having one queue that automatically chose a bench to assign the job to.
-You can mod the min/max character proportions by editing data/male_editor.cfg
-Item values are now calculated dynamically from the value of the materials they are made from

NOTES
-Can't build wells or farms anymore? You need to buy the blueprints now.
-The old medium and light plate armours have now been deleted, you might want to sell them before updating.

BUGFIXES
-Fixed building placement on other objects
-A few AI fixes for operating machines
-reduced chances of characters spawning under a buildings floor


Next release:
-Kole is close to releasing the first audio. It will include some sound effects and music, but not everything yet.
-Chris Roberts is nearly finished with the female models too, so that will be in the next update.
-I will finish armour crafting. I didn't quite have time to make it for this release.

The new update is out, and it's a pretty good one:

0.47.0 "Blueprints"
-Inventory now has a handy "Auto arrange" button
-Various research can now be bought at shops in the form of blueprints. You have to buy the basic blueprints in order to build a base now. Get them from the construction trader, the guy who sells the building materials
-New shops for the construction trader.
-You can now craft medkits
-Researching the next Technology level now costs money.
-Different weapon types for crafting must be obtained via blueprints, available at weapon shops.
-Equipment shops vary based on the local faction. For example, The Holy Nation specialises in cleavers.
-Crafting benches now have their own separate crafting queues, rather than having one queue that automatically chose a bench to assign the job to.
-You can mod the min/max character proportions by editing data/male_editor.cfg
-Item values are now calculated dynamically from the value of the materials they are made from

NOTES
-Can't build wells or farms anymore? You need to buy the blueprints now.
-The old medium and light plate armours have now been deleted, you might want to sell them before updating.

BUGFIXES
-Fixed building placement on other objects
-A few AI fixes for operating machines
-reduced chances of characters spawning under a buildings floor


Next release:
-Kole is close to releasing the first audio. It will include some sound effects and music, but not everything yet.
-Chris Roberts is nearly finished with the female models too, so that will be in the next update.
-I will finish armour crafting. I didn't quite have time to make it for this release.

News time I think. The 0.46 update is going to be boring, because all the fun stuff is being worked on in the background and disabled for release, because its not ready yet.
The update will be mostly bug fixes, mainly on the problems with walls. There is now a proper save/load dialog box so you can have multiple saves and not get too badly ruined if any kind of save corruption happens. There's also configurable controls too, to make things easier for some people.

Meanwhile, getting ready for future updates we have Kole Hicks just about to start on sound effects, having completed the first bit of music. The man is awesome. He's keeping his own news on his progress too, here is a video of his latest recording session:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFYbxgBY650

Vurt has been working on improving the foliage of the existing zone and keeping people up to date on the forums.

http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/15/14814/thumb_620x2000/9hcek.jpg

Most of the artwork and code is in place now for female characters to be added to the game. It's all down to Chris Roberts (our Technical Artist) now, who is handling the process of fine tuning and importing the assets into the game. It's a pretty painstaking job, and he only works part-time (he's an indie developer too) so we have to give him a while before everything is finalised. Hence why it won't be ready for 0.46, but probably for 0.47.

My priorities after the next update will be female characters, armour crafting, and I'm also going to take a serious look at the performance, which is getting pretty bad. At least, I'm going to get Sam to take a look at it.

Sam has also been working on some stuff in the background, again not ready for the next update but he has done water, birds and the code for enabling multiple biomes.

http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/15/14814/thumb_620x2000/oeskw.jpg

Give the 0.46 update about a week. I want to tie up all the various loose ends before I let it out, so I'm taking my time with it. I'm going to aim for roughly monthly updates for now on, as the actual release of an update and surrounding gumpfh can take at least a days work out of me. Bigger, less frequent updates allow us to progress faster, with the illusion that we are progressing slower.

News time I think. The 0.46 update is going to be boring, because all the fun stuff is being worked on in the background and disabled for release, because its not ready yet.
The update will be mostly bug fixes, mainly on the problems with walls. There is now a proper save/load dialog box so you can have multiple saves and not get too badly ruined if any kind of save corruption happens. There's also configurable controls too, to make things easier for some people.

Meanwhile, getting ready for future updates we have Kole Hicks just about to start on sound effects, having completed the first bit of music. The man is awesome. He's keeping his own news on his progress too, here is a video of his latest recording session:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFYbxgBY650

Vurt has been working on improving the foliage of the existing zone and keeping people up to date on the forums.

http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/15/14814/thumb_620x2000/9hcek.jpg

Most of the artwork and code is in place now for female characters to be added to the game. It's all down to Chris Roberts (our Technical Artist) now, who is handling the process of fine tuning and importing the assets into the game. It's a pretty painstaking job, and he only works part-time (he's an indie developer too) so we have to give him a while before everything is finalised. Hence why it won't be ready for 0.46, but probably for 0.47.

My priorities after the next update will be female characters, armour crafting, and I'm also going to take a serious look at the performance, which is getting pretty bad. At least, I'm going to get Sam to take a look at it.

Sam has also been working on some stuff in the background, again not ready for the next update but he has done water, birds and the code for enabling multiple biomes.

http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/15/14814/thumb_620x2000/oeskw.jpg

Give the 0.46 update about a week. I want to tie up all the various loose ends before I let it out, so I'm taking my time with it. I'm going to aim for roughly monthly updates for now on, as the actual release of an update and surrounding gumpfh can take at least a days work out of me. Bigger, less frequent updates allow us to progress faster, with the illusion that we are progressing slower.

I'm trying to be a bit more regular with my news updates. So I've just finished the main parts of adding walls back into the game. It was a major pain, I had to completely overhaul the way the AI perceives walls.
The old method was using a flood-fill of the navigation mesh to determine which areas were enclosed by walls, and which gate was required to access which area. This method fell down though when walls crossed map zone areas and got partially unloaded.
Anyway, I used my mighty brain power to squeeze out a new method, and it works pretty nicely now, much better at handling awkward situations with less bugs. It even accounts for walls within walls, and multiple gates in a wall, and other crafty things. The only problem it faces is that it will all spaz out if the players builds gates inside-out facing.

In the meantime Sam has added water to the game, though you won't see it in an update just yet. I'm holding it back for the new biomes at a later date.


Also, due to a minor mis-communication I accidentally put the game in the Steam sales for 33% off. I'm thinking of actually increasing the price a bit more soon, so now is actually the cheapest you will ever get the game for if you don't already have it.

I'm trying to be a bit more regular with my news updates. So I've just finished the main parts of adding walls back into the game. It was a major pain, I had to completely overhaul the way the AI perceives walls.
The old method was using a flood-fill of the navigation mesh to determine which areas were enclosed by walls, and which gate was required to access which area. This method fell down though when walls crossed map zone areas and got partially unloaded.
Anyway, I used my mighty brain power to squeeze out a new method, and it works pretty nicely now, much better at handling awkward situations with less bugs. It even accounts for walls within walls, and multiple gates in a wall, and other crafty things. The only problem it faces is that it will all spaz out if the players builds gates inside-out facing.

In the meantime Sam has added water to the game, though you won't see it in an update just yet. I'm holding it back for the new biomes at a later date.


Also, due to a minor mis-communication I accidentally put the game in the Steam sales for 33% off. I'm thinking of actually increasing the price a bit more soon, so now is actually the cheapest you will ever get the game for if you don't already have it.