Update 2.1 for DOOM Eternal is now live, and features Campaign & BATTLEMODE bug fixes and improvements.

• Weapon Quick Switch has been enabled again in both Campaign and BATTLEMODE (Thanks again for all of your passionate community feedback!)
  
• Made further improvements to networking latency in BATTLEMODE
  
• Added the ability for the Mancubus to shoot after starting a double jump in BATTLEMODE
  
• Maykr Drones have been added back in to some loadouts in BATTLEMODE bonus loot drops have been removed from headshots against the Maykr Drone in BATTLEMODE

• Reduced The Slayer’s Precision Bolt damage in BATTLEMODE against player demons from 400 damage to 300 damage
  
• Reduced The Slayer’s starting bullet ammo in BATTLEMODE from 84 bullets to 72 bullets

Campaign

• Fixed an issue with the Gladiator failing to drop health while staggered
  
• Fixed an issue with the Khan Maykr failing to drop health when Blood Punched
  
• Fixed a rare issue where AI became invulnerable after a failed Glory Kill
  
• Fixed an issue with Zombies ragdolling incorrectly when killed
  
• Fixed Baron of Hell leg animations displaying incorrectly in certain circumstances
  
• Fixed a graphics issue with the gibs that display when Glory Killing the Archvile from the front
  
• Fixed an issue in Extra Life Mode that caused extra lives to be removed during the Revenant gameplay sequence in Cultist Base
  
• Fixed an issue causing notifications for rewards to display repeatedly
  
• Fixed an issue where challenges would display on screen for an extended period if another challenge was completed while being displayed

BATTLEMODE

• Fixed a crash in BATTLEMODE when backing out of a private match
  
• Fixed a crash in BATTLEMODE on the Round Upgrade menu
  
• Fixed an issue in BATTLEMODE where selecting a demon simultaneously would display podiums incorrectly
  
• Fixed an issue in BATTLEMODE where the Marauder's wolf didn’t always deal damage and explode when attacking The Slayer
  
• Fixed an issue in BATTLEMODE with the Damage Report displaying incorrect damage numbers
  
• Fixed an issue in BATTLEMODE that would cause health/ammo loot visuals to persist when Loot Block was used while the slayer was chainsawing AI
  
• Fixed several descriptions for BATTLEMODE Round Upgrades to more accurately reflect current functionality
  
• Fixed an issue in BATTLEMODE where level progress would sometimes display incorrectly to other players in the lobby

• Fixed an issue in BATTLEMODE that would cause the title to crash when loading into a match with HDR enabled on some graphics cards
  
• Fixed a rare crash when the Archvile teleported while the BFG was equipped in BATTLEMODE
  
• Fixed an issue in BATTLEMODE where enemy hit sound effects would revert to default after installing a new game patch

• Demon Players may fall through the floor at round start in BATTLEMODE in rare circumstances (Players are teleported back into the map after the countdown timer ends or if a new round begins)
  
• Demon Players may observe a dark screen in BATTLEMODE persisting during the countdown timer on the Torment map
  
• The Demon Player HUD only displays the first two digits of the cooldown timer for instant resurrect and team heal
  
• Unlock notifications for event and series unlock content only display when entering the Rewards menu or when restarting the title

Hello, our fellow adventurer!

Please be aware of scheduled maintenance will be taken on the 6th of August, 2020 to enhance server stability and performance.
Maintenance will most likely last about 1 hour. Sorry for the inconveniences.


<Maintenance>
• Schedule:
o 2020-08-06 12:00 - 13:00 (KST)

• Server:
o Vegonia

• Note:
o During the maintenance, the game will be unavailable (the launcher will tell you that the server is not ready).
o Please store your items into your inventory/Vault before the maintenance starts.
o Please finish with building/destroying/moving structures and be prepared before the maintenance starts.
o During the maintenance, login and game access will not be available.

New championship available! This is another chance to obtain Zula Gold and this time with just 2 more mates!

Take a look to all the information by clicking here and sign up your team before all the places get taken up!

Date: Saturday at 6:00 PM (CEST)

Rewards:

Champion -> 40.000 Zula Gold (per player)
2nd place -> 30.000 Zula Gold (per player)
3rd place -> 20.000 Zula Gold (per player)
4th place -> 10.000 Zula Gold (per player)
5th place – 8th place -> 5.000 Zula Gold (per player)
9th place – 16th place -> 25.000 Zula Points (per player)
17th – 32nd -> 10.000 Zula Points (per player)

In the past, we have released a post touching on how the MMR system works. We are updating it to properly reflect the current system in Rainbow Six Siege.



Your skill represents your ability to win a game. Comparing two teams' skill gives you the probability that one team will win against the other. The higher the difference, the more likely a given team is going to win. When two teams with the same skill levels are matched up with each other, they both have an equal shot at winning. The algorithm used in Rainbow Six Siege assigns two values to each player: an estimation of their skill (μ) and the uncertainty of this estimation (σ). The players’ skills are distributed along a Bell curve, centered around 25 (High Silver – Low Gold).


The estimation of your skill is probabilistic. In general, the more games you play, the more information we have about you, and the more confident we are about this estimation. This confidence is represented by the uncertainty value sigma (σ). The lower the uncertainty, the higher the confidence.


Early on in the game’s first year, your rank was partially also determined by your engagement with the game. This led to confusion as the play experiences of players of different ranks would vary greatly.This has not been the case since Year 1 Season 4 and presently, your MMR only takes into account your skill (MMR = 100*μ). This also means that your clearance level has no impact on your MMR.


The MMR is updated solely on the outcome of your match. If this outcome is unexpected (for example, you lost against players with a lower skill than your team), the skill updates will be more substantial, and vice-versa. In addition to that, the more confident we are about your skill (i.e., if your σ is low), the smaller the updates will be.

Let’s take a simple example with only two players: Hibana vs Pulse. The values in this example do not reflect the actual updates that would happen with our system but it should give you an understanding of the situation. Hibana is a Gold player (μ ≈ 29), and has been playing at that level for quite some time. Hibana’s rank has a low uncertainty value attached to it, so σ ≈ 3. Hibana faces Pulse (a Copper ranked player, but he has a lot of heart), and loses. Due to the low uncertainty value, it is likely that Hibana just had a bad game, so her skill level would decrease, resulting in μ ≈ 28. This is due to the system taking into account the rank of the enemy you have lost to. If Hibana lost to someone that was Gold, the adjustment would be closer to μ ≈ 28.5. Losing to a Diamond would have resulted in a change to μ ≈ 28.9.

That being said, Pulse is still relatively new to the game, and our system is attempting to determine where he should be placed (μ ≈ 17 and σ ≈ 6). By Tachanka’s grace, Pulse won the match, so we would increase his skill level to 20. His victory against Hibana has helped us to determine that he may be a better player, so his uncertainly has dropped a small amount (σ ≈ 5.5). The large increase in skill level rating for is a result of Pulse being a fairly unknown player, and our confidence in Hibana’s placement.

In order to prevent matchmaking abuses while switching regions, we’ve changed our Matchmaking Rating system in Y5S2 to unified MMRs for each playlist. This means that you will not have different MMRs depending on the region you play in. However, your matchmaking ranking will remain separate in different playlists.

(formerly Casual)



This is the standard multiplayer playlist offering a fair environment for beginner and intermediate skill levels to play in.

Quick Matches are available for all players, do not affect the players’ ranking in Ranked and offer 3 game modes: Bomb, hostage and Secure Area.

Quick Matches and Unranked Matches use the same MMR. Therefore, winning/losing in one will affect your MMR in the other playlist as well.

However, MMR used in Quick Match is not linked to the MMR used in Ranked. Therefore players that mainly play Ranked, and rarely enter Quick Match have an MMR in QM that does not reflect their real ability. We think that that may be one of the reasons why QM is considered unbalanced. Unless they enter from time to time to update their QM MMR they will currently have this issue.

In the past we’ve tested several methods with the goal to provide all Quick Match players with a best possible matchmaking experience. Since Y2S3 the Quick Match matchmaking pairs players based on an independent and hidden Quick Match / Unranked Matchmaking Rating (MMR). This Quick Match / Unranked MMR is based on the same system described above, taking into account your performance in both, Quick Matches and Unranked. It is not tied to your Ranked MMR at all, nor visible to you or other players.

New players are provided with a base line MMR, which is more on par with where a beginner should be. A lower starting point for beginners means that they will be able to increase their MMR in a pool of players with a comparable skill level. This lower MMR rating will be erased over time as they win more matches, eventually placing them where they truly belong based on their skill level.




The leap from Quick Match to Ranked can be overwhelming due to the stark difference between competitive and casual players in terms of mentality, playstyle, and even personal comfort level. This gap was the driving motivation behind the creation of the Unranked playlist, which was implemented in Y4S3.

Unranked is a multiplayer playlist, available for all players with a Clearance Level above 10. It follows the Ranked ruleset, but has no Rank restrictions (which will be detailed further in this article) and doesn’t affect a player’s Rank or Ranked MMR. Unranked shares the same hidden MMR, which is used for Quick Match matchmaking as well and pairs players based on the same system. So whether you’re into competitive gameplay but would rather do without the pressure of a ranking system, or you want to get familiar with Pick & Ban and other associated features before heading into Ranked, this is the playlist for you.

Its advantage over Ranked is that you don’t need to meet the MMR Restriction as you do in Ranked. This, along with the lower CL compared to Ranked allows you to join a squad that do not meet the requirements for Ranked but still play with competitive rules.

Keep in mind, however, that Ranked policies also apply to this playlist, and any sanctions you incur in it will also apply to the Ranked playlist.



*The distribution above may vary depending on the Season.

Ranked is the competitive multiplayer playlist, which becomes available to players upon reaching level 50. Next to a smaller map pool and bomb being the only game mode available, this playlist features a ban phase, allowing both teams to choose and ban an Attacker and Defender.

Ranked features 23 skill ranks. These ranks are based on a players Matchmaking Ranking (MMR) which is derived from numerical scores generated by the TrueSkill algorithm as described at the beginning of the article. A player's skill rank is first obtained after successfully completing 10 ranked placement matches.


MMR changes are based on:

• The relative skill levels of the players/teams in the game.
  
• Whether or not the player won the match.
  
• Large skill difference between teams has a dramatic outcome based on who won the match as per the previous Hibana/Pulse example.
  
• Prematurely exiting a ranked match always counts as a loss toward skill ranks, even if their team won
  

• Abandoning a match or inactivity are all included.
  
• Connection issues do count as a loss but not as a win if their team won.
  
• When internet connection is lost then restored, the player is given an option to re-join the match instead of taking the penalty.

Your personal performance as your score or your kill/death ratio does not impact the number of points you get.

If you get 15 kills per game but lose all of them, then your ability to win a game is very low, hence you should be ranked very low too. Conversely, a player that does not land kills, but still wins often, should be ranked quite high (maybe they make excellent callouts, which is an important factor in a team’s ability to win). The idea is that if you play well, and are an asset to your team, you will naturally win more matches in the long run. This positive influence on winning matches is what we measure.


If you both have the same skill, the update will depend on how confident our system is regarding where you are placed. Let’s say that you are both Gold IV but your friend has played a lot more games than you (they have a low uncertainty), you will gain/lose more points than they will.


In Y4S3 we’ve implemented a limit to the MMR gap between party members. There cannot be a bigger gap than 1000 MMR between the players with highest and lowest MMR in the squad in order to play Ranked. Players can check their squad members' MMR in the Side Panel Profile. For players above 4400 MMR (Diamonds), you are able to group with any player above 3400 MMR (Platinum). Players below 1200 MMR can group with players below 2200 MMR. This was partially done to reduce the impact of boosting, but, of course, to also encourage a more balanced matchmaking environment.


Once a player reaches 5000 MMR, and has completed a minimum of 100 matches, they’ll enter the Champions rank. While it mostly functions like other ranks, it has something that ups the ante: individual rank numbers. The top 9999 players with the highest MMR within the Champions rank will have their standing displayed on their rank, which means that whichever players have the highest MMR in the game will be recognized as the #1 Champions.

This doesn’t mean, however, that Champions who aren’t currently in the top 9999 will be taken down to Diamond. As long as you remain above 5000 MMR and have more than 100 completed matches, you are a Champion.


At the beginning of every new Season we perform a so-called Soft MMR Reset. This means we are resetting the ranked MMR of all players between the “middle” (2500 MMR) and their rank from the previous Season, with extremes above 3500 and below 1500 clamped to those respective values. This also applies to placement matches.

Before Y4S2, we reset all players to a 2500 MMR at the beginning of the new Season. We changed this in order to improve the matchmaking experience at the beginning of a Season. This change leads to players reaching their “true skill” faster; players that should be Diamond will reach Diamond faster. We understand that some players, particularly those at the extreme high end of Diamond, would like more of a “grind” implemented for attaining the higher ranks. We have heard these concerns and are working on how to provide that type of experience for those who want it in the future.


At the end of every season, players receive a charm based on the highest rank they’ve managed to achieve during that season. For example, if you reached the Diamond rank but finished the Season with a Gold rank, you will receive the Diamond charm. Please note that if your MMR has been reset due to drastic MMR changes, you will not receive the seasonal ranked charm for your highest rank prior to the reset.



This feature’s goal is to help reduce the long-term impact cheaters may have on other players’ seasonal rankings.

When a cheater is sanctioned, the feature will roll back any rating gains and losses for all players from matches that the banned player took part in for that season. This cancels all games that the Cheater played for all parties.

Please note that you cannot go beyond your maximum MMR for the current season as a result of a roll back.

More information on the MMR Rollback feature can be found in this article.


Part of the reason we are doing this is also to push back against boosting services or players that use cheats to boost accounts or exploit the integrity of our ranked system in other ways. After those cheaters are banned the boosted accounts would receive drastic MMR changes through the MMR Rollback, which is a sign of massive irregularity and a red flag in our system. This is why we started resetting MMR for players with drastic MMR changes since Y4S3.3.

This means that instead of undergoing a significant change in MMR, players will have to redo their placement matches to get back appropriately on the ladder. Players who have their MMR reset will also not receive the seasonal ranked charm for their highest rank prior to the reset.


The current Roll Back feature will roll back all games (victories and defeats) the banned cheater participated in. We also explored a few other options, but based on the results of the data, rolling back all games will help to maintain a stable MMR environment, while still reducing the impact of cheaters on games.


Due to our process of detecting cheaters, and then the subsequent banning process, there is no way for us to identify which specific matches a person cheated in accurately (such as when players toggle their cheats on/off prior to being caught). With this in mind, we also explored the possibility for limited MMR resets based on recency, and tested MMR resets for the last 7 days vs the entire Season.

However, the results were too random, and there was no way to determine if we had actually reduced the entire footprint of their negative behavior. So in order to confidently ensure that we maximize our removal of the impact of a cheater, we are resetting the MMR from matches that player participated in from the entire Season.


We have noticed that the system itself induced quite a lot of frustration for our most dedicated players.

Therefore, we have decided to tweak the system at some point during Y5S3 and to expand the highest seasonal MMR value up to a fixed number of points. This means that you should still receive meaningful adjustments even if you are at the highest MMR value of your Season. This should lead to a significant reduction of neutral MMR adjustments (receiving 0 points).

If we define the additional fixed number of points you can earn above your maximum MMR value to 10 (disclaimer: it’s not). And if 3000 is your current and highest MMR ranking this season, any positive adjustment will still increase your MMR value beyond 3000 and up to a maximum 3010 MMR points.

We will monitor closely the impact of this change on the MMR economy and adjust the fixed number of MMR points (10 in the example above) based on your feedback and on our data.

An update will be shared as soon as we have a more definitive date to announce.


We want to let you know that we have heard some frustrations around the current MMR Rollback feature. We understand that losing MMR due to winning against cheaters or not gaining more MMR than your seasonal peak can lead to some frustrations for players. We are currently planning to revisit the MMR Rollback feature to explore if we can reduce these frustrations for our players in the future while still effectively cancelling out any effect cheaters have on matches.

Furthermore, the Matchmaking Ranking system as a whole is quite a complex system. We know that it can cause frustration amongst our players, when they feel like the matches are unbalanced and not fair for them. It is difficult to find the sweet spot between short queue times and balanced matches on all playlists and we always work on improving our system and its functionalities to give you all the best possible matchmaking experience.

Your feedback is – and always has been very important to us. Therefore, we want to encourage you once more to share your feedback on the Matchmaking Rating system and the MMR Rollback feature, and what kind of improvements you’d like to see.

We are looking forward to reading your thoughts on Twitter, Reddit and on our official forums.

Changelog 1.0.0

New Version of Nova-Life:



Redesign :
- Graphics
- Map Riverside (Based on Amboise in France)
- Account creation
- Character creation
- Driving school
- Car rent
- Vehicle purchase
- Administrative system
- Life system
- Death system
- Vehicle system
- Voice chat system
- Written chat system
- Beacons and police sirens
- In-game menu
- Radar

Add :
- ATM system
- Handcuff system
- System of Fines
- System to control papers
- System to control license plates
- Fuel system
- Chair / bench system
- Lobby system
- Telephone system
- Pay system
- Blood effect on damage
- Wiper
- PParticles upon impact on vehicles
- White screen when impact is too strong
- Mobile Home rental
- Key to hide the ui (F10)
- The chat is deactivated after 15 seconds of inactivity
- Voice chat icon
- Game credits



* Jobs :
- Garbage collector
- Street cleaner
- Policeman
- Lumberjack

* Vehicles :
- Garbage truck
- Sweeper
- CitroN C4

Weekly Maintenance will be underway shortly. We will notify players once maintenance has concluded.

Hello! Welcome to Project Heartbeat 0.5.0, this update introduces many under the hood changes yet again, but also some new features, let's get right into it.







Getaway is now available, this song produced by SuganoMusic, written and sang by the great Anthony McBazooka was intended to ship early on in the game's life, however some things happened and we couldn't ship it on time.

The artwork was made by Emmilly (sadnesswaifu) and finished by me (I only did the shading on the car and drew the visible wheel, she did everything else).

This chart has been beautifully crafted by twoncity.





Discord rich presence is now available on Windows and Linux, this will show what game you are playing (or editing).

For the tech-people: This is my first shipped module using the Rust programming language, it's a technology I really like a lot so expect to see more rust-based code in the future.

The source code for the rust module is available here: https://github.com/EIRTeam/project_heartbeat_discord




You can now tweet your score right from the post-game screen through the new shiny Tweet button.




You can now disable music from being played in the main menu through a new option.


VSync can now be enabled in the options, keep in mind this is likely to introduce more input lag, but might be necessary for some people.




You can now convert between note button types (so for example turn an up note into a right note) through a new submenu in the right click menu.


One of the new things added to 0.5.0 is our first foray into the world of modding, a new GitHub repository has been created with examples and documentation on how to do this.

Icon pack creation documentation




You can now change the video url in PPD songs through a button in the pre-game screen.




You can now see your maximum score directly on the song list.




The number of times you've played a song is now shown in the pre-game screen, this will be further expanded with more stats in the future.




To make the game perform well on very modest systems, the game now prepares all notes on startup and loads them even before they are neded, this comes at a loading time penalty but can greatly increase FPS on some systems.

If your computer is capable enough and you want faster loading times you can disable this in options under "Game -> Load all notes when song starts"

This option is disabled in the editor.




The way slide chains are drawn and handled has been rewritten, this new system should be much more reliable and also allows you to pause mid-chain in the editor.


Sound effects are now pooled instead of being loaded on demand, this should prevent stuttering on some systems.


Some users noted that it was still possible to exploit holds through some complicated controller trickery, this has been fixed, please experiment with the new hold system, it should feel closer to what you are used to.


Some PPD charts failed to load double hearts properly do to an edge case in how they were handled, this has now been fixed.


Some aspects of multiplayer have been reworked, it should now perform a bit better and songs with non-ASCII (Japanese, Russian, Chinese etc...) characters will now load properly.




In tools there's now an option to open the user directory for convenience.


A lot of the editor has been rewritten, this should lead to much better performance and less bugs (particularly the legendary slide chain "sirens").

Amongst the changes included is note culling, which causes notes in the timeline to be ignored if they are not visible, the algorithm that does this has been carefully made to extract as much performance possible.


Some Windows users using NVIDIA Optimus reported frame pacing issues, this is due to a bug presented in some optimus cards and only affects OpenGL.

In order to fix this I have ported the engine to ANGLE, ANGLE is a compatibility layer that translates the game's graphics calls from OpenGL to DirectX 11 and Vulkan.

This build is completely experimental and unsupported, the DirectX 11 backend will be used in an unannounced port to a new platform, so if you could test it that would be great.

To test the ANGLE versions go to your game's directory on Steam (you can access it by right clicking PH on the library -> Properties -> Local files -> Browse local files) and click on the .bat file that matches your desired version:

- Use run_vulkan.bat to run the vulkan version.
- Use run_dx11.bat to run the DirectX 11 version.

There are two additional aspects you should know about these versions:

- Obviously this is not a native port to DX11 and Vulkan, an official Vulkan port is planned for next year, this means that performance will probably not be as good (or good at all depending on the system) which is why this build is provided without support.
- The visualizer might be slow on both, so I'd recommend disabling it.
- The Vulkan version uses the same feature level as the GLES2 version of the ordinary game, this is because ANGLE doesn't implement OpenGL ES 3.2 yet.
- I recommend optimus users with frame pacing issues to use Vulkan and enable VSync


- Fix crash when using the add to favorites button on difficulties.
- Added a new failsafe for YoutubeDL installations, this should make it so that if the installation fails (or is stopped halfway) the game will be able to recognise this.
- The editor now ignored input properly while a song is being playtested.
- Changed the wording of the PPD importer, since we now support all PPD chart types.
- Changed the clear bar to match our new CLEAR percentage (75%)
- You can now set the SFX volume 0%



Over the last month I've taken the challenge of learning the Rust programming language, my objective is to write a new leaderboard system so that non-official songs get leaderboards too.

This will also allow leaderboard entries with modifiers (and to filter them too).


A new Frequently Asked Questions article has been published, let me know if there's anything you'd like to have added.


The plans for practice mode involve reusing code from the editor, which is why I've decided to push it back yet again to see if the new editor architecture changes are stable.


For a long time I've been building versions of the game for the Switch, however these have mostly been unplayable due to various circumstances.

It's now playable, however stuff such as graphics fail to load, video decoding doesn't work (yet) and user songs also are not loadable, but I think it will be viable to release a port for homebrew switches in the future.

Greetings & Salutations, Creators!


PHEW. We are still in awe from all of your submissions for the 1 Year Desktop Challenge.... You all really amazed us with your selection of hidden gems! You may be seeing them on our loading screens very soon...

This is some of what we are talking about.




By Antisocial


By PurpleHair



By eviltwinirbot



By Charlie229



By will.a.b.94


By Arbetaren07


By DeathKunKatt

Need more inspiration? You can check out the rest of the incredible entries by searching #1Year in our Screenshots or artwork tabs! Maybe leave the creator a nice comment?

Until next time, happy building!

—The Playful Team

Hey Everyone,

We would like to apologize for several daily updates over the past few days. With 3Gbs download for each update, this has been overwhelming to players with limited internet connections.

Now that we are finally done with all the critical fixes, we can switch to weekly updates, and today`s update fixes the last of game breaking issues.

We will continue with the massive 37th update within a week, this update will include major changes to the planet graphics, style, and huge leap forward in performance. Sorry for a bit of a delay with this update - but it needs some extra polish, and well - we do need to give our playerbase a break from large daily downloads.

Meanwhile, lets look at the fixes in today`s Update 36:

• Default view in-game in all instances switched to TPS, can still access FPS view by pressing T key
  
• Fixed major bug where logging out while on a vehicle would cause you to loose the vehicle
  
• Fixed bug with logging out on a vehicle causing you to be at different location
  
• Fixed issue with AI units not showing when on a vehicle on SQL Hosted server
  
• A lot of improvements to AI units showing while riding a fast-moving vehicle
  
• Draw-distance visual improvement (need to reset Visual Options for this to take effect)
  
• Fixed issues with game world looking extremely bad on all but Very High graphical settings
  
• Improved the look of Nav Point - smaller and more stylized
  
• Improved Russian Translation of the game
  
• Fixed Mechs not doing any damage to the player
  
• Fixed a dupe with building components sometimes being added twice to inventory
  
• Fixed being unable to move on space stations
  
• Fixed extremely weird gravity while on NOX moon
  
• Various improvements to the distance fog on the planet
  
• Fixed the strong white fog being there when approaching planet surface all the time
  
• Fixed bug with refuelling vehicle not remembering how much fuel was added on relog

Hi all. As with previous posts, I’ll start by recapping a few things going on with the continued support for the first Kenshi. For this blog’s special section, we’re catching up with some of the team at Lo-fi to find out what’s keeping them sane in isolation before finally getting to development news on Kenshi 2.

In the past month we’ve once again been making use of the experimental branch, most notably around an issue users reported with saved games following the latest windows update. Many players had stated they were unable to save, load, or experienced crashing when they tried. In Kenshi’s latest v1.0.50 update saves default to the Windows user directory, fixing any potential issues linked to system permissions. Please keep in mind that if you wish to edit a saved game the new location to check is
C:\Users\<YourUsername>\AppData\Local\kenshi\save.

Hinted above, after consulting with the forum mods we’ve made some overdue changes to bug reporting flow – namely better collating more widely popular bugs, cleaning up a number of older topics, and providing a more visible response to new ones. This will likely mean pushing for a stricter adherence to the bug reporting format as I work to ensure they can be reproduced and turn them into meaningful notes to the programming team to progress. The end goal here is to keep fixing issues for in Kenshi 1 in a more transparent way, giving users more feedback on if it’s feasibly possible to fix and where we’re at with their reports. For a more worded explanation of the changes check out the pinned topic here.

In past blog posts we’ve mentioned hiring a number of new team members to expand the studio for Kenshi 2. Over the next few updates, since we’re focussed on an important Kenshi 2 subproject (details further down) I’m taking the opportunity to catch up with different team members and share a little bit of who they are, what they’re up to outside of the studio, and how they’re doing working from home.

I’m Guy, a concept designer with a background in graphic design, illustration and advertising. I joined the team in November 2019 and have been working on concepts for the architecture, furniture, and characters that inhabit the world of Kenshi 2.

For my home setup I recently purchased a Wacom Cintiq Pro 24, replacing my Wacom Intous 3. After spending 12 years with the Intuos 3 (which is still going strong) it’s a big upgrade. I initially thought it was going to take a lot of time to get used to the switch but I’m already really enjoying it and using it every day. The Cintiq is connected to my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) which works pretty well running things like Photoshop.

I am quite used to working at home and have got into a good routine over the years. I do miss working in the office though, it’s much easier to talk through different areas of the project with everyone in the same room, much less typing!

I have been spending the lockdown back in my hometown near East Yorkshire by the coast. Running and walking are the main things keeping me going. I’m also doing some yoga in the mornings, I’m rubbish at it but enjoying it anyway.

In my free time I’ve been working on several of my own illustrations, such as the album covers for three different electronic artists that I finished recently.



Other freelance projects I’ve worked on that people might recognise include art for mud-and-lasers RPG ‘Lancer’ and a cover for the gritty future comic ‘The Hand Unseen’. Right now, I’m working on some posters based on my favourite Studio Ghibli films which follow on from other personal projects like last year’s Akira poster.

I’m Victor, or Mr4Goosey. I’ve been doing indie-dev on my own projects for over half a decade, and I’ve spent part of that doing it for a living. I got fed up of running my own business and decided to look for a full-time job in the industry, leading me to Lo-Fi. I wanted to combine my love for making pretty things with interests in logic and programming, which is why I’m now a technical artist.

I’m running a custom PC with a Ryzen 7 2700X and a GTX1080. For peripherals, I’ve got a Decus mouse and a Razer Blackwidow (Green switches) both with lovely wrist-rests. Finally, for screens I’m running a 34” LG Ultra-wide which I’m looking to replace with something less bulky and a 27” AOC monitor on the side.

Thanks to past projects I’m used to working from home, so it’s really not that special to me, ironically being in an office will take more getting used to. It’s nice to be in my own place and have access to my stuff, but when everything happens in the same room it’s easy to lose sight of the boundaries between work and life. It can also be hard to get to know the team properly when we’ve not properly met. All in all, I’m looking forward to being in-office; working from home feels less efficient and enjoyable than being together with people, plus it gets lonely and boring.

I’ve started another gamedev project in my spare time, though I’ve been trying to get away from my computer too. Out of my new interests the main one that helps is blacksmithing. Unfortunately, I don’t have a forge yet – that’ll probably have to wait until I’ve moved to the UK, but as I’m mostly focussed on armouring, I can do quite a lot anyway. It’s a steep learning curve, but it’s really cool to produce something like a piece of armour out of nothing.



I’m also just getting into electronics and robotics. It’s something I’ve been putting off for as long as I’ve been doing gamedev, but I’m hoping to get started on it properly now. First steps are reading up on basic electronics (I wouldn’t be able to give you a definition of a “servo”), because that’s the main part I’m lacking. I’m hoping I can get the hang of that then get properly stuck in!

Lastly, I’ve been doing more gamedev. I’ve recently started playing around with Phyronnaz’s Voxel Plugin for UE4, and I’m currently trying to make a small, relaxing game in which you build a low-poly eco dome with cute animals in it. Not sure exactly where it’ll be going, but I’m hoping to release it on Steam for a few bucks at some point in a similar vein to Islanders.

I’m Boodals, the programmer who was hired back in November. Up until now I've been working on remaking the GUIs from Kenshi 1 in Unreal Engine, but now that we've hired Craig, I can shift my efforts onto less urgent tasks, such as code cleanliness and stability. I won’t go into too much detail, but I'd call it more of a support role, making the other programming jobs easier and faster, and discouraging code which could be unstable.

Since we started working from home, I've been using my own PC for most tasks. We do all have laptops to work on, but I don’t have the desk space to fit mine. Using my PC also allows me to test the GUIs I previously spoke about on a 4k screen to make sure everything functions correctly at higher resolutions.

Working from home is pretty great, mainly due to lie-ins and easy access to snacks (ha-ha), but it does come with its downsides. Not being able to quickly speak to other developers or show each other what we're working on makes it harder to get stuff done. We're exploring several apps and programs to minimize this, but you can't beat being in the same room.

Outside of work, the lockdown really hasn't affected me too much, as I'm one of the lucky ones who isn't bothered by being locked in. I moved house just before the lockdown started, so I've been hanging out with my new housemates and their cat, whom I pay tribute to in the form of pets every time I pass through Her domain (stairs, hallway, kitchen…)



The team have been hugely busy this month working on a ‘vertical slice’ of Kenshi 2, which I have the pleasure of sharing snippets of today.



For those unaware of the terminology, a vertical slice is a portion of near-finished quality game which then allows a studio to visualise some of what they’re up to. It’s traditionally distinct from a prototype in that the quality is much higher leaving less room for flexibility but for us we’re blurring that line a bit and using it primarily as a tangible design tool. Internally nicknamed ‘Concrete Neon’, it’s about having a space to test and iterate on some of Kenshi 2’s ideas by taking them away from a design document and experiencing how they might actually be played.



Sharing some thoughts on our first major milestone, Chris compares Concrete Neon to founding Kenshi’s Holy Nation and his hands on approach to game design: “Anyone who played the [Kenshi 1 early access] map in it's earliest incarnation will remember that only a small area around the holy nation was active, the rest was greyed-out and you couldn't go there, because it wasn't finished. This gives us a test bed to get everything working early on so we can play the game and experiment. I'm not a very formal designer, my technique is iterative because my ‘special skill’ is playing a game for a while and then going "hunger needs to be 0.8x slower and strength needs to raise 1.12x faster instead of 1.08x". It's also better that way because I can approach the design as a player rather than as a game designer. I don't like game designers.”

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This month’s blog post was intended for last so ran a little late, but we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments – with so many players following different game development projects it’s a great place to reflect. As ever you can join us on Twitter and Facebook where we still have an upcoming creator competition to announce once we’ve worked out the prizes... If you’d like a none-Steam way to keep up with the studio, blogs are available on our website and via our mailing list.

Cheers,