Update 1.0.27 is out now! After some problems with the finished Japanese translation last month, we now have a fix. Both the main stable branch and experimental branch have been updated.

It’s taken longer than expected but we thank you for being so patient with us. We’ll be quality checking some more over the next few weeks but the vast bulk of it should be fixed now.

1.0.27

• Japanese language update

Translations:

• Added Chinese language support – After working alongside external partners in China we’ve added Simplified Chinese as an additional language option, feedback for this would be appreciated.
• Japanese language support progress – Following the previous translation rollback we are currently reviewing the Japanese translation with the help of our Japanese community manager Meg and expect to finish with an additional update.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed some additional stability issues
• Fix for some situations where a carried person would never get put down if they died
• Fixed dropping items onto portraits when view is scrolled

Miscellaneous:

• Passive characters wont fire turrets unless attacked

This patch includes a number of changes which have passed the previous experimental branch version and additional fixes directly to the live branch.

Translations:

• French translation updated to correct some errors
• Chinese translation updated to correct some errors
• Changed Chinese Language font – Following community feedback we have reviewed the Chinese language font with our translation partners and changed the font to one which is more legible.

Bug Fixes:

• Random crash fix
• Fixed dismantle button missing from turret info data panel if upgradeable
• Fixed crash in Escape Cannibal Cage tutorial
• Fixed clothing being chosen for characters before race limiter is set up
• Fixed boots spawning on characters with no legs
• Fixed boot slot not being disabled for characters spawned with no legs
• Fixed crash when making savegame names ending in ‘…’
• Fixed getting stealth XP when in a cage

Steam Community Forums:

• We’re currently working to update the stickied posts and consolidate some of the information into a more readable format. These updated stickies will be translated into other languages where possible.
• Added Chinese language sub-forum on the Steam Community Forum – Our Chinese translation partners will be assisting us with user feedback here
• Added Japanese language sub-forum on the Steam Community Forum – Our Japanese community manager will be assisting with user feedback here
• Added Russian language sub-forum on the Steam Community Forum

VAShumpmaker:
Did you make the Beak Things? DID YOU MAKE THE F****** BEAK THINGS YOU A******!?

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Chris:
Just for that, double beak things in Kenshi 2

VAShumpmaker:
Ok ok. But is it twice as many beak things or double-beak things?

Because I’m OK with it either way, but I fear for Beep…

Chris:
Twice as many double-beak things

FSNorthStar:
What made you choose the ogre engine when you started making the game?

---

Chris:
It is the year 2000. UE4 and Unity don’t exist yet. Quake III is the best engine around, and probably costs 1 million dollars to use. It’s a choice between Torque3D and Ogre. I went with some other engine that began with “C” I think. It died. I switched to Ogre: Open source, raw C++ and as future-proof as you can get. That we managed to stretch it to 2018 is proof of that, even if it doesn’t run that good no more.

alfredo0634:
Is Kenshi 2 supposed to be way before the 1st? What can we expect to see? As in world state, cars, giant robots, bigger cities, etc

---

Chris:
It’s something like 1000 years before the first game. The content is secret.

Aglorius3:
I saw that Kenshi may get moved to the newer engine. Is that true and is there an ETA? Will the new game have landscape and object LOD?

---

Chris:
We are working on a new (secret) engine for Kenshi 2, and hoping to be able to port Kenshi 1 as well. The Kenshi 1 port is a lot of extra work though.

nectos:
Will you allow modding to go further than Forgotten Construction Set and let us do insane mods like Skyrim, Fallout 4?

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Chris:
It depends on the engine moddability. Because most of the game code is in C++ it can’t be modded, but that’s the only way we can get a seamless world with 800 characters running around at a time.

RoasteeMcToastie:
My main concern was feeling like I hadn’t done enough in the game before buying Kenshi 2, say like a game where you can import/export characters, would this be possible? I know there’s a lot that would need to be removed, but could you port characters in?

---

Chris:
I’ll probably add an import option, but it would reset all your stats and gear

And you’d loose your robot limbs too. Hee hee

n7Angel:
Kenshi is an awesome game, but after a while there’s a breaking point where base defence gets a bit monotonous, you only get patrols of infantrymen trying to bring down a gate covered by a lot of turrets. Are there plans for introducing different types of defences like traps or siege weapons to spice up that aspect?

---

Chris:
It’s a plan, but as usual, not guaranteed.

But it would be good to have something tactically forcing you to leave the base.

ProjectHamster:
Were you expecting the game to spawn such a huge modding community?

Also can we expect more hairstyles/faces for character creation in Kenshi 2? Or possibly more races?

---

Chris:
Yes. It will look a lot better, we have a new character artist who worked before for Ubisoft. We also have the famed concept artist Callum Alexander Watt, who has worked on Star Wars.

SpookySkeleton53:
Was it surprising to you how popular the game got?

---

Chris:
I don’t know. I expected it really, because I knew the game would be great, so failure would be technically impossible. But I think the recent popularity explosion since release and a couple big YouTubers was a bit surprising.

Nat:
I kind of had faith that it would do well at release actually. Dealing with the PR and marketing at the time, I admit I was scared of exiting our safe little early access cocoon and how it would be accepted in the wider world. Part of me did also worry that people might be bored hearing about it after being in development so long but…I tried to turn the long development time into a positive when talking to media. I mean, it took a hell of a lot of love and determination, and 12 years development shows that.

HaTsUnE_NeKo:
As we know from some others this question does get asked a few times. Is Kenshi a moon, or a planet?

---

Chris:
Well, as it’s you…

It’s a tidal-locked moon

 

tfwnoshekfu:
Do you have plans to expand the Forgotten Construction Set’s options beyond the scope of what you need for implementation in either Kenshi 2 or even 1? You’ve made some additions and think you asked what more could be added on steam but it still lacks little things that modders have wanted for a long time – TAKING items away during dialogue, arbitrary world states to trigger through dialogue alone, spawning NPCs on the spot, and so on. It would help a lot to even expand existing functions to other items – like full skill bonuses for all types of equipment, some conditional checks, even those animation overrides could be added to equipment or triggered through dialogue or attached to an AI package.

And thank you for the amazing game.

---

Chris:
We will add a few things. I just pasted your post into my notes text file for future reference.

Lou-butavoiceactor:
1. Our assumption of this game currently is that it will be like the last days before the collapse of the (Roman) empire, as opposed to a century or millennia later in its fallout. How will the advanced technology of the past affect weapons and combat in the new Kenshi? More ranged combat focus? Power armour? Whatever This thing is?

2. The main factions in Kenshi 1 are famed for their lack of holding the moral high ground. You intended for players to be the Robin Hoods, but a highly requested feature was for players to be more like Fallout New Vegas’ Caesar’s Legion and do the same things. Will players have more control over whether to be lawful evil?

3. Player cities? Please?

---

Chris:
1. Ranged weapons will likely be more dominant than in Kenshi 1, technology level is generally a little higher

2. I’ll think about it

3. I’d prefer to spend the time focusing on other features, being a Mayor is a whole rabbit hole of features and bugs to go down.

Nat:
1. I don’t like shoehorning the player into one role, so it’s definitely something I’ll try and be more mindful off. Though, I’d love to hear more opinions and feedback on the evils you’d like to commit!

Rustledstardust:
Can I ask if you have considered branching off the current world Kenshi is set on perhaps after Kenshi 2 or will you stick with the same world? Was Kenshi 2 being set 1000 years in the past your first choice or did you consider other possibilities too?

---

Chris:
Thanks! I have a whole bunch of games planned, it’s a big timeline to work with…

Yogroxx:
Have you seen Sseth’s video about Kenshi? Cause I bought the game thanks to him and I’d really like to know what you thought about it

---

Chris:
I loved it, watched it twice

Thatonebolt:
First, thank you so much for bringing Kenshi into this world.

To both Chris and Nat: Is there an area or bit of lore that you are exceptionally proud of?

---

Chris:
I’m proud of the Skeletons. I also like all the places that torment the player, especially the Fog Islands

Nat:
Off the top of my head, I’ll always love the Shek Kingdom and the Hivers. But also, surprisingly for me, maybe the skin bandits. When I first saw the skin suit models I was like damn I have no idea how to make this work. But actually I’m quite proud of how creepy they turned out. I also, when I was still quite new to writing Kenshi, got a bit carried away and wrote way too much ‘shoo from shop’ reactions that last really long and have loads of variations. But most players probably will never even see it.

Frightlever:
Kenshi was inspired by stories of travelling ronin, according to Wikipedia. Can you give us a few specific examples of books and stories that acted as an inspiration?

---

Chris:
7 Samurai, kung-fu films, Mad-max.

I love the Malazan books, the sheer depth of history and world-building is astounding.

Dark-souls for the way it embeds history, lore and a sense of wonder into the world using barely any words.

lnjury:
Tried reading Malazan two times. This time I quit in book 9. There are some great books in there, but the casts changes so much it’s hard to come to like, know or even remember the who the hell everyone is in the later books.
With the very limited reading time I have in my life now, Malazan just isn’t worth it.

Chris:
Yeah, I started 15 years ago…

Frightlever:
Will Kenshi 2 have a job manager, akin to Dwarf Therapist or the one built into Rimworld? It’d be nice to mass toggle e.g. “Jobs” on and off. Similarly it’d be nice to assign “roles” to party members with pre-defined weapon/armour (like Dwarf Fortress uniforms) and even minimum food and medical kit levels that they could pickup from storage when free to do so. Getting your guys ready for an expedition only for them to dump their food and med-kits is annoying. (I know you can toggle ditch – I want GRANULAR control.)

Also, I love this game so much.

---

Chris:
Can’t say for sure at this point, but I won’t rule out taking a look at possible improvements

TrueChaoSxTcS:
Will there be a stronger focus on making sure the world works on a logistical level? i.e. all factions having a visible and discoverable chain of supplies, showing how they feed their people, supply their armies, and so on (within a realistic frame, similar to how we as players have to grow food, and mine and process ore)

Chris:
Probably not, I see the benefits but it’s an enormous amount of work for a relatively small pay-off. Possibly could manage some sort of hybrid semi-dynamic system

tfwnoshekfu:
I think a lot of the complexity can be removed if you abstract it from a top-down approach, you don’t have to simulate every little thing but have a simplified system that trickles down the details to the loaded area and be affected by it in broad strokes, almost like how world states function.

Chris:
Yeah that’s true, it’s the sort of thing I meant, not a bad idea actually the more I think about it

juicelee777:
Dude, I’ve followed this game since like 2012. I’m so happy for all your success. I guess I need to ask a question. Here so forgive me if it’s already been asked but with Kenshi how long do you plan to support it with updates when the second comes out? Also has anyone major approached you about bolstering your resources in exchange for more control over your IP?

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Chris:
If Kenshi 1 gets the new engine too, then it will keep getting support fixes, as they will be sharing the same code base.

Lots of random dudes have tried to get in on my business before now. Even back in the early days when I was broke, but I always turned all of them down. It’s my game, my IP.

Though I would consider selling movie rights or something like that…

praisedahsun:
Hey bud! Big fan of Kenshi, I bought it and played it religiously for around a year back when it launched in preview on steam.

However I now move around a lot for work and cant afford to lug a big gaming pc or anything like that around but I do lug a Xbox around, any chance for Kenshi to come out on consoles? Or any plans for the second to release on consoles?

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Chris:
The main problem is getting it to work on controllers. While I do love controllers, I just can’t come up with a viable control system for them without changing the game significantly.

Frightlever:
Sorry to interrupt, but… I love Kenshi but can you imagine it going through Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo’s quality control?

Chris:
I agree, it would never make it

shotgunbill:
Where do Hivers come from?

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Chris:
From the Queen’s dispenser unit

NinjaGregory:
Will there be a terrain/height map editor for custom maps and/or map changes?

---

Chris:
Unsure at this point

papaya:
Are there any things that you wanted to implement in K1 that you didn’t have time for/the ability to implement that you are now carrying forward into K2?

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Chris:
That’s what making Kenshi 2 is all about

Segef:
With the talk of Kenshi 2, will it be the exact same land mass but before the empire fall or will there be more areas to explore?

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Chris:
It’s the same land mass, but changed, and also hopefully expanded by 50%

Segef:
I’m taking it as you are referring to lower ocean levels?

And there is this interesting mod i saw once about implementing a cave system. Have you thought about using a negative floor system like the positive floor system for buildings?

Chris:
Going under the terrain has a lot of technical issues, mainly with the camera. You’ll see what I mean if you go in any of the Dome buildings in the Ashlands.

Segef:
Yep i see your point with the Dome buildings.

 

johncawks:
What was the inspiration for Beep?

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Chris:
It started just as an idea for an NPC that would be really easy to write, because most of his dialogue events could just be “beep”. Then for some reason he just started to come to life in my head and I just kept coming up with more ideas.

I wrote most of his stuff in one day, quietly chuckling to myself the whole time.

RedderBarron
First off. I dig Kenshi, I love it to bits. It’s actually quickly becoming my latest comfort game. It’s honestly one of the best games I’ve played in a damn long time.

Anyway, it seems the issue has problems with loading new areas (such as characters going into no-clip as a new area is loading) is there any work being done to rectify this problem? And will it persist into Kenshi 2?

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Chris
The new engine will change things up. Past problems will be irrelevant, we will have new different problems instead.

drruler
This is the most painfully real developer response ever. Thanks for the chuckle.

Chris
I am experienced. Everything starts off as “this new system will fix all our problems”

AquaIsNOTUseless:
Big fan of Kenshi, been playing since alpha.

How much of the world and lore was planed since the alpha release? Was it all planed, including the different biomes, or was it originally a big desert?

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Chris:
It all evolved over the course of development. This time we are taking a longer view, planning ahead to future games, to the point that we are writing and concepting the original civilization before the apocalypse

Wetnmm:
Will Kenshi 2 reveal more details about the Hive’s origin? This is one of the things which I think we know least about regarding lore, so I’d love to know.

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Chris:
There will be more revealed about the lore and past history, including the hives

saltshaker42:
Would you ever consider making a comic based on Kenshi to expand the lore and give us a feel for how the world interacts with itself?

---

Chris:
I’d love to, but don’t really feel like I have time

 

SethOfGrace:
Was Beep the 1% of the writing that Nat didn’t do?

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Nat:
Basically, yeah. I’m not sore about it at all.

Chris:
I also wrote the crab tournament, but that didn’t seem to take off.

salthesalute:
1. Is there any consideration to add more survival aspects to Kenshi 2- specifically along the lines of heat and water? It seemed semi unrealistic that we can wander through the scorching desert surviving off of bone dry sandwiches 🙂

2. Secondly, will the stage of Kenshi 2 being set 1000 years before the current game take away from the derelict and ruined aesthetic of the game that we all love?

3. I’m sure you get this a lot, but will the next version of the engine/Kenshi 2 allow for more extensive modding? Modding will turn these games truly immortal in my opinion, think TES and Fallout.

4. One more thing; do both of you play Kenshi at all in your free time? If so, what play style/race is your favourite?

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Chris:
1. I tried to make the hunger system as un-obtrusive as possible. When you have a lot of characters you have to avoid micro-management. That’s why they eat automatically, and infrequently (but at great cost), to allow you to forget about it as much as possible. Adding more aspects means more micro-management. I could add water, but how would it be different to the hunger? (The idea is that water is abstracted within the hunger system). I could add heat/cold, but do you really want to carry around spare clothes and have to dress 30 characters every time the weather changes?

2. If anything, it will increase

3. Unknown at this point

4. Yes, I have played Kenshi quite a bit. I like playing with smaller squads and a mix of races. I like Hives because they are like playing Hard-mode. The only downside is that I know where everything is, so I can’t explore or be surprised by things.

Nat:
I actually don’t play Kenshi at all outside of work. I get too exhausted from thinking of Kenshi stuff all day and need to reset my brain. I’ve gotten pretty sucked into it during testing a lot though, I mainly like getting wrapped up in escaping cannibal camps. It can go a bit off tangent during testing.

CamelSpyder:
Who was the Whistler? Will she make an appearance in Kenshi 2 or is she scrapped forever?

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Chris:
The whistler model was included by accident and I never noticed, it’s not canon

swishos:
Will we see more options with dialogue regarding the Forgotten Construction Set features? Such as giving NPC’s the ability to take items from the player through dialogue, it would open up a lot more options when it came to making quests for mods. ^^ also love the game

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Nat:
I answered this to someone else as well, but I have a few requests I’m hoping will be possible for the programmers to add to the Forgotten Construction Set. Hopefully it will be a little more flexible.

 

Greggerino_:
How many new gameplay mechanics are you planning on adding into Kenshi 2?

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Chris:
There will be one big huge feature that will change things up a lot. Not sure when to announce it. Not sure why I’m not announcing it yet either.

Tabisama:
IMO The best and the worst thing about Kenshi is that you can steal without restrictions because it’s so damn fun but kinda spoils the game. Will you do something about it in Kenshi2 or leave it as is?

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Chris:
Stealing in games unbalance the gameplay by nature, that’s what makes it so fun. It’s fun because you feel like you are cheating and playing the game the wrong way, it’s fun because you sometimes get caught, and sometimes strike it rich.

Artificial restrictions won’t work, it would have to be balanced more by difficulty and repercussions. But then that can be bypassed by save-scumming. One technique I used to balance this was permanent item tagging, like the STOLEN (so you can’t sell so easily) and UNIFORM (so factions can attack you) statuses. Not sure what else I could do here, other than adding Iron man mode to prevent save-scumming.

Strangieu:
Will Kenshi 2 be more advanced?

Kenshi’s all fine and all, but the world isn’t “alive” so to speak. There’s no dynamic economy, no global politics no dynamic population, just a bunch of npc’s in their sand castles. Plus what the player can actually do, is very limited. Your faction doesn’t matter, you can’t set up a thriving city, own a TRUE faction of your own, take over other cities, open trade routes. So again, will Kenshi 2 expand on all or at least some of that, or will it be rather similar to the old one?

---

Chris:
The more dynamic a game gets, the more unstable it becomes. The game world is already pretty unstable, like when hordes of spiders wipe out towns. Dynamic economies are a nightmare to balance.

Imagine playing for a few in-game weeks and finding out that United Cities now own every town. Cool at first, then exploration becomes boring, maybe you never got a chance to visit any of the other factions.

Mount & Blade for example apparently had an artificial limit in place to stop any faction from being defeated or taking over the world, if one started winning/losing too much then the tide of the war would change.

It’s also a matter of the game focus. I never intended the game to be a city manager, it’s supposed to be about your squad and their adventures, having a safe fortress to retreat to but not being a mayor.

That said, I DO want to take a look at making faction warfare more dynamic in the next game.

lagonborn:
As far as the town management obsession a lot of people come into Kenshi with, it seems to be in vogue. The player base of Kenshi seems to overlap a lot with those of Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, and even Factorio, and those games’ main focus is on base building, so it’s not really surprising a lot of people see “yet another town manager” while getting into it.

That said, Kenshi is a superb wandering squad RPG as it is, despite it’s faults and occasional instability, and maybe the best anarcho-communist simulator ever made (I really dig that vibe). From that perspective, it seems to me like bases were intended to be just that, not towns or trade hubs, but a refuelling station and a way to go “off the grid” for your group. If either of you see this, would you say that’s accurate?

Chris:
You nailed it

 

Intrexa:
I had a very close friend named Chris Hunt growing up, and we did casual game dev together growing up. We grew apart during college, and I lost contact. Are you him?

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Chris:
No, I couldn’t figure out how to make games until I was about 18. I could program, but how the hell to display graphics? Nothing would tell me.

zelleandsuch:
Are you aware that your name is how my mother pronounces “croissant”?

---

Chris:
I am now, thank you

 

spacefiddle:
What are the plans regarding modding for the sequel, in general? I am especially interested in getting at sounds.

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Chris:
The audio system uses Wwise, which unfortunately packs everything up so they can’t be modded. It might be possible to add overrides in the new engine

Agent_53:
Will there be new continents with their own lore/factions to explore or will it be the same continent as in the first Kenshi?

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Chris:
Both

Tooneyman:
Will you be updating the engine to the latest 64bit version of ogre and will you be updating Kenshi 1 to it as well?

---

Chris:
The game has been 64-bit for years. All that does is un-cap the RAM limit of 4gb

GeeZeR_FroG:
Hi Chris, what is your favourite flavour of milk shake?

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Chris:
Chocolate, the one true flavour

abito5:
First, I wanted to thank you for creating such an amazing game that kept me and my best friend busy over our holidays. My friend and I argue about whether it’s ethical to save-scum in a game like this. I argue that we should only reload if you wanted to test something out but he reloads almost any time something bad happens. What is your opinion on this? Thanks again for the great game and I can’t wait for Kenshi 2.

---

Chris:
You should play it as self-enforced iron Man, otherwise you miss out on a lot of the experience. Unless beep dies of course.

tutufuzi1:
Hi Chris and Nat, thanks for doing the AMA. my questions regarding Kenshi 2:

Will there be more meaningful interactions with the world other than just fighting?

Will there be a deeper diplomacy system?

What about a (dynamic) economy?

---

Nat:
Meaningful interactions: I’m not sure yet, both me and Chris prefer a more passive style of storytelling (i.e. I love dialogue barks) and it’s not really intended as a dialogue heavy game. Also, since ultimately it’s a sandbox, we can’t really control how characters spawn. For example, in a more linear game, you could approach, say, an injured guy who’d just been attacked by bandits. But because Kenshi’s more procedural, there’s no way of making unique events like that, because spawns in Kenshi should be living their lives and carrying on regardless of the player. Not waiting around injured for the player to talk to them. I’m still seeing what I can do to improve on it my side though, I may find a way yet.

 

music2177:
How much progress did you make in the first 6 years? Aside from the end where you were able to secure funding to build a team, what was a high and a low of your time working solo?

---

Chris:
It was a fun game by then: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cXcuZV77UJY

Saucy_Salmon:
What drove you to make the game so challenging? Not that I’m complaining, I love CBT, but I was curious.

---

Chris:
Number 1 rule of storytelling. Character wants something, character faces obstacles and challenges preventing him from attaining it. The job of the storyteller is to torment and obstruct the character. More torment = More story. Solution: maximum torment

FearTheViking:
Will the visual design aesthetic of Kenshi 2 differ in any significant way, especially in regard to the look of the world?

Kenshi is very good at relaying the feeling of traversing a vast desolate wasteland, so I’m wondering if the world in Kenshi 2 will feel more “civilized”, considering that it’s 1000 years in the past, presumably before the collapse of the more advanced civilizations.

---

Chris:
It will be similar in aesthetic, but higher quality

scalpingsnake:
1. What is your priority with the next Kenshi game; what is the one thing you really want to include in the game?
2. I, and I am sure many others too, are full of ideas for Kenshi, where is the best place for us to relay our ideas to you?

---

Chris:
1. The big feature, the big amazing secret one. There were lots of small features I missed. I wanted animals to poo everywhere. And mate in the wild. And people’s hair to grow (might get that in the sequel)

2. I have so many features that will never make it already. The thing that is useful, is detailed, specific, reasoned feedback based on your play experience. Thing you were lacking or felt out of balance, and why.

 

Sano_Victus:
What kind of games do you play in your free time? Any that serve as inspiration for Kenshi ideas, or just for having fun?

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Chris:
Not inspiration, but a lifetime of playing games is my education as a game designer. I like open world single player games. At the moment I’m playing Starsector. I’m a fan of Empyrion, Space Engineers, Rimworld, Factorio

Rafflarn:
The best part about Kenshi is exploring the world. But what makes that so much better is having unique recruits and at least 1 skeleton with you. As you go along you both get to hear comments about the different biomes as you enter them, and also conversations between the crew. This is something that made the game feel so much more alive. So I spent some time doing research on what people to recruit to not miss out on any dialogue. I just never can get get enough of this amazing feature and wish there was more of it!

Question 1: Do you plan to recreate these features in K2 and will it be any different?

If I could choose I’d much rather have at least 20 unique recruits packed with dialogue spread around the world than hundreds of recruits of which you’d have to find out who has the most dialogue.

Fame and renown, these are things that makes the game even better! either you bring in a bounty, or you defeat someone strong and NPC’s will remember you did that and comment on it. Or you have a bounty and people will recognise you/fear you.

Question 2: Is it possible to make this more of a thing in K2? It kinda makes you feel special in a world like Kenshi.

I’m doing a solo run right now and have almost reached 70 in general fighting stats. And it would be nice to get more recognized across the world as someone strong.

---

Nat:
1. Yes! These are some of my favourite things to work on and I agree that it was a little spread thin because of the limitless characters and combinations the player can have. I really want to improve on it for K2. These events were great because they felt quite subtle and personalised without overloading the player.

2. Yes again! Also one of my favourite things, recognition is such a nice way of rewarding the player. I’m thinking that perhaps combining this with a reputation system might improve it but I need to look into it more and experiment, see what technical things Chris and Sam can add to support it.

Directly from Chris Hunt, Lo-Fi Games CEO and the man behind Kenshi:

“Good news everyone! There has been a change of plans with development, and we have switched to the Unreal engine!

Now, what does that mean?

GOOD SIDE:

• Amazing graphics with little effort
• Better performance
• Less work for us long-term, as we don’t have to worry about engine bugs and features. We can focus more on gameplay.
• Fancy features, like maybe cloth physics for example
• Better stability probably?
• New pathfinding system

BAD SIDE:

• More work for us short-term, porting is a huge job
• We have less control over the engine
• Modding support will be more complicated, Unreal is a difficult engine to work with and has limitations in this respect. I don’t know the engine well enough to say how exactly. The likely scenario is “more powerful but more difficult”. The FCS will remain the same, but will control less stuff. Mod support will be a high priority for us though, so don’t worry.
• Kenshi 1 update now uncertain:
  Here’s the kicker: Porting Kenshi 1 to Unreal engine is now way more work than making Kenshi 2, because we have to port assets and make the old stuff work, where for Kenshi 2 we are making the assets from scratch in the Unreal-compatible way. We have started porting Kenshi 1, but I’m not sure whether to finish it because it is a lot of extra work and will delay Kenshi 2

So I’d like some feedback from people. Personally I feel like it would be better to focus on Kenshi 2, which will have exciting new features, new content and world to explore and mechanics to play with, rather than remaking kenshi 1, which would be essentially the same game.”

To get some more definitive feedback we’ve also put up a poll here: https://www.strawpoll.me/18697532

P.S. This does not mean Epic Exclusive, it’s just a game engine choice. Don’t panic.

About a month ago we reached out to fans across the globe and spoke about working with Unreal Engine, technical hang-ups on porting Kenshi, the potential to focus on Kenshi 2, and shared the seemingly important newfound British tradition for non-binding votes on important subjects.

As of writing, the poll stands at over 22,000 votes, 81% of which would like Lo-Fi to focus on Kenshi 2 and giving the game a more expansive feature set. Beyond the binary nature of the poll, the community wrote thousands of comments to explain their thoughts, concerns and wish lists which we’re always interested in, and finally something about an ‘Epic Game Store exclusive’, which we clarified we’re not interested in.

Today I’m happy to share that the team is focussed on Kenshi 2.

1. Join the Kenshi Community Discord
2. React to the ‘Server – Events’ role in the ‘#server-roles’ channel
3. Submit a suitably spooky Kenshi mod on either the Steam Workshop or Nexus Mods
4. Link your devilish creation in the ‘#event-submissions’ channel
5. Submissions close November 30th.

It’s no secret that we’ve been spending more time amongst Kenshi’s user base, those of you already following us on social media have seen us celebrating fan art, memes, screenshots, and highlighting some of the more creative mods made by players – We’d like to level things up again, so in addition to the awesome Halloween event hosted by the Discord community this month, once our merchandise is available we’ve got a whole host of ideas for fans to win some physical goodies.

Merchandise:
Creating merchandise has been a little slower than we first imagined but we’re in the home stretch now that we’ve found a good partner to help us with the process. We’re working closely with the team at Merchandise.Game, whose experience includes providing merch for Smite, Furi, Paladins, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds and other major titles – all sold in a variety of currencies and delivered globally.Here’s a sneak peak of colours for the last sample we agreed on:

Patch is live v1.0.40 pushing previous experimental branch updates to the main Kenshi branch for all users. Below is a collated list of all of the patches included in this update.

Gameplay changes:

• Slaves are now only fed up to 100 if not in a cage, instead of 115.
• Pet animals now heal 2x speed when KO’d, as they have no other means of healing and spend too much of their lives in comas.
• Holy farm storage is no longer full of ration packs.
• The GUI tooltip now also shows your bounty even if you are a slave.
• Stopped NPCs thinking animals are weak because they don’t have weapons

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a crash if loading an invalid item in a character inventory (eg from a missing mod).
• Fixed particle effects of buildings on roofs.
• Fixed crash if character dies while rearranging squads.
• Fixed missing temples in Holy Nation towns.
• Fixed DC_IS_NEARLY_KO being unhandled (it is a duplicate of DC_NEARLY_KO).
• Fixed some dialog not triggering as DC_IS_ENEMY always returned true.
• Some minor fixes to the navigation mesh.
• Fixes for a few building interior visibility bugs.
• A fix for NPCs sometimes dying if you knocked them out and then left the area, now it takes their health into account.
• Fixed bounty dialogue not triggering if you hand in Eyegor
• Fixed AI bug where a guard captures someone out of the boundaries of the town, and keeps picking them up and putting them down again.
• Slave status is no longer reset when you are arrested by police. Slaver caravans should come by and collect slaves, but mods could prevent this, meaning that a slave could get arrested and trapped in a police station forever. Now its possible to wait-out a sentence.
• Fixed AI stalling when crafting items when different input items are needed.
• Fixed inventory item limit being ignored when AI moves large item stacks.
• Reduced characters running through the air or underground when zones are loading in the background.
• Fixed a random crash that would happen if someone caught someone else committing the crime of assault against nothing (no victim).
• Fixed a random crash when picking up characters, or something related to that. Would only happen with certain people’s PCs, so was hard to catch. There is a small chance that this could fix the passable walls bug too.
• Clamped a value to hopefully avoid the cursed money item bug, where you would pick up a coin and get minus a billion cats.
• Mostly fixed the issue with characters patrolling into private buildings.
• Fixed interior visibility in build mode.
• Fixed interior not loading correctly if you complete a building while inside it.
• Fixed item labels being cut off at certain resolutions.
• Fixed a crash with the new fix for the previous ragdoll crash.
• Fixed bodyguard betrayal triggering more than once per betrayal, leading to oversize relation penalties. Penalty should be 20 to reputation.
• A bunch of small stability fixes to the FCS.
• Additional crash fixes.

Translations:

• Chinese language updated to include user suggestions from the Steam Community forums.
• German language has been updated to change a few words to shorter alternatives.

Special thanks to: ‘Kapaer’ for contributions to a number of crash fixes originally outlined in the Kenshi v1.0.38 (experimental) update, ‘Prd’ for contributions leading to fixing issues with missing Holy Nation temples, ‘RustledJimm’ for listing a number of dialogue errors and ‘Good luck’ for extensive feedback on the Chinese Translation originally outlined in the Kenshi v1.0.35 (experimental) update.

During October we confirmed our focus on Kenshi 2 before covering ways to get your fix of curated and studio-led Kenshi content, existing events and upcoming competitions, merchandise and our ongoing support for Kenshi 1 which has received a number of experimental updates pushed recently. If you missed last month’s update you can read it here.

Community Events:

The Kenshi Community Discord team’s Halloween modding competition officially draws to a close with the end of November meaning they’ll be featuring a winner and handing out prizes (read: free games) shortly. If you’d like to take part in future community driven events, be sure to join the community Discord soon as there’s something special coming up for the festive season…

Building Kenshi 2:

Supporting Kenshi 1:

Despite some users loudly decreeing the end of support for Kenshi 1, as mentioned before this isn’t the case and we’re still actively squashing bugs and tweaking gameplay. We’ve deployed a number of fixes across the last month using our opt-in only experimental branch as a means of testing them before merging them into the release build that typical users play, most recently v1.0.40 includes fixes for a number of issues such as several crashes reported on the forums. This also helps reduce the amount of time community members have to invest in upkeep of their modifications and changes to the game as generally the release version updates are better tested compilations of several patches and therefore less frequent.

Kenshi x WePlay: indiePlay awards:

In a previous post we got to test out Steam’s new ‘IRL event’ feature noting that Kenshi is a finalist in WePlay’s indiePlay awards. Making it to the finals prompted us to send Chris and Natalie over to Shanghai, China for a chance to meet another side of the community and, if we win, to accept the award directly. To grab a ticket check out WePlay’s website, our booth will be on the first floor in area D-02 (near the indiePlay area).

Steam Awards:

Those of you logging in to Steam will have seen that the Autumn Sales are here along with the opportunity to nominate games for this year’s Steam Awards, and whilst it’s tempting to shoot for “The Game of the Year Award”, we’re aiming for “The Best Game You Suck At Award” in homage to all of the would be protagonists that met an untimely end fighting everyone’s favourite murderous pseudo giraffe or entered the world for the first time and expected to win a duel against an angry goat. You can help us win by voting here for Kenshi in that category here.

On behalf of everyone at Lo-Fi Games, if you’re a fan from the United States finishing up celebrations of Thanksgiving, we hope you had a wonderful holiday and for everyone else remember – it doesn’t take a special time of year to call friends and family, ask them how things are going and tell them to try Kenshi.

Now that the holiday season is officially behind us and Michael Bublé prepares to return to hibernation, there’s a lot to look back on in 2019. It’s important to remember though with a lot of time away from the studio December was a slower month overall.

(If you’re just here for the latest Kenshi 2 gossip, scroll down a bit)

A Year of Updates

First and probably most importantly, in December 2018 Kenshi made it to version 1.0 marking the end of a long trip as one of the original titles in Steam Greenlight. As of writing it also looks like we’re fated to be the last to graduate.

Taking our place as torch-bearers for Valve’s first foray into pre-release support, we’ve pushed a huge number of post-release updates and continue to polish Lo-Fi’s first project. Last month, in addition to highlighting a large patch, we touched on release frequencies – the gist of which is to continue liberal use of the experimental branch and periodic combined releases on the main branch when we’re happy with the stability.

Journey into the East

Another huge focus of last month was our attendance at WePlay as indiePlay awards finalists in Shanghai, China. Chris and Nat travelled across the globe to meet fans, translation partners, and gracefully accept defeat surrounded by a crowd chanting ‘Kenshi!’ right to the end.

Whilst we would have rather taken the crown, losing to Touhou, another game series with a rich history that started as a one-man passion project, feels somewhat poetic. Congratulations to ZUN for realising a high school design idea as an iconic game series and Team Ladybug for taking it in a fresh direction with Touhou Luna Nights.

A slow boat to Japan(ese)

As a final note on last month’s Kenshi progress, fans waiting for updates to the Japanese translation and localisation haven’t been forgotten. Initially we were optimistic that it wouldn’t take long to correct but unfortunately it required a lot more work than we realised. Meg, our Japanese community manager, has been putting a lot of time into this and currently estimates it to be about 80% finished. We’ll share more news when appropriate via the official Japanese Twitter to keep everyone informed.

Recast replaces Havok

Switching to a more modern engine gives us an opportunity to change things in ways that are otherwise difficult for Kenshi, first of which is the technology behind navigation mesh generation (or navmeshes). A navmesh essentially defines which parts of the environment a character can travel through, understanding positions for height changes, terrain types, and obstacles which is fed into systems for pathfinding.

Kenshi 1 used Havok AI™, seen elsewhere in several popular titles and made by the same team behind the well known Havok Physics™. Kenshi 2 will use a different system called Recast, it has a well documented integration with Unreal Engine in addition to being open source allowing us a much greater degree of control and adaptability. Greater control of Navmesh generation is the first step towards better path finding in Kenshi 2.

Additional technical information on Recast can be found on the git project page here.

Level editor v2

As mentioned in our previous update, we’re not just creating brand new stuff – there are a number of important items for us to keep so that modding remains within reach of the wider community. Right now we have a functional version of the level editor ported for Kenshi 2 giving us time to define an appropriate feature set. This approach pairs well with more complicated functions such as terrain editing directly in the Unreal Editor. If this is a tool you use regularly it would be great to hear from you in the comments.

Game Merchandise.game

Also requested by fans, we have a small update on the status of merchandise. Before the holidays we caught up with the team at merchandise.game who’ve been working with us on our first drop of Kenshi gear. As we’re close to production there was some discussion about whether or not we should open pre-orders, in the end we decided it would be a better if we simply wait for initial stock and order more based on the sales. Assuming no issues with the paperwork Kenshi merchandise could be on their store and ready to ship as soon as next month.

We’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone for an amazing 2019 and wish you all the best of luck with any resolutions you’ve made. To our fans getting ready for lunar new year at the end of the month, don’t forget to sweep before you enjoy the holidays!

It’s a new month and I am once again asking you to read a developer update. In addition to pushing another sizeable patch to the main branch, we’re adding a new official language soon and sharing a small peek into what’s going on with Kenshi 2.

New language – Korean:

Subscribe to our YouTube channel:

On the topic of new content channels, we’re also finally graduating from using Chris’ personal YouTube. You can now subscribe to the official Lo-Fi Games YouTube channel for video content directly from the studio and to ensure this tweet ages poorly.

Merchandise – Not quite for sale:

As nearly everyone is aware, there have been a number of precautions taken to limit the spread of the coronavirus across the globe, particularly in China. As our merchandise partners use manufacturing facilities in China this has understandably lead to a delay in creating Kenshi products. We’ll have an update on the status of merchandise in a future post once things are back to normal.

The continuity teller:

Following the announcement of Kenshi 2 the speculative flood gates opened on feature lists and lore questions, specifically how various topics in Kenshi might be explained in the events of Kenshi 2. As before, our answers will remain limited allowing each user to explore the world and come to their own conclusions (unless we have to end any more astrophysics arguments…). What we can share is some of the thoughts behind it all, directly from Natalie:

“I’m currently working on the foundations of Kenshi’s story and content, which means a lot of switching between open world design and writing world lore (… I may or may not have ended up with my own endless encyclopedia of Kenshi lore at this point). First up I’ve had to map out the ruins which need preserving from kenshi 1, comparing three different timelines to make sure the layout and history are consistent.

This takes a huge amount of time, essentially working on two different world timelines as I go back and delve more into Kenshi’s ancient history. It all helps in keeping the explorable ruins nice and interesting, plus it helps to work out the evolution of its current factions, making for some really original cultures. So my working map right now has a bunch of overlays from the different timelines, plus the current faction’s territories, their safe(ish) zones, danger zones, wtf?!? zones, wildlife and enemy territories.

I’m constantly working back and forth between fleshing out the main faction lore, making a list of squads in that territory, mapping out the town locations, working out the individual town conflicts and stories, plus figuring out all of their gameplay roles, goals, motives, and traits. After a rough placement around the world, I’ve begun concentrating on a 1/6th of the map portion (one of the safer zones) and fleshed it out with any split off groups that may have conflicted with its main faction, any dens, bases and other more interesting POIs. Spider diagrams have become my best friend at this point :’)

It’s been a slow process. The map is… considerably bigger than Kenshi 1’s; it’s a challenge to fill it with interesting content as well as balance it for a desolate, wild atmosphere. I’m conscious of not filling the world with shallow or empty content, instead focusing more on the individual towns and their micro-cultures. Admittedly I have to keep reigning myself in from overcomplicating the whole thing – this is a sandbox game with subtle, environmental story-telling, not a heavily story-driven RPG.

It feels like I’ve had to scrap a lot of ideas so far but I’m starting to pick up some momentum as everything finally clicks nicely into place. World building and writing is a lot like sculpting a statue or painting, you have to constantly add, tweak, delete, repeat… it takes some patience but it’s all part of the process!”

For some additional musings on the inner workings of Kenshi such as NPC dialogue and world building, check out Natalie’s blog entries on Gamasutra.

The quiet sounds of progress:

Last month in addition to continuing our search for a tech lead, our programming team have been working on a number of systems to help in creation of the game. This includes everything from basic camera controls and map markers all the way to physics events such as building collision. As we’re still very early in development a lot of their time is laying the groundwork for certain elements of Kenshi 2 that are still under wraps, undoubtedly users will have a lot of fun speculating over this in the comments and we look forward to revealing more about this in a few months time.

Finally for any fans agonising over what to do for their special somebody this valentines day, why not tell them how to sign up for the Kenshi mailing list before treating them to a gourmet meal of the finest foodcubes and a glass of grog (assuming you’re old enough). If that doesn’t win them over then at least it should slow them down for when the skin spiders eventually turn up…

• Removed the “Disable civilians in towns” option as it was causing some issues with things like Waystations being unpopulated, and no longer made a noticable performance gain.
• Fixed use cursor appearing on player built tables.
• Stealing backpacks from animals now correctly flags as stealing.
• Fixed building town allocation when placing town markers.
• Fix for animals walking into buildings.
• Additional fix related to previous ragdoll crash.
• Fixed translations, fonts and audio when kenshi install path contains non-ascii characters.
• Fixed restricted food tooltip potentially missing some races.
• Fixed a few minor dialog bugs.
• Fixed texture loading error handling – with invalid textures (eg from file corruption or a broken mod) you now just get black, instead of a crash.
• Fixed crash with the restricted food tooltip for some mods.
• Fixed character editor crashing if character model fails to load from a mod.
• Fixed interior layout editor mod tracking (level editor).

• Added ‘character limit reached’ message when buying animals.
• Added error number to CRASHDUMP FAILED log message (description was garbled).
• Cleaned up list of races that can eat restricted food in item tooltip.
• Backpack contents marked as stolen when you steal a backpack.

• Chinese updated

Special thanks to ‘Victory Forever’ for spotting the issue around disabling civilians and waystations.

• Added Korean Language support.

Korean fans can check out the official press release on Newswire. Once again Lo-Fi would like to extend a huge thanks to Jeffrey Jeoung, BusanDaek, Byunghyun An, Son Byeong-gwan and all the others who worked hard on the fan translation that paved the way for the official release.

• Fixed dialogue interrupts not working on announcements when another NPC interjected. Could affect certain player base raids.
• Fixed crash dismantling cages with an unconscious occupant.
• Kidnapped pack beasts from wandering traders will no longer have their inventory automatically re-stocked.
• Fixed possible crash when dismantling a turret that is being used (which should be impossible)

FCS/MODDING

• Fixed crash if modded character mesh has UVs outside 0-1 range (other than head)
• Fixed an issue with CHARACTER “stealth stats” property
• Fixed crash if character model failed to load due to missing skeleton file

We’ve pushed an additional small update to fix a file mix-up with the Korean translation, it should be much more accurate now.

In this month’s community update we wanted to acknowledge teaming up on the trailer, share some important news regarding the recent Korean translation, and provide some more details on what’s going on with Kenshi 2.

New Trailer:

At the end of January we contacted Kokoplays to work with us on a new video that would coincide with our latest patch. The main aim was to give potential players an honest look at the game and an overview of what publications and users think of it. If you missed it, check it out below:

We’re incredibly pleased to see all the positive comments about the result, making it a notable entry for our new YouTube channel which also offers Japanese, Chinese and Korean versions of the same video. In future we’d like to do more collaborative projects with members of the community, level up awesome ideas that might otherwise stay on the drawing board, and celebrate alongside the fans that make Kenshi great.

Korean Translation update

At the end of last month we pushed a patch with a number of bug fixes alongside he official support for Korean language text, thanks to detailed user feedback and the assistance of a freelance third party to verify, we’ve been made aware that the quality of this translation hasn’t met a standard we’re happy with.

Our current plan is to revisit this translation with a much stronger emphasis on context and error checking to update it as soon as possible, current projections put this at around 10 weeks. Unfortunately this has also lead us to reconsider Korean social media efforts. In the meantime, Korean Twitter and Facebook coverage is set to continue for at least another month, keeping users updated on the status of the translation.

Korean Wiki – looking for editors

On a more positive note, due to the popularity of Wikis in eastern gaming communities we worked with a member of our existing English Fandom Wiki team to start up a Korean version, mirroring a number of key pages to assist new users.

With the initial setup out of the way we’re now looking for Korean community members to take over. The Korean Wiki can be found here

In the interests of shedding more light on the Kenshi 2 progress from the technical team, this month we’re sharing some thoughts on the ongoing work underpinning GUI development directly from programmer Harrison:

“Hey, im Harrison aka Boodals, the newest programmer at LoFi. Ever since I was first hired in November, I’ve been working on remaking the GUIs from Kenshi 1 in Unreal Engine for Kenshi 2. Its too early in development to know everything that the GUIs need to be able to do, so we’re just copying the designs (graphics & layout) from K1, and focusing entirely on getting the functionality working so we can test things. That means they currently look like uglier versions of the K1 GUIs, so there’s no point in showing any pictures yet, somebody will make them look pretty at some point in the future.

The GUIs in Kenshi 1 were made using a programming library called MyGUI, which allows modders to reskin GUIs, and move individual GUI elements (buttons, text, sliders, etc) around by changing specific files. However, the GUI’s functionality was hard-coded in the game’s source code, which cannot be changed by modders. This means you cannot make a mod which adds a new button, only change what every button looks like, or move existing buttons around.

For Kenshi 2, we are using Unreal Engine which comes with it’s own GUI system called Unreal Motion Graphics, or UMG for short. UMG is tied closely to Unreal’s Blueprint scripting system, which is used to give the GUIs functionality.

We don’t entirely know how modding will work for K2, but when we looked at other Unreal games that allow modding (such as ARK: Survival Evolved), both UMG and Blueprint is completely available. So in theory, modders will be able to change the game’s GUIs, and script them to be able to do just about anything. This is in addition to the Forgotten Construction Set, so mods that add or change weapons, armour, items, buildings, and most other things in K1 will still be possible.”

Harrison first took up coding to make mods for various games before pursuing it as a career choice, which gives us another great point of insight as we make a conscious effort to support the community’s efforts again in Kenshi 2.

Elsewhere in the programming team, there’s been an ongoing investigation of Unreal’s material system which governs a huge number of visual elements and object interactions. Ranging from basic properties such as colour and transparency to complex physics based lighting and weather functions. We’re not just aiming to step up the visual quality in Kenshi 2, it also gives us a great opportunity to make the world itself feel more dynamic (which is part of what’s pushed us to search for a full time technical artist).

Finally, there’s a whole lot more going on behind the scenes with other members of the programming and art teams for Kenshi 2; all of which would be working closely with the successful applicants for each of the roles we’re hiring for. On the topic of abstract studio stuff, we also fixed some of the stranger behaviour with the sign-ups for our mailing list meaning we’ll look for more excuses to use it in the near future, also making it a great alternative way of getting these news posts for fans of Kenshi that prefer to stay outside of Steam’s ecosystem.

Hi there, here comes another community update on Kenshi. In this update, we’ll go over the decisions and changes that were made on the Discord server, Kenshi’s milestone, and introduction to Lo-Fi’s team members, followed by some visual sneak peeks on what to expect for Kenshi 2.

The Future of Discord Server

As some of you may have known, Caliburn (Sam) who has been keeping the community up to date and was leading Lo-Fi’s marketing has moved on which resulted in some internal reshuffles that we hope have gone unnoticed.

The most significant decision that was made in the past weeks was the ownership of Kenshi’s Community Discord server that has now gone back to the community led by Seth Knight who was voted to the admin role by the group of moderators. For those who have not been aware, there has been an ongoing discussion on Community Server’s ownership and its purpose, but they are now set at rest, and the server is back in good hands.

Kenshi’s Community Discord server has always been a place to share ideas, creation, and experiences of all things Kenshi by the community, however, it was not designed as a means to communicate with the developer. Now with the growing Lo-Fi team who are involved in different aspects of the game development, we have decided to set up a new official Discord server for the team to interact and receive feedback from the community. We will work closely with Seth and other moderators to ensure that the community’s requests are reflected, and there will be more opportunity for us to work together on things such as online events. We will announce the launch of the official Discord server once it is ready.

Major Milestone

After 12+ years of development and less than 2 years of the official release, Kenshi has hit a milestone of 1 million global sales. We wouldn’t have made it this far without the support of the community who’s been there from the very early stage and have continued to come back to Kenshi throughout the years. Proceeds gained from Kenshi are now invested in developing Kenshi 2, with the expanded team of 15 and a new office in Bristol.

Keeping everyone safe is our priority with COVID, so we are taking time setting up the office with only those who are comfortable to come in for work. Considering where things are heading in the UK, it will be a while when we can fully kit the office and show some pictures in the blog, but we are fully intending to do so in the future!

Hello Everyone!

In the last update, we’ve introduced several new team members who have joined the studio for the development of Kenshi 2. We’ll continue the introduction of 3 members this month on who they are and what they are up to outside of work.

Christopher Schlesag – Concept Designer & Illustrator

I’m Christopher, a concept designer and illustrator from Germany. I have been working on Kenshi 2 for the last 5 months and recently moved to Bristol to work at the Lo-Fi Games office. I’m involved in the creation of various visual elements of the project and strive to make the world of Kenshi more immersive with every design I create. The main focus of the last few months has been the design of various props; refining and improving the visual language set forth by Kenshi 1.

(Some of the light-fixtures I designed further below as a taste of what’s to come)

Life Balance:
Outside of work I spend a lot of time on things that keep one inspired, like traveling, reading, movies, or playing games (thou there isn’t any traveling going on right now).
But the majority of my free time is spent on improving my skills as an artist, and working on personal paintings.

(Image of my personal painting)

Above is a digital painting I did some time ago, I still have a long way to go before I can be content with this and other paintings, but if you’re interested you can see more of them on my Instagram or Twitter. I only recently set up social media profiles, but I will post more of my creations in the future.

Paul Crilley – Writer

I’m Paul Crilley, and I’m a Scotsman who has been adrift in South Africa for twenty-something years (and I’m still not used to the heat or humidity). I recently joined the team to work as a writer on Kenshi 2 and am having an absolute blast.

Over the years I’ve worked in television, novels, computer games, and comics. My most recent series, Poison City, and the sequel Clockwork City, about a supernatural police force based in Durban, South Africa, has been optioned for television by Jerry Bruckheimer Productions and CBS. Whether it goes into production or not is another matter entirely.

I was one of the contract writers on Star Wars: The Old Republic back in the day. On the comics front, my most recent work was Star Wars Adventures, for IDW. I also planned out a comic book mini-series for IDW called, X-Files: Conspiracy. The mini-series brought together Mulder & Scully, The Crow, Ghostbusters, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Transformers. I wrote 3 of the 6 issues of that series. I also adapted the characters I created for the Wizards of the Coast D&D setting Eberron (the fantasy detectives Abraxis Wren and Torin) for comics, also for IDW.

Home setup:
My home setup is a mishmash of books, a cluttered desk, a whiteboard, and walls entirely covered in movie posters and old calendar pictures from over the years. (Lord of the Rings, Discworld, GoT, etc). I cannot stand bare walls and need to be surrounded by the clutter I have collected. I have a desktop PC for gaming, and the novel and scriptwriting work gets done of the MacBook.

Life Balance:
It’s difficult finding a balance when you work from home. Nothing has changed during lockdown on that front, as I’ve worked from home my whole professional career. What *is* difficult is working from home while having a five-month baby demanding so much attention. I find that I get more work done at night. (I’ve always been a night owl.) So I do a few hours during the day in-between feedings and putting the little terror to sleep, but from 6pm onwards, when he’s down for the night, that’s when my writing day really starts. I usually go on till about 1 or 2 in the morning, with probably one brief feeding for the baby. I need to get back into gym again, as they only recently opened up again, but finding the time to do that is going to be a challenge.

Meg (Gumstar) – PR & Community Management

I’m Meg or Gumstar, and I’ve been working behind the scene for Kenshi on Japan for a few years. With the departure of Caliburn, I’ve stepped in to help out the team on PR & Community Management.

Life Balance:
I live in London near several parks, and I walk or run every morning to breathe fresh air and declutter my mind. I’ve always been a city-dweller, but somehow this lockdown has made me crave for nature like never before.
I’ve been observing a family of swans since early spring when the parent swans started to incubate. With ‘The Ugly Duckling’ being one of my favourite childhood tales, it’s been fascinating to see the development of cygnets, when they looked nothing like swans in spring to now when they are perfectly shaped grey swans. They’ll soon shed their feathers and will become indistinguishable from their parents. As elegant as they are, I can’t help but notice how they look like the distant cousins of certain Kenshi creatures when they thrust their heads into the water 🙂

Details, Details, Details

Kenshi 2 goes back 1,000 years from Kenshi 1, and it was undoubtedly a different world from what we are familiar with in Kenshi 1. Some inhabitants would have changed over the years accompanied by transformation in social and cultural dynamics, something that is inevitable given the timespan.

In the past updates, we’ve shown some concept art from Calum Alexander Watt representing some initial thoughts on the world of Kenshi 2. Now that we are further along in the world-building stage, Christopher, our Concept Artist and Illustrator has been busy working out the details on props that are used by Kenshi 2’s inhabitants in their daily life, as in the external light fixtures below.

Kenshi 2 is developed with Unreal Engine, which allows further details in visual appearances and animation that would not have been possible in the technical setup used by Kenshi 1. We are happy to reveal an example of a creature that lived over 1,000 years with their uncanny survival instincts.

We’ve been late with this month’s update, but we love to hear your thoughts, especially on our visual reveals on Kenshi 2. As ever, you can join us on Twitter and Facebook, and if you’d rather receive this blogpost in a non-Steam way, they are available on our website and via our mailing list.

Out now on the experimental branch only. To opt in to the experimental version, right-click on Kenshi in your Steam games list -> properties -> betas tab -> then choose “experimental”. If opting in, please be aware of bugs and instability.

Please report any bugs or feedback to either the Steam or Lo-Fi forums

• Fixed deleting saves from new save location
• Fixed bar squads not spawning in Heng due to multiple towns in one zone
• Fixed issue with initial player health if race was changed during character creation

Hi there, here comes another community update on Kenshi. In this update, we’ll go over, a sneak peek on new modes to place interior objects and furniture in Kenshi 2, some news from the Studio, and more introduction to Lo-Fi’s team members.

Interior Object and Furniture Placement Modes in Kenshi 2

One of the key elements of Kenshi is the Building feature; finding the right spot to build an outpost or buying some buildings as a base and filling the external and interior space with furniture and objects. Building feature continues to be the key element of Kenshi 2, with enhanced modes that enable players to build and place objects with ease.

In this update, we asked Craig (his profile below) about the new modes for interior object placement for Kenshi 2. You’ll find below some sneak peek videos and descriptions on what we could expect from the feature.

Kenshi 2 will feature a number of tools to help placing objects indoors substantially easier. Let’s start with the improvements made to the Kenshi 1 method of placing furniture, now called Free-Placement Mode.

As the name suggests, this mode allows you to place furniture at any valid location at whatever rotation the player sees fit. We’ve now added collision correction to this mode to allow players to place objects up against walls and other objects much easier. There’s also an option to allow you to snap the rotation of your object against whatever you collide against, making alignment to walls and other pieces of furniture much easier.

For some objects, however, this mode is not exactly ideal. Say I want a neat line of hydroponic farms inside the building, we could try and line them up neatly by hand, which could take some time, or we could use the new Grid Snapping Mode for perfect alignment.

But what if you want to align objects at an angle? What if you want some things aligned differently? Well, that’s where our final new mode, Furniture Alignment Mode comes in handy. Now players can select any interior object and generate a grid to align to the building.

With these new tools, it’ll be easier than ever to create interior layouts for Kenshi 2.

Below are the interior views of the building provided by Nicolò (his profile below). Furniture is still being modelled (no spoilers!) so you’ll only see the shapes here, but the images demonstrate how the objects are placed against the curved walls and straight alignments such as shelves and internal walls.

News from the Studio: Another Lockdown and A Virtual Event

Starting 5 November, England has gone back into another lockdown for at least a month, which means everyone at Lo-Fi is now working from home. The lockdown can be difficult for some members who prefer to work in the Studio, but we’re planning lots of online gaming sessions to keep our team from going stir crazy!

We are all embracing remote communication and online meetings during the lockdown, but our virtual experience reached new heights when we attended the China Game Fest in late October. Lo-Fi set up a virtual booth within the virtual conference centre where visitors walked around led by a friendly virtual escort. The event was visited by more than 50,000 visitors over the 3 days (23rd – 25th) with impressive media coverage in China.

Hello Everyone, from Chris, Nicolò and Craig!

In the last update, we introduced several new team members who have joined the Studio for the development of Kenshi 2. We’ll continue the introduction of 3 members, old and new, on who they are, how they are set up at home, and what they are up to outside of work.

Chris Hunt – Head Developer and CEO

Home Setup

Life Balance
Outside of games I have 2 major interests. The biggest is motorcycle adventures. I have a 1989 Kawasaki KLR which is basically the AK47 of bikes: simple and reliable. I can repair it by the side of the road in the middle of a desert with nothing but a spanner and some cable ties. I once rebuilt the carburetor in the darkness on a beach with a torch in my mouth, without knowing what a carburetor was. I once rode up a ski slope in the Pyrenees and camped at the top, and found the next morning that a gang of wild horses had beaten up and possibly molested my bike which made all the battery water drain out. I rode across half of Spain with no battery, making sure I only parked on the top of slopes so I could bump-start the engine again. I love it, these little things add the adventure and create memories.

I’ve since rebuilt and upgraded the bike from the ground up preparing for a big adventure that I wanted to do in summer 2020 but the virus ruined that, so we’ll see. My dream is to cross Mongolia.

I’m also building a 4×4 camper van to go snowboarding with, but that’s still in early stages. I was originally going to use an old army truck, but that proved way too impractical.

Snowboarding is my other love, but it’s a very season and weather dependent thing so I don’t get to do as much as I’d like, especially as I’m so fussy about snow conditions.

Nicolò Zubbini – Environment Artist

Hi, I’m Nicolò, an environment and hard surface artist. I specialise in architecture, but also work on natural and mechanical environment elements, and vehicle models. I have a passion for sci-fi, and any weathered and grungy setting.

I studied architecture, and have initially worked on architectural visualisation, followed by historical documentaries and hi-poly vfx environment. I started using Blender in 2008, and became passionate about its community and open source software. In 2012 I worked for the Blender Institute on the VFX open short movie, “Tears of Steel”. More recently, I’ve been involved in game development, including Kenshi (for 2-3 months working for Sebastien Froncek, from whom I learnt a lot!)

Here are some of the works I’ve done for Kenshi (Warning! These are from Kenshi, NOT Kenshi 2! My work on Kenshi 2 appers in section above in ‘Interior Object and Furniture Placement Modes in Kenshi 2′). Please also note these are portfolio renders in Marmoset (a render engine for game assets), not in Ogre (Kenshi’s actual game engine), so the models look a bit different from how they look in the game.

Having worked often with small indie teams, I have experience in level building, shading and light, using Unreal, Unity and other engines. I also do some scripting to automate my art workflow, using Python.
For Kenshi 2, I’m working on buildings and related props, such as furniture.

Home Setup

I’ve always worked remotely, and my home-studio setup is made up of a ‘normal’ mid-high tier gaming PC as a workstation, just with a colour-accurate monitor and a keyboard with custom layout and macro-pad. Most game development tools are Windows-centric, so my workstation runs Windows, but I also keep a reliable Linux PC on the 2nd monitor with KVM switch, acting as spare/backup and files/media server.

Life Balance
In my free time … well, before 2020, I used to socialise more, like going to my favourite pub with friends and ride or work on my bicycle, but now I have more time to spend on my nerdier side: I guess I’ll finish building my 3rd keyboard, start another career in Kerbal and find 10k pages of sci-fi saga to read.

Craig Tinney – Programming

Hello readers! I’m Craig, the newest addition to the Lo-Fi Games programming team. I’ve been helping to port Kenshi to Unreal Engine 4 for Kenshi 2 since I started back in April of this year.
Since I joined Lo-Fi during the UK lockdown period, I’ve yet to actually work in the office with the rest of the team, and I’ve been communicating with everyone online. Safe to say at this point, I’m itching to meet everyone face to face!
So far I’ve been involved with the new building placement tools mentioned in this post as well as general porting to unreal and a lot of things we’re not quite ready to talk about yet (but they’re really cool, honest!).

Life Balance
Outside of work, I make my own games on a much smaller scale than Kenshi. Usually, I make things in Pico 8, which is just about the cutest game engine in the world and everyone should know about. If you fancy checking out my games, they’re all available for free at https://ctinney94.itch.io/

Lately I’ve been trying to find some non-screen focused hobbies due to spending so much more time indoors this year. As a result, I’ve gotten into building terrain for tabletop games with my housemate. Check out these rocks we made!

I’ve also started to make tapes of some of my favourite albums since acquiring my Dad’s old hifi stack.

Please do not judge me for this, 2020 has all affected us all differently.

That will be the end of this community update. We love to hear your thoughts, especially on new interior furniture and object placement modes in Kenshi 2. Please follow us on Twitter and Facebook for news if you haven’t already, and if you’d rather receive this blogpost in a non-Steam way, they are available on our website and via our mailing list.

Stay safe and keep well!

Hey everyone, happy new year to you all! Since the last update we’ve had a Christmas party, a Christmas break, a new year and a new national lockdown in the UK, so we’re all working from home again due to that pesky old C-word that we’d rather not mention. Regardless of being locked down, spirits are up and good progress is being made with Kenshi 2. Check it oooot:

The Official Kenshi Discord is here

We have launched an official Kenshi Discord server. We’re not looking to replace the community Discord in the slightest, and we have the utmost respect for its moderators and participants, thank you for being part of something very special! Instead, we’d like to create something complimentary: a place for mini updates from us and somewhere where you can quickly and easily have a direct line to Lo-Fi Games (though we do have a sequel to a certain game to make so forgive us if we’re not always too quick to respond).

We’re very keen to hear from you about what you’d like to see the Official Kenshi Discord look like, so do please jump in and let us know.

Giveaways! Ask the devs! Competitions!

From time to time we’ll be hosting Steam key giveaways and competitions where we’ll be asking the community to take part by sending questions for the devs and posting mods and screenshots. Keep an eye out for info on these in the Discord server.

An “ask the devs” channel has been added from the off where we’ll pick our favourite questions from the fans to answer on a monthly basis.

A smidgin of Kenshi 2 content

Environmentalism

From Environment Artist Oliver Hatton: “At the moment we’re putting together two adjoining biomes so we can get to see all the amazing buildings and characters in situ, doing their thing. This biome blending will also help us identify any problems that are bound to arise, things like town sizes, over-budget texture limits and so on.

The voxel terrain can be fun to work on, with overhangs and caves being possible and re-editing areas much more hands-on than with elevation maps.”

And now towns and settlements are beginning to emerge on the map, we should begin to get a much clearer view of the world. It’ll be like our own little working death valley where we can test out a lot of the pain and suffering to come.”

Gates

Look, it’s a gate! Here’s a few words from Concept Artist Christopher Schlesag on how the design of the gate came to be:

“The design of the gate was mostly influenced by the architecture of the main faction, which was already established. It is visually very sturdy and has simple geometry. For these defensive walls I wanted to incorporate more metal in comparison to the civilian buildings, which gives an even more militaristic feel.

These are the highest and thickest walls you will encounter in the game. We wanted the walls to be customizable to an extent, so they will consist of optional place-able modules like bastions, towers, and anti-climb extensions that will give advantages in several areas. For example, placing a tower on your wall will not only provide cover from ranged attacks and protect from environmental effects, but also increase the number of turrets you can place on this part of the wall. How much extensions the walls and bastions of a town have will also be a great indicator for how dangerous the surrounding lands are. We are also working on resolving placement-issues the walls in Kenshi 1 had.”

Some, er, mishaps along the way

We also thought you might like to see this happy little accident tentatively titled “I’m just going to spin my arms in the air as I run and if you get hit, it’s your own fault!” (thanks Craig):

From Technical Artist Victor Goossens: “What was meant to be happening was literally that the guy was just supposed to be running somewhere, but some animations broke in a bind pose. To explain a bind pose: it’s the thing that an animation is relative to. So if, for instance, an animation was animated with an A-pose as bind-pose, but then the bind-pose in engine is a T-pose (arms are higher), the arms will tilt up when playing that animation in-engine.

I think at that point in time half of our various reference poses (we use a cool blending system under the hood) were borked, so animations ended up being… Magical.

We also had people growing and shrinking vertically as they breathed because of this…”

Unscoring the World of Kenshi

Here’s a little something we thought you might appreciate seeing. Originally recorded back in 2017 at GDC (remember events?) and posted yesterday: “Kole Hicks & Chris Hunt share the details behind crafting the music and sound for the gritty, unforgiving, and indifferent world of Kenshi.”

Hello World, from Nat, Sarah and Dan

To attempt to prove that Kenshi isn’t made by an evil artificial intelligence, we’ve recently been giving our team the chance to let their personalities shine with profiles in community updates. This update is no exception, so here’s a few words from Nat, Sarah and Dan:

Natalie Mikkelson: Lead Narrative Designer

Hi, I’m Nat, and I’ve been with Lo-Fi for around 8 years now. Currently, I’m organising and writing base dialogue in and around our first Kenshi 2 faction, thinking up all the different ways we can troll y’all.

Life balance

Outside of work, I try to conserve my creative energy for Kenshi and not exhaust it on personal projects! So, because of that, my hobbies revolve more around physical stuff: weight training, calisthenics and pole. I just got over a 2 year back injury and lockdown has actually been quite useful for me to try and train back to where I was at before.

My hobby started all the way back when I was 20 years old. I jumped off a speedboat to swim in the sea, then found I didn’t have the strength to pull myself back up onto the boat to get out! I had to be hauled back up like some kind of sack of dead fish. It was since that day that I vowed to be strong enough to pull my own bodyweight up onto a speedboat, should I ever jump off one again. Simple goals!

I also study writing and game design in my spare time, that includes playing games as case studies (lately I’ve been ahem ‘studying’ Last of Us and Ghost of Tsushima). I tend to write up the stuff I learn and think about on my blog I feel like it cements stuff for me. I often work on so many different aspects of the game, it could be another 2 years before I work on the same type of thing again; I don’t want to have forgotten the important lessons I learned the first time around!

I also volunteer at a charity I feel very passionate about, One25, a support service for women on the streets. I make sandwiches and drive the outreach van on night shifts. At Christmas time we give out little goody bags, cakes and make sure women have warm clothes and hats. We meet some lovely women having some hard times, and the charity does a hell of a lot of good, I’m super proud to work for them.

Sarah Keates, Studio Manager

Hi! I’m the Studio Manager for Lo-Fi Games. I came on board (lol) in April 2020 to help out with the ever-growing team we have in place for Kenshi 2. I am currently Working From Boat managing all things office/HR/finance/welfare/H&S/happiness from afar!

My day to day tasks are running all the things business related! Mostly keeping everyone communicating together, managing the finance and legal sides of the business, and making sure everyone is OK, especially while working from home. I have been given the secondary title ‘Chief of Happiness’. The team sometimes struggle with not being able to work together in a creative environment so we put lots of things in place to try and make that better, including gaming nights, monthly catch up meetings and happiness packs sent to everyone including snacks and beers.

My background is in managing game studios, music festivals and event build sites around the world and I am now bringing that experience to Lo-Fi to help create an exciting and engaging studio environment for the team. Now we just need Covid to go away so we can all go in and enjoy it!

Home Setup

As I’m currently “working from boat” I thought I would show you my tiny 12v setup! I have a mobile WiFi router which (depending on where I moor up) is pretty good (around 300mbs). My teeny keyboard is still ergonomic so works surprisingly well! The setup is great for admin and the online stuff for my job but not for mega gaming unfortunately!

Life Balance

My boat is on a canal to the south of Bath and I travel up and down it enjoying the countryside life. It takes a lot of work to keep the engine and boat going but going for walks then coming back to a fire and cosy living space is awesome!

During the winter I’ve been getting together with some fellow boaties and we play a lot of card and board games, like Pandemic, Munchkin, Exploding Kittens, Code Names, Backgammon and Chess. It’s a simple life but a beautiful one!

I also have a studio in Bristol where, alongside sketching and painting, I create interactive sculptures using a variety of materials and Arduinos. I love to see what happens when people interact with my designs. I usually design stuff that emulates natural phenomena such as bioluminescence in jellyfish or firing synapses in a brain. Sometimes these get featured in various festivals or National Trust gardens too!

Dan Page, Head of Marketing

This very update is being put together by a chap referring to himself in the third person by the name of Dan Page. He’s the new Head of Marketing at Lo-Fi Games, responsible for being the mouthpiece of Kenshi across English-speaking social media channels. Dan can also be found lurking around reddit and the Kenshi Community Discord.

In a clumsy switcheroo I’ll be changing perspective and referring to myself in the first person from hereon, which is actually how my mind works, usually.

Life balance

Music

I’m fairly obsessed with music and from time to time I do try to make a bit of it. You’d think lockdown would be the perfect time to do more of that but it’s not always been an easy thing to focus on. The only things I’ve made public recently are me jamming with the Behringer TD3 I bought last year and this little work in progress thing. That is not much output for a year, 2021 will be different (maybe)!

If you’ve any strange desire to find out a bit about what I listen to, have a look at my Bandcamp Collection and Wishlist here if you like.

Games

Lockdown has meant gaming for me: Persona 5, Cloudpunk, God of War, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Disco Elysium (so so good) and Ghost of Tsushima have been the games that have had me pretty absorbed.

A 2020 resolution was to finish more games. I can’t really remember how well I did with my backlog but I did fiiiiiiiiinally get round to finishing Spec Ops: The Line, which if you’ve never played is a beautiful modern study on the absolute horrors of war.

I’ve a pretty keen interest in VR, having previously run a coworking space called Bristol VR Lab, and put on a conference by the name of VR World Congress. I don’t really have the room for recommendations here but I do make them on the twitters quite often.

Board game-wise, I’ve been playing a lot of Codenames: Duet this year. Big recommend.

TV

I’ve watched a lot of telly of late but I think everyone has so I won’t go on about that much, other than to insist you watch Giri / Haji, a beautifully shot story of crime, friendship and family drama based across London and Tokyo. Seriously, watch it, though be warned, it’s not being renewed for a second season for some sad reason.

Home setup

In my office/studio I have a gaming PC with a 4K monitor, Fostex PM2 monitor speakers, a MicroKorg, the aforementioned Behringer TD3, an old Carillon MIDI controller I nicked from my friend and a little Akai LPD8. For console gaming and TV I have a PS4 with a 55” 4K HDR Sony Bravia and a Sony STR-DN 1080 7.2 amp and speakers that I recently bought and am loving. I also recently got myself an Oculus Quest 2 to add to my headset collection.

That’s a Wrap

That’s all for now folks. Stay safe out there, stay in touch, and don’t forget to follow us on twitter and Facebook. If you’d like to get these updates straight to your inbox then sign up to our mailing list here.