![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lofigames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/RiverRaptor_v01_003-1024x570.jpg\")
<\/p>\nHi folks, we\u2019re here, it\u2019s the next community update! It\u2019s nearly June and the weather is absolutely horrific here in England where much of the Lo-Fi team are based (okay, so it’s actually getting a lot better on the day of publishing this, thank Okran).<\/p>\n
Since our last update we\u2019ve still largely been locked down but we\u2019ve just recently been able to get back into non-essential shops and (thankfully) back inside pubs again. Hurrah!<\/p>\n
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Here\u2019s an old friend rethought and remodelled for Kenshi 2: the River Raptor. On the process of getting to this point, Lo-Fi Games 3D Character Artist Vitali Ivanov said:<\/p>\n
“I started from the Kenshi 1 low poly model, then I made a sculpt in Zbrush with what I consider to be more believable anatomy, while still staying close to the original.<\/p>\n
Our Concept Artist Christopher Schlesag helped with the overpaint, and with feedback from head honcho Chris Hunt and our Lead 3D Artist Mohamad, we got to the point it\u2019s looking at now. We used a whole range of references to influence its direction, but the ones we\u2019ve highlighted here show the more pronounced features that I tried to implement in the new model.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lofigames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Raptor-progress-1024x550.jpg\")
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Raptors are omnivorous and are more like a vermin in Kenshi 1, so the idea was not to make it a ferocious predator but a clumsy, fat creature that\u2019s not naturally aggressive but can fend for itself when need be. We’ll be incorporating two variants of the model into Kenshi 2: one with and one without spikes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the past few months programmers Sam Gynn and Craig Tinney have been hard at work on The Forgotten Construction Set (FCS), making changes that will have an impact on both Kenshi 1 and Kenshi 2.<\/p>\n
For the uninitiated, the FCS is currently available to Kenshi 1 modders and is the exact same tool we use to edit the game.<\/p>\n
This week we\u2019re releasing an update to Kenshi 1\u2019s FCS that brings in a huge amount of these changes (this will first appear in Steam’s experimental build). We caught up to have a little chat about the update:<\/p>\n
Dan:<\/strong>\u00a0First of all, can you both give me a bit of information about what you do at Lo-Fi?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Craig:<\/strong> I\u2019m Craig, I do programming, push buttons and occupy space. Sam and I are responsible for developing new features on Kenshi 2 and the Forgotten Construction Set application, which our writers use to write all the narrative for our games and much more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sam:<\/strong> I\u2019ve been working at Lo-Fi for a long while. I\u2019m a Senior Programmer: I press buttons, make bugs and try to fix them again!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Dan:<\/strong>\u00a0So the lovely bonus of you working on the Kenshi 2 FCS is that we can incorporate some of these changes into the Kenshi 1 FCS. Can you tell us a bit more about that?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Craig:<\/strong>\u00a0So there\u2019s two elements: quality of life stuff that our artists and writers ask for, usually improving the usability of the tool, all stuff that can be easily brought over to the Kenshi 1 FCS. And then there\u2019s things which we have to make code changes for that go straight into Kenshi 2, which can\u2019t be hammered back into the first game for boring technical reasons.<\/p>\n The update that\u2019s coming out this week will be a load of bug fixes and quality of life updates that we\u2019ve been sat on for a little while.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Dan:<\/strong>\u00a0What are the highlights in this update?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sam:<\/strong>\u00a0The biggest one is the ability to simultaneously copy duplicate dialogue objects, which hasn\u2019t previously been possible due to how dialogue is actually many objects rather than being one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n lot\u00a0of clicking around and makes things much easier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Dan:<\/strong> Do you have any expectations for what modders are going to do with the Kenshi 2 FCS?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n great lengths\u00a0to make sure people can do whatever wacky stuff that they want, and our game (hopefully) won\u2019t break as a result of that.<\/p>\n Trust me, the new features are really cool, it\u2019ll be amazing to see what people do with them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Dan:<\/strong> Is it safe to say Kenshi 2 will be friendlier to modders than Kenshi 1?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Craig:<\/strong> I\u2019d say just as friendly, yes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Dan:\u00a0<\/strong>Will the point of entry be similar in terms of knowledge for modders? Is there anything extra people are going to need to know for modding Kenshi 2?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sam:<\/strong>\u00a0It should be about the same; it\u2019s the same tool, so any knowledge people have picked up while making mods for the original game will be relevant, but with lots of fun new features to play with.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Craig:<\/strong>\u00a0You should be able to identify things you might like to change in the game and edit them within a couple of minutes. It\u2019s the same kind of data relationships, a very small amount of that has changed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Dan:<\/strong>\u00a0So has the engine change not caused any issues with the FCS?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sam:<\/strong>\u00a0The assets we use have changed; we previously used ogre.mesh files, which I had to write an export tool for Blender for people to actually use, but that doesn\u2019t work with Unreal, so we\u2019re now using Unreal.asset files. But that is just the assets, the actual underlying data, such as lists of items, descriptions and all that stuff, that is just raw data that can just be read directly out of the files we use for the FCS, so it doesn\u2019t matter which engine we\u2019re using.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Dan:<\/strong>\u00a0Will people that have some experience with Unreal be able to put it to use with Kenshi 2?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Craig:<\/strong>\u00a0There has been some talk of modding blueprints<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sam:<\/strong> We hope so. Creating buildings will require some knowledge of the Unreal Blueprint editor, as that\u2019s where they\u2019re created now, rather than how that previously worked where you\u2019d be working entirely in the FCS.\u00a0 When creating buildings, working with doors and multiple floors will be much easier and more visual than it was before with Unreal Editor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Craig:<\/strong> We\u2019ll be making the same\u00a0how-to documents available to modders that we give to artists, just with slightly plainer English so they can make better sense of them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Dan:<\/strong>\u00a0Awesome! Well, to wrap things up, do you have any favourite Kensh 1i mods?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Craig:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, the one I made to extend the spider attack range, as I don\u2019t think it\u2019s long enough.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sam:<\/strong>\u00a0I tend not to use many mods. Though I do like\u00a0the one that turns off the map marker<\/span><\/a>, so I can properly feel lost.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Craig:<\/strong>\u00a0That is a good one. Actually,\u00a0the one we were talking about the other week<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that makes it so that when someone\u2019s arm\u2019s cut off it says \u201cLMAO, Kenshi vibes\u201d. I really liked that one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sam:\u00a0<\/strong>There are\u00a0lots of amazing mods, it\u2019s great to scroll through and see what crazy things people have come up with.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCraig:<\/strong>\u00a0My favourite is probably the layout saving, which you did Sam; you can have a million windows open for editing and have them open back up again once you close the application. And it\u2019s different for every mod, for example, you open up my\u00a0[insert secret Kenshi 2 feature here]\u00a0mod, and it\u2019s got all the relevant objects open, whereas if I was to open the dialogue mod, I\u2019d have all the dialogue packages and conversations open up that I was last editing, like dialogue stuff etc. which\u00a0 It saves a<\/div>\n\n\nCraig:<\/strong>\u00a0Every feature is designed with the FCS in mind, and right now we\u2019re working on a lot of features we can\u2019t yet talk about, which are what I\u2019m largely thinking about when imagining what modders will do. We are going to<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n