Unfortunately the guy who was going to do the sound engine implementation for me pulled out.  But on the plus side I'm moving into a new office next week.  It's a shared office with other game developers and freelancers, so hopefully I should find a dude there who can do it.

And for when it's ready, I've now got a new Sound Designer recruited.  Kole Hicks is a Kenshi fan, and he sent me this preview video to get the job:

THIS IS NOT IN THE GAME YET.  Those sounds were added directly to the video as a prototype.  But that's what the game will sound like in a couple of months.

Currently, I'm working on the new character editor and adding the new models in.  The character editor now has facial controls too...

I'm uploading update 0.42.2 right now.  It fixes most of the major bugs that have been reported.

Now I've hired a freelance programmer to do a few auxiliary jobs.  First he's going to implement Wwise, a professional grade audio engine.  After that I can hire a professional sound designer, and the game will finally have sound.  Good sound too, I'm not cutting corners.

That will take a while though, if after the next update anyone starts going "Where's the audio? You said you did sound" then they will get a slap.

As for me I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing next, but it will be a bigger update this time.  So I'll be going off radar a bit and focusing on work.  It might be the new character creation, possibly even the new bigger world map.  Then I can have famous foliage modder Vurt make the new biomes.

Here are the changes for the last update:

0.42.2

• -Integrated on-screen character name texts with GUI, so they don't appear on top of other panels
• -Characters now choose storage boxes to get resources from, before resorting to the machine outputs.
• -Characters now choose the nearest storage box if there are several to choose from.
• -Research speed is displayed at the top of the research window
• -Added Steel Refinery to make steel bars from.

BUGFIXES

• -Fixed Holy Servants having no weapons
• -Fixed complications when multiple characters tried to pick someone up at the same time
• -Science skill now applies properly to research speed
• -Fixed building power on/off buttons
• -Fixed game freeze when building if you still had gates
• -Fixed characters sometimes freezing after build mode
• -Fixed newly crafted items not saving when left in bench
• -Fixed the shopkeeper inventory crash
• -Fixed the quickload problem when not all the map zones would be loaded
• -Fixed the crafting window list being too short

The new weapon crafting update is out now, here's the change list:

0.42.0 "Crafting"

• -Weapon Crafting. Awesome.
• -Ore mining.
• -Stone/Ore mining upgrades, automated mines.
• -Weapon types have been refangled around.
• -Certain weapon types now give bonuses or penalties to attack/defence skills.
• -New game start-off: "The Holy Sword".
• -Characters will let you know if they don't have any inventory space to collect some goods, and all the storages are full
• -When a character is working at something, the info window will show you which skill is being used, and the effect it has on his work output.

BUGFIXES

• -Added extra Screen resolution option to the in-game options menu, because lots of people missed the one at startup.
• -Fixed the bug where if you got negative money, you couldn't get paid for selling items
• -Fixed crash when pressing the Rescue button

As usual, the next few updates will be smaller, bug-fixing type patches. Then I will probably go on to fix the wall building, and add some automate-able character AI jobs for your bases.

In the end I decided to work on weapon crafting.  So the next update should be a good one, it will add weapon research and crafting, ore mining, and a lot more research levels and upgrades for various things.  I'm also going to make the higher level research technologies take a lot lot longer to complete than the ones at the start.

Armour and clothing crafting will be added later after I have added in the new character/armour artwork, which will be quite soon.

It won't be too long for the next update, probably about a week.  Progress speed partially depends on my ability to dodge PMs and emails and pretend they're not there.

Here's a list for you guys, of the next updates I'm planning (in rough order).  Remember that this is just the top of my list, it's not everything.  Far from it.

1. Weapon crafting and new research tiers (1 week)
2. Walls
3. New character + armour artwork, better character customisation.. Will replace everything, probably leaving all your characters naked after the update.
4. Armour + clothing crafting.
5. AI harassment, threats, raids and assaults on your base.
6. Females
7. Sound
8. Crossbows, ranged combat
9. New bigger world map, layout, and varied biomes.

I'll stop there because I could go on forever.  The above list will take at least a good few months