Marek Rosa -- Need To Create!
Keen Software House -- Space Engineers, Medieval Engineers, VRAGE, Miner Wars -- GoodAI - Artificial Intelligence, General AI Challenge, AI Roadmap Institute
I am very excited to announce GoodAI Applied’s most recent project which is using AI to detect and prevent pressure ulcers in hospitals. This is our first major project using AI in the healthcare industry and has great potential.
The GoodAI team with MUDr. Lívia Večeřová of Hospital Na Bulovce
Pressure ulcers, also known as decubitus ulcers, are caused when patients spend too much time lying in one place. They can develop extremely quickly and are even used as an indicator of good care in healthcare facilities. We have teamed up with Hospital Na Bulovce in Prague to help nurses and doctors tackle this problem.
Our team is using AI image analysis technology in order to determine the position of a patient and alert a nurse, or doctor, to let them know whether they should take action.
GoodAI developer testing the technology
I find this solution particularly interesting as it follows the core values of GoodAI and it will have meaningful impacts on people's lives.
2nd major update since Space Engineers left Early Access
Build Planner
Small Grid Cryo Pod
Armor Skins
Individual Skin Sets
News about Space Engineers Xbox One
Merchandising
Video Competition
Hello, Engineers!
It’s time for another major update. We have been very busy since the release of Space Engineers from Early Access and the Major Overhaul of Survival update. For our last update, we added Customizable LCD screens, the Replay Tool, Steam Badges, Backgrounds and Trading Cards, Three New Music Tracks for the Deluxe Edition, as well as many bug fixes and optimizations for Space Engineers. Additionally, the Decorative pack was released in early April this year, as well as a minor update which included some work we did to make the Decorative Pack usable by all players.
Today we are launching another pack of exciting things for the game. So without any further delay, let’s look at the content we have prepared for you.
We continued working on the game improvements and in this update we focused on the Build Planner, Small Grid Cryo Pod and on customizable game elements, such as skins, emotes and armor skins.
We decided to keep the same approach to this update, being that if you decide to not buy the Style Pack, you are still getting a free update from us! This gives you the opportunity to enjoy new things, but also the chance to support the further development of Space Engineers, if you are willing to do so.
What will you find in this update?
The content featured in this update is split into a free content and paid content. All players will get the Build Planner, Small Grid Cryo Pod, Clean Armor Skin and all the bug fixes, as well as the small changes as specified in the changelog for free.
We will host a livestream where we will review and present the content of this release. We’ll also answer your questions and comments. Tune into the Keen Community Network or the Space Engineers YouTube channel on Thursday, June 6, 5PM UTC.
Build Planner
The Build Planner feature allows players to create a list of blocks or components, which can be automatically transferred into their inventory. It significantly simplifies the gameplay and we are sure that you will appreciate it. Special thanks to one of our top community members DraygoKorvan, for the inspiration to create this Build Planner.
Small Grid Cryo Pod
The Small Grid Cryo Pod is one of the blocks that has been requested a lot by our players, but also the one we promised to bring to the game some time ago. The Small Grid Cryo Pod will allow players to build small ships, vehicles and other creations that contain this block, which acts as a save point for Space Engineers, and is therefore much more efficient from an engineering perspective. For example, a player could build a drop pod for his/her fellow engineers which features Small Grid Cryo Pod and land near an enemy base in an offensive operation. I’m very happy to confirm that this block is now in the game and everyone will get it for free.
Armor Skins
This release also brings the Armor Skins into the game for the first time. The armor skins let you personalize your ships, stations, vehicles and all other creations. The Clean Armor skin is now available to all players for free. The customization offered by these new armor skins are immense, as players can tailor their creations as they see fit. For example, a player could paint one section of his/her spaceship with the Clean Armor skin while also applying different colour schemes and patterns to other grids. Additionally, if players decide to purchase the Armor Skins included in the Style Pack, they will also be able to utilize the Carbon Fiber and Digital Camouflage Armor Skins for their creations; more information on the Carbon Fiber and Digital Camouflage Armor Skins in the next section of this blog.
Style Pack
For players who wish to support the further development of Space Engineers, we have created a Style Pack which consists of two character skins, four character emotes and two armor skins.
For all those who remember the Ghost skin being available for purchase for $4.99 back in October 2017, we decided to set the price of the entire package (Style pack) to $5.99USD, or your regional Steam equivalent. You can purchase the Style Pack here.
We’ll be more than happy if you will send us the screenshots of how you used the items from the pack in the game. We will post the most creative ones on our social media.
This sleek armor skin is designed for spaceships and other vehicles operating in high temperatures; its cool factor is also off the charts.
Armor Skin - Camouflage
Some missions require the element of surprise and concealment, making the Camo Armor Skin well-suited for ambushing hostile forces. It also adds a dominant look to your creations. Use it to signal your power to your opponents.
Character Skin - Proper
Whether you’re hosting a party for your fellow engineers or you’re about to attack an enemy base, you’ll be dressed perfectly for any occasion in this suit.
Character Skin - Chef
Inspired by the apparel worn by the famous intergalactic TV chef on “Cooking with Clang”, this suit is ideal for barbecuing or preparing meals in the kitchen.
The Style Pack also includes four new character emotes: Pointing (6 variants), Angry, Dance, Assist (2 variants). I hope you’ll have a lot of fun playing them.
With this release, we are also bringing two new character skins to the game: NextGen and Fiber. Both character skins are only decorative and you can buy them in the Steam Item Store. The price will be set to $3.99USD per skin set.
"The continued support and development for Space Engineers brings me great delight. I can't wait to see what Keen Software House will bring to the table next.”
“Since the days of directx9 and Virakotxa's amazing gesture pack we've only had a few mods that have worked to fill the void it left, first Ghost416 and more recently Zeej have done a great job. I'm really excited that Keen are adding more themselves though, as I can never get enough variety especially when I want to create some scripted machinima.”
“I’m excited to see Space Engineers incorporate a much loved community mod as an official feature of the game.”
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FAQ
Q: Why are the two individual character skins not included in the Style Pack? A: The reason for not having these individual skins to be part of the Style Pack is because these two specific skins were developed separately from the Style Pack. As these two skins are unique, we wanted to give players the opportunity to buy them individually in case some people do not want to buy the entire pack. We also want to see if players are more interested in packs compared to individual items or perhaps both.
Q: Why did you increase the price of the Style Pack compared to the Decorative Pack? A: The complexity and technical requirements are different for these two packs. We spent much more time working on the Style Pack than on the Decorative Pack. The Decorative Pack was also the first DLC we released after Space Engineers moved out of Early Access and it showed us that many members of our community are willing to support us. Therefore, we invested more time and effort to bring some game changing things to Space Engineers now and we plan to continue this for upcoming releases. Another reason is that we wanted to give the Decorative Pack to as many players as possible, and a reduced price definitely helps :) Q: Can we expect that the next DLC will be even more expensive? A: I would not generalize it this way. The price of the DLC is based on the complexity of the content in the DLC.
Q: When we can expect the next update? A: The next update is expected to be released similarly to this one, so somewhere between one to two months.
Q: What will be the content of the next update? A: I do not want to spoil the surprise, but it’ll be a game changer that will give players a better system for cooperation, as well as certain levels of tasks and goals, which can be managed by themselves.
News About the Space Engineers Xbox One Version
We are receiving a lot of requests and questions about the Space Engineers Xbox One version. Check out these videos below to see some of the progress that’s been made on this project :)
This is the first Space Engineers Xbox One gameplay video ever :)
Merchandising
We would like to remind you that our fantastic Space Engineers merchandise is available at the Keen Software House E-shop.
Our shop has many designs to choose from and it’s easy to use.
Video Competition
We had some amazing submissions for this year’s Video Competition, which featured videos created by our talented community and voted on by our ever-growing fans. Watching these entries with the Space Engineers Team was a highlight of this year for me, and I would like to thank everyone who entered the competition and those who voted on these fantastic community creations.
Best thing about these videos is that I myself contributed only by starting Space Engineers, and developing it over the years, but the videos were created by the community. Something I couldn’t have done myself. You people are taking Space Engineers to places that I wouldn’t have thought of.
There are many talented filmmakers in our community!
Our community continues to inspire us and we hope we continue to inspire them.
What’s next?
This is the second major update being released after the game moved out of Early Access. Our focus is on bringing you new features and decoratives, so you can enjoy the game even more. Our team really enjoyed working on this update, because all of the work was based on our community’s feedback. I hope you’ll also enjoy all of the new things in Space Engineers.
Looking at our upcoming plans, I can say that we are going to work on another update, but with a bigger impact on the gameplay. I’ll repeat myself saying, that we want to bring you more things you asked for in the past, such as new skins, new weapons, new economy system etc., and we want to do it in a way that won’t split the community and where paying is optional and only for those who want to support further development of Space Engineers.
If you want to let me know your feedback please get in touch via my personal email address marek.rosa@keenswh.com, or use our Keen Software House support site. I welcome all of the feedback we receive and we will use it to learn and provide better services to our players.
Thank you for reading this blog!
Best, Marek Rosa
CEO, Creative Director, Founder at Keen Software House
CEO, CTO, Founder at GoodAI
Personal bio: Marek
Rosa is the CEO and CTO of GoodAI, a general artificial intelligence
R&D company, and the CEO and founder of Keen Software House, an
independent game development studio best known for their best-seller
Space Engineers (3 million copies sold). Both companies are based in
Prague, Czech Republic. Marek has been interested in artificial intelligence since childhood.
He started his career as a programmer but later transitioned to a
leadership role. After the success of the Keen Software House titles,
Marek was able to personally fund GoodAI, his new general AI research
company building human-level artificial intelligence. GoodAI started in January 2014 and has over 30 research scientists,
engineers and consultants working across its Research and Applied teams. At this time, Marek is developing both Space Engineers and Medieval
Engineers, as well as daily research and development on recursive
self-improvement based general AI architecture.
This is the first update since Space Engineers left Early Access
Replay tool
Customizable LCD screens
Steam trading cards, badges and background
Decorative blocks to enrich your gameplay experience
Reasons why investing into the future of Space Engineers is important
Merchandising
What’s ahead of us
Hello, Engineers!
It’s time for another exciting update for Space Engineers. After our out of Early Access release, we are now bringing you another big change. Keeping in mind, that we want to make the Space Engineers game more fun and closer to your desires, we are introducing new game elements to Space Engineers. But let’s start from the beginning.
The most obvious change is the fact that with this release we are bringing both free and premium content to the game. This gives you the opportunity to enjoy new things, but also the chance to support the further development of Space Engineers, if you are willing to do so.
I explain the reasons for these steps below in more detail. One thing I’d like to mention at the beginning is that the content is not “pay to win” and the owner of the package has no advantage against other players. If you decide not to purchase the Decorative Pack, but you want to play with friends or other players who did buy the Decorative Pack, you will still be able to join a multiplayer game or server with them and enjoy the game. In this case, you will be able to view these new blocks, but you won’t be able to build or interact with them.
If you decide to not buy the Decorative Pack, you are still getting a free update from us!
So What’s Included in the New Update?
All players will get new functional cockpit LCDs with customizable screens, replay tool, which can be used for setting up various animated scenes, brand new random Encounters, Steam trading cards, badges and backgrounds, and all bug fixes, optimizations, and smaller improvements for free.
Players who already own the Deluxe Edition will also get three new music tracks based on the music from this trailer for free.
For players who wish to support further development of Space Engineers, we have created a bulk of decorative blocks, which you can use for various decorations on your spaceships, vehicles and space stations. The price is $3.99 USD, or your regional Steam equivalent. You can purchase the Decorative Pack here. We’ll be more than happy if you will send us the screenshots of how you used these new blocks. We will post the most creative ones on our social media.
Free Update for Everyone
Cockpit LCD With Customizable Screens
We reworked most of the display-like surfaces in game to act the same as an LCD panel, to be able to display texts and images. This includes cockpits, programmable block and new console block. This advanced feature will also give you the ability to render textures and texts at arbitrary positions onto LCD screens. You may either use Programmable Block, MOD API or select one of the integrated scripts. Integrated scripts can display Velocity, Energy / Hydrogen, Gravity, Digital or Analog clock. It is prepared for both single and multiplayer. Every mission is different, and customizable LCDs allow Space Engineers to tailor these displays for specific tasks.
We will host a livestream where our programmers will explain how to use programmable blocks and customizable LCD screens. Tune into Keen Community Network for Tuesday, April 9, 6PM UTC.
Replay Tool
After many requests, we have decided to release our internal Replay Tool that we use to create our trailers. It allows you to record the movement and actions of multiple characters in the same world. You can use your video recording software of choice to capture these moments for cinematic purposes! It’s also super useful for epic screenshot creation. The tool allows you to be the director of your own Space Engineers film where you can carefully position and time different engineers with their own specific roles. We are extremely excited to see what the community will create with this!
Important: because it’s an internal tool, it has a very basic user interface and required advanced users to be used. We believe this is OK, because most video creators who would want to use it to create epic cinematic Space Engineers videos are advanced users.
Encounters - we added a whole bunch of new random encounters
and upgraded several existing ones as well. These new encounters will
now include and showcase the new DLC blocks.
Three new music tracks for the Deluxe Edition
Steam Trading Cards, Badges and Background
There are now Steam trading cards to collect for Space Engineers! Collect a full set of cards to earn items that help you customize your Steam profile including backgrounds and badges.
For more information on Steam trading cards, badges and backgrounds, see this FAQ
Space Engineers Steam Profile Background Image (example)
Space Engineers Steam Profile Badges
Space Engineers Steam Trading Cards (examples)
Decorative Pack (paid)
There are fourteen new decorative blocks for people who want to buy them and support the development of Space Engineers, which are available on the Space Engineers Steam Store page. Within the package you will get following new blocks:
Beds can preserve characters’ inventory and toolbar while they're offline and keeps them alive as long as there is oxygen available. Is considered to be the same as the Cryo Chamber Block, except oxygen is used from the environment. Space Engineers don’t work from nine to five, they work whenever they’re needed: day or night, during peace and war. But when it’s time to call it a day, every engineer looks forward to resting in these beds.
Standard and Corner Desks can be used as seats, which allow players to sit on the chair attached to it. Combine these blocks to produce various designs and sizes, creativity has no limitation. Whether designing new schematics or charting a fresh course to another world, desks are essential for any engineer looking to get some work done.
Kitchens are purely decorative. The kitchens in Space Engineers come well-equipped and include stunning visual details. Space Engineers overcome challenges everyday when they’re working on new planets or among the stars.
Planters are purely decorative, but they make outer space a bit warmer by housing life in a special glass container. Build your own garden on the space station. Planters not only help to liven up spaces, but the flora housed inside these capsules also remind many engineers of the homes they’ve left behind in order to explore the universe.
Couches can be used as seats, so take your time to relax and take a break. You don’t need to always run, fly or work, you can enjoy your cozy room and enjoy the view. The last thing anyone would ever call a Space Engineer is ‘couch potato’, but who wouldn’t like to relax after a hard day’s work on this comfy furniture?
Armory and Armory Lockers can be used to decorate interiors and store weapons, ammunition, tools and bottles; both are small storages (400L), where you can keep your equipment. Space Engineers use lockers in order to ensure that keepsakes from home, toiletries and other items are kept safe.
Lockers, storage is 1000L where little doors can be pointed at.
Toilets can be used as a seat. The latest and greatest interstellar lavatory technology has made many earth dwellers jealous of the facilities enjoyed by Space Engineers.
Toilet Seat that can be used as a seat and is fit for the creator of the legendary Red Ship; most engineers don’t want to get up after ‘taking care of business’.
Industrial Cockpits are used to control your ships. This industrial cockpit in both small and large grid versions will make your creations look much better. Offering unmatched visibility, the industrial cockpit enables engineers to experience stunning vistas while traversing landscapes and space.
Console blocks project blueprints for downscaled ships and stations, as well as display pictograms or customizable text. They are fantastic functional LCD panels where you can project your creations and show them to your friends. The sleek and crystal clear picture offered by this console allows Space Engineers to display designs and other important information.
Small grid cryo pods - we are still going to add this block to the game, but we are in the process of testing it and fine tuning it.
*Note to modders: When modding the decorative blocks, copy the current settings and then do the change on top of that. The mod will also include the DLC tag:
<DLC>DecorativeBlocks</DLC>
Why Income is Important & Investing in the future
Keen Software House needs to stay profitable in order to continue development and support of Space Engineers, and to take risks, to invest into experiments that may not pay off in the short term, and to develop innovative concepts.
We have been very lucky in being profitable since 2013. We are still very profitable. But we don’t want to just rest on one's laurels.
Sometimes we have to invest in people, teams, or projects, without knowing if they will work out. You need to give them time. And if you want to have a high bar for innovation, expecting novel things, you need to take the risk.
Examples of high-risk but high-reward features from the past:
Planets
Multi-player (very challenging to do in highly dynamic environments such as in Space Engineers)
Wheel, rotors, jump drive, ladders, and tens of other functional blocks
Example of future high-risk but high-reward features:
Water for our game engine VRAGE
Rewrite our game engine VRAGE with parallelism in mind, being more asynchronous in its nature (parallelism by design), more data-oriented.
General AI for our games (NPCs, living worlds)
Why are they high-risk? Because they are hard to do, and usually it takes many iterations until we figure out the right way to do it. It usually takes a few iterations to perfect it. This means that doing water can take a few weeks (if we get it right from the start) or a few years (if we need to experiment, iterate, throw away past experiments, look for specialists in this area, etc). Same for the engine rewrite and AI / living worlds for our games.
Please see the above as a very open explanation of why income is important, and how it fuels future improvements of our games.
What Others Say
FAQ
Q: Are all future updates going to be paid? A: Actually, even this update isn’t paid. The major part of this update (LCD screens, Replay Tool, new music tracks, smaller improvements) is free for everyone. Only the smaller and not mandatory part is paid - Decorative Pack, which you can purchase here.
Q: Aren’t you going to split the community - people who don’t own the Decorative Pack won’t be able to play with people who own it? A: The way we designed this is that even people who don’t purchase the Decorative Pack can play on servers with people who own the Decorative Pack. Players who don’t own the Decorative Pack won’t be able to build with these new blocks, nor interact with them, but they will be able to view them in-game.
Q: Where is all this money going? A: To support future development of Space Engineers and other leading-edge projects we plan to work on at Keen Software House. Players kept asking us for something they could buy to support the development of Space Engineers, and the Decorative Pack is a great option for them.
Q: When did you start working on Decorative Pack? A: Right after Space Engineers left early access and all hot issues were resolved. Most of the work was done by the Art team, the rest of the developers is working on other long-term updates.
Q: Why haven’t you increased the price of Space Engineers and include the Decorative Pack in it, or why it’s not part of the Deluxe Edition? A: We want more people to play Space Engineers, which means we must lower the barrier of entry. When the Space Engineers community grows, everyone benefits from this - more content on Workshop, more mods, more new ideas, more people to play with. This means that all non-mandatory features should be optional, so only those who really want them can pay for them. That’s why we decreased the price of Space Engineers, and made the Decorative Pack an optional purchase.
Q: We asked you for volumetric water, compound blocks, new goals, more optimizations, etc, and instead you are giving us a toilet block? A: Hehe, if you put it this way, it sounds kind of funny. But the reality is that decorative blocks are low-hanging fruit, not a bottleneck towards those other mentioned future features. Additionally, the decorative pack can bring added profit and make the mentioned things happen.
Our shop has many designs to choose from and it’s easy to use.
What’s Ahead of Us?
This update is being released soon after the game moved out of Early Access. Our team really enjoyed working on it, because it was not about some back end changes that only a few people will notice, but it was about things that are visible to everyone. I hope you’ll also enjoy all of the new things in Space Engineers.
Looking at our upcoming plans, I can say that we are going to work on another package similar to this one. It’s not a secret that we want to bring you more things you asked for in the past, such as new skins, new weapons, new economy system etc.
If you want to let me know your feedback on our decision to release paid Decorative Pack, please get in touch via my personal email address marek.rosa@keenswh.com. I welcome every feedback and we will use it to learn and provide better service.
Thank You
Thank you for reading this blog!
Best,
Marek Rosa
CEO, Creative Director, Founder at Keen Software House
CEO, CTO, Founder at GoodAI
Personal bio: Marek
Rosa is the CEO and CTO of GoodAI, a general artificial intelligence
R&D company, and the CEO and founder of Keen Software House, an
independent game development studio best known for their best-seller
Space Engineers (3 million copies sold). Both companies are based in
Prague, Czech Republic. Marek has been interested in artificial intelligence since childhood.
He started his career as a programmer but later transitioned to a
leadership role. After the success of the Keen Software House titles,
Marek was able to personally fund GoodAI, his new general AI research
company building human-level artificial intelligence. GoodAI started in January 2014 and has over 30 research scientists,
engineers and consultants working across its Research and Applied teams. At this time, Marek is developing both Space Engineers and Medieval
Engineers, as well as daily research and development on recursive
self-improvement based general AI architecture.
