Friday, April 17, 2015

Guest post by Ondrej Petrzilka - Space Engineers: Planets, scenarios and new multiplayer

Hello, I am Ondrej Petrzilka, for those who don't know me I am the lead developer for Space and Medieval Engineers. I joined Keen Software House in 2011 as a game programmer for Miner Wars 2081 and since then I have worked on various projects in the studio mostly on the development of Space Engineers. In this blog post I would like to put some light on our current and future plans with Space Engineers. Currently we’re working on three big things: planets, scenarios and new multiplayer.

Planets


Planets have been discussed many times and players have wanted them for a long time. I would like to give you more information about our intentions and the background of the idea.

When Space Engineers was released to Early Access, we were very pessimistic about planets, but that changed by the end of 2014, when the procedural asteroid generator was created. We realized that it could be possible to create bigger asteroids – more than 8 km across. When we discussed planets in the team, we’ve realized we don’t just want just big asteroids, we want planets with ‘everything’.

Planet features:
  • Decent size
  • Gravity (affecting ships too if possible)
  • Atmosphere
  • Terrain (mountains, canyons)
  • Vegetation (trees, bushes, grass)
  • Visible from big distance (1000+ km)

How big should the planet be? Currently we’re able to create ‘planets’ with a size of around 20 – 50 km. It’s quite small compared to Earth and technically, it’s not a planet. Even Pluto has a radius 1184 km and it’s classified as a dwarf planet. When we tried first prototypes of big asteroids, 8 km in diameter, it looked pretty big. With bigger sizes, gameplay issues emerged.

Imagine a planet with a radius of 100 km. You’ll get close to the planet to fill your screen from top to bottom. When you have default field of view (FOV in video options), you’ll be still 73 km away from the planet surface! When traveling at the maximum speed of 104 m/s, it will take you almost 12 minutes to reach the surface. That seems like too long.

How long would it take to fly around a 100 km planet? The circumference of a 100 km planet is 628 km. When traveling at maximum speed, it would take more than 90 minutes to fly around.

Solution. First we were thinking about changing the maximum speed, but it’s too problematic. We’re limited by physics stability, bullet-through-paper issues and other problems. We’ve decided to make planet size configurable in world options (minimum and maximum planet size). This way we can release planets soon and satisfy players who want small planets and also players who want huge planets. It’s possible that we will reevaluate maximum speed in future.

Gravity. Planets will have gravity which is similar to earth gravity. With distance from a planet, gravity will gradually decrease; bigger planets will have more gravity. We plan to apply planet gravity to ships as well.



Atmosphere. We plan to add atmosphere to certain planets; when there’s atmosphere, there will be vegetation. Other planets will be barren, without atmosphere. Vegetation should be very similar to what you see in Medieval Engineers. To achieve nice atmosphere effects, we’re planning to use a special shader which takes into account sun direction, air density, the distance light travels through air and other parameters. It will be possible to breathe freely and refill the oxygen tanks on a planet with atmosphere.


Visibility distance. Space Engineers has a default view distance of 20 km. If you were to fly toward a 30 km asteroid or planet, you would see nothing…nothing…nothing…and then suddenly a big planet would appear in front of you. This feels very weird and it would break the experience, so we had to come up with a solution.

One option was increasing view distance, but there’s still a limit of 50-70 km, because of Z-buffer precision. We wanted players to see planets from 1000 km distance or more. We’ve decided to render distant planets‘separately’. This allows players to see planets 10.000 km away, while other objects like ships and small asteroids are visible only to 20 km.

Scenarios


In last 15 months, we’ve added a large amount of game features, but we haven’t added much of the gameplay. Space Engineers is now sandbox game where you can do many crazy things…without any goal. We’re planning to add goals soon; you’ve probably seen the first scenario a week ago, this was just a testing scenario. More scenarios will follow; both single-player and multi-player.

The primary purpose of scenarios is to entertain players who seek goals and achievements in the game. The secondary purpose is to teach new players how to play the game and introduce them slowly to most of the game mechanics. A game like this, with a lot of features available at once, can be confusing for new players.

Single-player scenarios will consist of a series of objectives with possible branches (sometimes the player will be able to choose how to progress). Scenarios will take advantage of features which are already in game. First scenarios will be very straight-forward, to teach players certain mechanics, like mining or repairing the station. Then there will be more advanced scenarios with multiple ways of reaching the goal. An example can be: ‘destroy military output’. It will be up to the player to decide whether to build a heavily armored ship with missile launchers or to build decoys for distraction, blow one turret with a warhead and hack the rest of outpost. We haven’t decided yet whether it will be possible to play single-player scenarios in cooperative mode.

Multiplayer scenarios will be designed to bring some competitive gaming to Space Engineers. We’re discussing the designs of these scenarios in the team. There are ideas for classic scenarios like "defend station", "capture the flag", "death-match" and less common scenarios, for example where players compete in mining to deliver the largest amount of gold ore from a big gold asteroid to a merchant. Some scenarios will be team-based while others will be free-for-all.

Modding. We want to make scenarios fully modable, it should be possible for modders to create and script both single-player and multi-player scenarios. There will also be a simple scenario editor directly in-game; modders will be able to prepare a world and select victory conditions in the UI. Modders will be able to use prepared infrastructure, like victory/game-over screens, scoring screens, team selection, define player inventory, possible respawn count and more.

New Multiplayer


Update 01.015, which added multiplayer was released on Jan 16th 2014, more than a year ago. Multiplayer itself was written in 5 weeks. We knew it’s far from being perfect, there were connection issues, lags, desync issues, jittering, hackers and many many other issues. We didn’t want to spend 2 months rewriting multiplayer from scratch, so we decided to fix the things we could fix and focus on ‘better’ multiplayer later. We also knew that if we add infinite worlds, we’ll have to change multiplayer again.

Now we’re ready to rewrite multiplayer from scratch. The game has many more features and we can take these into account when rewriting multiplayer, especially infinite and procedurally generated worlds. We also have a bigger team, so we can keep adding features and also work on multiplayer.

In the current version of multiplayer, every client knows everything. When somebody is drilling 100.000 km away, the client gets this information from the server. It’s not necessary for the client to know it; the client should only get this information when he gets close to the drilled asteroid. In new multiplayer, clients will only receive information which is necessary and related to an area close to their position (or camera position in case they are looking through camera). This will reduce required bandwidth a lot; it will also allow many more players in the game (depending only on the server’s internet connection).

Information sent to the client will be prioritized; important things like position updates will have high priority. Less important things like battery capacity update or inventory changes will be sent with lower priority. This should reduce lags and make multiplayer more smooth.

Every client is now sending position updates to all other clients (it’s not going through server). This can reduce lag a little, but it also requires a bigger upload, because it’s necessary to send messages to every other client (not only to the server). It also makes connection issues much worse, because it’s necessary for each client to be connected to every other client. With more players on server, this issue has a much bigger impact.

In new multiplayer, the client won’t be connected to every other client, but only to the server. The server will validate data sent from the client (e.g. position updates) and send it only to other clients who need this information (clients who see the original client). This will prevent connection issues and reduce network bandwidth. It’s also a necessary step for increasing the number of players on server.

The current multiplayer uses the Steam Networking layer which allows us very easily to send data between players and it’s very easy to use. On the other hand it’s missing some advanced features. To get advanced features, we’ve decided to switch to RakNet. RakNet is a popular networking layer; it’s robust and it supports many platforms including Xbox, PlayStation, Linux, Android and other.

New multiplayer will work technically in a similar way to Halo Reach or the Tribes series (way of synchronizing objects and its properties). We’ve been working on the new multiplayer for a month now. The work will continue for at least several weeks or a few months before it’s done.

Stay tuned for more information about ship AI, Xbox, game controller and Medieval Engineers.

Note: All images are public domain

Thanks!
Ondrej Petrzilka
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198 comments:

  1. Ohhh, dis gun be gud! Can't wait! Altough It could be cool to only have a few planets with breathable atmosphere, instead of all planets with a atmosphere.

    Perhaps you can add a long-range sensor (scanner?) that gives basic info about planets/astroids, such as atmosphere(yes/no/breathable), size, materials (50% stone, 10% Uranium ect) distance and so on.

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    1. i like your idea of a long-range sensor. it could work together with the antenna and give information of at least the distance to a planet or asteroid.

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    2. Yes! I've always wanted a long range scanner to get more info on an asteroid. Maybe something that hooks up through the camera. I'm always scouting asteroids with the camera zoom.

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    3. you could do something like this now, but it would require you to launch a probe, with the laser antenna to send the information back. if you are good with coding you could automate the whole process, but if not there would be a few moments that would need human intervention via camera.

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    4. hello plz add like we can make some ships and make the AI controll them.
      let us can make some robots ! robo ships where you program them or something to fight with you :D

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    5. Will there be some kind of mechanic to allow for orbit of planets like a computer or something to plot courses? Or will we have to try it on our own? Or will orbit even be possible?

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    6. I would like a Long range scanner, and it could dubble for a comm relay if you want.

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    8. Planets in space engineers will be significant to multiplayer servers. Also, (assuming that we can build doomsday weapons in-game) we can make planets EXPLODE!

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    9. Send a class 3 probe into the planets core!

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    10. I think it would be more immersive to have to be in atmosphere with a ship equipped properly to take a atmospheric sample and tell you of that composition, or vegetation and other such things, rather than an antenna from a distance. It would make scout/survey ships important

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    11. Multiplayer like Halo Reach excites me. I still play that game frequently today. It's my favorite game.

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    12. A 3D map that only shows data you have scanned would be nice too,
      the data gets better when you reduce distanz.
      This would be great with a option to send live data to a other ship to Know if something passes your sector.

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  2. I'm impressed, as always, the work you are developing is magnificen , would like to thank you so so so much for so much effort!
    Can not wait for the planets and new multiplayer, waiting anxiously this !!!
    Greetings from Brazil! o/


    PS.: Sorry for my English...

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    1. To be honest your English isn't that bad Diego

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    2. Hi! Thank you for the update. If you at Keen ever decide it is not fiscally reasonable to continue adding badass features to Space Engineers, please do consider begging for money from the community. Call it, a community-bought expansion pack? I would happily repurchase this game every few months if it keeps you working on, and delivering, things like this forever.

      -DanP

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    3. true his English is better than some of my classmates XD

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    4. They are not stopping with Space Engineers anytime soon. This game made them more money than they know what to do with (actually they do seem to know what to do, but that's just a way of saying they have a LOT of money), so yes, I don't see them stopping.

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  3. All aboard to the hype train...

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    1. *gets on the train*

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    2. This game is already amazing, as it stands, But the features they're planning on adding will only serve to make it spectacular, or even better yet. Imagine: flying down to a planet's surface, and having to fight not only gravity, but also atmospheric density. They'll have to eventually add atmospheric stabilizers, but you'll really have to earn your silver wings :D

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  4. Not much of a pc gamer but this game makes me want to build a gaming computer with how good it is

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    1. I literally built a gaming computer for this

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    2. I have built cockpit for this :) Well, actually not, cockpit is for racing games, but replacing wheel with joystick and using pedals, buttons and shifters for various ship systems, it makes flying a ship pretty awesome experience :)

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  5. Now if you would port and joint develop it on the mac....

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    1. Forget Mac, get PC, cheaper, better performance (when you know what you're doing) and overall, better quality, plus it's cheaper to maintain should a part malfunction, you;d only replace the one part.

      This is all under teh assumption , of course, if you go Desktop, Laptop of any make or brand will cost a pretty penny to fix/ repair.

      My advice for any computer, keep your fans clean of any lint, dust or clogging material, it not only kill performance but it actually becomes a fire hazard.

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    2. Mac and Linux! This game is one of the few reasons remaining for me to not completely switch to Linux for my every day use.

      And it SHOULD be feasible; Sure, the DX11 renderer is going to be hard, but you CAN actually use DX9 on Linux these days, Wine, Gallium, and many projects alike are all fairly complete implementations of DX9 on Linux nowadays, combined with Mono it shouldn't be that hard to create a Linux build :)

      Of course that is all up to you guys, I can imagine it's not a development target, but realize that Windows 7 support is going to end sooner than later, and many people really don't like where Win8+ has headed, so it would be a great fanservice to port the game to Linux :)

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    3. Win10 will be out before 7 support ends, and 10 is pretty much 7 with some nice features from 8 and all that put together=problem solved. i tested the technical review and it was awesome

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    4. Except Windows is still a bad OS to begin with that I'd rather not use altogether.

      Not to mention that Windows 10 really hasn't solved the issues I had with CloudOS- I mean Windows 8/8.1, namely that they're desperately trying to make it another Android clone, with touchscreen-oriented screens, and most annoyingly of all, being forced to log in to a Microsoft account. Windows has enough backdoors as it is, being constantly logged in with some account makes it nothing short of creepy.

      tl;dr: I have my reasons not to like Windows, and I'm sure everyone has their reasons, a Linux and Mac port would not be a strange choice.

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    5. 1. Click local account and no longer a "cloud OS"
      2. You hate on windows for pushing you toward their accounts and systems, yet you like macs, which give you no option but to sign up for their 24/7 spyware and app stores...
      3. You also hate on windows for having "big tablet PC buttons" when you can chose a variety of options to make it just like a faster version of win7 with an awkward start menu - which win 10 will fix completely

      Finally, porting a game is no easy task, its easily double the work. And its not fun work either, its bug fixing, it would instantly kill the excellent update record we have going at the moment.

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    6. 1) That is true for windows 8, but not for 10. If you want to activate Windows, you will -NEED- a Microsoft account, from the last rumors anyway.

      2) I never said I like macs, in fact, quite the opposite, I absolutely disdain Apple's antitrust policies and blown up hype, which is also exactly why I hate Microsoft, because they're the second-biggest antitrust dick on the software scene. I just accept they exist, and any alternative to Windows is good. We need options, without it consumers are powerless.

      3) Microsoft purposefully hides options and configuration screens in the 'start screen' last I checked, and I know because I'm a qualified sysadmin who has to deal with these duplo/playmobile OSs daily. They have absolutely lost their feeling for UX after Windows 7, because they really want to push Windows onto the mobile market.

      I know exactly how hard porting a game is. If you even read my comment then you know that creating a Linux build should not be hard because the fast majority of the code should be portable already. I know bugfixing is hard, which is exactly why I said I understand it's not a development focus, but that I would very much urge them to still consider the idea. This however, does not have to affect the Windows branch at all, because that's exactly what it would be, a branch, separate from the Windows updates.

      I'm on your side, why are you trying to insult me? A port would be better for everyone, because code portability is very important to have with the kinda uncertain future of Windows.

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    7. pressed F5 so lost my reply... to sum up:
      1. like the subscription only rumor I expect this to turn out to be false too
      2. I like the idea of Linux, I just don't have the time/not in the position to switch (I know windows and its software inside-out)
      3. I'm on desktop and have only used the "desktop on startup" option because, in all honesty, metro is no absolutely terrible (just awkward with a mouse)

      It would effect the windows updates, they will have to dedicate more time to bug-fixing (less for content).

      Using DirectX they can't exactly dig themselves a bigger hole for portability later on, and windows future is as un-certain as apples (like it or not) if people ever move away from the big players it will be a slow and drawn out battle. In such a case the developers would have plenty of time to switch with the majority (and would see it coming like all of us with about 3 years foresight).

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    8. 1) I really hope so. Windows is creepy enough as it is.
      2) Linux isn't so bad really :) Most software is portable these days, and if you install something like KDE as desktop environment you'll never know the difference. It's also much better with modern hardware than it used to be, also thanks to Valve's efforts to get more attention from the hardware industry to it, which means that you can just install a modern Linux distro such as Fedora or OpenSuse and expect ALL your hardware to work out of the box without needing a single driver or kernel module. Give the Fedora KDE Spin (google it, the main version is Gnome 3 which is kinda.. Duplo :u) a try some time, you won't be disappointed.
      3) Metro isn't just terrible, it's a step back from the start menu and the specialized properly done desktop environment that they only had to perfect! I wish they just continued the way they made Windows 7, that was a great desktop OS. Metro is horrible, even for a mobile UI, Android has better mouse and keyboard support than that monstrosity does. I can't even drag the interface! That's like, UX 101! It just completely baffles me a company that large can fuck up User eXperience that badly, especially with how good they were at it in the past.

      DirectX is a bad choice, yes, but it's not impossible to port; There are decent DirectX9 implementations on Linux, Valve has done just that with all their source games really, DOTA uses a DirectX to OpenGL translation layer that they've opensourced for everyone to use, and it's really really good ( https://github.com/ValveSoftware/ToGL ).

      Again I care as much for Windows as I do for Apple, it's just good to have choices. If it were up to me, everyone would be on Linux, because the nature of opensource and openstandards allows everyone to make choices without even needing a second OS, although *bsd and other *nix OSs are very welcome to exist too. Something as fundamental as an operating system should be entirely opensource though, there's too many backdoors and bullshit that Microsoft and Apple implement in their code and get away with it just because the source isn't available.

      But I digress.. Space Engineers on Linux should be done, because it would be a shame to see a game this awesome to not try and reach the widest audience possible. It's not up to me though, so I'm instead just pleading to the developers; Please, at least try to port it, I don't care if it's less stable than the Windows build, eventually you'll be happy that you made your code portable instead of depending so heavily on something who's future is so unstable and uncertain.

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    9. 2. As much as I want to go Linux, I just don't have the mental capacity (in the first year of a job at Rolls-Royce (jet engines) + university course). When i have the time to switch it will be a long time from now.
      3. So we disagree there... slightly... but it is just a initial UI, desktop is still there and a lot of improvements are there/will be made in 10.

      Not a bad choice for the developers, I highly suspect the game has come this far because of the teams per-expertiece in Directx, and as many good qualities (as long as your main audience is windows).
      And what I was saying was by sticking with windows only until they are nearer end of development, they wont have a harder job in the "final port" than if they try and maintain 2 variations of their software.

      Space Engineers on Linux should be done, I just don't think it is do-able to the level of effectiveness the developers are currently able to do things. Porting it to linux wont reach much bigger audiences as a mac port though, like i said, it wont be a harder job later on because they are already as dependent as you can get.


      Anyway, I apologize for the aggression before (what can i say? I thought you were for-mac) and I can't post anymore replies because I have no compatible account for this board to notify me of a reply (f5 is getting quite boring :D)

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    10. I understand you don't feel like waiting for my next post and F5ing all the time, don't worry, I'm just posting my point of view. :)

      2) You can create a live USB stick with persistence, and only boot it when you feel like it, it'll be like you installed it except it won't touch your harddisk at all :) I certainly understand people not wanting to get familiar with an entirely new OS when they have lives of their own to attend to, but really, you won't feel much a difference if you get something like KDE heh, Linux is quite usable as desktop OS these days ;) It has still some road to cover though, but it's certainly getting there.

      3) UX is also a matter of taste I guess.. but somewhere that's exactly what I don't like about Metro, they didn't HAVE to remove the start button, initial versions of Win8 (dev edition for example) still allowed you to restore it with a register hack, but instead they opted to force the UI onto everyone regardless of taste, which was a bad choice imho.

      I can certainly understand them developing in DirectX if they only have experts in DX and not OpenGL, that's why I haven't said anything like "pls port everything to openGL", but things like "use a translation layer to make your life easier". Even though OpenGL would be a better choice, performance and portability wise, it certainly has its.. usability shortcomings, especially if you're developing with Visual Studio (which I'm pretty sure they are).

      Right now a port might be a bad idea, because it would be even more work on top of the already wide range of branches running in parallel in the development, but it could also be a good idea because if you're going to port, it's best to do it as early on as possible, so you can consider it while coding new things.

      As for the audience, it's not really about the audience, most Linux users also have Windows, but having to boot into Windows all the time is a chore, and I'd much rather stay on Linux all the time. But most of all, it would be a shame to see a project like this stay stuck on Windows, because if Windows dies for whatever reason, it means the game is immediately obsolete, and that would be a shame.

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    11. Mac parts aren't lower quality than the usual PC parts. It's quite the opoosite actually but that's also the problem with macs. They use very expensive professional server grade hardware like firepro gpus and xeon cpus which have a really bad price/performance ratio in terms of gaming in exchange for higher 24/7 use reliability which the normal customer doesn't need. Btw. if you own a screw driver you can repair a mac just like any PC ;)

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    12. The thing is, we see how this team works. When it starts a new project it devotes separate teams to it, so I suspect once some of these big things are out of the way, and they get a few more employees, then porting to Mac and Linux and Xbox and play station and the fricken wii will be more possible

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    13. The entire following post is off topic:

      @Megapro125: Macs aren't ANY better quality than normal PCs, in fact, they are very average or even mediocre hardware put in a pretty case. Their motherboards are made by Foxconn, which loves keeping things as cheap as they can, and the CPUs are just Intel CPUs like the rest of the PC world, just because it's a Xeon doesn't justify over 3K pricetags, especially since the hardware doesn't even sum up to 1K in total worth. Also Xeons are a weird choice in CPUs, unless you need the ECC RAM, which even professional workstations really don't need, there's absolutely no reason to go with a Xeon over just some i5 or i7.

      Also, swapping the RAM and Harddisk isn't repairing. Try fix your Mac if your screen breaks. They just LOVE to glue things in, and use arcane torq-variety screws instead of industrial standardized philips screws. If they use standardized philips screws, it's generally only to allow you easy access to more expensive upgrades such as Apple Certified RAM, Apple Certified Harddisks, and so forth.

      Macs aren't inherently bad machines, but you'll get a hell of a lot more for your money if you just buy a decent PC with the same hardware, without giving in any durability (because it's the exact same hardware, after all).

      Apple however, is in my opinion an inherently bad company; They are driven by nothing but greed and investors, especially after Steve Jobs died. They constantly do the craziest antitrust bullshit, just to try and keep people on their platform and prevent people from fleeing to other companies when they realize what they're really dealing with underneath those shiny metal cases, whether it's as simple as iTunes DRM, or as deep down as paying companies to only release software for their OS.
      Microsoft isn't much better, though, but it figures, they're all just driven by investors.

      I've started calling it Investor Driven Development. If you look at EA Games, especially their 'mobile division', you'll see what I mean; Dungeon keeper makes you wait for DAYS to excavate a cave, unless you PAY WITH MICROCURRENCY. THAT is what greed and investors does with companies. And I'm always very glad when companies like Valve explicitly say they have no interest in investors, because it severely damages the company's ability to be creative and good for their customers.

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    14. I've made the switch to linux-only a few years ago. Right now, people even started wondering whether I am really a pc-wiz, as I have no clue to how windows actually works right now. I'm getting the same problems, like: where is the copnfiguration of this thing. I just have 1 dual boot, in which I configured nothing, just the steam and the games. I would love for the game business to start making stuff for linux, but I can also see why that would probably not be a good idea!

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    15. @Mateo TChips: Imagine SE on the Wii U... your screen would be your character view, and the tablet-thing could have all the menus on it...

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    16. Though I have used the IBM based system and Windows since its conception (Yes, I am that old!), if this game was successfully ported to Linux, I would play it on that OS rather than Windows or Mac without question.

      Mac has never been in my sights, mainly due to bad experiences with the first releases of the original Apple PC, and then financial reasons.

      Windows is not a good gaming platform. You have to have top end machines to really get around delay issues. Even though I have my PC tuned for this game, Windows still causes delays in gameplay. And besides, Widows has and always probably will have too many security leaks, due to the platform design, and that's not likely to ever change.

      So give me a decent Linux port and Windows, I'm outa here!

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    17. @Alexander Ypema: If xeons were obsolete against I5/I7 CPUs Intel wouldn't produce them they just fill a different niche (which IS NOT gaming) and same goes for AMDs Firepro GPUs (or NVIDIAs Quadros). For the torx screws everyone should have a few torx bits in their toolbox. The advantage of those screws is that they don't wear out as easily as "normal" screws and withstand more torque as the name allready suggests and many companies use them for those reasons. About Apple letting foxcon produce their stuff - every profit oriented electronic company exploits cheap asian sweatshop workers to assemble their parts. For my uses I prefer a normal PC too since you can build a good gaming PC for something between a quarter to a half of the price of a mac pro I'm just saying they are not obsolete as a niche product.

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    18. @megapro125 : I never said they were obsolete, they're just entirely unnecessary and just make the computer way more expensive than it has to be. I have a server with a Xeon E3-1230, love that thing, the high amount of cache and ECC RAM support make it the ideal hypervisor and storage processor- And that's exactly what it's for; Safe Virtualization and Storage. Because you really don't want to run B-tree filesystems like ZFS or BTRFS on non-ECC RAM, as that can cause corruption out of nowhere. It's a great CPU, but it's not made for desktops, or even workstations, that just makes them unnecessarily expensive.

      Same goes for the FirePro and Quadros, although those ARE generally workstation things, but only if you do things like intense CAD applications that need to render super high polygon but entirely untextured models. Using it for games is silly, they suck at games, just get a normal desktop gaming card if that's all you use it for.

      As for the torq screws, they aren't even torq screws, they are torq-like, but their own dirty hipster variety just because they want to make sure their customers don't touch the hardware without their permission. If they've started using torq, congrats! They're a tiny bit less evil than they used to be.

      You really aren't going to make a dent in my Apple-hatred, trust me, so you might as well just completely stop trying. It's not that I'm stupid, I have very good reasons to hate them.

      That said I understand why people like Apple; It's a single company you can go to for all your needs, be it phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, or software like itunes, mac OS X, iCloud, etc. Though personally for me that's just another reason why they're creepy, with their own little ecosystem that they desperately put up huge fences around to keep people from leaving. I understand why people buy it, and I'm not saying they're inherently bad devices, but the company is entirely ran by investors, and that much greed with that much power is a dangerous combination. Same (although less so) goes for Microsoft.

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    19. On the actual topic:

      I'm really glad to see people are with me on this! Many people seem to dualboot Windows just because a few games are still stuck on it, Space Engineers included, making Space Engineers Linux-compatible would remove one of the last reasons for me to use Windows entirely!

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    20. I wonder if it would be possible to convince them if we got a kickstarter raising money for Linux/Mac... Obviously we'd have to OK it with them first, I wonder how much they would need to do it? I think Linux really is their core community in a way, with all the programming blocks and stuff they've been adding... Right down the same lane!

      I sent them an email a while asking for support... Still no reply I'm afraid :/
      There was a poll a while back though, and Xbox sadly won out over Linux.... I'm just wondering how they're gonna get it to run on that integrated graphics...

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    21. Afaik it wasn't so much a poll as much as a logical choice. Xbox One runs Windows :P so porting it is beyond trivial, literally you only have to add controller support.

      But I agree! I'd totally pay extra for a good Linux port, it would be a huge shame if this great game, especially with its geeky fanbase, would get stuck on something as mediocre as Windows.

      Delete
    22. Speaking of the devil! Microsoft released a version of Visual Studio, for free, that will work on Linux and Mac :)
      http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/04/29/microsoft-releases-free-visual-studio-code-and-visual-studio-2015-rc/

      NOW do you believe me that Mono is actually good these days? Even Microsoft supports it now!

      Please please please try and make a Linux build, even if it's just a proof of concept, Wine+Mono is a horrible combo (Wine is okay, but it confuses the fuck out of Mono because it pretends to be Windows, but it's not, and just, lots of shit xD), but you have the power to actually make this work!

      If you need any help with it, don't be shy to email me about it, I can't come help you guys over in Prague (I live in the netherlands), but if you just need advice on some code or decisions, just use my first and last name as seen at the top of this post, without dots or underscores, at gmail.com. <3

      Delete
    23. (wish I could edit my replies)
      I do realize that VS Code only supports editing code, it doesn't have the builtin compiler for .NET that it has on Windows, but it's trivial to make a shortcut to build something with Mono, or just open the project in Monodevelop/Xamarin. Mono is actually actively developed on by Microsoft and has had many features added by them, such as Entity Framework, Linq, etc.
      I would not be surprised if they add an option to compile and debug on Linux with Mono, as Mono entirely supports that. The only issue is licensing, Visual Studio is closed source, Mono is LGPL, but there's Xamarin, which has commercial licenses.. So who knows. With VS Code on Linux/Mac it wouldn't be a long shot to include debugging too.

      Delete
    24. not all is linux there are windows users here aswell ME i never use linux nor plan too as i dont see a need.

      But if they continue with windows and linux verisons im all for it!

      Delete
    25. Alexander, please wait approx 2 weeks and if we get lucky, you and the rest of the community will get a nice gift from us :)

      Disclaimer: to avoid any confusion, it won't be Linux/Mac port, yet... it will be something different but very useful!

      Delete
    26. @Marek Rosa: Oh my god! If this works out I will be ecstatic <3 I know you can't promise anything, but I am very very happy that you're seriously trying this! Best of luck with it!

      Delete
    27. I'm curious though, 'something different' sounds like it could be lots of things :P but considering it's in this thread.. and the 'yet'.. but yea :P I can't wait! you guys always make the best gifts <3 haha

      Delete
  6. Very good news actualy. Have you thought about density of space objects, mostly asteroids? Will they be like asteroid belts? Or may be some nebulas?

    Some time ago, Marek told about problem with graviti and building net on planets, axis aligned station blocks. Have you made some decisions on it?

    Thank you a lot for your job. )

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  7. Il love you Marek Rosa^^

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  8. uhm, what about resources on planets, though? It's cool to have planets, it opens up a whole new line of ships and machinery we could tinker for the purpose of landing/invading/colonizing... but in practicality how is it going to reward us? Oil/gas/bio-mass/wood on atmo-planets and metals/magma/crystals on barren planets?

    In that case resources open up new line of products, machines and eventual uses to improve our space ships/stations.

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    1. i imagine there will be some form of ore that is more rare in asteroids than planets.i would like to see a planet someone had uploaded for discovery mode, one that has bases and defences. that you must either take out from orbit or land secretly and take out on ground.. i would make a drop pod assault ship. fly down and place explosives on their main generator. hehe

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    2. KSH could add a new custom map preset where you start on a planet and have to stay on it until you are capable of leaving it's gravity field with a ship you've build. For multiplayer this would make a nice "space race" mode :D. They could also make ice on asteroids much more rare and increase the energy consumption for electrolytic O2 generation from ice/water dramaticlly to make planets with an atmosphere economically interesting to players because of their natural O2 and the plants to cheaply create more of it.

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    3. what I want to see is the possibility to start out on a planet with nothing and then work youre way to get the tech to build youre first ship to escape the atmosphere

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  9. You are heroes <3

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  10. you guys are the best developer out there today imo, 5 star work all around. you give us updates constantly and listen to the community more than any other dev, for that, we are grateful. I am really exited about the planets, and multiplayer updates.

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  11. When will Direct x11 support be out. I would love for it to be soon.

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  12. In my oppinion, planets aren't that important in this game. If you add planets, the community will ask for many other features that come with planets. I'm guessing you want to make the planets fully mineable?
    For example =>
    "Will the planet generator implement a realistic way of layering minerals with tectonic activity in mind?"
    "If you have volcanic activity, you will need to make a fluid that is affected by terrain, gravity, (mineralcompound).."
    "If you implement all that, why not add water?"

    I could name many more possible requests but I hope I hae made my point

    What I would love see in this game is more in the RTS direction with firstperson immersion.
    Checkout Flagship, this game was unsuccesfully kickstarted but their goal is so awesome and I honestly can't see why this wouldn't be possible in Space Engineers.

    Just my oppinion, I have already had more than enough fun for the money that I invested in this game!




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    1. I totally agree. I'm actually even a bit scared as to where the game is going.
      It's space engineers, not planet engineers. I just really hope it doesn't lose its focus, and the devs don't get carried away trying to implement more and more features taking the game away from its core.

      Delete
    2. Is this really a legit complaint? Or are you just trying to sound smart? I don't see why this is a problem, it's a feature, I'm sure you can even turn it off entirely once it's implemented and never have to deal with it at all.
      They are far from done developing this game, and it will only benefit from features like this, which greatly expand the ways the game can be used (note, CAN be used).

      Developing games takes time, loads of time, as long as you're willing to give the developers that time, everything will be fine.

      Delete
    3. mostly, everything that has big impact to game they make it optional feature, so whats the hassle? nobody loses anything if it can be turned off and it might bring more players since they might like just that feature..

      Delete
  13. We desperately need relative reference frames, so we can move around, repair and build in a moving ship. This one thing would revolutionize the way we play this game with our friends.

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    1. yeah, and now that infinite worlds exist. its likely that everyone will be always on the move.

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    2. Agreed! I was shocked the first time I got out of my flight chair while moving and was thrown to the back of my ship.

      Delete
  14. Nooo, no vegetation! This is weird, unrealistic, stupid etc., only cold and dead planets, only hardcore! There are many examples in our system, such as terrestrial planets, moons of giants and real asteroids - they look dead and cold, but still very interesting, many unique landscapes, landforms, ice magmatism, craters, water mantle under ice crust... And yes, craters - where are they?

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    Replies
    1. you can always disable it/customize your game - as with everything (oxygen, etc...)
      so where is the problem?

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    2. Think my last comment got eaten, attempt #2;

      How is it unrealistic to have lush planets in space? Do you even realize you're sitting on one right now? He says it's going to have BOTH, and I'm sure you can mod the game to only see the types of planets you want to see.

      tl;dr: I don't see your problem, at all. To me it just seems like you're saying things to sound relevant.

      Delete
    3. No, I want trees, bushes, and grass!

      Anyway, they've already allowed a lot of customization when it comes to such things. I don't think it's much of a stretch that they'll give us options for how many planets there'll be and what types.

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    4. Only cold and dead planets? You have no imagination what so ever.

      Delete
  15. Awesome! Suggestion for speed limit: may be do it like elite dangerous. They have 3 separate instances for each speed level(normal-to interact with anythings , supercruel-can hit planets, ftl-no interaction)

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    Replies
    1. actually, supercruise can hit asteroids as if you get too close to asteroid field it will emergency shutdown the supercruise before impact. but yea, it would be nice to see this kind of features, ftl maybe not so needed but supercruise would be nice to search for planets

      Delete
    2. Something like this would be nice, especially when you'd use gravity to sling your ship around, or try to achieve an actual orbit (for earth this would take about 8km/s).

      They could create bounding spheres around ships/independent yet big objects and use only them at certain speeds. Shoot rays at where they're going (velocity vector) and check them with those spheres and bounding boxes of where ships will be in some time frame (from current position to velocity*60 - where the ship would be in one second).

      If two ships are about to collide you could also reduce the physics load by simply stopping them/changing their velocities in some simple manner and applying an explosion at the ships with an energy that come close to their relative kinetic energy. Would kinda be interesting to simply have your ship explode and you don't know why because the other ship is already out of view. And it's just as surprised as you.

      Delete
    3. That's an interesting idea, but I also hope that the remark about increasing the speed being "impossible" only applies to the near term. While we may never see ~1km/s in the vanilla game, after playing around with some speed mods I think a circa 2 to 3 times increase in the speed cap would be possible. This is especially true if the new multiplayer system pans out and they increase the utilization of threading on multicore CPUs (as I recall, it is currently almost none at all).

      Delete
  16. Very good news! Thank you a lot for your work guys, especially for the MP part! Can't wait to be able to finally play this game in a smooth MP environment! Any word on compound blocks? Will this be worked on after the things you wrote about or are they actually worked on right now? What about realistic sound (http://blog.marekrosa.org/2014/01/space-engineers-sound-design_14.html?m=1)? Thanks you again guys for this great game!

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  17. Amazing! Great to see you take the project so seriously, it's truly unlike any other game out there :) I can't wait to see planets and how they'll work in the game! This'll be the ultimate sandbox for me, the sheer immensity of everything, combined with the scripting, programming and modding ability, it really puts it above others in the way it works.

    I really do hope you allow modders to make planets as large as the engine can handle, the speed issues are only relevant for players who really care about the physics engine's accuracy at those high speeds, some people even prefer not to have it, because currently it means you can kinda go to "warp speed" and occasionally accidentally flying through a whole asteroid without (much) damage. Not that I'd prefer that over more accuracy and realism of course :P, but warp speed is kinda interesting in its own way right now.

    Keep up the great work! And it's okay if it takes a while, especially if that means better results; People love your game so much they get impatient, but it would be a shame if you'd sacrifice big features for the sake of pleasing the bigger masses! As strange as it may sound, don't listen too much to the community, they have their flaws too, the vast majority of them has no idea what it takes to write a game like this.

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    1. I want to add that it's FINE that it takes a while to land on a planet! That is not a gameplay issue, no one is forced to land on planets, if anything it'd be part of the gameplay and realism! In the real world it takes quite a while to get from space to the planet surface too :)

      Delete
    2. Also I think there isn't much in-depth on-topic discussion going on because people pretty much agree with you there :)
      I can't wait to see this all in the game! It'll be amazing, and certainly a first among sandboxes and even space sims. I have the first thousand+ hours in the game already even with my busy life, and I'm pretty sure there's going thousands more to come at this rate!

      Delete
  18. Thanks for this Dev Update, sounds like a really really good Future for Space Engineers! :)

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  19. I guess its time to start designing landing ships for invading planets ;) or carriers with drop pods

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  20. Did someone say...Orbital Mechanics? :D

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  21. Imagining a scenario where I start on a planet and build my way into space, maybe use it as a way of slowing griefers in mp.

    Build your first piecemeal ship get to orbit and realize the moon is another teams mining platform.

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  22. "Gravity (affecting ships too if possible)"

    What do you mean 'if possible' ? That's one of the easiest things in the list! Not to mention it's already been done in mods:
    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=378084827
    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=424418778

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    Replies
    1. This.
      Having played around with physics engines, and partly written my own, this really isn't that hard. Just take the center of mass and apply a force.
      More interesting would be atmospheric drag, and calculating the center of the ships cross section area relative to the relative speed, additionally calculating some form of Cd value based on the block shapes and placement, then we can talk about "if possible". ;)

      Delete
  23. I think present project planets is wrong. Why you cant ad to skybox 2D picture planet. When we draw near picture planet will grow. (You should add word map with sectors. Anyone sector will be individual gameworld. Players could fast jump to select sector osed specjal engines, or long time fly ship. This wos just teleportation ship on world. )

    If player be very close planet automated load new map :"atmospfere planet".

    This way take more bigger planets, but dont morder fps.
    P.S.
    We want too death planets like mars and pluto.

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  24. This sounds like a step toward linking Space Engineers with Medieval Engineers or some over plug in options. Expand the game with the next step and you have Future Engineers or whatever building option types to put on a planet.

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  25. now just add a female model so my friends will play. they don't need hair and nails simulator but they don't want to be beard-men either. just put some curves on the suit and a female head. either that or allow model modding so people can do their furries and tentacle aliens too. whatever it takes, guys.

    it's 2015 there are not just beard-men in games anymore and early access is no excuse. they did the same thing on H1Z1; "new character model" released and it's ANOTHER MALE, despite a large amount of women streaming their game daily. seriously, spend the manhours on a new mesh and make it selectable from the medbay. i know it's not that hard. it cannot possibly be more difficult than planets. so get to it.

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    Replies
    1. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=423973115&searchtext=female

      You're welcome ;)

      Delete
  26. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Seamless transition between planet atmosphere and the space, PLEAAASE. Something like the Infinity Engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrcEUO7TC28

    THIS WOULD BE PERFECT!

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    Replies
    1. That's exactly what it will be; There is NO transition :) It's an actual object in the game that is the size of a planet (or pretty damn close to it).
      It will be beyond amazing, there's no other game out there that does this on this scale.

      Delete
    2. There is No mans sky on PS4 that does this on much greater scale, but it isn't sandbox since everything there is mathematically generated.

      Delete
  27. Thanks for the update, can't wait to play around in natural gravity fields. :D

    I do, however have some concerns about the planets. Nothing against the VRAGE engine, it's great, and awesome that you can create entire planets on one grid. It's just that I kinds hate the idea to build something on the planet and not have it align with the ground-grid. After all, a sphere made out of a orthogonal grid will only have flat places at 6 places.

    Someone on reddit actually told me about the idea of using two grids: one big one to show when you're in space, like the planets you probably have right now. And a second one when you're on the planet. The second one would be like Medieval Engineers/Minecraft and always align to buildings. That grid is then projected to the space sphere so you can possibly see changes from space (if they're big enough). To project those two together you could build a Rhombicuboctahedron, and it would only have non-ortogonal seam at 16, of 48 edges. There you could simply forbid building, and connect the ground gaps with triangles.

    For the transition from space-grid to ground grid, you could use some vertex shader (or whatever that actually is) like in this video and curve the grid:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVmvJlEZFOo

    Objects in space (long distance antennas/beacons) could be distorted in a similar way.

    At least that's how I would do it (and almost did in a game that I abandoned because it would be too big for myself to program)

    In either case, really looking forward to what you're cooking up. :)

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    Replies
    1. i say just add the voxell hands auto terrein so fix that problem :)

      Delete
  28. all that is nice and if you are adding scenarios i think there needs to be agressive npc that attacks you and has its own faction that you can join and not get attacked by them but if you join them some 1 else might come and attack you.(for example if you join some pirats they dont attack you eny more but the millatery that left you alone beffore is now hunting you down) and on this idea you might add a quest sistem for each faction like.
    minners-get 5k gold
    millatery-kill 10 pirets
    pirets-steall a private sail
    (sry for the bad eng)

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  29. Great job guys! Should you also try to make LAN possible, that'd be amazing! Of course I don't mean to say that your work isn't already amazing!

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    Replies
    1. And also have a different method for "Hacking", perhaps a minigame of sorts?

      Delete
  30. The planets are going to amazing, game changing. YESS!!!
    I hope they come really soon

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  31. If you look at the workshop, there is a mod called neutral gravity. It drags everything in and it is basically what you are speaking of doing. I would also like to see a hacking "device" or something like that because grinding and re-welding an entire ship when it could be broken into by a computer of some sort is illogical. I would like to see maybe NPC randomly generates species like in a game like No Man's sky, there is nothing more fun to me then looking for another species or fighting off an evil alien race. SE in my mind needs some more exploration that is more then just ships/asteroids/planets. the potential of blast doors is immense, and to find out they couldn't hold oxygen shattered my heart, you should add a "oxygen-proof blast door block". A minimap would also be nice, I would like it to use almost an ore-detector like way of detecting. I have been playing SE for quite a while and I have over 1200 hours of it online (and at least 400 more offline)

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  32. imagine having not just bases dug into astroids... but into barren planets without atmosphere... the possibilities.... are endless... sort of...

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  33. I feel like there has to be a solution to bumping up the maximum physics speed. Like maybe do some quick test to "look ahead" for potential collisions that will happen in the next tick, and then temporarily decrease the physics step size?

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  34. YES, YES, YES, PLANETS COMING SOOOOOOON, LOL, LOL, CAN NOT WAIT, what fun to find out that, that great ship you bragged about on the steam workshop can't fly in a planet atmosphere, and you crash, meaning you have to build a new base just to get back home, what fun lolol, NO HARM FOLKS, but yes looking forward to testing my building skills against planets, can't wait... to the DEVS at KEEN...THANK YOU FOR MAKING SUCH A WONDERFUL GAME,I'M HAVING SO MUCH FUN RIGHT NOW IT WRONG LOL...ANYWAY..THANKS GUYS, KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK..Lord Wraith..

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  35. Very cool post! RakNet seems pretty solid so far judging from unity, so I am happy to hear this step has been taken! Really hope you make big steps there fast, coz I can't await to really build up something with friends! Planets are nice too, but really, getting a fast and seamless network experience, that is worth much much more :)

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  36. "New Multiplayer" finally!!!

    i am so exited right now and really looking forward to it! cant wait! but still i cant say it often enought PLEASE MAKE A LINUX SERVER! So many people want to host their own game servers and i am one of them. i have several linux machines running, but i am not willing to pay for a low performance windows server!

    Also i like the suggestion with the different speed levels really much! so a normal flight mode, and some "hyper" mode where you cant collide with thinks like a jumpdrive or warpspeed or stuff, you jsut can fly to rough coordinates. that would really help

    so do your thing and amaze us! go go go!

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    Replies
    1. Even if I don´t play on Linux, a linux based server would really be great idea. most game server are already on linux so we don´t have to rent another server.

      Delete
  37. Please make heat-resisting tile by Silicic acid glass for atmosphere entry.
    Planet size is no problem. If planet has earth size, prevent unnecessary PvP by size.
    If small planet, occur huge destroy by user made ballistic missiles.
    Therfore, I want Aegis combat system. not sensor, that is rador like HUD current.

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  38. I would like to see trade with Aliens where they give you a job to find a rare mineral, gives me a reason to explore the astroids, and when I find it and upon returning to the plant I give him the mineral he gives me something cool for my ship or something of that nature.

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  39. If I may stand on the soap box of talking out of ones butt for a moment, there's a game called Seed of Andromeda which handles the huge-planets-made-of-voxels situation by having actual-sized planets upon which the voxel terrain is replaced after a certain radius from the camera by a far-view mesh that takes the shape of the planet's topology. Anyway, I'm glad that the planets will be configurable! I would certainly not mind if it took a little while to get around a planet = )

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  40. Exciting news. Any brainstorms on improving/scaling up large ship battles?

    How about another game mode, simplified ship, using another physics rendering style, less blocks. You may be able to incorporate that into online play as a battle prompt, "enter onto stage of war with named character?" in which winner gets some type of reward but ships are returned to original afterwards, others can still see the show, but not interact. Reward could be your choice of mass resource, simply oxygen, or maybe a continent? Awsome!! I love you guys, can't wait to see your work regardless. Cheers.

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  41. Would it be possible for a map for instance like the one in spore? Just so you could navigate planets easily.

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  42. Would you need wings to fly in atmosphere? Add some aaerodynamics?

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    Replies
    1. Yeah I'm really curious about that!

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  43. Awesome!! I hope it'll be possible to set up ships or stations to orbit around planets!!

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  44. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  45. You guys are truly the hardest working dev team I've ever seen. It has been such an amazing experience for me as a gamer to watch this game develop over the last couple years. I remember when all there was to do was to crash the red ship into the platform or one of the 5 or so asteroids. We have certainly come a long way!

    We now have Survival, mods, rotors, pistons, weapons, docking, mining, programmable blocks, tools, infinite worlds, atmospheres, procedural asteroids, cargo ships, timers, sensors, cameras, turrets, multiplayer, factions and many other things I'm leaving out. You all should be extremely proud of what this game has become.

    KSh, you guys are incredible! Keep it up!

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  46. Hey man I do YouTube and Space Engineers is a major fan favorite and I simply can`t wait for planets.my question is will there be re-entry? If so then what type of plating should we use. Also it would be epic if you guys could add in some form of wildlife that in some cases will eat you or hunt you down. Also a intercom would be epic so that way a station commander can contact all crew. P.S. epic work so far guys

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  47. I do not play a space engineer because the multiplayer .. I'll finally be able to replay

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    Replies
    1. Same here... Several friends of mine bought this game, but first we have to rent a windows server and then id just was unplayable with moderate sized ships... so hopefully those problems will be gone with the new multiplayer. Also does anybody know if there is a linux server planned?

      Delete
  48. This game needs a trading system and currency for multilayer.

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  49. Money don't look like a good idea from my point of view.
    It would likely ruin the philosophy of the game, I think. The game about wastness of space and possibilities of even small groups of future people, about beauty of the Universe. Starmade is currently trying to live with money, but I certainly don't like this approach. It makes you feel yourself a part of giant economical system instead of feeling yourself a part of the Cosmos.

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    1. Agreed. The best part about Space Engineers is that everything is available through mining, which means that you have to put the effort in to get the materials that will make your ship and design it well due to lack of materials, which is far more satisfying because you're involved with your ship on every step.

      Delete
  50. Dangerous planets with very very high gravity.. these planets would be very hard to escape from.

    Black holes, very rare.. very dangerous if you get too close, result would be it sucking in anything and destroying it completely.

    Some planets having Aurora Borealis, very beautiful sky lights, for reference one of the best I have seen in the game was in "Dreamfall Chapters".. on one of the first levels, very beautiful sky...

    Space anomalies, very rare to come by... could affect power on a ship, make ship power reactors / batteries damaged, would have to repair them to regain control of ship.

    Hot planets, lava planets.. dangerous planets.

    Please Gas giants!

    Please moons that have low gravity~

    Please a physical Sun.... that will kill me if I get too close... which I will do if there is a physical sun... because of reasons... ?_?

    IDEAS!!!~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_planet_types

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    Replies
    1. Very great ideas! this could add some fun dynamics to the game.

      Delete
  51. It almost seems like this game is tying to compete with Elite: Dangerous, which I like, times of war had lead to vast technological accomplishments.

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  52. awesome! so great to hear this update!! been really unmotivated to play space engineers because of the lack of goals available, and the multiplayer. So great to know that the team is addressing their issues and that our support is truly appreciated and being taking in properly!

    Thanks space engineers development team for continuing to produce your great content!!

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  53. I am very concerned about Kepler's laws. How do you want to make orbiting around planets possible? Satelites orbit around the Earth at speeds around 2000 m/s. Could you even escape planet's gravity well like real rockets do or would you always had to point your spaceship the opposite side than where the planet is and fitr engines until you are far away that velocity of 104 m/s is enought?

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    Replies
    1. if they add suns, they MUST add solar energy collectors like on the stargate destiny

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    2. They have solar energy collectors - they just renamed them "Solar Panels".

      Delete
  54. I just died of excitement, Shit..

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  55. As far as the planets and view distance problems go, I think a 2d sprite for each planet say ~100,000 km away from the player gets snapped to the skybox, sized proportionately to distance would be the best solution in my opnion. honestly, no need to overcomplicate it. Granted, this technique would also work great for stars, and in game star maps, over almost any distance. I'm planning on implementing similar isystem in a game of my own.

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  56. Can he move to the AI team? That is much more important.

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  57. Oh boy .... a good game is going to get a whole load better if all this comes to pass. It's great to see the level of ongoing support this game has and the regularity of updates and progression. THIS is how early access should be done. Keep it up!

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  58. What if there was an ultrasound sensor that detects how far away an object is, the approximate size and gives GPS cords. It has a limited range (40km) and us less accurate the further away it is from the object. unlike other sensors you have to manually point it and it has a hard time detecting small ships. It's primary use is finding asteroids and stations

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  59. This is the best news I've heard yet for this game. It addresses a lot of concerns I've had for the long term viability of this game. (the idea of gravity of planets affecting ships in proximity sounds pretty awesome. Putting yourself into an orbit = )

    Concerns Addressed:
    1. Isolating client information
    2. Planets and view distance
    3. Some multi-player optimization

    Concerns That Remain
    1. Multiplayer Logoff of Ships: There MUST be a feature for logging of a ship along with your character. Even without closing the exploit door that was built into the game (all clients know everything) which made multiplayer persistence 100% broken, unless there is the capability of securing some manner of persistence while people are sleeping there will never be full use of creative talent and time in survival multiplayer, and people that don't realize that this is a fool's errand will quit the game in frustration. People need to be able to log a ship off that they have spent so much time working on, there is simply to little effective mechanics in play to even justify the attempt at building anything with the hope that it lasts more than a day in survival without setting yourself up for failure.

    Private servers have developed the use of named beacons being the means by which servers decide what is space trash and what is not. A similar object on a ship could be tied to logging a ship off. Additionally, there would need to be a safeguard against combat logging. (I'm being chased, better logoff) Building your logoff module on a ship, and then bringing the ship to 0 m/s, and then attempting logoff could initiate a 2 minute log-off timer which if your ship has suffered no damage or has not increased speed will cause your ship to disappear as your character logs off the server. Additionally, you should only be to logoff the ship your character is in. Additionally stations should not have this feature, and stations should have some additional benefit that would make people build stations that can't logoff.

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  60. Part 2

    2. Space Engineers needs a sensor/navigation system to fully take advantage of the larger server worlds and massive planets that Keen is working towards. An in-game navigation map, that can be labeled, and where way points can be set from is necessary (similar to Dayz's map) Simply not having a system like this and relying on a 1990s game navigation system (XYZ system) breaks immersion and defies logic, without any other problems considered.

    Additionally a sensor system tied to various modules on a ship per time/benefit choices and ship size, tied to the navigation map are 100% necessary. We need to have the ability to detect nearby objects both celestial and player built and get some sort of useful information about size/speed/type. This will allow players to make choices they couldn't make before as far as avoiding or seeking contact with other players, as well as providing time to make those choices.

    Initial Choices:
    A. Turn of all EM sources, coast on inertia, lowering your sensor signature and making it more difficult to be tracked.
    B. Set my ship on an inertial heading, and leave the cockpit, heading to control a turret because my friends haven't logged in yet. Defend your vessel.
    C. "Oh there is something interesting, I'm going to investigate", slow down, use my telescope, "looks like salvage" ::attempts to identify defenses and salvage vessel::

    The information this provides to allow us to use the options built into the game by Keen, and enhanced by modders cannot be overstated, as well as how it will help at depth to scenarios that Keen wishes to add to the game.

    Additionally there must be tradeoffs as well, both to help the hunter and the pacifist conduct their business and make their choices matter. Some sensors (active?) should be better for hunting others, but make yourself far more visible and provide much more information to everyone else that might be watching, while passive sensors may provide less information, with a greater location uncertainty at greater ranges, but be worse at finding everyone else.

    Think submarines and I think you will find a useable model for Space Engineers. There are pages of debate on the forums about how real physics would apply to this issue of stealth spaceships, but I don't think its necessary to take that too far, its a rabbit hole of future tech speculation. Submarines provide a concept that makes logical sense in the human mind, and is feasible for implementation into this game, and provides and requires choices to be made. The more choices that we can and should make, and the more that those choices affect our failure or success combined with varying levels of information, the better for the sandbox, and the more complex the scenarios.

    Right now we are just driving blocks around space waiting for a few key things to happen:
    1. Our work gets destroyed while we are offline either due to hacking, very simple client exploiting or the very high probability that someone sees artifacting contrasted with space (or the weird things that render distance does to objects to make them extremely visible at distance) while simply flying around.
    2. Noob ship ramming. (or spending 2min building a butt plug spaceship designed to ram you and survive your turrets)
    3. One or multiple people simply fly around your ship at range, expending your ammunition and then nothing stops them from just chasing you in their space suit and grinding through your ship.
    ------------

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  61. Part 3

    3. Ammunition expenditure on vanilla turrets needs to be changed, or the ore/ammo outputs. This has been a problem since the beginning. This makes ships in space with or without an owner sitting ducks to any number of exploits and tactics. Admittedly things are slightly better now that turrets don't simply do 0 damage to players half the time, but turret behavior and ammo usage is still a major persistence problem. Also interior turret + conveyors plz. Most good servers will refuse to use most modded turrets and game and mod optimizations are done, so fixing the vanila turrets and ammo useage is important.

    [ Also this is a minor issue but im going to add it at the bottom. LCDs need to be able to display camera footage. This will make them useful and not just aesthetic. As well as being to setup warning alerts/sounds for "player not of my faction is grinding blocks on my ship" etc]

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  62. Part 4: Wish I could edit these posts after the fact. There are some errors like an "and" that should be "until". Read between my lines please.

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    Replies
    1. Are any of these things even on your radar? Want to buy more dev posts. Again, planets are going to be awesome. Good work.

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  63. Imagine this: you start a new game single or multiplayer, you will be put on a random planet at a random location, you need to gather stuff to build whatever you need to build you're ship, then you can escape the planet and build the ship bigger in space

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  64. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  65. Just for an idea of scale, the Mun in ksp has a radius of 200km

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  66. My wish for this incredible game....
    a Paintbrush Tool for easy change Block color by klick.
    As Mod? Anyone? Pleeeeaaacceeee........ ;)
    Regards Sky

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  67. All this sounds amazing! I hope your considering some of the following:

    Being able to upload ships you made with friends into competitive multiplayer matches (with ship mass limits imposable by the host).

    Cooperative multiplayer scenarios.

    The effect that a planets gravity well will have on ship gravity generators and the insane grav drives everyone has built.

    Big fan of your work!

    Hugs and kisses

    Anczak

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  68. Okay, so did some math, a planet of radius 100km, assuming density is similar to that of earths, 5510kg/m^3, would have a surface gravity of 0.15m/s^2, compared to earth's 9.81m/s^2, I doubt you'd even notice the gravity of such a small planet

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    1. Due to what I perceive with limitations of the engine, I think we can live with massive bodies have more gravity than physics say they should have. Especially in a game that has artificial gravity via "insert science fiction trophe".

      Its not going to break my immersion.

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  69. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  70. I think there should not be too much mineral recources on the planets, so the player is forced to take those of the asteroids. This would keep the focus of the game in space and on building ships instead of houses. As an explanation for the missing of recources could get implemented some relicts, e.g. parts of mines, that show that e.g. former expeditions oder civilizations exploited most of the minerals. This would also add a kind of history/story to the game.
    But however you do, I think you will make most of your fans very lucky with this developments, particulary me!

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  71. I think it's great that this game gets credible weekly updates with an attentive and caring development team. It's one of my favorite games.

    PS. 1 glitch still to fix - doors don't close all the way - there's a small gap in the middle.

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  72. I would like it if one of the planets is Earth

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  73. This game is just gonna get harder for me to run...


    Still looking forward to it though!😛

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  74. Have you considered using LOD and controlling relative speeds to give the illusion of having enormous planets? See the indie game Rodina for an AMAZING way to do planets.

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  75. the best way you could do it is have the planets in realms where you get a low key load sequence( and by low key i mean you would hardly even notice) and when you land the planets could basically be a tread mill of sorts, lets say you have 1000km planet and lets say you travel 970km with a load distance of 30km at this point you can code it so the chunks where you started from start to load in front of you to basically create a round world, while simplifying the block placing so you don't have to account for planet radius under cutting or over cutting the blocks, it also solve night and day problems getting the big planet to spin sound like it would take a lot of processing power since my beasty computer can't even spin a 100 by 80 block ship, which i would actually like to see that fixed, adding a publish feature that finalizes the ship until you want to build again, so it doesn;t have to keep track of each and every block.

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    Replies
    1. and to account for digging through to the other side you can either create a lava core or at a certain point gravity reverses and you will fall up and down unless you use a jet pack or something

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  76. I know it would be REALLY difficult and almost impossible but it would be cool if on the planets there were AI that were in the medieval time period. Basically what I'm saying is it would be cool if the to games combined to make one HUGE just realm basically.

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  77. this should be a limitless optimized sandbox game. that is what makes it cool.. all this other shit is a waste of time. This will never be evochron mercenary or Star citizen or any other space sim. it is minecraft in space with a super cool ultra creative freedom that no other game has... doing anything more than optimizing it for this sole purpose will kill it. PERIOD. game is already dying and all this stupid crap is the reason why... WHY even make a game with this kind of crappy optimization. the engine is crap the code is crap and the only thing that made it cool, the multiplayer the creative freedom and the epic scale of it, the space battle and deformability of everything is the only thing that keeps anyone interested in it. Missions? Really? its not needed. Focus on porting the game to an engine that can handle true sized planets... and optimize the multiplayer and let it go wild and you will have one of the best free form sandbox games ever made. do anything else and you will kill it, mark my words... this game will die half made and never live up to the expectations of the true fans unless it is reforged with these elements in mind. OPTIMIZATIONS. CREATIVE FREEDOM. and MULTIPLAYER.

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    1. im not saying all these ideas people have about ai and atmospheres etc are bad i just feel that if you made it possible for lets say 300 people to populate a seemless creative sand box there would be no need for AI or missions it would be created by the players as a by product of the freedom of the game.

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  78. Dear Space Engineers team,
    A friend and I were discussing the problem with generating planets and we came up with a relativly simple solution to many of the problems.
    In the initial generation of a map, planets are placed at random through the map, but only as a sphere with atmosphere and biome data calculated (they would show up like picures of earth from a distance, with procedural rendering).
    At a specific distance, 5km or so, the planet gets its terrain generated and saved into a subset of the main save file (allowing for easier modding). Once the player enters the atmosphere, he is "teleported" into the skybox of the planet.
    The planet is flat surfaced and shaped like those "boken earth" projection maps. The edges are wrapped using a formula similar to that usind in Portal. This removes the problem of building on curved sufaces and simplifies rendering issues in the main map.
    I hope that this helps you all,
    Frayboy15

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  79. 20-50 km planets will be more than enough i think. Imagine an Earth like planet (12000 km) It'll take centuries to explore and just one orbit around these behemothes at 104 m/s will take some time...

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    Replies
    1. Thats why the want to increase the max. speed
      btw. the max. speed is 100m/s... it is a bug that it shows 104m/s ...
      when you fly the hudbar says 104m/s but you are only flying 100m/s or ~200km/h
      so the max speed isnt pretty high :D

      Delete
  80. Honestly, if you want to solve the time to get through the atmosphere of the planets simply make them proportional to the size of the planets.

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  81. Also, I'd only load the visible chunks of the planets and generate more for the player's location and degenerate mom visible chunks

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  82. I think that you should add a retractable bridge that can be built seperetly from connectors to be used when you dock a ship and you have a safety distance of one large block then you can get the bridge to connect to your ship (Requires different block to connect to of course)

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  83. Will there be solarsystems? So more than one Sun? And will there be blackholes?
    Im already thinking about orbiters...

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  84. I have an idea for the planets and the oxygen generators. If the planet has a breathable atmosphere, you should add castles and stuff from medieval engineers. I mean, that would be cool. Also, you should make the engines run off hydrogen (have them be thermoplasmadynamic engines), and have the oxygen generators produce hydrogen as a byproduct (H2O - O = H2 ), and also make it so that you can harvest hydrogen from the atmosphere.

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  85. I was wondering how this game can be implemented on the likes of x-box etc, as this would be a game killer as far as the scripting goes.(imagine writing code with a game control,yes you can plug in a key board but that is besides the point) I believe it would bring a larger audience to the game if a simplified type of logic was used. Even simple logic like that used in little big planet 2 on PlayStation. That way many more people can make awesome creations without having the arduous task of learning to write code. Any thoughts?

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  86. This sounds awesome! Keep up the great work! Planets with Medieval Engineers like functionality would be the ultimate mashup and the ultimate sandboxing experience. Ability to make buildings and houses and populate a planet added into Space Engineers would be pretty sweet. It sounds like this is the direction things could go in since you already have the foundation with Medieval Engineers.

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  87. sadly im not play SE till planets are in the game...

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    Replies
    1. Why dont you build a vehicle that drives on all terrains...

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  88. There should be some sort of hyperdrive where you can travel like 1000mps, or at least mach 1 @ 340 mps

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  89. I do hope to see living, breathing, mineable mineral littered solar system but still doesn't exclude any asteroid belts or the asteroid field at the furthest extension of the sun's gravity field.

    I would create living breathable domes on non-atmospheric planets and build on those with atmospheres alike. I would visit the sun and orbit it to prevent from being pulled into by it's immeasurable grasp. Same goes for all planets, building orbiting satellites and send probes out to those beyond.

    Infinite space wouldn't just be limited to this single solar system, but for those that have the know how to build means to accelerate to imaginable speeds, out there would be waiting for us all new solar systems with stars that litter the space around our starting solar systems.

    Forgive me, I'm day dreaming again, haha.

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  90. you should look at kerbal space program its got planets yyou can even land on them they have atmospheres too

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  91. there are so many engines and games out there that have done all of these things really well... and there is a lot that the dev team could learn from these games if they would focus on optimizing and streamlining the current game instead of continuously branching off it would be way better

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  92. imho you dont need a "realistic" planet, just one that works like one. if you can "mine" it(for a workaround to the problem of size you can add minerals with a limit of number of ores(for example a mesh with 1500 gold ores avaible and the count goes down every time you harvest).

    sorry for my bad english

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  93. this looks awzome but me and my friends got a issue that we want to have a dedicated server for our server with all this and things to come, but the only one that can realy host a dedicated server is running linux on his server computer,and then i wonder, when or will you add the feature of having dedicated linux servers?

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    Replies
    1. Within a few weeks, perhaps, if I interpreted the comment from Marek Rosa near the bottom of the Linux/Mac port thread in this blogpost correctly ;) Though that is just an educated guess.

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  94. все замечтательно. почему не работают больше коннекторы?
    я пытаюсь пристыковаться и ничего не получается.

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  95. Советую добавить раздельную загрузку для планет и космоса как было реализовано в игре "Freelancer".
    Googl translate :))
    Suggest that you add a separate download for the planets and the universe as it was implemented in the game "Freelancer".

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  96. I just wanted to say how mich i love you for this...
    Every game has a specified amount of potential, for me, when i see it the first time...
    The sad thing with indee games over the past has Bern, that the creatirs didnt seem to actually care if the game they made was using all this potential (sorry to say this, but ksp just failed, regarding this... Wheres my enhanced iva, my multiplayer, my Mord kerbal focussed game in v1.0?)
    Seeing that you guys actually care and try to make a good game just makes me happy :D

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  98. На счет планеты , земную кору можно сделать не очень массивную (до мантии) а саму магму просто текстурной . По мере добычи ресурсов добавлять их как при выходе вулканической активности .Уж очень планету хочется .И желательно ботов каких нибудь ,возможно как в Симсах .А-то пусто как-то.

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  99. Do you think that you could add reentry effects to the ships and characters I think that would be amazing!

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  100. What about liquids? Oceans, rivers, magma? Will these be implemented and if so, how will they affect the character or ships. Will there be water monsters? Will you be able to play with the physics of the water itself?

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  101. GamersRevolutionTVJune 2, 2015 at 5:02 PM

    Is there giong to be weather and a day/night cycle on those planets

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  102. Geez. This is so awesome that im buying another copy, just to help out.

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  103. I think A game mode where you start on a livable planet that may be in the path of a large asteroid that would destroy the planet, you have to build a ship and make your way into space,
    And either live in space, find another planet and build and live on it, or stop the asteroid from being such a danger,.. by exploding it or something.. Although relative reference frames and motion of asteroids and stuff would need to happen for this. Maybe multiplayer planets nearby each other, where two teams try to advance and destroy or take over the other planet.
    Ultimately i think it is important that planets have some important reasons to be visited.

    Also, i think progression and tiers of technology could fit in in near any race to space kind of game play.

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  104. Best. Devs. Ever.
    Ive been along since Keen introduced multiplayer, and they have gone well past my expectations, multiplayer re writes? Im not worthy, I feel like I owe something more than what the game was originally sold for. So I told some friends and they play too. Best Wishes going forward Keen!

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  106. The planet concept is, I believe, a great idea. Not only because it will give players a new feature to mess around with and collect resources from, but because it adds so many possibilities to the game's future. What I mean is that I've seen lets-players talk about factions and stuff like that and I just thought what if a faction claimed a planet as their home world and another faction came in and tried to invade it. There would have to be many more updates if this idea is included like ground based weapons, hand-held weapons, nukes, ballistic missiles, maybe even an automated planetary defense system if a player is good at coding. Not to mention ship-to-surface combat, like the covenant "glassing" weapon in the Halo franchise. There are just so many possibilities with this its unreasonable not to include it!

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  107. What about adding something like Lightspeed in serials, but in fact you will be traveling slow (~300m/s or something) but you will have a shield that will be like a bubble and it will prevent you from damage or it will check not only where the items are and where they will be in next tick but also their movement but only if they are close enough or if they are moving to the ship.That should solve the "bullet through paper" problem.
    I know it's little bit nasty and slow but it could be only temporary for those who want to travel fast.
    Sory for the BUTs

    Originally written on April 20, 2015 at 8:28 PM
    but edited to remove my email address due todays spam I got from matthewking@foreversharp.com

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