Thursday, January 14, 2016

The KSH roadmap for 2016 – Space Engineers & Medieval Engineers

As I promised in the Year in Review blog I published a couple of days ago, I would like to share with you the Space Engineers and Medieval Engineers roadmap for 2016. This comes in contrast to our decision to only talk about features that are actually present in our games (fully finished or work-in-progress) and not speak about planned features, ideas, future dates, our roadmap, etc. The reason why I am making this exception now is because I believe that after two years in Early Access, our players have a better understanding of our development decisions. Additionally, people deserve to know how our games are shaping up, especially Space Engineers, as we are approaching the final turn in the game’s development before it leaves Early Access.

Before I continue, I would like to remind everyone that everything I say here is subject to change.
Important: some of my comments may sound harsh to my colleagues who are actively working on these games. Let me assure you all that we have the same goal: make our games great!

I also want to mention that I will not go very deep into details or explain each and every feature separately in this blog (that’s for separate design documents). Instead, I am going to be playtesting both games live on Twitch, as I did on Monday – most likely on a weekly basis, usually on Mondays – where I will point out the issues I find in our games. We are also planning to do focus testing groups where “random” people with no experience with Space Engineers / Medieval Engineers play the games for the first time (to see what issues they encounter, where they get stuck, what they enjoy most, what troubles them, etc .)

Space Engineers roadmap

After two years in Early Access, I believe that Space Engineers has a vast amount of features - perhaps even more than what was needed. But we always wanted to keep the development going and add new features constantly since there are so many community suggestions that could be a great addition to the game. For example, I never would have imagined two years ago that we’d add planets!

One of our top priorities is to improve multiplayer. It is not only about network coding, but is also related to game logic optimizations. We are working on a method where we put all non-real-time game-logic in a secondary thread. For example, the computations for drilling/refinery/conveyors/oxygen won’t delay the main thread (which has to stay real-time). The reason is that players can always build crazily huge things which slow down the game (regardless of how much we optimize it), and if players perceive non-smooth movement, they think it’s a bug.

The development cycle of a game is complex, but its core idea does not differ from the development of the majority of products that are out on the market today. I will give you an example to understand this better. Let’s assume that you are producing a car. The first thing you do is assemble all necessary parts. After this phase is done, you take the car for a test drive. You identify any possible issues and then you fix them. After all issues are fixed and the car is functioning properly, you add the final touches – painting, polishing, etc. Then you are ready to start selling the car. The same principles apply to our games. Space Engineers is now in the phase where (nearly) all necessary parts have been assembled and we are ready to move to the major polishing and bug-fixing phase. This will probably be the longest and final bug-fixing period before the game is released in its final state.

Please note that the order of the list below is random and doesn’t reflect the priority that we give to each action. As I mentioned previously, our top-most priorities are to fix all annoying issues that make the game unplayable for many of you, improve the multiplayer, and polish the game.

SE roadmap
  • Multiplayer - polishing, checking design, lag, compensation<
  • Fix all sounds, 3D, arcade / realistic (ask programmers and our sound designer to make a list of all sounds used in the game and then have someone test them all – so that we don’t miss anything)
  • Voxels: data cell cache, storage, optimization, profiling voxel runtime
  • Render fixes (Ambient, environment map / lighting / reflections), occlusion query, ambient + backlight
  • Occlusion culling - blocks / voxels (speed up the rendering)
  • Disable object highlight on LCD screens (it’s annoying)
  • Optimization and fixing the loading screen, and checking if there are worlds that take forever to load while not properly informing the player
    • Fix loading screen issues (e.g. the wheel gets stuck at the end and I can hear the in-game sounds)
  • Red message box – make the background texture less transparent; it’s hard to read text on it
  • Conveyor system optimization
  • Drilling / mining optimization
  • New animation system / caching  (speed optimization) / other optimizations
    • Fix ugly animations
    • Add new animations – e.g. holding a weapon
    • Walking over small obstacles doesn't work - the player has to jump over them
    • Jumping and holding the forward-movement key doesn't result in a forward jump, and this doesn't feel right
  • Shooting and weapons
    • A few more new weapons
    • We need much better animations, holding weapons, ammo reload
    • In general, we need a basic FPS experience
  • "saving please wait" - hide this overlay text and do saving asynchronously without bothering the player
  • Why does the game auto-save in multiplayer when I am the client and manual save isn't available?
  • Remembering removed trees on planets
  • Nvidia GameWorks – consider HBAO + Antialiasing (speed up)
  • SE Indication of hydrogen fuel
  • Spectator flash light / night vision
  • Object highlight – outline – finish – also in ME
  • Finish support for scenarios, mission scripts and sub-missions (will need for tutorials)
    • Better support for gradual tutorials (story-based tutorials), submissions
  • Finish building from cockpit
  • Rethink the way of respawning, respawn ships, landing ships, and rethink "mobile tools" (manual assembler – so player can respawn without a ship and still be able to start building)
  • Rag-doll + IK, bullet impact, falling, four legged...
  • Official persistent servers
  • Automated tests for our testers + buy dedicated computers where the game will run 24x7
  • Redo the GUI framework (this doesn’t mean changing graphics; it only means the underlying tech which has become very cluttered over time)
  • Game logic optimizations + oxygen (mostly for MP) + oxygen sensor
  • Add voxel material in survival
  • Improve tutorials
    • Reduce the usage of text panels, deliver the info to the player via context-sensitive screen hints
    • When I launch the first interactive tutorial, I see two things that I shouldn't see – the respawn screen and "you have been accepted to faction"
    • Quickstart will be our interactive tutorial, with minimum text, HUD sub-mission navigation. Its purpose will be to engage the player and not to explain everything that happens in the game.
    • After we add this new tutorial, remove the video tutorial message box
  • Development of Xbox One version

Medieval Engineers roadmap

In Medieval Engineers, things are a bit different from Space Engineers. The game will complete one year in Early Access very soon and many of the features that we planned to implement are already in the game - e.g. survival mode, castle siege mode, multiplayer, simple AI characters, and crafting. However, many of these features have various issues or the implementation is very rough – in a clear work-in-progress stage. The overall gameplay lacks a polished feeling – e.g. the first few minutes might feel very annoying for some players (myself included!), the controls and gameplay is not intuitive, there are weird animations, etc. These are the things we will improve first so we can then continue adding new elements.

Please note that the order of the below list is random and doesn’t reflect the priority that we give each action.

ME roadmap
  • Add planets to ME - this will unify the technology in our games and make future improvements easier
  • Animation polishing
  • Inventory size rebalance
  • Character stats rebalance
  • Multiplayer fixes and polishing
  • Polish the in-game screens
  • Fix all sounds, 3D (ask programmers and our sound designer to make a list of all sounds used in the game and then have someone test them all – so that we don’t miss anything)
  • Combat system
  • AI changes, fixes, simplification
  • Building on a grid
  • Large grid construction site
  • Small grid construction site
  • Rethink if the respawn cart is necessary - why can't the player respawn in a normal way?
  • Testing scenarios for DEV
  • Tool durability, tool damage
  • New animals – e.g. wolves, bears, etc.
  • Fix Z-fighting
  • Door / window blocks
  • Gate blocks
  • Mechanical blocks
  • Redo the manipulation tool, remove it from the toolbar, add it to the context-sensitive action key (e.g. T), disable physics while the player is holding the item
  • Faction system
  • Claim of an area
  • Support to add voxels in survival
  • Area inventories – remove this feature (players should not have access to the inventories / items that are not in the direct vicinity or those that they are not interacting with directly)
  • Regrowing trees / bushes
  • New maps / worlds
  • More voxel materials such as iron, sand stone, etc.
  • More multi-blocks
  • More compound block combinations
  • Specialized workshops
  • Specialized furnaces

VRAGE / both games

  • Add/build new blocks/grids – finish the redesign – static, dynamic; small, large; creative, survival, construction sites
  • Multiplayer server optimizations (read the second paragraph under the Space Engineers roadmap section for a more detailed analysis)
  • Falling in 1g (especially in SE) doesn’t feel like 1g – the falling is way too slow; this was caused by changes in physics due to the Moon gravity, but the result is not good (yes, we want higher jumps on the Moon but we also want “normal” jumps/falling on Earth)
  • Finish transition to PBR (physically based rendering) and DX11, all models and textures needs to be checked
PBR example images
  • Redesign and simplify the key and mouse controls and GUI, check F1 help screen, left and right mouse click - try to do things with as few keys as possible by adding context-sensitive commands, get it to a stage when we don’t need to show 5-7 lines of default screen hints
  • Fix the 3rd person aim-point; first-person is ok
  • First-person movement and camera – the experience needs to improve, since now it feels all wrong
  • When pressing ESC while playing single-player (menu screen), the game doesn’t pause (and that’s just weird)
  • Proper sound when the character is running on armour blocks – players don't hear metallic steps
    • need to check all sounds in both games
  • Faster executable loading - when I installed the game on a new computer and launched it from Steam, I could only see a black screen and game mouse cursor and listen to game music for about 15 seconds; I don't understand what the game is doing during this time before the main menu – trying to upset me?
  • Particles fix
    • Consider Nvidia Gameworks / GPU particle
    • Editor
    • Rendering, especially DX11
    • Fix individual particles in each game and keep the low number of billboards and pixel overdraw
    • Programmer – make a list of all particle effects in the game
    • Artist – make a list of all particle effects in the game
    • Then match these lists, so there’s no unfixed particle, and we’re not fixing a particle that’s not used in the game
  • Faster world loading
    • Cache assets that don't change between worlds – when the game needs a voxel texture in one world and I exit to the main menu and load a new world, this texture can stay in memory - and the same applies for hundreds of other assets
    • In the main menu, the game should pre-load the most used assets, so that when a player loads a world, most of it is already loaded
    • Streaming assets, but make sure this won't break the game (lags, crashes, delays) when something suddenly jumps to the player (jump drive, spawned object, etc.)
    • Or if pre-loading isn’t a good option, then at least load assets asynchronously so the game doesn’t lag for a few hundred milliseconds every time new assets are needed
  • Refactor code (e.g. cube builder) – for two years we have been adding new blocks to this class, and it’s time for some spring cleaning
  • ME + SE player skills
  • In-game server admin tools (with GUI) – take the best from Midspace’s SE Toolbox and Tyrsis’ Server Extender; assume players want to become space masters
  • Main menu redesign
    • Think about how we can simplify it
    • Workshop button – move it somewhere else (e.g. Load), because it shows only world workshop items and not the entire workshop (blueprints, 3D models, etc)
  • Blueprints – simplify the user interface and GUI
  • Economy model (very simple)
  • Camera shake (e.g. when near explosion, when hit by a larger object, when shooting, etc)
  • Analyse the player stats and see where people get stuck, where they have problems, if tutorials are actually helping them or not, what changes in game design can prolong their game time (by making the game more intuitive and better)

Additional polishing and bug-fixing ideas will appear during my twitch gameplay sessions . If you think I missed something, please send it directly to me: marek.rosa@keenswh.com (Please report only the "annoying stuff", not wishes for new features/blocks. Thanks!)
Also, please keep reporting bugs and other issues on our forums (add links).

This year is going to be a very busy and challenging one for all of our teams. I am really looking forward to it!

Additionally, we have decided to run a live-stream tomorrow Friday, January 15th at 7pm CET on our Twitch channel, where, together with our lead game designers and a few of our closest YouTubers, I will be answering your questions and providing more details about the roadmap. Please start preparing your questions!

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EDIT: Thanks to everyone for their comments and emails -- it's "fun" to go through hundreds of emails...Haha :-) I keep replying to you as I process the emails. Thanks again!
---------

Marek Rosa
CEO, CTO & Founder
Keen Software House, GoodAI
:-)

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For further updates, keep reading my blog: http://blog.marekrosa.org/ or find me on Twitter: @marek_rosa

Follow Space Engineers and Medieval Engineers on social media:
Space Engineers on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SpaceEngineers
Space Engineers on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SpaceEngineersG
Medieval Engineers on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MedievalEngineers
Medieval Engineers on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MedievalEng

236 comments:

  1. Awesome! Very awesome! Spectacular!

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    1. Yeah awesome :D. Now we can crash official servers :D. They still never fixed those problems and they are not listed here either.

      Also the size of official persistent servers, assuming they would allow for 10-20 people to play, would be in the gigabytes within a few weeks. Gg downloading those worlds. Solutions to this are not on the roadmap either.. This is gonna be another year of pain...

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    2. I understand your though process, this has been mine about there patch history since I started playing in OCT.

      I personally have never seen a game go backward before, but I have also never seen things like planets added to a game after the engine has already been significantly constructed.

      Regardless, we finally have information, so rather then make things go downward with negitive thinking, lets uplift reality and make SE good.

      Call me crazy, but in my 28 years of life, I quite literally think that what I think, what you think and what everyone else in the world things, affects the real world..and I mean your thoughts..not yours speech, thats even more profound in change.

      So stay postive, or this could be the end of SE, if they don't fix it this year, the current player base is gonna drift, hell I already have, and have recommend others to wait...

      With this I have a new flame of hope. I am excited Keen, I hope you actually deliver.

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  2. Something I think has been missing:
    Camera feeds to LCD monitors. You should be able to display what feed you want on from any given camera to any connected (or networked via antennae) camera to any LCD monitor. This is a very basic need that I think has been overlooked.

    Additionally there should be something in the camera or monitor menu to affect the filter that is being used on the display.

    Why does it look like all cameras were made in the 1980s and recording to VHS when you're viewing them? This takes away from the futuristic feel. Why not just have a more low-profile HUD that indicates you're watching a camera? A few translucent HUD items in the corners and the camera name in the top center should be enough - otherwise it's like trying to mine/shoot/build while looking through a dirty goldfish bowl.

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    1. Camera feeds to lcd aren't exactly "basic". Having a single camera rendering allows for a ton of massive optimizations in occlusion and object loading, positioning, and simulation. To start adding multiple cameras rendering in parallel would drastically reduce performance.

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    2. Camera feeds to lcd aren't exactly "basic". Having a single camera rendering allows for a ton of massive optimizations in occlusion and object loading, positioning, and simulation. To start adding multiple cameras rendering in parallel would drastically reduce performance.

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    3. I agree on the camera overlay. It really inhibits its usability. The player should still be able to comfortably see. Maybe some dirt/particles to help the realism.

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    4. actually there's a mod in work making these live camera feeds, though it's not out yet:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DiAIW-cPb8
      but ur totally right, that really should be in the vanilla game.
      also there's a very great mod for the camera overlay which also should really be implemented in the game:
      http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=320125359&searchtext=hi-tech+camera

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    5. Only problem, adding in the ability to have lcd monitors feeding in video of another area requires to render that area as well as the area you are in, now one or two would be fine, but you get 20 players all running cameras at once, everyone's computers would explode from the amount of stuff to render, unless they can implement a system to mitigate that, we shall see I guess.

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    6. I don't think that cameras on LCD monitors is good idea i know, it's usefull in some cases but problem is when somebody decide to build 100 cameras and 100 LCDs let's say in radius of 10km. Just imagine those lags and there is now way to improve it :/ because every camera will have to keep some part of space loaded and displayed.

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    7. Second this. I can't begin to describe how annoying this has been and how often this has bothered me.
      And it's not just the camera effects themselves but the fact that SE takes place in 2077 so you'd expect that cameras would have probably something like UHD quality, and not something that feels like it's from the late 19th century. Really hope they improve this, and also of course being able to display camera feeds on LCD screens which I think should be rather obvious.

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    8. @Mat5i6 Sorry, wrong :)
      http://forums.keenswh.com/threads/camera-feeds-to-lcd-display.7376529/

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    9. A feature I have been wishing for is a way to manage my Mods in the SE Main Menus, so that I can remove old mods, or ones that I decide I don't want any longer.

      Thx for your amazing work.

      Kane

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    10. Live Camera mod WIP:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DiAIW-cPb8

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    11. I don't think a camera live feed to a LCD would be a huge performance problem if done right. E.g. it could render in a very low resolution like 320 or 480p and 15-25 fps on the ingame LCDs. Also it doesn't have to render the models with their best LOD stage and maximum tesselation. If players decide to build hundreds of livestream LCDs and performance is bad it's teir own fault and it can be prevented by common sense. If I build one Million warheads and explode them simultaneously it will lag too but that's not the game's fault. The physics have to be calculated for the entire map anyways and physics are mostly cpu load while rendering the picture is mostly gpu load so since SE is heavily cpu bottlenecked the gpu is usually not doing much work anyways if you have a decent one.

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    12. Instead of live "security camera" footage, each LCD could simply be a screenshot of what the camera can see when the game loads up or maybe once per hour or something. Then if you interact with the LCD while it is sync'd with a camera, it gives you the camera's live view just as if you had done so from your K menu interface. I know this isn't perfect, but it would be a good compromise that isn't hard on your performance.

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    13. The way he is implementing the camera mod, If there are 50 feeds running, the feeds slow down, not the game. So if you add more cameras the framerate on the LCDs drops. It has no measurable impact on game performance.

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    14. I agree. Ya figure after so many tech advances to get to space that the camera views would be clearer. There are mods for that that work good but we should not need a mod. A little lens flare and some damage/grime is ok.. but they can almost seem worthless otherwise.

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    15. Performance problems with camera feeds on LCD screens could be potentially counteracted if given a much lower LOD setting, view distance and other optimizations such as no shadows.

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    16. you do realize how games work right? to have a camera give a live-feed to lcd monitors is essentially the same as opening another SE with the same world and all the assets within the FOV of the camera, dont you think that if anything it will kill your pc? even if it were somehow optimized to work (which i doubt since most games don't even dare venture into "parallel client ops" do to obvious reasons) then it would still lag like crazy and with more than one monitor would still kill the game, the best any other game has gone into challenging this issue was to make special consoles to interact directly with their selected camera so that only the user can see the live feed and doesn't require parallel clients, in games where the feed is in actual monitors the most common solution is to for devs to place a pre-recorded video on the screen, or in rare cases the feed is recorded in real time, stored temporarily and then fed back into the system as a video in the screen, but its not real-time so it defeats the purpose and also consumes quite a bit of processing memory

      as for the camera hud you can just download a mod to clear that up and make it appear more modern, i do agree that KSH needs to fix that but its not a high priority simply because all it is - is a simple reskin job

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    17. Jesus H., no, renogiza, no... There's no need to instantiate an entire client to achieve that. You instantiate a point of view, "the camera", and project its output onto a flat surface... it may be a texture - so in fact a "pre-recorded video" of just one frame.

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    18. Hope to see LCD cctv it took me a while to figure out it wasn't in the game from the start. as far as people saying it's complicated it's not even it was in half life I think that's more than 10 years ago. The amount of spoken words you need to dock at high speed when you could just use a camera is ridiculous. as far as making any type of probe that you can use I'm not sure how that would work without being put in a very bad situation where you're looking through a camera not controlling my ship not being able to see what's going on around me and only being able to hear if somebody is attacking me, in an emergency situation before a jump under fire I would literally have to wait for all eight people to tell me they are seated in their seats. I can go on and on about the uses of CCTV in space. Even for nasa it was such a high priority it was one of the first things they were working on after and during the moon landings

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    19. I think the amount of lag it will generate is to big, if the cameras are near to you there will be no problem, but if you add a camera 10 kilometers away, it will need to meka a phisics rendering of that area (that is the main problem), even if you are not seeing the LCD screen, because it can me seen, it will generate phisics in that area, it is like hosting a server, when another player goes far away, you lag because yo need to render different areas, so your computer will do x2 work. However, it's possible to fix a bit of lag reducing the area of rendering (like i said, graphics doesn't really matter), it can also be fixed making more simple physics simulations, but it will result in bugs and errors because the laws of physics will not apply well in that area. So, I think the best idea is to make a mod, that anyone who wants it, can download it. But forcing everyone to have that isn't a good idea. Imagine people that can barely play space engineers due to the lag, but with this update, now there is more lag. Luckly I don't care about lag, because I have a good computer, but other people will do. Hope this helps to understand why it isn't going to be added. Sorry for my bad english, I am from Spain.

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    20. Instead of trying to render full video why not just have it set up so only the owner sees the image and it only renders still images (the same way time lapse video recorders do) per lcd and have it set up in the game so you can only do a max of 6 cams per lcd units with a max of 3 lcds (showing cams) per grid to reduce the amount of lag on the system.

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    21. What they really need is just a way for the monitors to be programmable to allow us to change individual monitor pixels using programming blocks.

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  3. Everything looks good so far, especially the VRage and rendering roadmap

    Maybe this : ("saving please wait" - hide this overlay text and do saving asynchronously without bothering the player)

    should be reconsidered or optional. The notice provides the player with a reference point for the last save in the event that the player wants to suddenly go back to the point of last save. For example an accident happens and the user wants to "undo" the accident.

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    1. Yes you are right... for some unknown reason there's a difference in how we did this for SE and ME. In ME you still see a small hint but it's not so obtrusive. So we will go that way also in SE.

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    2. Most games have a simple autosave icon that twirls periodically.

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    3. I would REALLY like to see the GUI made more extensible to the API and Programming blocks to allow us to make interfaces for mods with settings, display screens, etc.

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  4. Maybe introduce a villager system like in ME to SE with ships and playing companions, and also the block combination and decoration like ME also in SE. I really love the system of autopilot AI, and really appreciate the hard work put into the game,especially on such a fast paced timeline of every week, so feel free to take your time.

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    1. even a villager system for trading like in minecraft would be very nice for ME. so that they have their own houses and things...

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    2. Ack.. please no more minecraft. But yeah.. trade with npc factions would be ok. Some friendly so non-friendly.. and.. ability for them to change attitude over time.

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  5. GIVE US COMPOUND BLOCKS IN SPACE ENGINEERS!!!!!

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    1. Your absolutly right!

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    2. I agree completely

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    3. Probably not going to happen, unfortunately.

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    4. I was really surprised it wasn't on the road map. This really should be implemented!

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    5. Agreed. This should have been implemented months ago

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    6. Agreed..... Definintly

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  6. please remove the block limit
    http://forums.keenswh.com/threads/game-keeps-crashing.7361957/#post-1286783270

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    1. The limit is not artificially imposed as a design choice - it's a side effect of the fact that every computer has a finite amount of RAM, which can therefore only hold a finite amount of block data. We also lack the quantum computer needed to process more blocks without taking more time to do so - calculating the physics of even more blocks will require even more processing power, which translates into more lag... so you're basically asking Keen to improve our hardware beyond what is currently available ;)

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  7. What about removing the speed limit?

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    1. not a good idea atm
      game need the polishing stuff before doing that.
      When u look on mods u may have troubles landing on planets or maybe glitching stuff from your ship with connected ships away :)
      Prefer Installing this mod only when playing offline and alone!

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    2. There are mods for this on the workshop.

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  8. > Nvidia GameWorks – consider HBAO + Antialiasing (speed up)

    Please don't forget AMD's GPUOpen when it launches. I won't be surprised if Intel graphics eventually end up supporting GPUOpen as well...

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  9. Dat PBR graphichs *drool*, anyways, nice to hear you have extensive roadmap in hands, make the games even greater they currently are! :D Thank you for your hard work :)

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  10. Thansk for sharing this roadmap Marek, I'm sure it's important to keep pleople's faith in the game even after so many game breaking bugs. I think the game should rely less on the "copy to clipboard" buttons (for laser antennas and GPS). Maybe implement some kind of "send to [player][faction]" button.

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    1. Seconded, at present sending such information to other players is just one more thing which needs a tutorial when it should really be more basic and straight forward.

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  11. Wow, this looks like a lot of work, but I think it will make the game a lot better. Thanks, Marek!

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  12. First post :D

    no ai for SE?? its boring over time to play solo survival if u are all allone on your own. make us some buddys wich we can give orders and some sort of npcs wich walk arround your station. make some crew for ur ships wich got as sample maybe better aiming skills then basic ai ... its realy realy boring over time at ur own ...

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    1. I thought this was strange to leave out as well. I could've sworn I saw confirmation that they were working on AI - and didn't they release a video about AI testing in SE? Plus they seemed to be going that route with the barbarians in ME. Wondering if they scrapped the idea of AI. That would be kind of sad. It'd be a good thing to add in Beta and close to the final release, so maybe it's further down the development line. Right now though, I'd mostly just like to see optimization as the major issue. Can't try out multiplayer if I can barely even play single player haha.

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    2. This is a 2016 roadmap. Perhaps they anticipate the game will take slightly longer to finish?
      Either that, or they'll work on it on the side. They have expressed a want to put in survival aspects, which they mentioned on their Planet Release Twitch stream, and yet that isn't on the roadmap either.

      I guess we'll wait and see.

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    3. I agree that NPC engineers would be nice, especially for trading. Wouldn't it be more interesting though for them to improve the available features for building droids and have robots you can customize?

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  13. Really looking forward to 2016! This game is way too bugged to play with friends :D

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  14. No please NO GameWorks! It messes about everything up for AMD users and even Nvidia users sometimes have problems with it!

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    1. HBAO is fine, it's available with source code and can be used out of GameWorks. For AA, I'd suggest SMAA, it's much cheaper than MSAA and way better than FXAA.

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    2. HBAO(+) looks awesome though. Try enabling and disabling it in some games that support it. In most of them it's a night and day difference. They don't need to go so far to implement nvidia hairworks on the cyborg wolves^^

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  15. I do like the idea of the manual assembler alot!
    Any chance that SE would get the same building versatility of ME in which 2 blocks that don't take a full block space could but place in the same block?

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  16. I just hope you will not try to bring out an update every week anymore. When you want to polish the game you have to give yourself at least a month's time to release something that isn't breaking even more.

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    Replies
    1. As much as I get excited every Thursday in anticipation for the changes, I have to agree.
      Once all the content is there, and the real bug fixing happens, I would also rather them spend more time in between updates.

      Delete
  17. This excites me, its a long road but it will be a good journey. Looking forward to it Keen!

    ReplyDelete
  18. I do like the idea of the manual assembler alot!
    Any chance that SE would get the same building versatility of ME in which 2 blocks that don't take a full block space could but place in the same block?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I would like to see some nebula's that really add some beauty to the game. Thanks a lot for keeping us informed, i do enjoy this game :)

      Delete
  19. It would be very nice, if Space Engineers had compound blocks - and we desperately need Relative Reference Frames so we can move about inside a ship, repair, build, fight, interact with button panels - - while the ship is moving and being piloted by a friend.

    In my opinion, this is the most important thing we need for a true multiplayer, multi-crew experience. Add an economy, trading and a persistent hosted large capacity server, and you have created the greatest space game in the history of space games.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I really like this reference frames idea, I hope it wouldn't be too difficult to implement. The compound blocks are a must-have, I've been waiting for that since I first saw it in ME.

      The economy idea was most surprising, but I support it entirely. That alone could make factions incredibly more in-depth.

      Delete
    2. They mentioned economy and persistent Keen servers.

      The relative reference frame is really needed. I hope it's in the multiplayer update they'll be doing, I really do.

      Delete
    3. True that! Also robots, we need more robot minions with more options for making our evil robot army stand out from the rest of our contemptible, er I mean very interesting, villainous brethren.

      Delete
  20. I just hope you will not try to bring out an update every week anymore. When you want to polish the game you have to give yourself at least a month's time to release something that isn't breaking even more.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's largely KSH's decision to work at the update a week pace in the first place, I say as long as they're willing to put in the effort let them update on their schedule. I realize they're a small team but they have spent 2 years on SE - by now they know what they're doing (or atleast one would like to think so))

      Delete
    2. They could release once a year or every hour, it won't affect the pace of development - only our perception of it. Less frequent releases will only give us the illusion of faster progress, because we'll never see some of the smaller transitional changes that lead to a bigger improvement. You could achieve the same illusion by only playing every fourth update.

      But if they did release less frequently, then changes that the players dislike will have gone up to three weeks further in development before receiving feedback, which could take longer to revert - your slower release schedule can't speed up development, but it could slow it down ;)

      Delete
  21. What about basic axis assignment/deadzone? (I.E. Being able to setup joysticks and gamepads)

    ReplyDelete
  22. Maybe you should wait a little bit further with an Xbox one version, so development doesn't get slowed down. A (mostly) finished PC game might be easier to port to Xbox one

    ReplyDelete
  23. It's great that you want to optimizate your games. I have a good computer but I can't set graphics more than low. It's really sad. I'm playing space engineers and I so happy that game developing more than 2 years. From myself I want to see in SE combat realisation. Weapon choose is really short. It's would be great to see rail, plasma cannons, and... Manually targeting from all ship weaponry. It's would be great and PvP fights will really exiting! Good luck!
    P.s. Hi from Russia!

    ReplyDelete
  24. That second PBR example pic is stunning, the day space engineers looks like that is the day I quit my job and become a full time space engineer.

    ReplyDelete
  25. You only mention AI in ME section. So, does this mean that you don't have any plans about adding the actual friendly/neutral AI to SE and all bots we'll ever meet will be just a planetary wildlife?

    Oh, and Compound blocks for SE. After playing ME a little i was so upset that SE doesn't have compound blocks... I can't even describe it in english :(

    ReplyDelete
  26. I heard a rumour about you guys adding more survival mechanics like hunger/thirst, can someone tell us if this is a possibility or something you won't add?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They've personally mentioned it in a live stream. I don't see it on the raodmap though. Maybe a 2017 addition?

      Delete
    2. a lot of space suits have water in them how would that work ??

      Delete
  27. Looking at the roadmap, please avoid manufacturer specific coding (Namely NVIDIA Gameworks). It just locks up your game to only run well for them. If you could look at more open equivalents like GPUOpen that will work with either and be open-source, otherwise it'll make using your engine impossible without NVIDIA's support/approval, and that's not fair to anyone.

    Plus with GPUOpen you can play with the engine down to a much finer degree for the best optimisation, which a game this deep desperately needs.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Any news about updating the github for space engineers?

    ReplyDelete
  29. Are those PBR images from SE? Are those models we will get? They look amazing! :O

    One thing missing from that already great list is compound-blocks and multi-blocks in SE. At least the multi-blocks (where you can select one blocktype and scroll through the variations) would greatly simplify the SE building experience. Compound-blocks would allow greater construction freedom. This would also be good to mention now, or the artists will have to redo the assets because of potential z-fighting later.
    This would also get ME, and SE close together from the engine point of view, like you've mentioned with planets for ME.

    One last thing I would like you to consider is a vanilla speed upgrade for SE. 100m/s is simply too slow to efficiently reach space. It also makes falling from space less dangerously, as you only have to break 100m/s at most when you reach the surface. 1000m/s would be much nicer.
    Some form of speed-based collision LOD could make this work, or I'm always open for a system like in Kerbal Space Program (not discrete collision detection, but more path collision detection, as in "where am I going, is there anything I can hit there").

    Thank you for your continuing great work Marek, and tell all of Keen they're doing a great job. :D

    ReplyDelete
  30. >CTRL+F
    >ladder
    >no matches
    >ishygddt

    ReplyDelete
  31. Looks real good Mr. Rosa, thank you for the Road Map, it looks promising. This Is Harold BTW, I'm in your friends list. Additionally what would help is more help tips in relation to the Wheels, seems some are missing for "Strength" and "Power", and a few other sliders. I keep flipping my new wheeled vehicle because the controls are unfamiliar. I've never driven a car in real life so I don't know what those terms mean. So many sliders and when you mess around with them, can have unpredictable results, just something to think about. Keep up the good work, you give me a little more hope when it comes to early access games, because right now steam is milking them, and many gamers are unhappy with some of those people. Early access is getting a bad name, and it affects even the good ones who are trying. NICE WORK

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  32. Medieval Engineers currently feels empty. you can spend ages running around looking for food as there aren't any plantable food sources(vegetables, fruit) and the trying to mine is a pain in the butt when everything needs huge amounts of stone for construction. The AI needs a considerable amount of work so that they are useful. I do like the sound of new materials such as iron as this would open up for more mechanical features like sawmills, blacksmiths, better tools for tedious mining.

    Medieval Engineers is a great concept, I just wish there was more "Survival" to the game to entice me to play it for more than half an hour.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Space zombies on derelect ships would be cool.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Zombies???
      are you mad? go play 7 Days to die or something else with these madness, but let this out of SE

      Delete
  34. Will the game, in a far future, be optimized for DX12, or will we simply see a new space engineers at this point?

    ReplyDelete
  35. That's fantastic! That addresses every gripe I've ever had! If you're able to get all the through that roadmap, you'll be a definite dev of the year, again and again!

    ReplyDelete
  36. Replies
    1. Well, Linux Servers are also my #1 whish, but i think the way the game is currently working this might not be possible with a justifyable efford...

      Delete
  37. GameWorks? Yes please :D it only brought amazing things in my case sor far, excited to see it in SE! Also, will the game, in a far future, be optimized for DX12, or will there simply be a ``new`` space engineers at that point? (Yeah I know, this question probably is too far in the future to be answered ^^' but i'm still curious about it)

    ReplyDelete
  38. Cant wait for the dedicated server fixes.
    I know there is already a mod for it but I would still love to see an official hinge block from Keen.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Please add linux support for deticated server.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Yes, please show your AMD users some love, too!! All I feel the game needs is multi-block/compound blocks, ai, Live video feed on LCD (as mentioned), lift and drag in atmo, break speed limit, more comprehensive building interface..
    there's alot more actually, but you'll hear all about it from others!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I feel ya, personally, I've always used Nvidia, not because I know the differences, but simply out of ease of use, and I'm not a technical person. However, this war between AMD and Nvidia is ruining the gaming industry. No longer are they making money off sales of their GPU's but seem to be looking into the gaming market to control who can play what games base on what GPU's they buy. This is totally wrong in my opinion. In the past I never imagined my loss of gaming experience could have been better simply because I was not using the "right" video card. I think GPU's should run optimally with any game, but Corporations are ruining it for us gamers, for the sake of money!

      My name is Harold btw, I post Anomyously because I have no youtube account or facebook, account, so I'm forced to this method of reply, as I do NOT agree to their Capitalistic terms of service where we loose our freedoms in exchange for their invasive products.

      Delete
  41. Yes, please show your AMD users some love, too!! All I feel the game needs is multi-block/compound blocks, ai, Live video feed on LCD (as mentioned), lift and drag in atmo, break speed limit, more comprehensive building interface..
    there's alot more actually, but you'll hear all about it from others!!

    ReplyDelete
  42. Should roadmaps be? These are To-Do-Lists! Sorry Marek ...

    ReplyDelete
  43. Maybe make the ships faster than the freaking characters???!!?

    ReplyDelete
  44. Finaly sone news on the X1 version!

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  45. Yes, please show your AMD users some love, too!! All I feel the game needs is multi-block/compound blocks, ai, Live video feed on LCD (as mentioned), lift and drag in atmo, break speed limit, more comprehensive building interface..
    there's alot more actually, but you'll hear all about it from others!!

    ReplyDelete
  46. I would just like to say - the modding community has been as important to my enjoyment of SE as KSH itself, with the idea to make a simple economy model I may want to suggest you have a look at existing mods revolving around trading; especially the one's like the economy suite: one of the most asked for abilities in this area is the ability to have trades done in "Real Amounts" of resources, currently they are somewhat of an NPC "thin-air" Conversion system, it'd be nice to have a way to interact with other players on the server using actual resources and materials you mine in-game. Also would like to continue to see planets tweaked here and there, some of the properities are still very annoying - like the earth-gravity being too hard to escape and the lack of mine-able resources in reasonable distances.

    ReplyDelete
  47. Please don't forget about the in-game scripting API in SE; it needs major love, or replaced entirely with something far superior to Timer blocks. Will be crucial for automating systems.

    ReplyDelete
  48. A few modding questions :D

    - Is there a high risk that the render fixes for ambient/environment/etc will require reworking our DDS textures again?

    - Could "Finish support for scenarios" include some kind of "capture the flag" scenario, or support for a special flag object? I'd love to build some CTF maps/scenarios once the FPS experience is improved.

    - I noticed "new animation system" and IK are separate bullet points. Is the new system strictly for player models, or are you thinking blocks/textures would support at least basic animation in the future?

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  49. Please don't forget about the in-game scripting API in SE; it needs major love, or replaced entirely with something far superior to Timer blocks. Will be crucial for automating systems.

    ReplyDelete
  50. Please don't forget about the in-game scripting API in SE; it needs major love, or replaced entirely with something far superior to Timer blocks. Will be crucial for automating systems.

    ReplyDelete
  51. actually i don't think the loading screen is that bad. of course, the amount of time it takes to load a world isn't that nice, but when the wheel stops turning, that indicates that the loading is almost done :D

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  52. It.looks.very.promising.the.roadmap.
    Maybe.I.ve.missed.something.but.in.SE.will.never.be.a.block.in.other.blockspace.building.like.in.ME??

    ReplyDelete
  53. one thing I don't see here and it needs to be done is a throttle system for the thrusters so we can dock without major damage and be able to mine at set speeds like 0.4/1 meters per second

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You can already do that with the toolbar and thruster override...

      Delete
  54. some kind of voting for making mods into the vanilla game would be very nice. so that the community can vote for some mods each month or so and the 1-3 best will be implemented.
    something like that

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  55. please do something about the text on the buttons panel witch is unreadable when highlighted. with on yellow is bad, try high contrast and bigger letters. thanks i love theses games.

    ReplyDelete
  56. The roadmaps looks quite good but I think it's just an omission because it might be obvious as it is already partially present but you forgot to mention about AI. We need procedurally generated neutral and enemy factions with ships and stations to give the world some life, especially when playing in singleplayer mode.

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  57. really love the commitment you guys have towards these games. I've had SE for 2 years now and its really timeless. I think it would be really cool if a few more mods were integrated, like the conveyor hinges, force fields. Also a quick match, where a team of players goes against another team of players and dukes it out. It'd be cool also if the GPS could also be a map, where we can calculate our trajectory. SE is definitely going in a great direction and I appreciate your commitment

    Ave

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  58. The biggest UI improvement I want to see in Space Engineers is with the Rotation. I can never look at the square in the corner and understand what buttons I need to press to get things to line up the way I want, which results in me mashing DEL to see if that will do the job (which it seems to most of the time), followed by the other keys in a random order.

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  59. Hello Keen !
    Are you going to implement liquid water (lakes, rivers, oceans), in your games ? It's a bit disturbing to find only ice lakes in temperate climat biomes when I visit a planet. swim and floating objects could be an great addition to SE and ME !

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  60. Mr. Rosa: In the last Roadmap you promised Compound Building into Space Engineers and it's what drew me to the game from Medieval Engineers. Please bring that into the game. It's pretty sad that a Window take ups a 1x1x1 block when it's not even that big. PLEASE PLEASE bring it to SE. Thank you!

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  61. Marek, Thank you for the transparency - it is this level of detail that helps keep us abreast of happenings with Space Engineers. It's confusing and befuddling when all we see is things like a robot dog or spiders come out of left field. those sorts of thing strike us as the work of a single individual individual or intern and don't give us much insight as to what is going on with the actual core features that we're concerned about such as multiplayer, leaving for a frustrated core playerbase. Keep up the transparency and hopefully some additional insight (Technical is OK! Some of us are actual CS graduates and Engineers ourselves!) into the less flashy, but critical elements would be great to see/hear about as well!

    ReplyDelete
  62. Marek, Thank you for the transparency - it is this level of detail that helps keep us abreast of happenings with Space Engineers. It's confusing and befuddling when all we see is things like a robot dog or spiders come out of left field. those sorts of thing strike us as the work of a single individual individual or intern and don't give us much insight as to what is going on with the actual core features that we're concerned about such as multiplayer, leaving for a frustrated core playerbase. Keep up the transparency and hopefully some additional insight (Technical is OK! Some of us are actual CS graduates and Engineers ourselves!) into the less flashy, but critical elements would be great to see/hear about as well!

    ReplyDelete
  63. I'm curious about the updates for models. You released several, the projector, spotlight, beacon, warhead... but what about the rest? Thanks for all your hard work, this list looks very exciting!

    ReplyDelete
  64. This is more like it. I think this game is the most amazing one in a long while. Even with all the kinks and holdups have been worth it to get to this point

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  65. Marek, in my opinion, you've missed a lot of features, that are neccessery for a good-quality survival:
    1. Faction class system. At the moment any newbie can destroy the equipment of whole faction and use any tool at any place.
    2. Asteroid generation improvement. Their distribution has to be much more chaotic, to make possible high-density asteroid fields. Also, their shapes and ore abundance are not okay for the almost finished game.
    3. Remove "Convert to ship" button, improve interface aswell, to make RP aspect of a gameplay a bit better and to avoid awkward situations.
    4. Toggleable global chat. Make the communications much more comfortable, allow to use low-quality voice chat through them. Nobody uses the antennas in public MP. Ah, and also, it would be nice, if players had only the rough strenght of antennas signals, for their owner's safety. Beacons could stay the same.
    (5.) Custom sounds for sound blocks.
    6. Speed-limiting block. Public station in the MP are rare due to chance not of the robery, but of the huge missile/broken ship flying at it at the maximum speed.
    7. Warp rework. Deep in my dreams there's concept of a warp, what just makes the ship in 1000 times faster. Well, anyway, at least, I want to see a warp-blocking blocks for pirating purpose aswell as a need to accelerate before making a jump.
    8. Better damage system. It would be awesome, if reactors could explode, if you don't care about them in mid-battle.
    9. Rethinking of atmospheric thrusters. They are OP vs wheels.
    10. Big heat scanners, that can see working at their's limits generators, thrusters and fast vehicles. Maps aren't now small and cute, it's hard to find people even at highly populated servers.
    11. Better physics. Thrusters currently don't make angular acceleration. Basic atmospheric friction hasn't been invented aswell.
    12. And the last, but no least: sector system. Don't you think, the sun, spinning around 2 or more planets (without even skybox moving with it) looks ridicilous? I think, fracturing map into different pieces and allowing only jumping inbetween them could solve this problem. Those sectors could even be hosted at different servers to allow people to stay in the same shared world! Just like a different star systems (or even just interstellar spaces for a smalles servers)! And just imagine now, if different sectors had different resource balance? It would make a whole trading system possible! Just imagine traders' routes, what extends for many thousands miles, through a different planetary systems, through moonar gravitational wells, avoiding military bases, from a jump to jump! Economics, yes. That would make a SE definetly a game of a 2016-2020 years. Heh.

    Well. I think, I finish here. Enough of my bad-english skills!
    Hope, you'll read it~...
    Because that's all, what I wanted from the whole game industry for the last 5 years, and individually from the Space Engineers for >2 years.

    ReplyDelete
  66. Really nice roadmap.
    I hope you are considering some kind of 'multi use blocks' such as the cockpit mod with different LCD panels or opening doors.

    ReplyDelete
  67. nVidia GameWorks? Takže když mi to teď občas s R9 290 jede mizerně (planety) tak si potom nezahraju už vůbec?!

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  68. And not a single word about bots/AI and what fucking HDR is still inverted? You see, when you enter dark room, your eyes adapt and after some time you'll see better in the dark, not vice versa! For now in SE, it's exactly conversely - the darker room is, the worse (darker) your vision becomes. Falloff parameter is inverted too - ships built in DX9 mostly unplayable in DX11 due too extremely bright lights. You need to play your games much more. And to rework general lighting in DX11.

    ReplyDelete
  69. There was no mention of the "new netcode" that was talked about for ages and supposedly in the works, did that project get scrapped or did it kind of halfway sort of come out and no one noticed?
    The desynchronisation on multiplayer is still as ridiculous as ever, sometimes you get the feeling that the computers aren't even communicating with each other at all....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I would imagine Optimization on the Multiplayer front means new netcode, because at their current spec, its as best as they can do optimally, the only other option to increase performance optimation is to introduce new netcode or reduce memory / datapacket information from the server to the player and vice versa which means reducing graphics size packets.

      Delete
  70. i am so excited!!!!! good job KSWH, i hope one day this game is bigger than minecraft.

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  71. I can't stress enough how refreshing it is for a development company to openly share the information you do; including your own criticisms of your product. I couldn't imagine Ubisoft or EA even doing something like this. In my opinion, it elevates you guys above any game development team that has come before you. Now add to that all the groundbreaking features you have implemented, all while maintaining a 1 week sprint cycle!

    I'd love to see this stuff implemented, and a move towards Nvidia optimisations is a good one in my opinion. I'm sure there are AMD/ATI users out there who have a different view...

    What you guys have done is phenominal and I have every faith that you will succeed at, and surpass your roadmap.

    Thank you for all your hard work over the last 2 years. You've earned those awards!

    -Shockr

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  72. Really great job, I love both game. But what about Procedural planet on SE? The game is a bit empty and ennemy faction seems to not exist and just spawn randomly.

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  73. Everything looks awesome buuut game works nvidia optimization. Run ATI and rather see a more friendly alternative that works more evenly between nvidia and ATI graphics. To many games using game works sabatoge ATI performance like a high end ATI gpu running like a mid level nvidia with a game works build when in correct none game works games performance is more correct

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  74. My -biggest- gripes/frustrations in SE are with suspensions, pistons, and rotors... I can't count the number of times I've had builds rip themselves apart because these things don't work properly or as expected.

    Also, 'tool reach' in SE seems way too short..

    Lastly, we really need thinner blocks! .. How many real world buildings have 2.5 meter thick walls?! .. Maybe just let us use small and large blocks together? (removing the need for 2 different grid types)

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  75. My engineers are thirsty and want water.

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  76. I see that you took action after your livestream and seeing the state that the game was in! I'm really happy you finally found out and how you reacted to it :D Also I think that the saving message should still be displayed even if it doesn't cause any lag

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  77. Some of those Improvements seem pretty nice, especially those, that aim for higher Framerates, like the multithreading.
    I really like Space Engineers, and I'd like to build with a more-stable framerate (My Creations tend to gain quite a Size, so that's something that I really like), so I'm looking forward to see the goals carrying over to the current released Version.
    Also, with the Oxygen-Sensor mentioned, there is one Block, that I'd really like to see one Day, a single-block-Airlock.
    This should be able to work by checking each sides of the Airlock, for oxygen.
    When someone approaches the airlock and presses the Button to open it, the Airlock should scan that side, whether or not there's air, closing both doors, and de- or pressurize the inner part, then opening the side, where the button is pressed.
    When entering the airlock, pressing the Button in the middle-section should start this process again, , leading the Player to the other side of the airlock.
    For size, this could go to a length of 2 or 3 Blocks, and and a height of 2 Blocks, having it's connectors on the Top and/or bottom

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  78. Hi keen, I am really pleased to see the new dev roadmap and I look forward to all the new features you've told us about (especially those screenshots of the reflective surfaces)
    Anyway I was wondering about a couple of things and I have a couple of requests.
    - adding a manual turret targeter (so you can select a grid for all youre turrets to target)
    - AI or further improvement of the pirates.
    - Better destruction e.g. make reactors of hydrogen tanks explosive. or oxygen tanks because they would be pressurized.
    - Some kind of better faction system with ranks and such so that some noob cant join a faction then instantly destroy everything.
    - and finally make cockpits have their own inbuilt lcd's and make the default cockpit's door at the back actually open.

    Many thanks

    Pokerjoe456 - Your 643,263th biggest fan!

    ReplyDelete
  79. GameWorks should not be used because it has bad performance on AMD and Intel GPU's.

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  80. I think the road maps look good, my only problem is a lack of multi-core CPU/GPU support. If this is somehow already added (besides loading and saving), make it more apparent. My computer's CPU has been pretty much all but destroyed from 250 hours of space engineers. The CPU overheats 100% of the time, even when just simply staring at the desktop. And the CPU only overheats because one single core goes 100% on every single task, while the other 3 cores go 2% and the heat spreads to the other cores. While refreshing the desktop, the CPU reaches temperatures of 200 degrees Fahrenheit. I have a new PC now, but I'm afraid to play because I don't want it to get damaged in a similar way as this one. Simply adding multi-core support will not only save CPUs, but also increase performance and reduce sim speed lag/loading issues. I think this can be easily implemented into the road map under anything labeled "optimization." Please add this feature, I'd like to play without having to buy a new CPU after 200 hours...

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  81. (SE) There is also a bug that when you crouch and use your tools, the crosshair isn't placed where you're aiming at. Please fix that, it's annoying to guess the right spot.

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  82. Thanks for the roadmap! Keep up the great work!

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  83. Interesting to hear about in-game economy. Does this mean game will impose value for ore (possibly causing hoarding), or will there be a way for players to determine value of ore (similar to real life)?

    Will your persistent servers network with player-owned servers in some way?

    I'm still absorbing all this but boy am I glad I bought this game!

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  84. "Add planets to ME" what? you mean like bigger partially generated worlds?

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  85. ME: "Area inventories – remove this feature" This is very disappointing. In contrast to SE, ME's Survival Mode often feels like work because so much of the experience is carrying things back and forth, and getting things where they need to be. Area inventories help alleviate that. If you remove this feature, then you compensate for it in some other way.

    The most critical thing that needs to be addressed in ME (Survival), though, is the physics. I am a big fan of Keen's emphasis on physics-based gameplay, but, as a player, you can't exploit physics for gameplay if it doesn't work predictably. How many times have I been killed by a log I jostled that inexplicably acquired several hundred Joules of energy from nowhere? Carts without chests are useless because timber will not stay put. This is part of the reason that the removal of area inventories is worrying, in fact: ideally, players ought to be incentivized to build some machine to help gather and transport resources, but the present state of the physics engine makes this frustrating at best, and futile at worst.

    I know the physics model is still buggy at this stage, but I saw no mention of such (quite glaring) problems in your road map.

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  86. That's definitly an interesting list for SE :) By the way do you consider updating and adding features (on a slower pace of course) after the 'final' game is released like minecraft does for example? This could keep SE interesting for many years to come. I know it's a bit early to ask something like that but maybe you allready have an idea.
    There are still a lot of smaller features many of us like to see acording to the forum threads that could be added later on e.g. more transportation stuff like rails or tracked vehicles.

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  87. Srsly KEEN , please don't use nvidia tech , pretty pretty please, just stick with amd work studio, nvidia will screw the game for intel and amd users like it always does!

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  88. Hello,
    Offical servers sound great! I am to worried to invest time on community servers and random people's world for fear that they will just stop being online. please don't forgot about Australia. (<----- Australia not Austria) As we are very isolated and have pings of 270+ when connecting to US or Europe.

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  89. 2017 similar game come up planet xxxxx
    but SE is forever graet job rosa

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  90. I know that there are mods for this out there, but I've been hoping for some more vanilla ramps, and half slabs.
    At least a 1x3 - it just seems like something that should be in the base game

    ReplyDelete
  91. I notice that the SE roadmap fails to address the fact that Survival gameplay feels empty.

    While space feeling lifeless and empty is realistic, it's not great for gameplay.

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  92. sounds good but what happened to ai npcs?

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  93. I'd like to see some improvements to allow direct control over devices on the other side of rotors and pistons. The current system is awkward and limiting. Almost more types of connections in general (eg. ball-and-socket joints).

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  94. Is nobody going to point out the wooden house in one of those pictures? This means we should be getting a new type of material soon.

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  95. I like this road map. I have to admit there's many things on here I don't see I was hoping/expecting to.

    -Camera feed to LCD's. I know this is hugely requested. People say this is a performance issue to make this work, but come on, we have performance killing planets in due to player pressure so why not camera feeds too?

    -NPC's in SE. We have them in ME. We have enemies creatures in SE. Let's see some enemy/neutral/friendly engineers too.

    -Blocks occupying the same grid space. Like having two lights in a corner. Seems like something we should have had a while ago. It's in ME.....

    -Also goes with Small blocks on Large blocks in SE. Works great in ME so let's get it in SE too.

    -More blocks in general. ME is still young, but mods are honestly the driving force behind me playing SE still. The game's fun, but just feels too empty and I fear the dev's don't see it that way and we'll end up with a hollow feeling game at the end.

    Adjustable durability for blocks. More of a request, but I like an option to make vehicles something other than mettalic paper mache or indestructable.

    Better way/easier way for blocks to communicate. For example I love mechs, but building one in SE is, frankly, a waste of time. The game doesn't work well for it. Legs are ridiculous to make move properly and balancing the mech is always tricky.

    Rudimentry behaviour settings for A.I.

    Really glad to see optimizations are taking priority. Game runs like it ate a McDonald's buffet and it's shoe laces are untied.

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  96. This list is amazing can't wait for all the awesomeness to come. One thing though as mentioned before, tons of people like myself have 100+ mods thanks to the amazing modding community and it becomes a pain in the rear having to go through all of them in that tiny scroll box everytime we start a new world, it should take the entire screen with the first line of description or something, it would save 1h literally, an image would be a big plus if poss and favourites tab? that would be bliss... thanks

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  97. We can all look forward to NVIDIA Gameworks ruining this game.

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  98. Great work, amazing game, can't for all this to be implemented,already my fave game ever. Just a thought though, could we please have a better mod selection menu, it's cute as it is, but when you have 100+ mods like many people do it becomes a pain in the rear to go through, a favourites tab would be greatly appreciated and it should be screen size with 1st line of description not a tiny scrollable box, make it moddable if thats easier, any improvement there would be greatly appreciated, thanksssss and again great work

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  99. I know this would take some REAL time and effort and a hell of a lot of work, but for me it is impossible to have an Earth-like planet without volumetric water. Whilst ice lakes are a great stop-gap measure, without water the hospitable planets do no feel properly immersive and I don't think that when this game is released in its "final" form (I take it that there might still be updates and add-ons right? I just can't imagine SE getting to a point of becoming stagnant; you guys are so creative with what you add and allow modders to make with your guidelines) and I realise that this is a LONG way off in the future and that your performance and optimisation must come first. But it is something to think about.

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  100. Awesome roadmap there!! I love the focus on polishing and bugfixing and that adding more features to space master is mentioned.

    Im slightly worried about "Official persistent servers" i hope this doesn't mean discontinuing player hosted servers, as im mostly only interessted in playing with my 3 friends with the mods we choose and nothing else.

    Few things that i feel are missing on the list:

    - desync's in multiplayer are next to crashes the biggest problem, needs like 3-4 logins each time before all ship grids are visible sometimes. Sometimes ships are missing, ship-ghosts (blocks that look like from a ship, but are walk-through) are in wrong locations.

    - source code on github could need updates again & 64bit code; this would help the community to help adding/fixing things.

    - automatic trash removal/world cleaning could need a optimization. The one time we played with drones/ships on, our world ended up with so much debris from crashed/shot down ships, nobody could even move at some point due to the lag.

    - would be nice to have real (moddable) npc's at some point. Attacking npc bases is more fun if theres actual npc's defending it.

    - the dedicated server tool could need some fixes, like perma-death option keeps ticking itself on, a crash/freeze-watchdog functionality that auto-restarts the server when performing badly would be nice.

    - a linux version of the server would be nice too ;) Maybe im just asking for to much here now..

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  101. Please don't use proprietary nvidia api's: open source is always better in the long run.

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  102. Nice to see you're looking at wrapping up the development of SE and getting it locked down with some solid bug fixing.

    At the moment I can't really think of anything the game actually needs other than to just do what it already does, more reliably.

    Can't wait to see it finished :)

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  103. Still no plan on finishing the projector :(

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  104. I'm glad to see that multiplayer optimization is on top of the list but what i couldn't find is something on multicore use for dedicated server. I mean... who doesn't own a multicore computer these days?

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  105. we need three things:
    One a toggle for cockpits to use buttons this way we can actually make and use our elaborate cockpit designs.

    Two we should experiment in the way of adding a wire mod like in garry's mod for the use of programming i find that most people dont know how to right complicated code strings and having a visible way we could wire up timers to add or sum gates would greatly improve the automation of the game.

    Three, we need some sort of way to get the beacon to work with a sensor block that way we can make automatic landing or airlocks for ships. id love to have a base like the one in xcom the bureau. here is the link for the scene skip to 14:50 to see the base clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw4-t1cVKqo

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  106. Will SE and ME/VRage come to Linux?

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  107. Autopilot is still seriously broken, I was surprised that it wasn't on the list. It would be great to have something reliable enough to use for automatic docking. Currently the ship spins around uncontrollably as soon as autopilot switches itself off.

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  108. I would like to see extension cords in SE. Or some sort of man-portable power system for powering temporary work lights (also to be man-portable). Even better would be "broadcastable power," within a reasonable range of a fixed power source, of course. Having available power while working at a remote site without having to equip a ship with scads of lights just to see your work would be nice.

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  109. Lots of stuff has been mentioned that's sorely missing from the roadmap:
    - higher speed limit and relative local reference frames to better represent space travel.
    - NPCs
    - atmospheric drag and lift (maybe make the mod vanilla)
    - compound blocks

    But one thing hasn't been mentioned, and I think it would be crucial to a better engineering experience, that is when operating heavy machinery: the ability to bind joystick axes to piston or rotor operation. Operating something like a crane or mining drill currently requires lots of entering/exiting GUI menu, dragging sliders and toggling checkboxes.

    If it were possible to drive a robotic arm or the like with a joystick, that would be great. I know of no other game that has this feature, SE would be unique in that way.

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  110. Dear Marek,
    don't use Nvidia Gameworks, because they never let it run on AMD cards as well.
    The same with PhysiX. No wait, or.. no only for CPU computation, not GPU...

    Almost all the games today are optimised fo Nvidia.
    I don't have seen a game in years, where the AMD logo is in the intro, only Nvidia and I am sick of it.

    And that's the problem with all the game Benchmarks, too. Optimised for Nvidia...
    [sarcasm] Ohh look, Nvidia cards are always better, I don't look at the stats of the hardware, only at the performance in games. [/sacrasm]

    I am not a AMD fanboy, but I hate the way it is right now.
    And I beg you not to drift into the Nvidia hell as well.

    So... vented my anger and calm again. ;)


    Toryius

    P.S.: I have both games SE/ME and they are great, so don't ruin it, stay neutral.

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  111. On SE, Planets take ages for me to load. How about working on that issue.

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  112. What about programmable blocks?

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  113. I'm sad that linux so far is not planned for the engine at the very least :( but I'm glad you have a roadmap!

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  114. Thankyou Marek for sharing. I've been onboard with SE since very early days & have watched popular community opinion of KSH and the varying state of the game wax & wane with each weekly update. In all that time & through all that change however, I've noted the consistency of yourself & KSH in responding positively to disillusionment & negativity among the community, be it justified or otherwise. This I believe demonstrates that you're not only actively listening to your players but that you're willing to learn from them & bend your strategies & ideas to accommodate them, which is I think, worthy of commendation.
    In the face of the arguably unpleasable consumer base that is video-gamers, I'd say Keen shows the patience of saints!
    Many well-earned frothy beers to all & keep up the hard work!

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  115. Would REALLY like to see head tracking (TrackIR) - especially in SE, where one might be in a cockpit working in cramped quarters with a grinder on the front of the ship... wouldn't want to grind down the last thing holding two halves of a ship together.

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  116. SE: "Adding Official Servers", now that's getting me exited!

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  117. I'm glad to see that you really address the features we players demand for fluid and satisfying gamplay.
    However, I would have liked to see a roadmap which actually gives clue about your time planning or at least a rough order of projected completion.

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  118. Regarding the placement of voxel materials in survival: Could you make it so that the different types of voxel materials can also be placed in block form on a ship or station (so they can move with the ship)? I think that would be really cool, because we could build greenhouses with trees, grass and ice on our ships. Maybe some of these voxels (like the grass) could even produce small amounts of oxygen.

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  119. Looks nice, but "Nvidia gameworks" frightens me, because I use AMD v/card.

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    1. Yeah, Nvidia gameworks really isn't good.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcF36_qMd8M

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  120. Marek, please add option whene fuel can be transported, with connectors.

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  121. Well, here's my list...

    You asked us to report annoying stuff in Space Engineers.

    The load times for mods is a little excessive. It is my understanding that the game checks for and downloads mod updates every time the world loads. If there was a way to bypass this so that the game does it perhaps once a week, that would be fantastic and it would greatly reduce loading times.

    There is no way to "delete" a mod from the mods list within space engineers itself. I do not know if this is an oversight or if the feature can not be added due to steam. I have a couple mods that I can't track down to unsubscribe from for whatever reason and they seem permanently stuck in the list.

    Character movement.. When trying to move around, occasionally it seems the character will get stuck and the movement speed, acceleration or deceleration will greatly diminish. This seems to happen mainly while trying to strafe or move around in creative.

    Character Bounce. When mining, rocks tend to bounce the player quite a ways. It would be nice if the range of the drill was sufficient to reduce some of this. It's especially aggravating when trying to dig out an underground room. Or just extend the range slightly for every tier of the hand drill. Nothing insane mind you, the elite version of the drill having a range about the length of a large block would be more than sufficient. It would also ease the issue of having to crouch to dig out ground corners as well.

    Tree Removal. Getting rid of trees can be frustrating. How about giving us a lighter so we can watch them burn for a minute before disappearing, hopefully never to return.. Or just make the grinder affect them so they can be demolished. Fire = good when dealing with frustrating trees spawning in the middle of a base that didn't have any before you left to go to space and do some asteroid mining.

    If I could have one wish though, it would be to fix this last one annoyance...

    The game feels "empty" We need a way to spawn NPC engineers that wander around repairing things, or hang around fixed items such as using a flight chair for a while before wandering to a console or assigned "bed" or other decorative blocks. It's great that we can build huge ships and all, but it feels pointless without having a way to populate and decorate a ship or station. Being the only person in existence when your friends aren't online gets lonely... Plus it would be fun to fire someone out of an airlock at a planet.

    Maybe they could be spawned for an assload of power and a good bit of time from a medbay and they would have to have an actual "crew bed" on the station or ship they are on. Sun up, they're moving around doing their assigned duties around the job they are assigned to or interacting with an object. "Repair, grind, guard object or player, flight seat, recreation table, follow, stay, etc". Sun down, they return to "bed". Then add a day/night shift selection to affect their daytime/nightime behaviors.

    They could also used as guards against dogs and boarding pirate ships/stations? Not to mention.. Pirate drone ships? With no actual crew? Hostile NPC engineers would make a lot of sense and you've already got the hostile NPC AI done, as well as the factions set up to identify ownership with..

    Tell me you wouldn't enjoy taking a crew of 4-5 npc space engineers in to a fight to capture a small ship.. Or having a few of em equipped with grinders tearing down a ship in your shipyard and putting the components into a container.

    Other than this, you seem to have addressed the other issues within the game quite well, and I am happy with my decision to purchase a 4 pack and share it with my friends. We all enjoy the game.

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  122. I kind of like the loading screen having game noises at the end, that way I can tell when its almost loaded and its been there for so long it fells like a feature to me now

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  123. Having some idea what you're doing is good.

    However, I notice that it doesn't really address the lack of compelling things in gameplay. There's no real reason to land on an alien planet, except because you can. Sabroids deter people from going to those planets, without giving an equally good reason to go there in the first place.

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  124. Nvidia Gameworks is fine as long as it doesn't decrease performance of AMD cards, which is what I happen to be using as I don't support cowardly monopolistic practices of Nvidia.

    I would also like to see official support for aerodynamics mod and engine types with variable and reverse thrust, as well as more diverse gun, mines and rocket systems for combat purposes. But even better would be support for realistic thrusters mod which adds applied to center of mass force and efficient turning using actual engines instead of "easy-mode" gyroscopes http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=575893643

    Having a proper AI and epic/boss monsters, maybe even in space would certainly benefit the game as well, especially for people like me who can ever get only 1 or 2 other people to play with them and are more into fast-paced competitive than plain boring survival. Having progression when you survive on a planet or asteroid vs pirates and small mobs only to have a huge-ass boss appear and wreck everything would be challenging and fun to explore and overcome!

    Anyways, most of the goals you have there do sound good except for one thing - what do you mean by "final state" of the game? Do you plan dropping support and further development once this list gets implemented? If so, this just sucks. The game has so much potential, especially if you start filling it with actual content like story arc/missions and more challenging (yet fair) AI enemies.

    BTW, you should also fix the dogs as they aren't fair at certain times. They can be frustrating since they are like Minecraft Creepers but worse! They would have been perfectly okay if they didn't get automatically triggered on spawn and didn't tend to get stuck while trying to get to you somewhere on the other end of the camp. You don't even have any idea that a dog has spawned and got stuck until a random chunk of your base gets obliterated. At least Creepers don't blow up unless you come extremely close to them, at which point you are very likely to know they are there >_>

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  125. Marek,

    Firstly, congrats to you and the Keen staff on all your success - Space Engineers is by far one of the most rapidly expanding and popular Early Access games I've ever seen, and on top of that, you and your staff are certainly THE most dedicated, goal-driven, open-minded and community oriented group of game developers I've ever seen. Kudos to you all.

    There are a few things I'd like to see done with Space Engineers, and the top of my list is obviously a better multiplayer experience, but the second thing would be the ability to place certain blocks on another block without eating up an entire hit box, almost as if they were decorative. Interior Lights, Sensors, Cameras and Button Panels are the first things that come to mind. I'm not sure if that's what commenters mean by "Compound Blocks" or not as I've yet to dive into Medieval Engineers, but I believe that if players could condense their designs with these functional "decorations" it would allow for astounding new possibilities for players and open a whole new way for modders to create content.

    Another small-ticket item on my wish list is something along the lines of a small fuel connector. I created an entire drilling rig station on a patch of ice to refine hydrogen without even checking to see if it could be transferred from one tank to another via connector, and now have a large "tanker" sitting on my landing pad collecting dust. I'd love to see it in action! The potential for in-flight refueling operations is tantalizing as well, especially when considering the challenge of making automated refueling drones!

    Lastly, if you're going to have dedicated servers for Space Engineers, consider having "safe" starting areas for each player, or at least each faction. I'd hate to spawn onto a dedicated server as a new player only to have some jerk with top-tier gear come by and grind up my stuff, shoot me down, plant explosives by my reactor, crash a ship into my little starting area, etc. As an example, I play on a Minecraft server that gives you a 60x60 block plot of land where you decide who can do what and nobody can touch anything unless you allow them to, but areas outside THAT particular area are free game. Outside the instance these "lots" are in is The Wastelands, where enemies can be hunted and ore can be mined... this is one of those "free game" areas, and to discourage large bases defending ore deposits this area completely resets on a long interval. Their server also features the ability to open your plot of land as a shop and sell things in the community's economy. If you'd like to see it for yourself, let me know and I'll send you a link. I'd never suggest copying their structure, but maybe you can get a few ideas for a fun, friendly, and still competitive multiplayer environment.

    Let me emphasize, I am VERY happy with Space Engineers as a whole and look forward to great things from you and your team in 2016 and beyond. I hope that your team will remain as dedicated and passionate about the game and it's players after official release as they are now. You are all truly an inspiration to the game development community. I'm no game developer, but if a lowly American radio producer and graphic designer can further support the project in any way, please say so.

    Yours,

    Big Nate
    Steam: Zeke_Stryker

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  126. *Continuation of the previous message* You know, basically excluding the need for more realistic physics, the game engine is mostly there. Now all we need is some cool stuff to do in the game after you are done with building a ship. Think of Terraria or Starbound: you have the crafting and most of the world objects done, now you need more creatures, bosses and dungeons to make it challenging for the players but yet rewarding and interesting to explore! At least that's my vision of what I would like to see implemented before the end of game's life cycle.

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  127. Implement planets with asteroids so our solar systems don't feel empty!

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  128. Skills? That's one you have to do in a way that suits the game well or you can destroy the entire atmosphere. Tread carefully.

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  129. SE needs REALISTIC WATER. If the planets have oceans and you can build an underwater-base or warships, SE will become much more interesting.
    Ps: Hi from germany

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  130. Personally i think they should add volumetric water, parts for ships, a large server with 10k+ capacity, and better weapons just in general if they did all that i listed this would be one of the best games for sci-fi fans on steam.

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  131. Still no love for Rails in the roadmap? *sniffle*

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