Marek's Dev Diary: 2025-01-02

Marek’s Dev Diary: January 2, 2025

What is this

Every Thursday, I will share a dev diary about what we've been working on over the past few weeks. I'll focus on the interesting challenges and solutions that I encountered. I won't be able to cover everything, but I'll share what piqued my interest.

Why am I doing it

I want to bring our community along on this journey, and I simply love writing about things I'm passionate about! This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly. Any plans I mention aren't set in stone and everything is subject to change. Also, if you don't like spoilers, then don't read this.

Thursday 2.1.2025

AI People

This was my main priority during the Christmas period.

I was working on a new roadmap - we are now in a phase where the AI NPC technology works and we are turning it into a real game (player and NPCs need to have objectives, challenges, and reason to interact with their environment, to progress somewhere, etc).

It is increasingly clear to me that just AI NPC as a game mechanic is not enough - we need a fun game that just happens to have AI NPCs.

Space Engineers 2

This week was quiet. Everyone was on Christmas vacation.

I reviewed a design document for the Energy System in SE2 (Planets and survival). Nothing surprising has happened because I already went through that doc with designers before. Only one thing caught my attention: an idea to show energy consumption graphs in-game. I think we will leave it in the backlog, but it looked interesting.

I refreshed the PR plan for our January 27 release, making sure we don't forget about some key tasks. The main things are:

• Blog post

• Alpha release trailer (it will be less cinematic and more focused on the actual gameplay, showing what is possible in SE2)

• KPIs we are targeting

Tomorrow (on Friday) we will be recording our OST with the orchestra in Prague. It's mainly work for Karel Antonin (our music composer). Many people from our team plan to stop by and see how it works. Even my dad decided to travel to Prague to see it personally.

The OST will be available as part of the Pioneer Edition and you will be able to download it on January 27. Here are three tracks you can already listen to right now:

• 18. Welcome to the Almagest

• 08. To the Stars

• 31. Research Outpost

Games

Because Christmas was calm, no emails, no meetings, no urgencies, I had time to play games. It's nice to realize that I am still a gamer.

Here's what I played:

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - I am in the middle of the game (in Egypt). I love the location design in this game - copying reality and looking beautiful. The gameplay is also good - simple, straightforward, rewarding. And for all of us who love Indiana Jones, this is a true masterpiece we have been waiting for our entire lives!

Fallout 2 - I wanted some old-school RPG game to refresh my knowledge on the game mechanics. I never really played Fallout games. The turn-based combat surprised me. Good game.

Diablo IV - We are investigating better combat mechanics for AI People, so I decided to check how Diablo does it. The last time I played a Diablo game was probably 30 years ago, some DOS version. This new version looks beautiful, gameplay is fast-paced (which I like because I have zero patience in games).

Path of Exile 2 - A game similar to Diablo. Actually, it is very similar. But it looks amazing, plays well, it's a good experience. One thing that surprised me in a positive way was the selection of characters at the start: there was a scene where a few people were about to get hanged. I had to select one. So I picked, and then all of the others fell and died, and only my character ran away. This was a great moment: surprising and emotional.

Dead Space - This is a game that I played many years ago. It had its influence on Space Engineers aesthetics and our first GUI. I decided to replay it now because I met Glen Schofield at GDS conference in Prague. I got stuck quite early so I need to find some manual to see how to get over my current obstacle.

SpaceEngine - This is not really a game, but a space simulator. It has a database of all known planets, stars, galaxies, asteroids, and you can travel using WASD or fast travel via search. The graphics are really nice so you feel like you are traveling through our universe.