"Need to create" - Builder, accelerationist, and Founder/CEO at KeenSWH.com and GoodAI.com - Working on AI People and LTM, Space Engineers 2, VRAGE3 engine and Resilient Civilization
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 caught 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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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.
Space Engineers 2
Cenda (Jan Hlousek, Tech Director of SE2/VRAGE3) and I spent a week traveling through beautiful South Africa's nature and rural areas and did some field testing of VS2 Planets.
You can see us here, including a music track from SE2 soundtrack:
The SE2 team is finishing VS 1.1 (Workshop). It will go into the final testing round next week and could be released soon after. It will bring Steam Workshop integration and an in-game browser, along with many other improvements - including mouse sensitivity and mouse inversion settings - because you asked us to add it.
Lukas and I were working on sound improvements for VS 1.2, mainly ship sounds (boost sound, speed-dependent sounds) and drill sounds (idle drill, contact with voxels or blocks). It's feeling much better now. Another significant improvement where Lukas went all out are the destruction sounds - when you shoot with the debug gun and incrementally damage blocks, and then when the final stage of block breaks or explodes. He created custom versions of sounds for all types of blocks. It really sounds meaty and satisfying.
We've finally implemented grass and trees into VS2 - of course, this is just the first stage, and we plan to make them several times more beautiful.
The debug gun tool got a new 3D model (we still need to improve the animation and projectile trail rendering).
We are improving the precision of highlight interactions (when you aim at a block and see the highlight), so no invisible occluders will interfere with the raycast from your crosshair.
The water team encountered a funny bug, so I'm sharing it here with you 😀
Gearforge - a brand new block for VS2 Planets and Survival, for our improved survival mechanics.
The SE1 team is finalizing the update 206, and they'll even bring some improvements from SE2 to SE1. I really like this approach. We even joked that this is the only time when stealing is a good thing.
I also love all the new blocks that the SE1 team is creating - they're really a bunch of talented artists!
AI People
We are now working on MVP 1, with a deadline at the end of February.
Currently, AI People is more of a scene-creation tool than the living, breathing world we envisioned. NPCs lack the depth, memories, and goals that would truly make them feel alive, leading to repetitive interactions and a lack of surprising, shareable moments. To address this, we're focusing on three key changes: giving NPCs long-term memories and evolving personalities, implementing a dynamic goal system so they pursue their own agendas, and introducing "Wildcard Events" for unpredictable, shareable moments. We want to create a world where NPCs aren't just responding to you, but forming alliances, starting rebellions, falling in love, and creating stories you'll want to share.
I'm really curious to see how the end result will look and how close we'll get to our original vision: AI People as a living world with goal-oriented, lifelike NPCs.
