Marek's Dev Diary: March 27, 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 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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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

• We have started with weekly updates, adding new blocks every Thursday
  
  
• I am amazed by everything our players are creatively building in SE2. Some recent examples:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• We've started work on improving the jumping animation. The current problem is that we only have one animation, irrelevant of whether the jump starts from the left leg or the right leg. The result is that it feels unnatural and quite bad, to be honest. Our solution will be to detect which leg the character will land on (left or right) and then play the corresponding animation. We will have to do this for walk, run, and sprint animations.
  
  
• VS 1.2 is almost done. Work is frozen now, so we are just doing the last rounds of testing.
  
  
• Emotes will come to the game soon, in VS 1.6. But the main motivation isn't just so you can play the emotes. The real reason is that we want to be able to play arbitrary animations in-game. This will allow us to use them in trailer production, have characters do specific things, and move us towards more story-oriented trailers. This system should also include "two-character animations," allowing, for example, two characters to interact during a trailer.
  
  
  
  
  
• Voxel debris will be coming soon.
  
  
  
  
• Consumables are coming to Survival in VS2.
  
  
  
  
• Flora rendered in the distance.
  
  
  
  
  
• Wind in grass – I really have to share this, it just feels so amazing!
  
  
  
  
• Target Base Gyro is coming to VS 1.2! (Sorry to mention it so many times, but I think this will improve ship piloting very much.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Off-center camera (another feature very close to my heart!) coming to VS 1.2 soon!
  
  
  
  
• We are prototyping a new kind of detailed decorative block that will help you design interiors and exteriors to feel more like real places, not just structures made from 25cm armor blocks. Don't get me wrong, 25cm armor blocks are great, but they can sometimes feel too blocky and low-poly. Real environments have a finer level of detail.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Some new foliage:
  
  
  
  
  
• And here is subsurface scattering on the flora (a special shader that makes it look more real):
  
  
  
  

AI People

• We are moving more and more towards a post-apocalyptic RPG, where you try to survive together with other characters on an island. I am really excited about this; I want to turn this game into a fun experience.
  
  
  
  
  

Groundstation (GoodAI Swarms)

• In GoodAI, one of our projects focuses on adding AI to drones, aiming to make them intelligent, autonomous, and powerful! Here's a demonstration of one algorithm that allows the recreation of a 3D scene from a video stream while simultaneously locating the drone in space. This demonstration was recorded right here in our office.
  
  
  
  
• Because autonomy is crucial, our drones need to be autonomously rechargeable. So, we created this docking station where a drone can land and automatically recharge its battery, requiring no human operator.