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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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.
AI People
This week, I’m focusing on the AI People project. We’re returning to the drawing boards, redesigning both the gameplay and the technology behind AI NPCs. Our goal is to make the NPCs more goal-oriented, with distinct personalities, capable of solving environmental and social challenges. Their interactions—with each other and the player—should lead to emergent stories and butterfly-effect-like chain reactions spanning from hours to weeks.
I decided to work on the prototype personally, so a colleague and I have been vibe coding all day. Vibe coding is when you instruct a coding agent (like Cursor, OpenAI Codex, or Jules) to autonomously make changes to the codebase. It’s going well—it feels like we can achieve in a single day what used to take weeks. Iterations and feedback loops are much faster, which means we can prototype at an incredible pace.
Today, we also implemented automated testing. After the agent completes code changes, it runs the tests and, based on the results (e.g., if some tests fail), it starts fixing the issues itself. This new workflow is a game-changer because we no longer have to tediously copy-paste errors from logs. The tests were written by the agent as well, saving us even more time.
I’m already looking forward to the next five years when this workflow will be even more simplified and faster. Imagine just asking for something like "add grounded NPC actions like goto(), attack(), harvest()—planned and executed in sequence," and the agent makes the changes, tests them, and delivers an interactive game in a second.
Just see how fast the new diffusion LLMs are: https://x.com/InceptionAILabs/status/1894847919624462794
Space Engineers
SE1 Team
SE2 Team
- Procedural World Generator: This now spawns asteroid fields and rings with a realistic distribution.
- Clouds: Already in-game and visible in many screenshots (though they’re still programmer-art clouds; artists will refine them later).
- Planet Flora Generator: We now have grass and trees on planets! Currently, it’s just one type of tree everywhere, but artists are working on a flora library that includes dozens of trees, bushes, fynbos, plants, and even underwater flora.
- Backpack Building and Welding: This feature is nearly complete, which is exciting because we’ll soon be able to playtest the full survival game loop and start iterating on improvements.
Water Team
- Enhanced performance.
- New marching cubes for the water surface.
- New particle effects for dynamic water (think waterfalls and splashes from your ship).
- Improved resolution of the water simulation, plus many other upgrades.
Art and Visuals
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The dam with the trees and the grand canyon both look amazing! SE2 really shaping up!
ReplyDeleteAlso assuming that water thruster... spins 🫨🫨🫨
We all know how you love things that SPIN!!
DeleteSpinning stuff is truly the best kind
DeleteThis shows that we can finally make subs and boats
DeleteIt's amazing how trees shape the aesthetics of the planet. Good job.
ReplyDeleteWill stuff like water at higj speeds be able to rip of trees? It would be quite cinematic for stuff like floodings to have a chance to get them off the ground if too fast
ReplyDeleteCan't remember where I read it, but the plan to preclude ingots from the SE2 loop seems a pointless and contrived departure from the established loop of every similar game I've played. I'm not a fan at all.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I feel the same way. Having ingots just helps the immersion and gives you a reason for "working" in your base after you have farmed resources, provides a step between farming and building and just rounds up the farming tour.
DeleteOut of the entire learning curve of SE, the concept of ore->ingot->material is one of the easiest parts, automating it can really take an immersive section out the game. Plus instead of mining Ore, taking it home to refine, then making it into components when needed, are we just going to sit around with raw ore waiting to be used? Building machines to do stuff is a core concept of the game and automating basic processes takes core parts of gameplay out.
DeleteTo me the idea of removing ingots feels like having a staircase and in the middle there's an elevator that takes you from step 5 to step 7 and you aren't allowed to step on step 6. No matter how breathtaking the game looks and how good the physics engine is, this kind of thing is a bit...
DeleteStrange, how could we create the parts we need without the refined materials?
DeleteThe original game lacked complexity. I was hoping for a little more this time around.
DeleteI really don't mind seeing ingots disappear, they're pointless. The ore is still refined, it's not like anything is stopping happening, the machine is just handling more of the process in one streamlined process. It smelts and refines the ore, and then directly produces with the products, without us having to manage ingots or bars or coils (SE1 oversimplified things here)
DeleteAmazing how the screenshots with the trees look. Can't wait to fly through those valley, mere centimeters from the water surface. And I love the underwater plants.
ReplyDeleteThe water wiremesh looks interesting as well. I was wondering, if my airtight submarine is fully submerged, does the engine recalculate the water boundary all the time, or is it smart enough only to change it when you open a window, or surface?
I'm not sure about the water thrusters, they look quite similar to the flat atmospheric thrusters in SE1. That's not a bad thing in itself, but I think water screws tend to be thicker than air propellers, because water is heavier and the screws need to be sturdier to move it. My suggestion would be, if an air-thruster is 3x3x1 (like in SE1) the water-thruster should be 3x3x2 to show the extra heft of it.
Amazing
ReplyDeleteThat planet view is really getting me excited for VS2 - Can't wait to build and play with purpose! One thing I hope to see is character customization, mainly faces... Its weird to play with 15 brothers 😅
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you've considered implementing VR in SE2 but that would be awesome. Placing blocks by hand and looking around while piloting ships. Can't wait for VS2 to be done keep up the good work!
ReplyDeletePersonally I’m not yet sold on not having to process ore into ingots. Doing so can be satisfying and means another thing to consider when building a ship/base
ReplyDeleteEverything else looking great though
The planets already look absolutely stunning with the trees, geology, water and clouds!! Really awesome work, Keen! I cant wait for VS2!!
ReplyDeleteOnly what I hope is that tools and suits play a bigger role in SE2. If youre arriving in a new star system, every tool or space suit is valuable! In SE1 the tools are too cheap, all the same (only faster) and easy to get and suits are all only one type. Would be cool to have tools be more valuable and maybe multiple suit types e.g. standard suit, fighting suit (better accuracy with weapons, lower healts damage but worse ship control in flying), pilot suit (better control, maybe more acceleration but more damage if shot), planet suit (maybe being more like a backpack/jetpack, less like a space suit, lower food/water and jetpack fuel usage, faster running, far more efficient with tools, ressource discount when building, but no oxygen)
The exaust effects on the hydrogen thrusters need some work. They look like a bonfire not like an exaust plume.
ReplyDeleteMarek,
ReplyDeleteIt is good to see how this is shaping up. SE1 had a focus on the machine and not the engineer but I have suggestions about customizations:
The suit is only cosmetic but backpacks are not. Increased cargo space, faster welding,more ammo, more faster or more efficient thrusters). Players can choose from preset or customize. There are 4 inventory slots and players have to choose between equipment. Also, there is a customizer menu that allows presets to be built and there an in game block that if connected to a conveyor instantly equips the player with a preset configuration.
Tools are more robust in function than SE1's faster variants. For instance, jamming device to evade enemy turrets, cloaking device to make the engineer camouflaged, CABLE!!!!
The butterfly-effect-like chain reactions sounds absolutely amazing. Please do implement this.
ReplyDeleteI've done butterfly like emergent research irl, and realise it's vital to a lot of things, probably fundamental, like emergent tasks.
Beautiul progress ! I remember seeing a demo of water physics showing a stationary ship beeing unafected by the mass of the water submerging it, so I wonder if water streams will have an influence on their environment and other physical structures, like IRL a river can erode the terrain, move boulders and tear entire houses apart ?
ReplyDelete