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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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 1
Free Weekend Alert! From Thursday, August 28th, at 5 PM UTC, until Monday, September 1st, at 5 PM UTC, you can play Space Engineers on Steam for free!
If you’ve ever been curious about building, exploring, and surviving in the ultimate sandbox, there’s no better time to jump into Space Engineers. Try out the full game, experiment with engineering and design, and see why the community has been building in space for over a decade.
We’re also once again substantially increasing the drop rates for all skins from Unknown Signals on Steam. Strong Unknown Signals are especially rewarding during the Free Weekend event, as they have a higher chance of dropping the rarest skins.
Space Engineers 2
End of weekly releases & More dev time on VS2
This week marked our last Space Engineers 2 Weekly Release for a while. All hands are now on deck for Vertical Slice 2: Planets & Survival, and the team is pushing hard to bring this milestone together.
We are ending or pausing weekly releases, which involve adding new blocks every Thursday, to minimize distractions and allow everyone to concentrate on VS2. This decision was also made because the weekly releases created complications in our branch merging process as we are finishing VS2. Artists and designers had to push each block twice – to both the public branch and the VS2 branch – leading to inconsistencies and requiring extra support time. We believe this time is better spent working directly on VS2.
Overhangs and boulders
One significant improvement I’m excited about is the introduction of overhangs. In Space Engineers 1, terrain was largely restricted to pyramid-shaped hills and simple rock formations. This limitation stemmed from defining the planet surface with a planetary heightmap, allowing only one parameter per voxel: its height.
With our new VRAGE3 engine, we can now generate natural-looking overhangs, cliffs, and more complex landscapes. This makes the planets feel much more alive and believable.
While we still utilize a planetary heightmap (a cube projected onto the planet where the height of each voxel/location is defined; a voxel’s size is 1 meter, and the current heightmap resolution is one pixel per 8 voxels, though a “detail heightmap” ensures an effective resolution of one pixel per 1 voxel, resulting in 1-meter resolution), the game also spawns small voxel storages of overhangs and boulders throughout the environment.
The procedural generator ensures these are placed in natural locations, enhancing the shapes of mountains, hills, flat areas, and canyons. The end result is that the surface is no longer merely 2.5D (the maximum achievable with a heightmap) but fully 3D. Additionally, we have caves, as the game now also subtracts from the surface to generate them.
Material Transitions
Artists are enhancing the visual quality of planetary voxel material transitions. In Space Engineers 1 (SE1), material blending between voxels occurred simply over the surface of a single voxel (one triangle).
In Space Engineers 2 (SE2), these transitions can extend across multiple voxels and triangles. Additionally, a transition mask with height information allows for significantly more natural-looking material transitions.
Planetary Rings
We’ve also been expanding the internal VRAGE3 Editor. Here you can see editing planetary rings directly inside the tool. This is one of many incremental improvements that help us create richer worlds faster and more efficiently.
Planetary rings are something I’ve wanted to try for a long time. They add scale and atmosphere to a system, and open up interesting design and gameplay questions.
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Man, I love working on SE2. The game I see in my head is such an amazing piece of work. If we get even to 50% of it, I can die happily 🙂
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Do you like the idea of planetary rings? Should they just be beautiful backdrops, or should they have resources and hazards hidden inside them?
Let me know what you think about any of this.
I read all your comments – it’s one of the best parts of my life.
I am super excited for SE2 and all of the progress that you and the team have been achieving. I am definitely looking forward to a much better looking planet as I tend to spend a lot of time on planets in SE1 but the view is a bit lackluster. SE2 looks incredible and I cant wait for VS2. Keep it up!
I so love the work that you guys do and it’s perfectly reasonable to stop the weekly releases because i’m itching for this slice.
Rings with an actual purpose would be really fun, but it’s hard to imagine it not simply being an asteroid belt all around the planet, gameplay wise. It would have to have something about it that’s completely different than regular asteroids you can find anywhere. If you can figure out a way for hazards to make sense there while being extra rewarding, i’m very much down for it.
Some ideas: Maybe needing to pilot mini drones to make a clear path for your big mining shop to get through, or having hidden lore like wrecks orbiting about, or the sheer particle density jamming communication signals which makes it the perfect hidden base if you can keep it maintained/shielded inside, perfect for multiplayer stealth missions!
Even if these end up possible, the core features are ofc prioritized and i wouldn’t be surprised if this is way later down the line
Awesome suggestions!
How cool would it be if there were smaller asteroids in the belt then you can not find in space. Then have those smaller asteroids be way closer together so that flying at high speeds through the asteroid belt would be a real challenge. Like you see in Star Wars for example.
Small asteroids together would create fun aspects for building bases that stretch across mini asteroids. Or ships that are able to devour a mini asteroid at once.
Combat wise dense mini asteroids would be fun as well, as you can then use the environment to you advantage but still having to watch out to not crash into an asteroid.
Let’s not discuss the possible performance impact here, as that would probably make a lot of PCs very unhappy. But having asteroid belts would and accompanying gameplay/lore would make me very happy.
It’s so peak guys, keep up the good work
Do you like the idea of planetary rings? Should they just be beautiful backdrops, or should they have resources and hazards hidden inside them?
You have to ask? Hell yeah! Resources and hazards will be awesome! Making the risk and rewards fun. When you add meteor storms for these rings and the need for protection against flying through them will be nice!
First of all, amazing work as always.
Secondly, yes, I think interactable planetary rings is the way to go. Beyond the amazing, but also quite obvious gameplay implications, I belive it would be a good way to introduce astroides to the world.
Having them floating around in empty space like in SE1 should be avoided in opinion. It makes little sense, and decreases the value of jumpdrives.
Concepts like astroidbelts and planetary rings gives us an oppertunity to distribute astroids in clusters. There would be an inherent logic to it, as well as gameplay implications.
Perhaps there could even be different types of planetary ring? Like, some primarily consisting of ice? It would sure be a nice place to stock up on hydrogen, or perhaps even to place a large processing facility.
i love planetary rings! my favorite concept is a bunch of hidden stealthy Space Pirate ambushes hidden within the rocks that you need to really hunker down for and haul ass through without running into any of the asteroids. super high risk but the reward is great because those same pirates have a lot of high-tech stuff and valuable resources and setting up base in their spot would be very advantageous for your defense of the area and planet
I’ve been playing SE since early 2014. The concept of buildable and destructible ships pulled me and many others in immediately.
I remember my excitement when endless asteroids were released, when planets came out, the sealed interiors with working oxygen, all the different updates. Seeing your team push the limits of VRage2 was always impressive, and you’ve done it again with the water especially. I can’t think of any developer that has managed this level of fluid simulation to scale.
I bought SE2 when it was first available even though my current computer setup needs to be upgraded to run it and my wife and I just had our first child, just to support you guys. One of these days I’ll have free time to play it, and in the meantime I enjoy reading through the blogpost updates.
I’ve always recommended the first game to friends and family who are into building or space games. I like that the second is keeping what made the first great and expanding on it, as well as adding features that will hopefully bring in new audiences. Fingers crossed that you guys can pull off NPC interactions at some point, I always thought it would be cool to engage in or repel boarding action, or manage a ship full of colonists as I deliver them safely to a new home. I’m assuming the biggest challenge there has always been getting them to navigate a 3 dimensional space that is constantly changing and with no consistency in layouts.
All this to say, you guys have always worked ridiculously hard to produce amazing results, and you’ve engaged with your community throughout at an impressive level. I hope that your newest game enjoys the success it deserves, keep it up.
I’m in the exact same situation with buying the game but not being able to upgrade my computer due to a new baby. If you have good enough internet, you might try playing it through geforce now. It allows you to stream your steam games from a remote computer. That’s how I’ve been playing se2. It’s not the most ideal but it’s better than nothing!
I think it’s awesome that you’re getting all hands on deck for VS2. This game has so much potential it’s unreal.
I’m so excited to start playing survival! (And even moreso with friends in the future) Planet rings sounds like an amazing addition and I can’t wait to see them in action!
These blog posts are epic. I always look forward to reading them every week. Thanks for implementing the image function. Great job to everyone in the team
Planetary rings and asteroid belts are such an amazing opportunity for space gameplay decisions. If those are present in SE2, you could dramatically reduce the rate of asteroid spawns outside of those regions and increase the threat of pirate activity inside those regions. So prospecting in the void is low-risk but low-reward, and prospecting in the belts is high-risk and high-reward.
Planet rings could make one of locations where resources are concentrated, so players have to compete for them and make big facilities processing them in there
Rings are cool. They need to be made high quality, not just low level flat planes, with resources loading in and dangers lurking in random places, hidden pirate bases etc. Don’t you dare just make them a flat jpg 😀
Planetary rings should be thinner denser ring of asteroids and/or iceteroids around planets. They should not just be visual. They should be a POI with unique or better material opportunities in a smaller area so players have more chance of encountering each other.
planetary asteroid and debris rings make gameplay areas and could potentially enhance the game tenfold
here are some basic examples.
1. your story and tech progresses by regions that are controlled by specific factions the areas controlled should yield higher end recourses the further you get into the game. the starting planet could have high amounts of regular materials and very low amounts of rare ores. these areas only spawn rare ores in small pockets on asteroids not full asteroids worth, additionally these areas have high amounts of ice asteroids as well. progressing further enemy faction controlled planetary rings have full asteroids of rare ores, but are defended by small drones that keep spawning the longer your in the area. to disable this you need to assault a large regional base that lets you control a sector of the ring without hassle, additionally the drones will come back over time with ships that cover smaller regional areas with drone spawns . if left uncontested for a set amount of time small bases appear then large ones – engaging pve and pvp with an additional layer of -pizaz
2. Having materials locked into asteroid rings breeds player interaction this will make warring over areas more meaningful and drive players into a central area to either work together or contest each other
3 others have mentioned here that you can add effects to the area like degradation of signal output -reduced scanner reception ettc- this would be a great future
4. one other thing i’d like to see is an outer asteroid belt extremely far outside of the solar system surrounding it . having this would allow players that don’t want to deal with the dense population able to go very far and achieve a moderate income of normal and advanced materials
RINGS. Hope it will contain hazards like passive damage or dynamic rocks. Imagine Obi Wan going through the asteroid belt, chasing Jango. May be too much, but damn…