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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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
We are celebrating Space Engineers 12th Anniversary this week!
When I look back at how far Space Engineers has come since that first Early Access release in 2013, it still feels incredible. What started as a simple concept of building and destroying with physics has grown into a massive sandbox, powered by creativity and engineering from all of you.
Twelve years later, the community is still the heart of Space Engineers. The ships, bases, and worlds you’ve built continue to surprise and inspire us every single day. It’s your ideas, feedback, and passion that have shaped the game into what it is today.
Please join us this Friday to celebrate! 🥳
🚀 Friday, October 24, 5 PM UTC
🛰️ Twitch: https://twitch.tv/keencommunitynetwork
🛰️ YouTube: https://youtube.com/user/SpaceEngineersGame
Feel Old Yet, Engineers? 😅
As we work on Space Engineers 2, we carry all those lessons and that same spirit forward. SE2 is being built on everything we’ve learned from the past 12 years – bigger, better, and made to last for many more anniversaries to come.
Space Engineers 2
VS2 – Planets & Survival Foundations
Let’s sit down and talk for a while about how survival building will work in Space Engineers 2.
You will be placing an animated projection of a block instead of its lowest build state. This makes planning and building feel much closer to creative mode – more intuitive and accessible for everyone.
And that’s not all. This system opens up a whole new level of creative possibilities in survival mode – including mirroring, copy/paste, modular blueprint building, and even undo & redo!
Here you can see SE2 projection particle effects – a small WIP preview of what we are refining right now.
Unlock screens will appear to announce your progression, giving a clear sense of achievement as you advance through the game.
We are constantly optimizing and tuning LODs and grid performance – the goal is simple: keep large builds smooth without losing visual quality.
Our SE2 Art team is refining Delfos to become a true brown dwarf – adjusting its color and light scattering to give it that deep, warm glow and massive sense of scale.
In VS2, you and your grids will have the option to fast travel between major space stations. This will let you move through the Almagest system before you gain access to high-tech jump drive technology.
Of course, the old way of slow traveling everywhere – without any loading screens – is still there for those who enjoy the journey.
More tree physics testing and tuning:
And it’s not just trees that are fully destructible – we now have exploding rocks too!
Single trees can be great for savanna biome – but I always wanted more. Here are our first tests of full forests on Verdure.
After VS2
Me and the teams are already planning our releases after VS2. We will share an updated roadmap together with the VS2 release.
VS3 – Water
You can take a look at block permeability testing here – water is pouring through a grinded block. It’s an important step toward making our water simulation behave more intuitively, following how players naturally expect water to react.
Our water also got less uniform shore foam:
Overall, water visuals are already looking better and better! Each new tweak makes the surface movement, reflections, and color feel closer to what you’d expect from real water.
Question to you: Why does the flora on Verdure look so much like Earth’s?
Who planted it when the first Bering colonists arrived just ten years ago,
and how could it have spread across the entire planet?
Share your thoughts in the comments below – I read them all, and they’re one of my favorite parts of making our games.
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Kinda just wanted to note on the tree physics, overall better than a few weeks ago when they “Exploded”, but when something hits it at a high rate of speed in the clips provided it kinda just falls, shouldn’t it go in the direction of the thing that also hit it? with some of the velocity of the thing that hit it?
I just love this. This is an awesome update, so hyped about this. I was little worreid for a while about this update, but especially the fast travel solution is perfect, you can do it any way you want. just PERFECT!
LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT!!!
Cant wait the update! After this only actually mandatory thing are the moving parts, rotors, pistons etc. After that I can move from SE1 to SE2!
I feel like Delfos is not emitting enough light, it fades quickly on long ranges and looks insignificant. If you want to represent the cale of it, you can show it on a planet close to it from the surface looking up, that’s the classic way. 🙂
Trees on Verdune look OK, I’d still wish more shrubbery to be present, but overall nice. This won’t negate though that the game needs alien planets and alien flora and fauna eventually. It’s a scifi game, you can’t just make it look all like regular normal earth.
Water looks ok, the new foam doesn’t look too impressive. Maybe if you’d add some shore rocks to bang up against?
I think the tree destruction is at a right place. Rock destruction I’m not too sure about.. I’d kind of expect it to be more heavy, ideally maybe something that can be dislodged from the ground, like a boulder, but that would probably need something to wake them up and make them static when the player is not around. It would probably be too difficult for VS2. I could imagine someone making a large container full of boulders just to throw it at an enemy from high above. That would be nice.
The brown dwarf does actually look like a brown dwarf, is the thing. A brown dwarf, if I recall, is the stage between a gas giant and a star. It is the smallest, least energetic kind of star; look up other pictures of brown dwarves. I think most of the light is coming from the other star
That Delfos does not emit much light is realistic for a brown dwarf. Think of it as a glowing piece of iron, at the color that matches Delfos it does not shine all that bright.
Looks great!
I hope the fast travel between major stations is still somewhat immersive. Would be awesome if players could also construct “Jump Gates” as structures at their bases with enough progress, maybe even eventually upgrade them with more segments or higher power throughput to get more distance or even the ability to jump directly to a waypoint instead of just to another jumpgate. Covering distance should always have an appropriate cost and interrupting jump routes for piracy might also be interesting.
With projection building i feel like the animated texture is nice, but i’d like it better if it were more grounded in reality. Having the option to build with mirroring etc. in survival to plan something out is nice but i’d hate it to only be like factorio blueprints. The “scaffolding” nature of SE1s build planning also has its charms. Maybe it could be compromised to have blueprint building be bound to the use of projector blocks, or a suit/visor upgrade to allow for fancy survival building features while keeping immersion?
I just made a comment about the fast travel thing, i compared it to a Stargate. I really like your idea about the possibility of piracy. Might be worth exploring!
The forests look incredible, makes verdure look a lot more natural already. Can’t wait to see furher iterations and your take on undergrowth!
Since Delfos isnt typically mentioned in the same way as the other 3 primary planets, is it more of a navigational hazard rather than an actual landing destination?
Hello, Mr. Rosa. This is a great week, everything looks great. Verdure is beautiful as always, and it feels like with the projection building system you solved the problems of designing in survival. It takes a bit away from the build-test-rebuild loop, but I guess we can consider it an extension of imagining how something could be built. Also, that’s a strong pistol! Will heavy ground vehicles also be able to crush rocks by driving over them? I like the rifle in the solid color, there’s just something about it.. The water looks nice. Will we be able to reach Delfos, even if it destroys the ship? The screenshot with the unlock screen mentions “tier”. Does this imply that you are considering more tiers in blocks in some sense, such as specialized uranium enrichment blocks and so on? It could be really interesting. I wasn’t sure about the fast travel lanes, but now I want to see what you will do with them. I’m looking forward to the 12th anniversary stream.
About the flora on Verdure, I guess it could be the classic: A seed ship was sent ahead of time to a planet with high likelihood of compatibility. Maybe thousands were sent to different systems in a last effort. Honestly I don’t remember why the colonists departed the Earth, maybe they just had a need to explore. If there was no human intervention before the colonists arrived, what if the trees were actually built by nanomachines or similar systems? Maybe it’s a modified type of tree that is actually genetically minimized to be the functional part of the tree and a symbiotic relationship was created with a nanomachine system that takes up the task of creating an initial structure for the “tree” to grow into and then out of, to create a proper tree after some time. Another classic, of course, is that human life actually originated in Verdure, but nobody remembers because man was transported to the Earth for some reason. It’s also possible that the growth of trees was accelerated by some factors: maybe genetic modifications, maybe a very rich soil, maybe a rich atmosphere. You know how insects used to be giant because there was a lot of oxygen or something like that? Apparently trees can grow faster if there’s lots of CO2, as long as the other environmental conditions are controlled and there isn’t drought or extreme weather. However, this accelerated growth can also shorten their lifespan, so maybe it was done as an urgency measure and now there might be an ecological disaster if the other trees that were grown normally don’t grow up in time to replace the fast trees.
P.S: I just noticed, but thank you so much for adopting the ISO standard for unit formatting, with the space between the number and the unit.
test di laboratorio e poi anno butato con una navicella atmosferica semi di piante
Block projection is great for more relaxed gameplay – though would it be possible to disable that feature? It would bring more planning and add difficulty – which I would definitely love.
Aslo kinda unrelated question – will there be aerodynamics in SE2? On early stages of the new vrage engine there was editor shown with some aerodynamic features (if I’m not mistaken), but since then I’ve never heard of it again
I just wish you apply the block permeability idea to airtightness of grids… the system in SE1 is clunky and sometimes requires people to break immersion and hit thw wiki
Keep up the amazing work! You guys are amazing and so looking forward to it!
Not sure there’s any physically possible way to attach those sights onto the rifle, but otherwise it looks great! The ocean wave frequency lapping onto the beach still seems a bit high. Maybe it should go backwards slowly like water running off a beach after a wave before the next wave comes?
Verdure lore hints? In the year of our lore 2025? Say it ain’t so.
in my head every planet from SE1 will have a copy with a different name in SE2 and i love it, i hope that this beatiful game continues to improve not only in gameplay quality/graphics but also performace, my GTX1060 3GB is just scraping by on medium (just a bit lower than 60fps)
Forests looks awesome from outside!
But please, take time and little research what do the root systems of different tree species look like.
If we are able to dig around.
water looks nice,
We already seen lot of water to grid reactions,
Still missing any reverse one.
How will react grid at contact with water surface ?
How about buoyancy?
What in contact with moving water? or preassure stream….
Why engineer don’t react at all ?when grinded that block in video above? It will shot him off away instantly.
Oh wow, these quality-of-life improvements give me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside! I can’t wait to kick off Operation “Tree Body Problem” and try transporting a tree to another planet!
the rifle looks nice but can we get different ones? there are plenty of factions around and it would be quite unrealistic for there to only be one kind of rifle used by all of them. it is also quite futuristic and a more grounded looking one would be amazing. maybe making the different kinds of rifles like the ones we have in SE1 to actually be diferent looking rifles and used by different factions could be a way to do it
I love the ideas with huge forests and the trees are looking magnificent. Im very hyped for all the upcoming new features and mechanics in SE.
Just a quick question for se2, i know that the steering engine for ships already exists but just as an idea: besides SE1 i was playing a lit of elite dangerous, in which there is a very complicated way of steering your ship, i cant really describe it but it also has its advantages in pvp. Now that SE2 is getting developed i wondered if it would be possible to make an option in the game settings to switch between the space engineers steering and the elite dangerous steering. Both methods have their own advantages and disadvantages and I also cabt really decide which one i would prefer but it would be a great feature in the game i think.
Nice Stuff !
Fast travel anim reminds me of Freelancer but better and shooting rocks looks satisfying 🙂
Delfos the brown dwarf looks really good, i like the detail.
Maybe add some glowing plasma rings. Please do not forget most pictures of brown dwarfs with these glowing rings are artistic interpretations of real pictures. Stellar classification L, T and Y are for infra red. The light from M class brown dwarfs that we can see is very very faint to not visible in orange to dark red.
Also i wonder how many trees can it render? 🙂
I absolutely implore you to create an on/off toggleable log area for the stuff like achievements (if it’s off it’s off, no turning back on on achievements). I dislike getting pop up that are breaking the immersion. If you are going to make it part of the game, make it so it makes sense. When we discover a tech in real life you don’t see popups announce in the air. 🙏
The shader on the virtual building is not good, stick to the old method for building please, it was good, it worked, don’t be hellbent into trying to innovate for the sake of it.
I strongly disagree. I personally think that allowing mirroring, copy-pasting, undo redo and everything else in survival is a massive improvement and worth the visuals maybe not looking as good. But there’s tons of room to tweak it and make it look better too.
I also disagree. I hated having to go to creative mode to build my ship because the tools in creative mode were much easier to use when designing. This improvement will allow us to more easily build and design ships while staying in our survival worlds.
Can’t wait for VS2!! It would be fun if you could only see the build projection and these type of things if you got the helmet on, it adds some more functionality to it
I would suggest a different approach to building.
This holographic shader for projected blocks might be suitable to show a ready-to-build grid, like in SE1 — but definitely not for the actual building process itself. In a way, SE1’s survival building may even be superior from a visual and immersion standpoint. Here, it feels like you’re trying to combine SE1’s creative and survival modes, hoping to make building as easy in survival as it is in creative — except it’s actually worse, because of this distorted projection shader instead of fully built block visuals.
If anything, the classic SE1 survival building system could be carried over into SE2 with a few improvements. For example, since we now have a mini-assembler in our backpack, we could use it to create the first required component on the fly — instead of constantly managing our inventory to have different components available just to start new blocks.
I’d also argue that SE1’s creative building is far from perfect. You basically use the same controls for playing the game and for designing grids — while those two activities are fundamentally different. It’s like using a character controller and WASD keys when working in CAD software: technically possible, but there’s a reason no one does it.
Grid Design Mode
There could also be a Grid Designing Mode.
You would first build a projector block (or perhaps a new “Blueprint Designer” block — like a workstation with a computer on it). When interacting with it, you could enter Design Mode.
In this mode, you’d have all the creative tools needed to effectively design new grids or update existing ones. The controls could be optimized — still offering a free-fly camera for controller users, but giving mouse users better options such as orbiting around the build, zooming quickly, box-selecting, and more.
Once the blueprint is ready, it could be overlaid in-game using the projection shader. You should also be able to choose a reference grid — either one that’s physically attached to your current grid or connected via antenna — or start with a new grid entirely.
When editing an existing grid, entering Design Mode would show only that grid. Existing blocks could be highlighted so you always know which ones are already built and which ones you’re adding or removing. When you exit Design Mode, the projection (with new and removed blocks) would remain perfectly aligned with the grid. Blocks to be removed could have a red tint, showing clearly what needs to be cut away, while new ones would appear in standard projection color for welding.
Benefits
Besides the obvious advantages of having a dedicated design environment, this system would make building much more convenient, especially on planets — since you wouldn’t need to constantly fly around your base with a jetpack. In fact, this could finally justify nerfing jetpacks, making them a tool for occasional use rather than the best mode of transport in the game.
10 years seems like such a short time, how can a pine requiring 30 or 40 years be transplanted to an alien land and grow to be an entire forest in the space of only 10 years?
The key was in two things, one mundane and one mysterious. The first was the Bering colonists’ aggressive enviro-engineering plan, comprising of cloud seeding, vast distances covered during planting activity and a careful selection of species best suited to the biosphere.
The second was something else, something unpredicted, a black swan moment, a discovery not yet fully realised. No alien life existed on the planet, there was not a single cell alive before the arrival of humans, however there were DNA reminants, either left from some long distant past or perhaps deposited from interstellar comets. This alien DNA, some of it in the form of viral combinations interacted with the introduced species of flora, changing it’s lifecycle in subtle and striking ways. Now a 100 year forest takes 5 years to grow, water cleaning reeds stretch down a continental coastline within weeks and entire biomes have been transformed from barren wasteland into lush humid tropical rainforests, a new cradle for their human guardians.
The colonists are studying this intently, and so far results are promising. Food takes less time to grow and grows in marginal lands. Plants are stronger, more disease resistant and are able to absorb more nutrients faster. A question remains though, with the almost inexplicable growth and changes in plant DNA, what hidden costs, what negative consequences, what dangerous outcomes are the colonists playing with that they may not even understand? Will this transmutation of Earth DNA herald the dawn of a new age, perhaps the end of aging itself for the human race, or will it yield a harvest of death, at the hands of those who wish to twist it’s virtue for evil, or from some yet unknown deadly side effect?
I would suggest a different approach to building.
This holographic shader for projected blocks might be suitable to show a ready-to-build grid, like in SE1 — but definitely not for the actual building process itself. In a way, SE1’s survival building may even be superior from a visual and immersion standpoint. Here, it feels like you’re trying to combine SE1’s creative and survival modes, hoping to make building as easy in survival as it is in creative — except it’s actually worse, because of this distorted projection shader instead of fully built block visuals.
If anything, the classic SE1 survival building system could be carried over into SE2 with a few improvements. For example, since we now have a mini-assembler in our backpack, we could use it to create the first required component on the fly — instead of constantly managing our inventory to have different components available just to start new blocks.
I’d also argue that SE1’s creative building is far from perfect. You basically use the same controls for playing the game and for designing grids — while those two activities are fundamentally different. It’s like using a character controller and WASD keys when working in CAD software: technically possible, but there’s a reason no one does it.
Grid Design Mode
There could also be a Grid Designing Mode.
You would first build a projector block (or perhaps a new “Blueprint Designer” block — like a workstation with a computer on it). When interacting with it, you could enter Design Mode.
In this mode, you’d have all the creative tools needed to effectively design new grids or update existing ones. The controls could be optimized — still offering a free-fly camera for controller users, but giving mouse users better options such as orbiting around the build, zooming quickly, box-selecting, and more.
Once the blueprint is ready, it could be overlaid in-game using the projection shader. You should also be able to choose a reference grid — either one that’s physically attached to your current grid or connected via antenna — or start with a new grid entirely.
When editing an existing grid, entering Design Mode would show only that grid. Existing blocks could be highlighted so you always know which ones are already built and which ones you’re adding or removing. When you exit Design Mode, the projection (with new and removed blocks) would remain perfectly aligned with the grid. Blocks to be removed could have a red tint, showing clearly what needs to be cut away, while new ones would appear in standard projection color for welding.
Benefits
Besides the obvious advantages of having a dedicated design environment, this system would make building much more convenient, especially on planets — since you wouldn’t need to constantly fly around your base with a jetpack. In fact, this could finally justify nerfing jetpacks, making them a tool for occasional use rather than the best mode of transport in the game.
Everyone knows Verdure was identified as the most earth like planet in the system, but it lacked biodiversity. AI drones were sent there a few centries in advance to seed the planet so the atmosphere and biome would be more adapted to humans when they arrived. what did the AI drones do once their mission of seeding the planet was complete? nobody knows…
i would love to see flatter beaches on verdure that mimic real life ones and I have also been wondering if you have wheels and more seat variants planned for VS2. otherwise i love how much effort has been put into SE2 and i cant wait to see what new stuff you have for the future.
Absolutely loving everything as always! My only points of improvement would be that it looks like the trees don’t have any momentum transfered to them from what hits them, and the water foam on the shores looks really flat. It would be awesome to have waves crashing against ocean shores like in real life, it would really make the oceans feel more volumetric.
Why does the flora on Verdure look so much like Earth’s?
The first colonist found Verdure to be in an Earth like state, confirming an ancient mystery.
This has to be the related to Monoliths, my guess would be that there is another monolith near or on Verdure. An ancient race sought to bring life to new worlds using a technology almost beyond our imagination. In the Sol system there were three monoliths, the third monolith used to be located on Earth, it was never found by humans.
The monolith on Earth and the one on Verdure could instantaneously share information on the formation of life itself. The closest humans ever came to this idea was proposed by Rupert Sheldrake with his theory of Morphic fields and Morphic resonance(https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/introduction). This lead to a parallel state of evolution between the two planets. Things did not go completely to the ancients plans and along the road of history there was another intervention leaving the two planets organic life to diverge from each other. Though mostly the same, the balance of life had shifted.
Studies on other two monoliths had revealed some of the history of the ancients and of Earth’s paired twin Verdure. The details of the hidden messages were drawn out through the tireless work of Dr. Zeros, who then then proposed the beginnings of the great expedition.
Later, there came a reason(not disclosed) for humanity to reach for the stars, what was going to be a venture of scientific exploration became a journey of escape for so many more.
Having a known destination gave the people hope.
Blueprint based building is a perfect extension of the game itself. So many new players have gotten confused trying to build in survival and this is a great way to have players start cutting their teeth on building without having to worry about sourcing materials first.
Now, I will say, we’ll need a better method for welding in SE2 (which I think has been hinted at). Building a fully functional blueprint of a ship and then having to weld it up from the inside out will be extremely difficult. Area welding it gonna be a necessity 🙂
Ahoj, vím že moje nápady vám asi moc k ničemu nejsou, ale aspoň na zamyšlení.. Myslím, že by bylo opravdu super, kdyby výroba lodí měla nějaký hlubší systém jako je Termodynamika, která by limitovala zbraně, nebo NPC které ovládají třeba zbraně, opravují nebo řídí jiné systémy a sami potřebují kajuty nebo jídlo. Lodě by pak připadaly víc naživu a byly by mnohem zajímavější než jen takové “lego”. Jinak super práce na planetách a vodě, jsou krásné.
The first colonists were the bioengineers team that came to transform the planet. They setup the concetric orbital space stations (COST) system to seed the planet and transform the atmoshpere and biosphere if the planet has the right basic elements for the building blocks for terraforming. Instead of taking generations, now with the new technology it only takes a few months. They are working on a new payload system that hopefully they will be able to deliver remotely to drop on ideal planets that will transform in just a few days.
Hello. Your team do a great work as always !
Having a skull as icon to have unlocked renewable energy is kind of disturbing.
About your question for Verdure : years after the departure of the Bering Project, humanity invented a faster spaceship and sent humans to the Almagest system, only to do the same mistakes as on Earth and makes the civilization fall again before the Bering Project arrives. Yeah thats not a serious answer.
So if I’m understanding correctly, fast travel would work similar to a Stargate type device traveling from one fixed point to a second fixed point?
I hope that is the case! And it would even cooler if that type of mechanic was obtainable in late game where the engineer could place their own and travel from a planetside home base to a forward operation base in space above a different planet without dieing (or losing inventory too)!!
(Not a smart comment)
YOU CAN SPAM PLACE GRIDS AS MISSILES!?!?!?!?!?
this is so cool. Will the sand darken under the water when its done? i feel that would be a great way to make it FEEL wet.
Please can we plant trees? In SE1 I had to be so careful not to destroy a tree because it would never grow back and trees and flora are nice for decorating bases!
Overall love the update! thanks
Agreed on this though I think it needs a further step. Biomes should heal on their own. Would be interesting if trees were to propogate on their own as well so that the landscape shifted over a long duration.
This would be great along with being able to place a turf block that would tile, so we could create gardens.
I am very excited and I am curious if the Npc’s that we will interact with will have voices or if they will talk to use throught text, would love to hear some voice acting and maybe audtition if there is open casting
Great display of the upcoming capacity for SE2. Lots of wiz bang addtions over SE1. I hope great care is reserved for the player control, ‘feel’ and interaction. SE1 suffered so from this.
Obviously there was a (now extinct) precursor civilization that traveled around the cosmos and seeded many star systems with life. 😉
For the game play of SE2, I have two ideas/requests.
First, for the build system: an offset POV to place blocks (projections) from a perspective for placing them you cannot reach easily in SE1. Especially if you play with jetpack disabled, it may be tricky to reach a position from which your engineer can directly look upon the placement point. Moving the build POV a meter or two would often be enough.
Other than that, I think the new build system could become a major improvement in balance of build costs. In SE1, placing that initial block will instantly give you a surface to traverse, it is so easy it almost feels like a cheat. Meanwhile, welding up a ladder or ladder shaft to the point of usability takes more material and effort. Make the first usable atage of armor blocks more expensive and ladders /catwakls cheaper.
My second idea is player-buildable fast travel destinations. Assuming the pre-existing destination stations are made of regular blocks, it should not be too much of a stretch to let the players build their own. That would obviously be an endgame thing, but a nice target to work towards.
hi, love the fact that the trees are brakeable and have good physics but i feel like from the video that they are not balanced out whzn falling. Like when i see videos of trees falling i can kinda feel that the leaves are slowing the tree down and creating sort of a drag force, and it feels like from the teaser videos that it’s not happening, maybe the weight distribution of the branches broken could be a little bit more centered around the leaves, i am not a physicist or anything but i just wanted to share what i felt about the trees braking down. thx for reading all of that i love how the game looks and i can’t wait for survival to be a thing. love what u guys are doing !!
Скажіть, будь ласка, чи можна буде полетіти на Дельфос? І якщо можливо, чи буде якась небезпека для корабля та гравця: дуже висока гравітація, або через деякий час весь корабель буде знищений, або щось інше?