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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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
I am excited to announce the upcoming Core Systems Update for Space Engineers, arriving at the end of November!
This update brings basic joystick support, faster planting and harvesting, and a host of quality of life improvements.
Stay tuned for more details as we get closer to release!
Space Engineers 2
I want to share with you exactly what will be included in the VS2 update for Space Engineers 2. This milestone, VS2: Planets and Survival Foundations, introduces the first full implementation of planets and lays down the core systems for survival, colonization, and progression.
I’ve seen how positively you’ve been reacting to these dev diaries, and it really means a lot. We’re trying to stay as open and honest as possible about how Space Engineers 2 is being built – what’s done, what’s still changing, and what’s coming next.
Let’s take a closer look at the main features coming with this update.
VS2 Features & What’s Next
Here is the list of all main VS2 features:
- Almagest Star System
- A fully traversable star system with planets and asteroid fields. At its center lies Delfos, while beyond its borders shines Almagest – the system’s main star and source of light.
- Brown Dwarf Delfos
- Planet Verdure
- Planet Kemik
- Planetary Features
- Flora, overhangs, caves
- Destructible trees and rocks
- Volumetric Clouds
- Multiple different biomes
- Voxel Decals
- Natural Wonders
- Dynamic Voxel Hardness (different behavior while crashing into snow/sand vs rock)
- Colonization
- Star System & First 2 playable Sectors
- Colonization Progression
- Storyline Introduction (intro cutscene, voice-over during the onboarding phase – Miro and Ivan)
- Base Contract Systems
- Interactive Star System Map
- Fast Travel (Station Points)
- Basis for GPS system (without custom GPS points for now)
- Basis for Safe Zone System (non-placable for now)
- Survival Mode
- Backpack Building (crafting Simple Components from natural resources)
- Projection Building
- Modular Blueprint Building
- Mirroring
- Copy/Paste
- Undo/Redo
- Basic Production Systems, Manufacturing
- Grid Power System & Swappable Batteries
- Block Construction Stages
- Consumables (Hydrogen, Energy, Health)
- Jetpack H2 usage for Boost, Energy for non-boost movement
- HUD Additions & Changes
- New UI Screens (initial implementation of Production Screen, Grid & Player Inventory Screen, Respawn Screen)
- G-screen Improvements
- Ore Detection (Drill + Ore Detector blocks)
- Random Encounters (non-dynamic, non-AI, non-NPC for now)
- Optimizations
- Rendering Improvements
- Destruction LODs & Performance Improvements
- Tons of new Animations added (welding, grinding, drilling, character movement, and more!)
- Inverse Kinematics
- New Particle Effects
- New In-game and UI sounds
Hand Tools
- Welders Tier 1-4
- Grinders Tier 1-4
- Drills Tier 1-4
New Blocks
- Survival Kit
- Fabricator
- Gearforge
- Smelter
- Batteries
- Contract Block
- Atmospheric Thrusters
- Hydrogen Tanks
- Largest Hydrogen Thruster
- Large Drill
- Barrel (non-connected cargo container)
Blocks with added functionality
- Added Inventories to all blocks (Crates, Lockers, Cargo Containers)
- Reactor
- Medical Bay
- Ore Detector
- Solar Panels
- Connector – just connector, ejector/collector functionality planned
- Conveyor System
- Large O2/H2 Generator (Just H2)
- Small O2/H2 Generator (Just H2)
- Antenna
- Animation added to existing blocks (assembler, refinery)
Q: Wait, wait, wait – where is feature/block “X” (Wheels, Weapons, Mechanical Blocks, Oxygen & Airtightness etc.)?
A: I would love to have them in VS2 too! Some features need more time and testing to reach the quality we aim for. You can check our updated roadmap for an overview of what’s coming next and when you can expect your favorite features to arrive.
What’s Next After VS2?
You can expect regular expansions of Contracts and new Sectors through smaller updates after VS2 release, following the same steady approach as our previous block update releases (but probably not on a weekly basis).
The next large milestone will be VS2.2: Survival Extensions, which focuses on expanding the survival and colonization experience. This update will bring mechanical blocks & subgrids, functional block tools, weapons, area welding, block wrappers, the Delfos killing field, full GPS System, new contract types, and much more. Since these features build directly on the systems introduced in VS2, we’ll be able to deliver them at a bit faster pace.
After that comes VS3: Water. Planetary-scale volumetric water, along with all the water gameplay systems and blocks. This update will also add a new water planet, Byblos, to the Almagest system.
Following closely will be VS4: NPCs + Cooperative Multiplayer, adding 4-player gameplay and the first iteration of interactive non-player characters. VS5: Full Multiplayer will complete the foundation for large-scale multiplayer sessions.
Two development teams will be working in parallel on VS3 and VS4, so the final release order may depend on which reaches completion first. Either way, we’re pushing forward on all fronts to bring you new features and deeper gameplay as quickly as possible!
Many of the features and improvements planned for the future have been requested and shaped by the suggestions and ideas shared through our Support Portal. Your feedback is incredibly valuable, and we appreciate every suggestion you submit.
VS2 Last Touches
We’re getting very close to the VS2 release, and right now my main focus is finishing the remaining tasks – bugs, polish, small fixes, everything that needs to be done before we can call it stable.
On Wednesday (yesterday), we had around 185 open tickets, but as you can see from this chart, we’re closing about 50 per day. That’s possible thanks to our large team of roughly 70 people, where work can be nicely parallelized.
The art team managed to squeeze in even more snow and mountain biome improvements for this update. Verdure will have much nicer snowy mountains now and I love that!
Verdure will also feature caves – including stalactites!
When playing on a planet at night, I realized we actually need more darkness. The SE2 skybox is magnificent, but the night still looked a bit too bright and almost comics-like.
We’re now tuning the lighting and atmosphere to make nights feel deeper and more realistic – so that when you turn on your suit light, it really matters.
Art Team
Do you want to see “how the sausage is made”? Or to be specific – how one of our characters is made? 🙂
Alice is refining the character and adding extra details to the high poly version, while listening to the Space Engineers 2 soundtrack by Karel Antonin 🎶
Question to you: What do you think about the updated Space Engineers 2 Roadmap? Anything you’re most excited for?
Share your thoughts in the comments below – I read them all, and they’re one of my favorite parts of making our games.
Subscribe and get an email whenever I publish a new post!
I desperately needs ropes anyway🤣 Hope it could added to VS 2.2
Oh man, so at this pace maybe we will see something within a week or two…. 👀
After water and multiplayer is added, are there any plans or even just potential to add some form of aerodynamics? Most of my time spent in Space Engineers 1 (quite a bit of time) has been spent designing and making aircraft with the aerodynamic physics mod. I feel it adds a whole new layer of engineering challenges to the game which provide many hours of fun.
I think all your work so far is fantastic.
Cheers.
In “crash while flying…” video it seems to be a bug with sounds. Engineer walking sound in crash site was like walking on metal hull.
As I was looking at in-cave base pictures, i wondered why all ground buildings and floor were made from metal, when concrete exists in real life? I remember there was a mod in SE1 that added concrete to the game, main material for it was gravel, it was super-heavy and did not allow building flying ships with it. I imagined what if to add it somewhere after water update, and the recipe will be a mix of gravel and water, making liquid concrete which will use pipes/watertanks. As for building, you place a “concrete block” as a scaffold, then use a block similar to welder, but for pouring concrete through pipe systems. When pouring on scaffolds, it will fill them like welding blocks in construction stages. And if pouring on ground or somewhere else, it will behave like a very dense liquid, and become voxels in a short time (maybe almost instantly). Imagine fixing ground holes, or making some beehive-like structures (like 3d-printed houses in real life), improvised dams, or shenanigans with pouring it on somebody’s ship/vehicle/base.
Thanks, concrete block is a good idea. It was on my todo list for many years, we may consider it in the future – you description of it convinced me a bit. Thanks.
are you still on track for 2025 vs2 release?
Yes … you will see more in a few days!
I always found ore finding the least intuitive system in the game. I really hope the ore detectors are a lot stronger this time around
It might be very basic for now. As it is: VS2: Planets and Survival “Foundations”, which means “everything is subject to change”. Feel free to join https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc. I think there are already sevar tickets realted to Ores and Ere Detectors
Maybe some long range scanner type ore detectors which consume a lot of power for locating asteroids and short range ones for locating ore veins?
I think there should be two different ore scanners or two different modes:
The first works as it does now, shows all ores (or the closest of each type) within a radius.
The second should be a mode where you choose a specific ore from a list, initiate a scan and it then finds the nearest ore to you of that type regardless of range, for balance, it wouldn’t give precise co-ordinates, just the distance. Unlike the current ore detector, if you get closer to another ore of that type, it wouldn’t update and show that instead, because that would make tracking it down much harder.
Then you can either try triangulating where the ore is by noting the distance from different spots or you can just play “Hot or Cold” until you get close enough to find it with the current style ore detector.
If during testing that turns out to be too easy, you could make changes like not giving the precise distance, just “Distance: 400-500m”.
Or perhaps it takes time to scan, the longer it runs, the more precise the distance. You just run the scan for a few seconds? You get something as vague as “Uranium. Distance: 1km-2km”, you run it for 5 minutes? You get “Uranium. Distance: 1250-1300m”
What about more modding features and scripting? :3
Yeah I was wondering that too! I don’t see scripted modding on the roadmap.
Script modding is in our plans…just not exact timing/milestone yet. We want to get the big things done first: NPCs, mechanical blocks, combat, coop MP, more contracts and encounters and colonization meta loop.
Ooooooh pistons and rotors teaser! Looking good. Also rotors now maybe have very slight piston functionality it looks like for micro tuning? Love that! Fingers still crossed that we can project subgrids in survival!
After water and multiplayer is added, are there any plans or even just potential to add some form of aerodynamics? Most of my time spent in Space Engineers 1 (quite a bit of time) has been spent designing and making aircraft with the aerodynamic physics mod. I feel it adds a whole new layer of engineering challenges to the game which provide many hours of fun.
I think all your work so far is fantastic.
Cheers.
Second this! When playing co-op mp in SE1, aerodynamics/plane wing mods have been a must have. Even a simplified lift system from wings/planar surfaces is a huge improvement that makes atmospheric engineering more interesting, and flight much more fun (bonus points for drag). It also enables cheaper/lower power small transports for players (wings and a forward engine), at the cost of stability and VTOL capabilities, which creates unique engineering needs (runways, parachutes for emergency landings).
I especially love the added distinction between space/atmospheric combat it adds, leading to a more “dogfight” like engagement at higher speeds that become an option. Hope this get included in SE2 base game alongside the hundred other great improvements the team is making!
That caves video and screenshots are phenominal, they look so good!
OH MY GOSH ITS THE PRIEST OF THE CABLE!!!!!! CAAAABBBBLLLEEE!!!!! CABLE CABLE CABLE CABLE CABLE!!!!!!!! CCCCCCAAAAAABBBBBBBBLLLLEEE!!!!!!!! cable.
This is so much great news. Honestly can’t wait for mechanical blocks. I really hope there will be different sizes for them (maybe even 3 sizes?) so you can for the first time build small moving panels, landing gears and stuff in your ship without having the struggle of large grid / small grid restrictions.
And I hope they receive a physics upgrade, so that there is less clang, smoother operation when barely touching and the ships auto dampeners don’t get confused by subgrids anymore.
Btw. Any information about programmable blocks, surfaces and automation yet?
I thought coop was moved forward..
Nice updates on the terrain. Crashing needs more improvement and a proper wreckage. My suggestion was ~90% of blocks revert to random BS or BS1
The caves looked pretty good, but the load-in for the stalagtites were too close. It was immersion breaking to have them load in so close to the ship.I might be wrong, but I’d try to squeeze in a bit further out loading so a close pop-in will not break immesion. I wouldn’t even mind a separate LOD for far objects when the player is near a cave just to allow better loading in for the cave and objects within.
Yeah I agree about both. It’s really weird that the ship entirely evaporates like in SE1, I was hoping it wouldn’t anymore. I’d love it if maybe 50% of the blocks were destroyed, and the others were separated so there’s a mess of wreckage left in the crater.
Seeing the crater so elongated and smooth was really great though! Definitely better than SE1.
Also yeah the voxel LODs do seem to need some tuning still. Definitely good enough for release, no question there, but definitely room for improvement too. But to be fair, when isn’t there?
Overall absolutely awesome work as always though! I’m sooo excited for this!
so, about weapons and weapons, make underwater variants. super low range weapons 50/200 meters with supercavitating ammo. they wouldnt deal much damage to grids but be lethal to players. normal weapons could fire underwater but their bullets would just disappear after a few meters.
I’d like to suggest that LCDs have a Toolbar app, so you can view the toolbar settings on an LCD with the HUD off, creating a more immersive dashboard. Another suggestion is a digital speedometer app that has the same progressive speed animation as the HUD. In SE 1 and SE2
with the bacic joystick support do you plan on steam deck suport and with the steam controler and steam macine now anounced
I love that the original roadmap is still visible! I have a tendancy to scroll back through roadmaps a lot. o.O What I personally look most forward to is building my giant squid capital ship. Gonna be wild!
Some general feedback I do have about the current game & future:
1) The “resize” button for + blocks appears to scroll through items instead of resizing. Made me feel somewhat confused
2) The backpack speedbosot feels like displaying the same speed as when accelerating without dampning. I believe that is a bug?
3) I wonder if the displays on blocks will be easier to build in SE2 compared to SE1. If these become in-game customisable in an more accessible way would be amazing. I can code in python but I have no idea how to code with SE. If opting for code for screens like SE1 it would be super useful to have a sort of code wiki ingame to learn it.. a cookbook of sorts..
4) If doing any sort of information UI update on the game in the future, it would be really helpful if maximum thrust of thruster blocks could be displayed somewhere in the UI. Having like general stats about a ship build helps tons with designing and testing it, and makes the game a lot more accessible and transparant.
Have a wonderful X-Mas!
Seriously, don’t put off AI and NPCs too long. The entire concept of colonization is stupid without “people” in the colonies.
what i am looking forward to the most is being able to construct machines to help me out. i hope being able to have cockpits with programmable controller support. some keys for movement, some for the crane, some for the pistons, all depending on cockpit.
Grid Power System & Swappable Batteries
This is an idea I really like. The Power Cell item would finally allow us to separate power production from power consumption, letting us transport energy as a physical item. It would enable quick recharging of vehicles, ships, drones—and hopefully even the engineer’s suit.
Instead of waiting to be “charged,” you could simply swap standard batteries in your suit. These batteries would be compatible with the same power cells used in regular batteries, creating a unified and practical system.
Imagine a scenario—even in a campaign—where your suit is running out of power, and you remove a standard power cell from a nearby battery (something that wasn’t possible before) and insert it into your suit to survive. Your suit essentially becomes a portable battery with one (or more, depending on the model) slots for energy cells.
Instead of having “integrated” hydrogen and oxygen capacity, the suit could also have dedicated slots for standard hydrogen and oxygen bottles, promoting modularity and realism.
I think it’s a shame that the oxygen system isn’t included in VS2 and is still so long away. I believe it’s a fundamental component that should be part of the survival system from the start.
Unfortunately, I’ll be out of the loop regarding SE2 and its support for the next few years. Since crafting and base building for SC will be available by then, I’ll be investing my time there instead.
When will jump drives come and will it come out in Nov.
I feel like I remember hearing something about there being airtight voxels when airtightness is added, is this true?
I feel like I remember hearing something about there being airtight voxels when airtightness is added, is this perhaps true?
I hope there are going to be more types of mechanical blocks as well. For example, rails that can attach to a sliding subgrid, so you can make elevators (no more piston stacking) or trains. Same goes for a 360° hinge (yes, it could be technically build with a rotor, but it would be more compact).
Share Inertia Tensor should be the default and not something experimental anymore.
This has probably already been mentioned, but in the settings, can we have a seperate controller/slider for tool volume? If it is like SE1, using the a hand drill felt like it might give me hearing damage 🙂
Is it possible to add more admin lighting controls for streamers? Most people watch streams in smaller windows, which lack all the advanced detail the player uses to decipher their environment in the dark.
To have a good stream in SE1 today, you’re moving the sun, using a sleep mod, plastering the area with lights and running brighter skybox mods. It would be awesome to just have an advanced option that keeps things bright without washing it out.
I’ve been following this game as soon as I heard about it. I have been wondering what you guys have decided to do with the combat in the game. I know that there were a lot of thoughts and ideas being thrown around like shields and weapons that are good against different things. What does that look like currently? Also is there plans for more unique combat things like cloaking devices or is that going to be done by mods?
I dearly hope that with the mechanical blocks we finally get a piston which can function like the rotors do with an ability to be back-driven with an adjustable resistance force.
amazing progress! Since you are begining work on funtional blocks, I’m hoping for improvements for 2 of them; Wheels: im hoping we get better performing wheels than SE 1. Anyone whos tried to build a massive rover in SE 1 knows that you can only get so big before wheels just stop moving the grid anymore and you need to add thrusters. Maybe a trade-off could be adding tank tracks, tank tracks slower but more traction and able to move heavier grids, wheels faster but less traction and can’t move heavier grids. Pistons: want more variety with them. If pistons are the only tool available to us for building elevators, we need more piston sizes as in SE 1 the amount of space you need to sacrifce to add a piston to your builds is quite a lot. If not that I’d love dedicated elevator block(s) as elevators (which are quite common in real life) are rarely in user builds due to the complexity and size requirements to build them. Just some requests from a diehard SE fan I hope are considered!
“Rendering Improvements”
i sure hope you finally decorrelated physics from rendering…
2.2 is the milestone I’ve been waiting for… but may have to jump in at 2 and see what a no rover start is like….
Really need a character creator, even it’s not as detailed as other games, more customization of the engineer goes a long way…
I love thursdays….
Regarding SE1: Yay, joysticks. I love seeing how SE1 still matures after all those years. Little by little in every regard – genuine new features, functionality that should have been there five years ago, and laying some old bugs to rest.
Regarding SE2’s 4 player multiplayer: Why exactly 4? You are officially still in alpha, which means some breakage is to expected. So why not open things up more and let people find out the limits the hard way? As in “at 20 players, my CPU starts smoking.”
This is all about optimizations. MP for 4 players is much more achievable in short term than larger servers (less network issues, rendering, physics, etc). It’s just about being able to give you something to play with (4-player coop MP, while we continue working on the big thing (dedicated servers).
I love seeing the progress and am super excited for VS2! Unfortunately, its a bit of a sad excitement for me (and several others, I know). I have a GPU that is currently unsupported even though it meets the specified criteria for SE2. I had bought the Alpha to support the game and development, but I haven’t been able to play it at all so far. I was hoping to be able to help test things and give better feedback. I understand that Keen is busy producing VS2 for the majority of players, but it sure would be nice to be able to join in the exploration and the excitement. I did put in a ticket for the issue but it’s been several months. Just want to say thank you to yourself and the team for the hard work. Keep it up!! even if I can’t play right now, I’m excited to see the development.
Caves give me excitement to explore but then I had a thought: What if there is nothing in the caves to explore?
SE1 has 1 living mammal on the entire planet: wolves. I hope SE2 brings the worlds more alive with some variety and challenging wildlife and/or alien creatures that DON’T always have ships and machines. Hopefully a balance between native threats from the planet’s living creatures and NPC threats like other civilizaitons. It would be awesome to have caves full of aggresive beasts you have to destroy in order to loot the ruble of a lost civilization or a rare ore vein.
I look foward to outwitting challenging foes through engineering, player skills and lots of luck, in a star system full of mystery and surprises. I hope to enguage in commerce, support the colony, make plenty of useless contraptions and the occasional good one. All whilst exploring the vastness of space, the depths of the sea and driving across rolling hills to the sounds of nature and dakadaka.
I will probably be most excited for what ever is the next step along the road, otherwise it would be interactive human NPCs.
Progress looks good! I love everything about this!
When it comes to the future of multiplayer – I really think making it relatively easy write new game modes and gameplay types could do extremes for longevity – such as typical co-op game modes, PvP modes from deathmatch, vip, ctf to large scale attack & defend modes, mmo or ‘life sim’ modes and way more than I need to write – i think historically i’ve never seen people make these in se because i’ve never seen major changes to the standard ui for spawning. i know modded combat leagues in SE have been relatively successful and i’d love to see more of that as well – this could be a whole log more if you give us the tools 😀
The progress looks amazing. It feels like it’s happening faster than I expected. I am stoked to build crazy things. I’d like to plumb the depths of vrage3. I have built things in vrage2 and it is a delicate balance between “a base here” and “a base there” then glitches because I’m over 300k pcu. I’m exicited to hit 3mil pcu and have a game that works.
Fast travel? Could be a cool thing to have a Med Bay at both places that you can/get to use to proverbially “clone jump” But I’m not sure if that cheapens the character life in the game. It’s just a mechanic that people have seen before and makes sense. If I want to build a base on Verdure and Kemik and jump between the 2, I don’t necessarily need a ship to jump there. There may be some game mechanic (similar to SE1 with bonuses to welding/etc for not dying) that I would lose if I “clone jump”. Doesn’t matter. Just my 2 cents on it. It’s what I thought of first. Heaven forbid your remote grid runs out of power! Dun dun dunnnnn!