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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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
I wonder – how many of you were caught off guard by this moment?
This week we brought you a series of hotfixes and several new options to help you tweak your worlds to your liking. You can now switch existing saves between Creative and Survival (in World Settings on the save-file list), the classic Creative scenario has been updated to include planets and the full Almagest system, and we’ve added a new Vallation Station Start scenario for those who want pure survival sandbox without story or tutorial contracts.
We’ve also made our internal debug menu easier to access with CTRL+F12. Please treat this as a power tool: it’s developer-level access that can bypass limits (like PCUs) and can easily break or permanently modify your world. For this reason, sessions and worlds touched by the debug menu are automatically tagged and excluded from our crash reports, and if such a world is shared, other players may see a warning that it was created or modified using debug tools.
Releasing the full debug menu is a bit of a controversial area for me. On one hand, it gives you more freedom to experiment and poke at the insides of the game you bought. On the other hand, we will probably lose some valuable crash and bug reports when players use these tools instead of playing normal gameplay. And there is always the risk of players not understanding that we cannot guarantee game stability when debug tools are active.
VS2.2
Works on VS2.2 are already in full swing. Here you can see a rocket launcher model evolution.
And the finished Rifle model
And some first concepts of SE2 gatling turret
We are introducing new helpful internal tools to VRAGE3 – player heatmap – mainly for tuning out our LODing systems.
VS3 – Byblos
Let me reveal the design and first shots of the water planet Byblos, coming to the Almagest system in VS3. A “just water” planet would be pretty boring. Yes, Byblos will be a water planet – but under the surface there will be an entire water world, with deep crags and canyons, underwater travertine cave systems and small volcanic islands rising above the waves.
With the coming of water, the underwater layout of planet Verdure will be improved as well. We already know that water will be such a monumental change for the game that you will need to start a new world when VS3 arrives. We try to minimize situations like this, but during the alpha stage of development they are sometimes unavoidable.
That is why we started to keep previous versions of the game available after major updates. So you can return to an earlier version at any time and, for example, save your blueprints or creations. You can find these builds in the Steam Beta tab.
And here are some first WIP screenshots. You can probably tell that seeing Byblos at this stage is a bit like digging through the old planet files from VS1 – barren terrain, temporary textures everywhere, testing materials, and very early water visuals. It is all still rough, but this is exactly what real development looks like.
Not many studios share raw production screenshots like these, and players are not always used to seeing such an unfiltered snapshot of the process. But for me, showing you our real progress and the way we work is a core part of Early Access. That is the whole point of these dev diaries – open development, without hiding the messy parts.
Question to you: Are you a more survival or creative type of player?
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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Hello, I’m from America. I just wanted to say you guys are doing a fantastic job in what you do. I already have almost 200 hours and can’t wait to play more on SE2! I can’t wait to see what you guys do! Thank you!
Happy Holidays!
Thank you!
Looking amaxing so far, love to see that planets are available in creative mode now and byblos already looks great. I cannot wait for ater to arrive!
I am fully hard survival player and because of tgat i’m creating a huge rework of survival in se2 in my mod. I love to grind and spent a lot on exploration and resource mangement. I would love to see you guys allow us (modders) to set up block resource requirement for more than 1 resource (example right now refinery require only electricity, i would love to add more like fuel, computing power etc so my mod would give a way more deeper survival experience). Speaking of planets you guys made my eyes fell off from skull with how beautiful textures work and looks like. I am so waitin for multiplayer or coop to have fun with physics and unplanned exposions in my base
1. I had cut the crashed ship twice, and the first time I didn’t even notice. I was only thinking about diving into the depths. Later, I noticed the scenery had changed, so I had to start again from the beginning to see what had happened. So, it completely exceeded my expectations.
2. I spend most of my time in Creative mode. But after VS2, I have a feeling I’ll be spending more time playing Survival mode. VS2 is absolutely amazing! Every moment is filled with beautiful scenery and music, and the missions progress at a good pace. Holographic construction offers a lot of possibilities. However, compared to SE1, the handling of ores has major flaws. I’m hoping VS2.2 will remove a lot of impurities from containers and bring back the joy of running factories. Then, I noticed the horrible noise coming from coasting again. This is a mysterious phenomenon that has been present since SE1. The sound of the drill scraping the ground also seems unpleasant. Anyway, this is a great start!
Oh, can’t wait to explore Byblos in a submarine. Will have to design a carrier ship first.
Weapons? Okay but I hope next time we get to see pistons, hinges and rotors!
illanyss,
They’ve already released teasers of pistons and rotors in past dev blogs! If you go back and look through a couple of them you will definitley be able to find the pictures they released.
I play mainly Creative, since i wasnt a fan of survival in SE1 (before the great updates it received). Also i would like to tell you, that you guys are literally one of the best game devs. I cant tell you guys how much i and thousands of player appreciate your community oriented development. You build the perfect game for every creative player out there. Only thing i would love to have a little more early in SE2 is the rotors, hinges and pistons, since i love to engineer and i want to start to engineer! 🙂 Neverless SE2 is already amazing and im really looking forward to the process.
Alright it’s decided… I’m building a base on Byblos inside a mountain but only with a secret underwater tunnel entrance. 😊
yeah I was thinking the exact same thing. and be so awesome to have an upper level hanger with a outer landing pad for aircraft and then an underwater portion where you can launch submarines and boats out of with a door at the base of the mountain in the water.
I love that you are deciding to let us keep access to the dev tools! Its an absolute joy to play around with game setting and creator tools in VRAGE and i’d hate to loose that. I am sure modders will also appreciate it.
One thing that i do still kinda miss from the current game feel is actual voxel displacement on a ship crash. The dirt i crash into wouldn’t just disappear. It would fly somewhere else and make a mound, or bury the ship in the process.
Why can’t a live crash end up with the same result as the crash sites we’ve seen in the game scenarios over the years? I know that performance is always a big concern, but if this kinda dynamic is possible at any LOD level, it would be wonderful for emergent gameplay. Make a ship *stuck in voxels* a feature, not a bug.
Hello. Great work as always !
Yes the crashed ship script surprised me .
To reply to your question, I am more a survival player.
I tested the SE2 survival version on tuesday and I got absolutely no bug! Just a few very long freeze but nothing else unstable.
Hi I just wanted to say the work your doing is truely amazing and one thing that could be cool is if you added the Victoria Falls to verdure once the VS3 update comes out
I just want to say how much I appreciate that you’ve shared the basics of Survival this early. It’s great to finally try the new systems myself, and the progress so far really does look good.
Before you wrap up VS2, I hope you can take a closer look at the core Survival loop — mainly mining and production. There’s a lot of good stuff here already, but some parts still feel a bit rough or like they come straight from SE1 without much change. There’s a lot of potential in these systems, and with some improvements they could be much more solid and enjoyable.
I know the game is still in Alpha, and I’m really glad you’re letting us give feedback at this stage and see how Survival keeps improving with the help of the community.
I remember sailing across the Bay of Biscay in a gail, most of the passengers were down below in their cabins. I decided to have a look at the sea on deck(not advised). I could see the waves all around me like moving mountains, rising high and then falling to become deep valleys. Under the dark clouds in the distance I could see a tanker on the crest of a wave looking like a very small toy. This when I realised how small I was in the place of things, nature is grand.
That’s a tough question, but I’d say I’m more of a survivalist.
more survival !!! 😀
Thanks for the insights.
I would prefer a classic progression system. Not everyone wants to make contracts. More options when creating a world would be nice, as would the ability to create custom scenarios.
The ModSDK needs a bit more stability; it crashes quickly when it encounters errors instead of simply saying “that’s not possible.”
And I’m sorry, but calculating the number of components based on weight and density makes it extremely difficult for us modders without precise knowledge of how it works. It’s a huge guessing game, since the tooltips say something different than how it actually works.
The SE2 wiki team is working on provide such information soon, it takes some coding to extract those values. If you’re on the Discord, tell us in the wiki-se2 channel what modders are looking for regarding components.
“Not many studios share raw production screenshots like these, and players are not always used to seeing such an unfiltered snapshot of the process. But for me, showing you our real progress and the way we work is a core part of Early Access. That is the whole point of these dev diaries – open development, without hiding the messy parts.”
– I just wanted to say that this is kind of the highlight of the week for me, so keep going.
Simple Apps for vanilla LCD’s both SE1 and SE2(Diegetic interface)
I enjoy playing with the HUD completely off for added immersion, but I don’t like having to resort to complex scripts to play smoothly, and I understand that console players don’t have this option either in SE1. 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. both in SE1 and SE2.
Smart Cockpits: Physical and Visual Control Integration
Core Idea: Integrate physical buttons and switches directly into the cockpit dashboard, with the crucial addition of the corresponding keyboard shortcut visually projected onto each one.
The Key Differentiator:
Physical & Static Base: Fundamental buttons and switches are a permanent part of the dashboard, providing solidity and realism.
Immediate Visual Feedback: Each physical button dynamically displays the key bound by the player (e.g., “[P] Parking”, “[Y] Power”), but in the dashboard
Fluid Interaction: The player can either press the key on their keyboard (using the visual prompt as a guide) or aim and click directly on the 3D button for the same action.
LCDs as a Complement: LCDs remain for dynamic information, forming a complete and intuitive cockpit.
Outcome: A diegetic interface that is beautifully integrated, visually clear, and incredibly functional.
Love this idea, probably won’t come but god I wish it would.
I wish the FTUI would be a thing between the current state and it beeing turned off.
I would imagine it as the following: You do all the tutorial stuff until you should fly to space. While returning from the crashed ship where you received the coordinates, you get attacked and the ship get’s destroyed and crashes. This way the player get’s to build its own ship to fly to space and getting to space starts feeling like an accomplishment rather than a step in a tutorial. Also it would ground the player for some more hours instead of immediately letting him leave the beautiful planet.
As a bonus it would introduce the enemie (or rouge security systems, depending on the story).
The whole space part of the FTUI would kick in again as soon as the player reaches space (minus the base part, as the player should decide where to build a base).
I love the work on byblos so far, though i do have a few notes;
i think the planet should be larger and the landmasses smaller and more scarce, land should be something you have to look for, the ocean should also be super deep, it is the water planet after all, and we also need flat, abyssal regions to not only give single crews thalassophobia, but also provide a sort of shipyard where people can work on their larger submersibles or floating bases uninterrupted by terrain.
I want to sincerely thank you for the tremendous work you are investing in the development of Space Engineers 2. For us players, it is incredibly valuable to see the game constantly improving and to know that the team maintains ongoing contact with the community, listens to feedback, and engages in an open dialogue. This creates a truly special sense of trust and a positive atmosphere.
I would particularly like to express my great appreciation for how this philosophy of flexibility was implemented in the original Space Engineers. I absolutely love how the tools for transitioning between Survival and Creative modes were handled in the first game. The ability to grant my character creative tools (like spawning resources or blueprints) at any moment during a Survival session was a brilliant design choice.
One detail was especially brilliant: even after enabling creative tools for building, the player was not stripped of the challenge and logic of Survival. You could instantly build a ship, but its fuel tanks would remain empty, and its turrets without ammunition. Fuel and resources still had to be sourced and replenished. This created a perfect hybrid experience: the freedom of creation without removing economy and progression.
It created the perfect balance: you could experience all the challenge and thrill of “survival,” but the moment you wanted to be creative, quickly build something large-scale, or fix an annoying bug with a stuck ship — you could do it instantly, without interrupting the gameplay flow. And you could just as easily revert all the restrictions.
My biggest wish for Space Engineers 2 is to see this same seamless, intuitive, and very easy-to-use system for toggling capabilities within a single gameplay session. To give us players the complete freedom to decide when we want to struggle for resources and when we simply want to create — and to make switching between these states as quick and simple as it was in the first game, while preserving that crucial distinction: creativity for form, survival for substance.
Thank you once again for everything you do. We believe in you and eagerly await the future of the game!
As for crashed ship part falling off: when I flew there in my ship, I wanted to land it right on that part, but I saw it hanging far from the edge of the cliff, and my intuition told me not to land there (landed on half buried large cargo container). It was so funny to see how that possible landing spot fell off and rolled away in darkness at night xD
I played surival more in SE1, but also spent a lot of time in creative to make blueprints for survival
I’m one of those caught off guard. It went a little differently for me however; I was already deep in the ship when the half broke and started tumbling down!
What a ride, what a laugh afterwards! I was impressed!
These screenshots look spectacular! Please listen listen to the community when we ask for immersion because it is arguably the most important feature! When it comes to some of the weather I would love it to feel moody, intense, and be a decision making important part of the survival and engineering experience. For example I can imagine Byblos is a very windy planet with typhoons. An experience that can set apart this planet from all else is how the weather affects the player. I can imagine being at sea with nowhere to go as the clouds roll in, The seas get rough and the winds pick up. This is the type of place an evil lair would be, or perhaps… A KRRAAKKENN!! 😝 Also I would like to suggest if you have not already add planetary ambience to planets with atmospheres like wind and, for life planets: little insect sounds and whatnot. Also make an ambience sound setting so we can change the volume of it. I like listening to that type of stuff. You know.. immersion. I love being a part of an immersive universe. Also final suggestion, maybe expand on the idea of weapons? I can imagine an infiltration mission and it would be neat to put a suppressor attachment on my rifle or pistol, or change the scope. I could have sworn you mentioned in one of your previous posts you mentioned the idea you wanted the gunplay to feel more like an FPS with smoother controls and stuff. This would go along with it.
I fully support this awesome idea with insects, birds, and ambient wildlife sounds!
I would absolutely love to see planets in the game feel truly alive. Imagine driving a rover from one base to another and witnessing not just a static landscape, but a dynamic ecosystem: for example, watching a flock of birds take off from a lake’s surface, or spotting a herd of wild animals grazing in the distant meadows, cautiously watching your approach.
These details are not just “cosmetic.” They create an incredible sense of immersion – the feeling that you’re not just on a sterile resource map, but in a real, breathing world. It adds that “wow” factor, creates memorable moments, and gives the game much more depth. I truly hope the team considers adding such diverse, non-aggressive fauna in future updates!
less land on byblos is a good idea
less land on byblos would be a good idea from what i can tell it is a creepy planet because of its nature the the factions on it but to much land would make it to easy to land and build on it and from ehat i can tell it is a endgame planet.
I fell with the detached ship and panicked cause I didn’t remember which button was Jetpack 😀
We clearly appreciate the love you’re giving to SE2, players count increased 300% since VS2, maybe it would be good to have a way to give feedbacks in a more streamlined way, like a Google Form or maybe in game log submit with a comment panel. It might make everything easier for everyone. Spectacular job Keen team, your work is flawless SE will always attract players because is something that doesn’t exist anywhere else.
Thanks again!
the rifle is good and all but, please, bring more traditional looking handhald weapons too. maybe even different weapons per faction. and, definitely, different weapons for each archetypes. not just slap a scope to this ar and call it a precise rifle.
This is very exciting. I feel like VS3 will be a great time to dive in to SE2.
I’m loving SE2, I find myself playing, building, testing, constructing, and interacting with the community more and more as I dive deeper and deeper into things. Thanks for yalls hard work creating SE2.
Cant wait to see what else yall have enroute for it 😉
Water looks cool, would having water physics for planet cores (i.e. lava, a ‘thick’ water, for the mantel) save on voxel count for computer performance, maybe…?
He used an em dash! It must be written by AI! Jokes aside though, even if water looks like that in the end, it would still be awesome. Will Byblos clouds visually differ from Verdures clouds? I think it would be a cool detail and it would make it more obvious which planet you are on.
I landed the grasshopper on the front opening and proceeded from there. When i hit this spot, I heard it, stopped, and turned around. I knew right away it was going to be a long trip back.
Hey I’m a majority survival player, both in SE1 and now SE2. I use creative to mostly blueprint new ship or base ideas, as don’t have to waste time grinding down blocks to replace if I change my mind, should get an area grind upgrade if you can.
My biggest concern right now with the game is the move away from the survival genre and a move more towards a casual exploration and building game, of which I am still a big fan of those genres but the remove of ingots/stone and the removal of that “get up and running stage” severely stalls out my drive to continue playing survival. Yes, it’s a grindy and annoying stage of SE1 but it provides a lot of satisfaction and depth to early game as you move thru it, that VS2 is sorely missing. I want to clarify that I don’t mind the backpack building, I just would prefer if it was more like No Man’s Sky where you refine and assemble components in your inventory and less ore straight to welding. It would make an excellent casual setting for players who are more into to exploration, building and story over survival. however if possible I would prefer a story mode for casual players vs making survival more casual. ps please bring back volumetric storage! that was such a cool and clever system.
Loving the details! Now that survival is here, have been playing more, but something feels off about the new “war thunder” aiming controls. While it works nice when just floating arround in creative, when actually using ships during survival, the experiance is less than ideal, especially when tow other ships, cargo containers ect. Id love if there was a toggle to go back to direct control.
Unfortunately the CTRL+F12 menu does not work for me at the moment. (I’m using Linux so it may or may not be the fault of the game. I will not complain for now.)
But I’d still like to share my general thoughts on it: This sonds like the Experimental Mode for SE1 and somehing like it is very welcome. There are lots of features that I’d like to see in the debug menu, such as configurable safe speed just to name one example. And if the in-game debug menu gets too large, I suggest an equivalent to the Sandbox_config.sbc from SE1. That seems a reasonable selection of parameters that make sense for the user to experiment with.
I have not been playing SE1 in “vanilla mode” for a long time, as it just feels too limited and my computer can handle the extra load of cranking up the block limits. The same may apply to SE2 several years from now, when new computers seriously outstrip even the recommende specs.
Да, я полностью с вами согласен. Система меню из первой части игры (Ctrl+F12 и Alt+F10) действительно необходима и для второй части. По крайней мере, она откроет гораздо больший творческий потенциал, чем то, что у нас есть сейчас. Я даже разместил несколько предложений на форуме, чтобы привлечь внимание разработчиков.
If i see Byblos i remembered Triton from SE1, Byblos looks like Triton but with melted ice and snow.
Please consider separating weapons into:
HARDPOINTS (the base of the weapon). Determine aiming capability (fixed, tracking, player controlled…). Multi-slot hardpoints and other fancy things. Maybe a few different sizes.
WEAPON HEADS (slots into any hardpoint of right size). Gatling, rocket, sniper, laser. Common, Rare, Legendary.
Weapon heads draw energy and ammo through the hardpoint.
This leads to PERMUTATIONS! Add a new weapon head, get a dozen new hardpoint-weaponhead combos.
This ELIMINATES DUPLICATE WORK, no need to model the same base into every single weapon, since things are decoupled!
If you make 5 types of hardpoint, and 5 types of weapon, you end up with 25 realized weapon systems!
I dont know what the weapon heads would be. Blocks? Really big components? Youll figure it out 😀
The weapons look great. I just wish the scope of the rocket launcher was bigger (closer to the player). In SE1 it’s kind of hard to see what you are aiming at because it’s small.
I’m mostly a survival player nowadays. When I was new I played creative, in the literal meaning of the word. I just went there, built some stuff, flew around, maybe crashed it. I still play creative, but no longer in that way. Now it’s mostly for designing blueprints for survival. I can already feel that projection building is going to take many hours away from creative mode. What makes survival fun is the problems you have to deal with and the contraints within which you have to work.
Wow! The clouds on Byblos look fabulous. Supposed to be looking down at the water, I know. But, those panorama shots show how much terrific work the team has already done on clouds.
The Rifles all look too smooth to me. I would expect some weapons to be more militaristic, which is seldom developed beyond the bare essentials for continual use. I’d prefer to see more pared down barrels, lightest possible framework for hilt or stock. At least, a model that is this military issue version.