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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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
Please join us next week for Space Engineers 2 New Sector Release Livestream!
🚀 Monday, February 9th, 6 PM UTC
🛰️ Twitch: https://twitch.tv/keencommunitynetwork
🛰️ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@SpaceEngineers
This week’s playtest was quick, we looked at improvements on the turrets – now they have proper collision and placement shapes, and the projectile trails work correctly. Rocket launcher was implemented to our internal build – the aiming and reload animations are work in progress. But it’s fun to blast everything around – I always enjoy destroying stuff.
Interior turret concept art (if you really like gaming concept art, check out our Pioneer Edition)
Area welding got improvements too – we added visualization of blocks that are within range and will be welded when you press the mouse button. I am thinking whether to show a consistent 25cm grid or adapt it per block size in the vicinity.
We are in the last finalization weeks of VS2.2 so everyone is converging, and trying to not diverge and delay the release. After the code freeze, we have some more weeks for bugfixing, and then release of VS2.2, and start working on VS2.3, which should bring new changes to colonization meta loop, contracts, new types of contracts, and more.
We also held a biweekly all-team presentation, so I could see the almost final version of our weather system. There’s rain, smoke particles, and grass is influenced by the wind, and what’s amazing, it is volumetric, in a sense that if you are inside, the weather doesn’t get to you – no rain indoors! I don’t know if this makes you happy, but my heart was happy from seeing it.
I’ve been getting a lot of questions and pleas lately to show more progress on mechanical blocks and wheels. So here you have it. I had the chance to review our current work on wheel suspensions, and it’s really nice to see them coming together. You can see the latest progress in the footage below.
And the Rotor block, first in the VRAGE3 editor:
And first shots of rotor spinning in-game
I also want to share a first look at our planetary ring visuals. This is still very much “Programmer Art” – that’s what our art team calls all the prototypes that haven’t received their attention yet 🙂. What I enjoy about planetary rings is how they add scale and atmosphere without needing any explanation. You can see them directly from the surface, and they give planet Verdure a much more otherworldly feel.
From here, the rings are moving to the art team for a proper visual pass. I’m really curious to see how far they can push the look once they get their hands on them.
We also reviewed the game analytics and Steam reviews, to better understand what SE1 veterans and also new players say about SE2, but also what their behavior says. The positive is that people trust us and have high confidence in SE2’s future and direction. The negative, but fixable, is that the survival is still just basic, contracts are not much fun or replayable. These were expected results, and we will improve it in the next iterations, this is just temporary and not a surprise. We are simply releasing what we have, instead of waiting for the final product, so obviously we have to give you unfinished things from time to time.
Other than this, for the last few days I have been playing with OpenClaw bots (https://openclaw.ai/). Ignoring the hype and scams, what we are observing is the creation of a new species – AI agents. These are not just our workers, but eventually our equals. I understand that this may sound scary to some, but for me it’s like being part of the moment where first life emerged on Earth. I think we are living in historic days!
GoodAI Swarm Robotics
This week I had a special treat – Project Prometheus, our autonomous drone developed by GoodAI Swarm Robotics, was featured in ABC magazine.
If you grew up in Czechoslovakia, you probably know ABC. As kids, we read it for stories about science, technology, and sci-fi, and it played a big role in shaping how many of us thought about the future. Seeing our work appear there now feels surreal – and honestly, very rewarding for me and the whole team.
Prometheus is our autonomous drone, designed to explore unknown environments, build 3D maps, and navigate without GPS or a human pilot.
Huge thanks to everyone involved – and to ABC for the feature!
Our Prometheus autonomous drone got a lot of traction, it seems many industries want an autonomous drone that can fly indoors, without GPS, without a pilot, and without a constant radio link. So we are accelerating and started to hire a hardware engineer. If you’re interested in building the next generation of intelligent drones, check out our careers page: https://www.goodai.com/careers/
More info about this role: https://www.goodai.com/career/senior-robotics-hardware-engineer-uavs-docking/
Also, for about 2 months now we’ve been looking for a CEO for GoodAI Swarm Robotics. Someone who can run pilots, raise a Seed round, and turn Prometheus from a working prototype into a real business. If you know someone with robotics/AI or deep-tech experience who wants to build Europe’s leader in intelligent drone swarms, send them our way: https://www.goodai.com/careers/
Question to you: How do you feel about planetary rings as a visual feature in Space Engineers 2?
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!
if you could add welder, grinder and conveyor priority (even as a beta test feature), I would be playing this a lot more already than SE1
Right now I’m in space near Verdure and welding a 35k+ cpu planet-space big ship (it’s like a mobile base with hangar). It takes some time (2-3 days, including ore mining with small ship), but seems to be possible. Next time i’ll definitely wait for welder block, or even area welder for such ships.
Asteroids & Points of Interest
I really like the idea of asteroid rings around planets. They naturally give players a clue about where asteroids can be found. I’d also like to see more points of interest beyond rings—such as asteroid clusters scattered through space.
In general, I strongly dislike the even distribution and infinite asteroid generation we had in SE1. Ideally, these asteroid clusters should be visible from very far away, well before they enter normal render distance, so players can spot and navigate toward them intentionally.
Rotors & Mechanical Blocks
Rotors look great. There are two things I especially like:
* Clear visual markings of the current angle.
* The fact that they can extend, effectively combining a rotor and a mini piston into a single block
One concern I have is usability: how easy will it be to control a single mechanical block while seeing it at the same time? In SE1, this was often neither intuitive nor convenient to do from the terminal.
Wheel Suspensions
The wheel suspension feels underwhelming, to put it mildly. It seems even more simplified than its SE1 counterpart. I’d also prefer suspension blocks to be more universal, rather than being strictly tied to wheels.
In theory, pistons could serve as suspensions if they had additional spring or damping functionality. That would make them comparable to rotors, which now effectively have mini pistons integrated.
Survival, Contracts & Long-Term Gameplay
I haven’t written a Steam review yet, mainly because it would likely be negative in its current state. I don’t understand why “survival” and “contracts” are being framed as tightly connected concepts.
What if a player wants to survive without doing contracts? Are contracts intended to be a mandatory survival mechanic?
Veteran concerns about survival tend to focus more on mining, production, and scavenging loops, not contracts or colonization. Colonization feels like a feature you might enjoy a few times—but what happens after that? I doubt many players will want to replay the same colonization path over and over for years.
Why do i see you everywhere XD
If you have the Basic keybinds sorted why not release them along with Mondays update? Why make us wait even longer ?
Hi marek, progress looking phenomenal so far. I was really wondering if it’s possible you guys can work on a visual wind system? utilising your volumetric fog to create a sense of dust and moisture flying past the player at high speeds during a weather event. I’ve seen games like No Man’s Sky or Helldivers 2 create something like that, and it helps add a sense of unforgiveness to weather on an alien world. A windswept wasteland where your ships cuts through low dust sounds very atmospheric and like a nice sight to see out of the comfort of your own base
Plantery rings – ring Colour too strong, needs to have an etheral look.
Weather and shelter – TY the thunder makes you want to run for cover and the change in sound going into the shelter is perfect. It makes me happy too.
I would like indoor weather on occasion to be available for sprinkler systems, smoke from fires, toxic gas leakage and steamy factory machines, especially if you can crouch below or stand above horizontally layered smoke or mist. This would be in addition to the exhaust type effects, where one type is a source and the other forms the vapours spread out through interior spaces.
Rotors – looking good, I would like a passage ring rotor too, for tank turrets or for transit between an orbital ring and a stationary dock for space stations.
Wheels – good, but would like a wheel option suitable for rail systems.
Drones – It is wonderful to see you inspirering young people, children love gadgets, they try to work out how they function and how to operate them. This leads to the beginning of forming technical ideas.
Agreed the yellow ring color takes away from the beauty of the planet. Kind of looks like it’s dirty instead of cool sci-fi planetary rings, can’t shake that feeling. When people see someone streaming se I’d rather them see something wildly cool that sucks them in rather than a realistic ring.
These wheels look as bad as SE1 – not particularly great as rollers or tracked wheels and also utterly useful for wheeled vehicles.
The rain not going through walls and voxels is great!
Also the rings look really good
I think that in an “engineering” game, you should give players the tools to make their own suspensions with rotors, pistons (with proper dampening settings), hinges, and wheels.
I’m afraid that a game where you can build a rocket engine magically from ore is not about engineering.
Thanks Marek,
The turret tracking is so fluid and satisfying! And the rotors 😍
Also, massive thanks for the progress update and rough timeline for VS2.2. it is very much appreciated! I know its not easy and often helpful to talk timescales, but for someone like me, it really helps to get little bits of info to keep me excited.
I promise to not hold anyone to timelines ever. I’m just happy to know we are getting closer 👊
Yellow is a bit strange color for a ring, I’ve expected it to be a bit more gray. It does help emphasising that we are in an alien solar system though so it achieves that, just the color is not matching the planet in my opinion.
Good progress on the mechnical parts. It’s not space engineers until we have rotors and pistons etc.
i said it before and, after seeing the rain, i say it again:
my problem with se 1 rain is how its fog illuminates the night with bo reason at all and gow it has no effect on the world, there are no water splashes when the drops hit the floor or grids and some visual effect of drops at the visor would be great.
I like the idea of planetary asteroid rings, and hope it will be not only a visual feature, but have gameplay implications. I have some ideas about it:
1) asteroid rings should be thick, so that flying a large ship (like red one and bigger) will be not easy, especially at high speeds. It will allow smaller/weaker ships to escape and hide there, or add need to make safe flight tunnels
2) as for safe flight tunnels, there could be missions like to find a research facility hidden in thick layer of asteroids, and clear a path for large supply ship to fly there, or maybe clear crashed asteroid debrees on the facility itself. Another mission may be just to make flight path safe between 2 stations on other ends of asteroid ring. Or a mission to clear path for stuck large cargo ship and maybe tug it from there.
3) maybe make most of asteroids appear only in rings and asteroid clouds visible from far with eyes, and make all other space almost empty. There might be very rare asteroids, and you will need long range antena/radar to find them. (20-100km scan radius?) That antena could eat a lot of energy, so you will need large flying mining/scouting ship with large energy supply, and a small miner ship/ships in it’s hangar.
As for rain shelter video: no rain in closed places is awesome, but other thing made me a little sad – voxel LODs loading at close distance. Such thing destroy immersion and make feel that the world is a kind of simulation, not real one. In my opinion they should transform like that only far from player, to make them less visible. And another important thing: small hole in the ground must not look like giant quarry from far away with LODs (like in SE1), it makes stealth gameplay almost impossible. Maybe make that from far away ground looks like untouched no matter what, or you need to dig a really big quarry to make it visible from big distances.
No rain inside very much does make me happy! 😀
Loving the progress! I love the idea of the planetary rings, though I think for Verdure especially- it would be nicer if the ring was much less pronounced (a lighter blueish white/cloud-like visibility from a distabce). I would also push the ring out significantly.
Verdure is already auch a beautiful planet, I feel that the ring being so close disrupts that. Perhaps the ring can be almost a “halfway” point between Verdure and Palatine?
The ring concept is fantastic though, Densely packed site of asterioids for a mining operation? Yes please!
I’m eager to see where this leads to!
The new models is gorgeous but i dont quite understand why keep using that ugly wheel suspention. I mean the model itself is looking good but it looks nothing like the actual wheel suspention. Maybe atleast make 2 variants of suspentions: Heavy load (these ones in the post) and light/medium load wheels (like the actual wishbone suspention)
Or maybe there is some technical issues that prevents wishbone suspention being made as one block? People are making their own wishbone suspention via physics using rotors and blocks. I just don’t see the reason why those types of suspention are nonexistent in your beautiful game
I don’t like the rings, it feels not right compared to the planete, you could have used blue-greenish instead of orange, you get the alien theme, it’s conform to the name of the planete (common, you called the planete Verdure >.>).
> AI agents. These are not just our workers, but eventually our equals. I understand that this may sound scary to some, but for me it’s like being part of the moment where first life emerged on Earth. I think we are living in historic days!
This is not scary, this is downright insane. Machines are machines, regardless of how similar you make them to us, it’s still simulation, I say that as a tech savvy dude and fairly interested in the AI topic. Please, don’t lose your way in your obsession over tech, innovation, progress, we are all there is and all there will be, we can’t make real life outside of biology. There’s no way I treat an AI as an equal, Software has not right, just like chips, screws and LEDs.
We are ruining our planets, for resources and the last thing we need is even more robotization anyway.
I love the art direction but I’m more worried about whether or not turrets will have better functionality ingame than what they look like though. It is a long-standing issue that it’s hard to properly control automatic turrets in a convenient way without serious try-hard efforts.
Beyond that I have a new concern that I really think you need to stop and think long and hard about: the wheel suspension.
What you have presented here looks like a duplicate of the space engineers 1 wheels system. The only people who enjoy that are extreme tryhards with 2400 hours ingame – everyone else abandons wheeled vehicles the moment they can.
This is because the wheel clearance makes it impossible to make a vehicle designed for off-roading – ALL of space engineers is offroad – there are no roads and no way to make roads! Therefore, these are not vehicle wheels, they are simply rollers. Carry on this path and you will spend a fortune on redeveloping the same exact problems from se1 that nobody enjoys using.
Please consider making proper suspension systems with clearance for proper off-road vehicles. They also need much better grip and power and should be very competitive against ships cost-wise for building and using so that there’s actually a reason to use them. Right now wheeled vehicles in SE1 are more like ice skating, garry’s mod tier shitmobiles that constantly smash the ground and flip over non-stop – if se2’s simplest wheeled vehicles DONT feel like a sweet off-road 4×4 baha rally truck then you’re wasting lord knows how much money developing something that will be discareded by everyone who plays.
On that thought, a great deal of se1’s planets made it nearly impossible to get utility out of wheeled vehicles anyway. What are you going to do to make vehicles actually worth building, fun to drive and reasonable to use versus an atmo mining ship? Will anyone ever have a reason to make them outside of a simple fetch quest mission? Remember, the goal here is a fun game that has engineering in it, not just an engineering tech demo.
I tend to agree with the wheels. All the rovers I built in SE1 always have problem with wheels or are just not fun:
– Randomly jump/clang out and toss my rover into the sky BOOM
– Doesn’t feel like the wheels are actually on the terrain, like he said…feels like sliding
– Always hated the lack of actual vehicle sound, if I am going max speed it should sound like it.
– Aside from rolling on flat ground rovers were pointless, always getting stuck and cant manuver the terrain
– No supporting blocks for ramps. To get rovers into and out of areas that need a change in elevation you had to use the block that had the smallest angle incline but even that was too steep and then your rover either can’t go up it because its too steep or it scraps its front or bottoms out on the ramps top end, etc….horrible!
– Too easy to just use flying ships and skip rovers entirely.
Not saying I have the answer but yes we need some major thought put into wheels/rovers to make them fun to drive, even advantagous to make over flyers.
in the background of the turret video, will space engineers 2 have any way for the players character to pick up and move the small crates? I’d love to use them in early game survival. Or have some way to load and unload them and use them for delivery missions.
Also are there any plans for some sort of soft body hose to transfer liquids and power?
maybe a 50cm connector on either end or something that can be linked up to “refill”
The, optional, little “human” interactions I feel help make a game feel immersive.
I like the idea of asteroid rings, but they should contain some resources too. Maybe, if the lore supports it, some future sector could contain a *wreckage* ring where you have a chance to loot valuable stuff, but also with a significant hostile presence.
The rotor design looks nice, especially the prominent red triangle indicator for the angle. When you introduce hinges, pretty please do something similar? SE1 has indicators for “+90” and “-90°”, but sometimes those are a bit difficult to see.
The wheels look nice, and there are sooo many possibilities that cound make them greater than in SE1. Let me point out one idea:
The suspensions could be multipurpose springs where you can attach a wide variety of blocks, the wheels only being one of many choices. At the same time, the wheels could have their propulsion built in as hub motors and be attachable to non-suspension blocks where they still work. Finally, at the risk of appearing greedy, please let them work on subgrids too!
Would i believe enhance the immersion in game play. Waiting to to see how rings implemented. Enjoying the game so far. This game sits in very distinct place for me, it is the only game i have ever pre ordered in my 40 yrs of playing games on console or pc. Have a pleasant day!
The thing I find most fun in SE1 is the prospect of enemy AI, with mods such as modular encounters being essential in my mind. My largest hope with SE2 is that you are able to seriously expand AI and NPC encounters. I want bases to raid and destroy, enemy grids flying in the distance, maybe even more advanced mechanics such as a factions having a “headquarters” that is heavily fortified and that is supplied by various smaller stations. I want to need a reason to build defenses on my grids. For example, say I attack one of these enemy stations, I want them to treat me like a threat, attacking my base with a amount of force equal to how large of a threat I am. For me to see SE2 as a fun and engaging experience I want the world to feel somewhat alive, not like I am floating in a empty void alone. My ideal game would be manufacturing like satisfactory, and base defense from a game like From The Depths, side note I would absolutely love to see modular weapons make it in to the game. I want to build a capital ship with a massive modular capital weapon that requires many, many systems to be functioning together, such as cooling, reloading etc. Keep up the good work, I am very much enjoying watching the game progress!!!
I gotta agree with others on the rings. Their color/opaqueness from the ground is due to how dense and what materials the rings are.
To the point- the coloring is a bit strong. I don’t know how to fix it, except to say that when inside the asteroid rings, the color of empty space shouldn’t change. The only change should be looking along the plane of travel along the orbit- the other objects that compose the ring.
Using a color gradation to simulate that effect and lightly scattering objects in that works, but maybe make it thinner?
Granted, I don’t know just how much the new game engine can handle, but that’s a ton of objects to generate and keep track of.
Maybe a server setup could handle those calculations later on for a major upgrade to multiplayer sessions. I’m already salivating at the thought of just how epic the battles are going to be, and the game actually able to hold that many large grids moving without lag. But, I digress.
Then again, maybe I’m dumb.
Some of the comments on the suspensions feel valid as well. More real world, better utility and capability is needed.
Also- treads should be included in the base game, with the ability to extend them. Please.
Lastly:
Agreed on the AI angle, sir.
I asked my supervisor about our company’s AI initiatives, if any, the other day.
We fix copiers from all brands. The naming conventions, vendors, part numbers, service manuals, tech pubs- there’s a LOT to sort through when researching an issue.
Having dedicated Technical AI agents loaded with everything we can get access to could be a major tool in accelerating our turnaround and reducing error in diagnosis or ordering the wrong parts.
He promptly stated that IT has a no AI policy.
The next day, he took us to lunch.
Our chips and salsa were brought to the table by a robot waiter. (rolling tray model with a screen face)
He was in shock, and asked me to explain what I was asking about more.
Progress?
Rings: I’m looking forward to diving into the beautiful rings. Are the rings made of different materials depending on the planet? Saturn’s rings are made of water ice, Jupiter’s rings are made of dust. Or are there localized collections like the Trojans, or large-scale rings that orbit stars?
Turrets: New threats are approaching… but there are also old signs. Turrets on boxes are often seen, but they should be hidden under their bases if possible.
Shelters: Great news! Many amazing caves will become our new home. Ideally, there would be some hidden treasure as well.
Contracts: Rather than simply repeating the same tasks, there could be more difficulty and complexity. For example, competing objectives, factions that sabotage the mission, offers to divert goods, and picking up treasure map datapads. It might even be a good idea to adopt a rogue-lite approach, where alcohol is mixed into the missions.
I think rings around planets will look very nice, giving a little bit of distinctive-ness to the sky on a planet, it would also be cool if they had gases or dust or something floating around near them just to add something unique. I feel like the planets in SE 1 were just choices between ground color, O2 level, and gravity, so sometimes unique and exclusive both in and around each one could make the planets more interesting, especially in (future) multiplayer without the story NPCs to characterize their respective celestial bodies
Art team keeps coming up with amazing stuff, still loving the look of the new parts. The programmers work on the rings (the coding framework revealed, before the artist work on it) looks like a cool addition. Verdure is shaping up to be a screenshot planet, with water added for lakes, atmospheric weather effects, and now a planetary ring.
AI will be a Wizard of Oz…since it was created by humans, there will -always- be *someone* behind the curtains haha
Art team keeps coming up with amazing stuff, still loving the look of the new parts. The programmers work on the rings (the coding framework revealed, before the artist work on it) looks like a cool addition. Verdure is shaping up to be a screenshot planet, with water added for lakes, atmospheric weather effects, and now a planetary ring.
It seems AI will be a Wizard of Oz…since it was created by humans, there will always be *someone* behind the curtains haha That’s just human nature, can’t get around that.
love the work so far I’m Part of a server group we are trying to move away from Empyrion. One big question we have is “Will we be able to mod like our own Planets and so much more? coming for Empyrion where we can and much more. we just like to know how far can we go thank you