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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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
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Space Engineers 2
VS 2.3 – Wheels
You already know that for VS2.3, we are working on wheels as one of the main features.
This is not just “add wheel block and done.” The physics team is implementing a custom friction estimator instead of using the default Havok one. We are also testing new wheel colliders that can behave either like cylinders or spheres – depending on the situation.
The reason is terrain. Ramps, slopes, and uneven surfaces can make wheels behave badly if the collider is too simple. So we are testing a hybrid approach and iterating/refining in Havok demos before we will release the wheels in-game.
Wheels are a tricky physics feature in a sandbox game where gravity and terrain can vary a lot, so we are taking the time to build a solid foundation.
Hangar Doors
Andre Lopes, Art Team: “The first main idea for the Hangar door was to avoid weird gaps and make the interior more detailed, in case the player placed the door sideways. So all parts should look properly connected and, when closing, they all should fit correctly like a puzzle. With this in mind, I tried to nail the puzzle part first, and then worked the interior details around that, by creating some mechanics and a logical structured frame.”
“After that, the second idea was that players could have a bit of liberty with their door design, since for now it is just 1 block. So now you can play around with these simple “vertical lines” patterns, by just rotating each block 90 degrees, when stacked.”
“The last idea was inventing a sort of visual locking mechanism between each door and the base, so that it looked even more industrial and realistic.”
LCD Screens
LCDs in our internal builds already include the formatting options from Space Engineers 1, plus a simplified markdown subset for headers, bold, and italics. They also support localized strings, so text can be displayed in the player’s language. You will be able to customize background colors, fonts, and choose from a catalog of project-defined images. Blocks can also support one or more customizable screens, and these screens can be signaled as on or off through the terminal UI.
Each screen can have its own aspect ratio and texture resolution, for example 512×512 for square panels or 1024×512 for wide panels. This helps prevent content distortion. SE2 Control Seat currently has eight individual screen slots, and our artists have created several LCD panel configurations.
Players can also access a block’s inventory directly through its LCD screen terminal dummy!
Grass Clustering
The grass in SE2 will look so good, I can’t even believe this is our game 🙂 If you’re wondering why grass visuals matter in a space engineering game – honestly, I don’t know. It just feels important, and if you can make something more beautiful, it’s your duty to make it more beautiful. Also: “need to create,” all the way.
Mirko Bartolini, Art Team: “This is our new grass clustering tech, which allows us to scatter grass in a more natural and realistic way. It lets us combine many more grass types in the same biome and distribute them using splat masks that control both spawn probability and scale. It also gives us better control over sparse tufts, especially in more arid biomes.”
Other
- We started detailed planning for VS4 NPCs and Coop multiplayer. This is fun, because we are finally working on NPC user stories for our game! NPCs will make Almagest so much more alive, challenging, and surprising!
- Hinges for VS2.3 are something special… I can’t wait to share something with you soon!
- Event Controller for VS2.3 is starting to look like an amazing addition to the game.
- On today’s playtest we checked exploding warheads — the balancing and visuals are coming together nicely.
- With sound designers we reviewed some of the new SFX. This time I actually said the opposite of what I usually say – for the warhead arm/disarm event, I asked them to make it less aggressive and tune the volume down. (Usually I push the other direction.)
- A few weeks ago we had a nice review with Karel Antonin about the music updates. Some small things will come in VS2.3, but most of the music updates are coming in VS3 and VS4 – especially the “water music,” both for the OST and as ambient tracks that change based on depth.
Question to you: What will your first SE2 rover be?
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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Hopefully we can have a action for event controllers, timers, sensors and other blocks that fire action to change the text on a LCD panel.
or to change profile on LCD, which would have complete setup of what is on the screen
When programming blocks?
In SE1, rovers often become obsolete as soon as you are able to build flying ships.
Is there a plan to make ground vehicles a viable alternative to flying vehicles?
^ this. Personally I hope to see planets that have conditions that make sustained flight very difficult, therefore encouraging the use of rovers, such as extreme gravity or wind!
I agree, Marek if you see this we’d love to hear from you. I understand it may be hard to make rovers more useful without changing some fundamentals about ships. but i hope there are some good ideas to make them viable.
There should be good incentive to want to make a dropship that carries a rover. But in SE 1 the rover inside said ship couldn’t do anything the ship itself couldn’t do
Hey Marek,
thanks for your insights. I’m really looking forward to the new wheels! 😀
Can you please share some details about the future of the survival mode?
I mean, NPCs and contracts are a nice addition to the game, but what about the core game mechanics like resource distribution, resource processing, unlocking blocks, and so on?
Many people are asking for the return of ingots; what are your thoughts on that?
Thanks!
If you go back and look at all of last years dev blogs he has spoken about all these things and in the live streams.
It’s mostly about the first implementation of the survival mode.
I would like to hear some details about the future plans.
There is also a lot of new feedback in the ‘Survival Feedback Thread’ on the support site which could lead to changes in existing plans or features.
Yeah, I agree, building and using a rover should give certain benefits over ships, otherwise you are simply going to use ships all the time (faster, simpler).
I have some opinions, and I think I even discussed it here in the dev diary a year ago … but what are your suggestions? I am honestly curious + this is the reason why I started the dev diary – so we can have back and forth channel.
Marek is there anywhere we can reach out to you to consistently discuss more ideas, especially about rovers, in a back to back format?
@marek I think some missions should be underground and accessible by ground vehicle only (like some halo levels). Add fuel consumption to jet engine. Make wheels much stronger and much more traction so we can build large cargo rovers. Tracks to increase traction further.
Hey Marek, it would be nice if you could join the discussions on the support page. There are a lot of fantastic ideas regarding survival, progression, and much more.
I personally think that the current design of resource gathering and processing, as well as the system for unlocking blocks, is not as good as it could be.
For example: gathering and processing resources in Minecraft is more realistic and believable than in SE2.
Why?
Minecraft: find ores -> furnace turns them into ingots -> ingots can be processed with a crafting table into items (nice!)
SE2: dig some dirt -> put it into your backpack or smelter -> get components to directly build advanced technical things (dafuq?! Why can I build a base from dirt? Why can my backpack produce items? Why does a smelter produce motors, turbines, etc.?)
As for the system of unlocking blocks, I want to say that I would find it much more immersive if we had some kind of research system in the game instead of binding everything to contracts. Research could be tied to production and exploration in many different ways and would fit perfectly in a game about engineering.
Awesome sneak peaks. These updates are looking more and more impressive each week. The new LCD panels have especially drawn my attention.
What we really need is for LCD panels to have the ability to livestream live feeds from the camera blocks to be able to create real time CCTV circuits and even remote control dash camera feeds that players can use to control grids remotely in a 3rd Person interactive display.
When it comes to wheels, I hope to see additional suspension settings like damping making a return. I really missed that one in SE1 since the wheels overhaul.
In the future, I would really like to introduce new type of suspensions, even those that tilt to a side, like you see on proper 4×4 car (I can’t describe it… but offroad junkies probably know what I mean)
Curious as to how the localised strings will work on the LCDs, would those be limited to a preset list of words, or could someone define their own associated with the grid or the LCD?
Custom signs showing english/french/chinese/german/etc text depending on the player could be good.
If string substitution is a thing could we also get things like variables like {velocity} {gravity} etc for custom displays for ship cockpits?
It’s so good seeing grass beeing improved. The current look really is the biggest immersion breaker on Verdune.
Regarding LCDs, I can’t wait for programming blocks and hopefully Camera livestream. But please, give us a proper image selection instead of a number slider.
Wheels look great so far and I hope to see improved suspension logic in the future diaries too. Ideally, having a “smart” feature.
Rovers in SE1 are frustrating not only because they have no advantage incomparison to flying vehicles but also because of tedious suspensionconfigurator, especially if it’s a mining rover with dynamicallychanging mass and center of mass.
I believe traction and suspension are key gameplay features that if implemented correctly could elevate rover gameplay and reduce player frustration
Marek, I have a question. I was wondering about this in SE1 too. Why do you always only make the hangar doors 2 high?
You can’t really make large doors for big ships that way in vanilla. I don’t understand it. Why not at least offer some that are up to 4 or 5 high? But always only 2?
the grass looks great 👍
So far i’m quite stoked with the performance on Linux despite not being officially supported (tested on arch, cachyos, mint and bazzite)
🤔 love to see the work in progress of the new wheels approach.
Question:
• Are wheels going to have tire pressure to allow changing the friction coefficient?, if so,
• Are they going to have deformation just like with rock crawler wheels?
• Is there any news in hopes we are finally able to get a full color wheel on the paint gun?
To make rovers worthwhile to use, wheels should have more advantages over thrusters than in SE1. Such as significantly more carry capacity than a thruster of equal volume.
It seems thrusters have already been somewhat nerfed compared to SE1, perhaps the wheels could get a buff? I think the load capacity of the 150 cm wheel should exceed the thrust of the 2m thruster.
Hey, Marek!
When will SE2 receive the “Share Inertia Tensor (or Vector, I can’t remember)” option for subgrids?
I have some wild ideas for beautiful transforming ships for SE2, but they are only possible if this specific function gets moved over from SE1.
I feel like the hangar doors should be narrower and extend taller than they currently do, I understand you want them too look chunky and protective but it looks a bit awkward. with a lot of telescopic items the wall thickness is a lot thinner to allow more extension.
cant wait to have my AI assistant on those LCD screens 😎
That grass looks amazing! Some of those screenshots are so great I want to move there. 🙂
My Engineer is asking if he can get a terrace with grill for those rare days he is off duty.
The LCDs are looking amazing also, the control seat and the blocks. They should make it easy to have some neat messaging, hazard signs, whatever. I love the markdown also.
For the rover I want to build, how about a beach buggy to rip up and down those sandy / desert dunes? Though more practical will just be a rover to explore and collect resources. Maybe eventually a mobile base, but I usually like smaller exploration machines and a home base.
Maybe to go with the vacation theme I should be thinking of a caravan rover instead. 🙂
Thanks to everyone for all the hard work, the results are looking amazing.
Those LCD screens around the cockpit make my inner Flight Simmer very happy to see 😉
First Rover to drive to space, we shall give it a try.
Marek,
LCDs are looking great. If you can set up a way to import from a bitmap or .png custom images, that would be easier than going through the se1 script.
Also, is it possible to directly link a camera input to it for more immersion?
The one thing I hope for the most is that the driving experience in Space Engineers 2 feels heavier. Using a rover in Space Engineers 1, it almost feels like they have no weight to them no matter how much you load them with cargo.
For rovers to be successful in SE2, I am curious to see how they will be beneficial to gameplay versus just bee-lining to a ship instead. Unless power requirements to run ships in atmosphere is high enough to make rovers beneficial to use for more efficient transport, or gravity is higher on some planets to make ships either obsolete or restricted to special use cases, I don’t see rovers being anything more than just a thing you can do.
Q: What will your first SE2 rover be?
A: Probably upside down
😀
My first rover would probably be built to test whether wheeled vehicles are actually more practical for transporting heavy loads compared to “helicopters” or rockets 😂
If there’s anything that I’ve wanted on the hangar door side is ones that are airtight and can be bigger than 3 blocks. I’d really hoped the blast door blocks could be used that way (e.g., hinged or pistoned into place) but be airght as long as the blocks are intact and next to each other, it would be great if that counts as sealed.
Looking forward to the wheel suspensions, and the demo looked fantastic! Getting stuck clipping on random jutting voxels is definitely one of the annoyances of driving in SE1, to the point where hover engines is a pretty typical mod I run in most of my games. This said, I’m still skeptical of the use case for ground vehicles, and feel like they’re going to end up being a definitively suboptimal answer yet again for most problem domains (Which is a shame because I love building Rovers).
As it stands, they’re basically in direct competition with aircraft which can largely ignore terrain issues, and still carry the same kinds of loads, and get up to speed + coast at their top speeds so the trip is a fraction of the time. To not be in competition with this, (or that is to say, to be a good engineering solution to a subset of problems) wheeled vehicles are going to need their own identity. Personally, I’m a fan of making them efficient at carrying extremely heavy loads, given that top speed is capped + as the crow flies is basically always going to win a relative trip time competition, and having to contend with the terrain is the entire point of a ground vehicle. Insofar as logistical utility, this basically just leaves the ability to carry massive weight.
For example, the NASA Crawlers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter) which is as noted by the wiki is 2721 metric tons. Which is JUST for the crawler. They were moving the Saturn rockets and Space Shuttles to their launch positions which themselves massive (The Saturn V is somewhere in the ballpark of 2800-3000 tons). Point being, we can already build ground vehicles with the necessary torque to move obscenely heavy weights around.
In real design, as far as I’m aware our existing constraints for ground vehicles are typically tied in some way to our ability to build roads for them, rather than being directly an engineering limitation of the vehicle itself. I feel like Space Engineers doesn’t reflect this particularly well, because you just can’t get the torque out of wheel suspensions that would be necessary (And just adding a lot of them inevitably results in ground contact issues, not to mention suspension sagging). Further, the limitations of just flying the cargo to its destination vs. driving it typically end up being irrelevant because the thrust to weight of any air/spacecraft in SE is high enough that you can basically just ignore being on the ground as well as the weight of any cargo you want to carry (provided you have enough thrusters, of course, but you can just extensibly add more if you need more thrust because ground contact issues don’t exist for thrusters).
That said, I’m not advocating that thrusters should be made worse. I.E. Our ability to park a capital ship sized build groundside and then climb back to orbit should remain unchanged in my opinion. What I am proposing is that if you weld enough wheel suspensions onto the side of said capital ship, (or park it on a platform with wheels) you should be able to get it to drive around pretty readily and for a fraction of the power cost. In my opinion this would make using wheel suspensions worthwhile, and give them an extremely useful application as a problem solving tool.
As a side note, per the hover engines mention at the start of my comment, has the team ever considered implementing such as a late game progression in SE2?
hi keen and marek!
i just wonder, instead of the connectors isn’t it possible to have like a fully sized docking port where you can walk through and it’s pressurized and also connected to the grid so items can be transfered? would be so cool to connect like an IRL space capsule at the ISS, so when docked you never have to leave your ship first to enter a station.
thanks for making these games so good 🙂
Hi mate,
The elephant in the room; rotors. Please say they are going to be completed. At the moment they are not usable. I was literally just about to start building and then realised that they had no min/max like SE1. This is a deal breaker for me. Such a shame as I am sooo keen to play but I need rotors for contraptions. Wheels not so much. I do like the idea other people have mentioned that, to make them usable/viable, make high grav planets etc but until that is done I always skip past them to flying miners. I’ve never used them besides the odd ‘wall of welders’ printing machine. Basics first please :). Great job though and I seriously cannot wait!
Ooo another thing! Can you PLEASE break the 50 limit that is in SE1 for LASER COMMUINICATIONS when you get to them! I have a dream of launching a satellite and putting it into geo-sync orbit and launching a capsule to the moon and mars (or whatever the planets/moons are in SE2) and piloting it remotely. I’ve love a satellite network to establish communications between the earth, moon, mars. A planetary satellite system completely around a planet would make navigating a breeze. I can’t do that in SE1 due to the 50km hard limit and I am gutted. Please. Please.
Another suggestion instead of a hard coded limit would be to use a slider or a field to enter an integer as servers are pretty powerful these days (this is for when we get to multiplayer). This could work for high powered gaming PCs aswell