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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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
Lighting Improvements
I really love the VRAGE3 lighting system – but we are always trying to improve. We want to achieve greater overall realism by properly mastering distance fog, atmospheric scattering, and shadow coloration.
Here you can see some of our experiments – creating stronger contrast and elimination of a “whitish specular halo” on foliage. I want to make light and subsurface scattering on vegetation look more vivid and natural.
Snowy Flora, Savanna Bushes & Planetary Stations
Mirko Bartolini, Art Team: “Implementation of snowy flora for tundra and high-mountain regions. Snow is procedurally applied through the material based on the biome/region. Flora distribution is built from five “altitude and position-based” layers, with tree density generally decreasing as altitude increases.”
And behold – a shrubbery!
The Designer Team is making more and more stations and encounters so we can populate the Almagest system when NPCs and Factions come.
Renegade Base on Kemik
Refinery on Caligo
NPCs React and Shoot Back!
For months, we’ve been building the foundations, but now I’m finally getting to the truly exciting part: teaching our NPCs how to fight back and think for themselves. Making an AI that not only sees and hears you but also reacts intelligently – seeking cover, peeking out, and returning fire. I want to share the first successful steps we’ve taken with visual and sound alerts, and how we are using behavior trees to bring their combat maneuvers to life.
Visual Alert
NPCs feature a visual alert meter. If a player is fully spotted and then hides, the NPC will eventually return to an idle state here.
Sound Alert
NPCs can investigate sounds, such as gunshots, even if they cannot see the player. Like visual alerts, they return to idle if silence persists.
Cover and Combat Maneuvers
NPCs can now utilize low or full cover. They have the ability to peek and shoot from either the left or right corners of their cover.
VRAGE3 Editor
Combat Behavior tree nodes now include settings that allow developers to define what an NPC should prioritize.
Flight Navigation Experiments
And here you have a sneak peek of our ongoing 3D flight navigation project – here you can see navigation testing within a complex, but still static environment.
Question to you: What do you expect from Space Engineers 2 NPCs?
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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hey marek, if you inprove the npcs further and further i can see how they can reach the level of F.E.A.R. NPCs. they flank around and communicate with each other. in my opinion the best npcs we got in games. i know this might be not you goal but to see, that your npcs taking cover before shoot (which stalker 2 achieved only 2 years later with the unreal engine 5) is a huge leap forward to authentic and impactful combat.
love the the new lightning and contrast !
Very good work ! we now get stealth combat in Space Engineers.
However I wonder how we can be in this stealth situation while enemy base and ships have turret that spots you far away.
Hi Marek. About NPC, will you make them as a crew of random encounters? For example, pirate ship with pirates inside that you can fight with.
I think it would be really cool to have small, medium, and relatively large cities populated by neutral NPCs where players could trade and do other similar activities. Of course, these cities should be relatively balanced in terms of performance so they don’t overload the game world with too much PCU. And naturally, we shouldn’t forget about non-player animals such as fish, large predators, and others. Water is going to be added to the game, and the oceans definitely shouldn’t be empty — otherwise, that would not be very good.
Imagine deep-sea enemies on water planet – barotrauma in space engineers 2. 11/10
It would be interesting to see at one point something like an end-to-end for a foliage asset, show how it looks in a 3D program, how the texture looks like, what maps it has, then how to add it to the game, how is it being scattered etc so when people build their own planets they will know how to add custom foliage.
Alert states are nice, but they should do something with it – if they don’t have a weapon run away, or if they do find cover or activate something like a nearby alarm button. Also alert times / cautios times are not long enough, and seem very rudamentary. If you can please avoid the “must have been a wind” type of AI, that you can just hide from and reset it in 20 sec. It would be more relalistinc if it would remain cautious for a longer time (10-20min?) and only get idle if there’s no action in that period. Cautious sould also include faster patrol speeds or adding patrol or creating a route they wouldn’t normally take. That way they wouldn’t be predictable, and it would be more realistic that they are “looking for the player”.
I think it would be pretty nice if you were able to trade or receive quests from particular NPCs. This way NPC colonies would feel more alive.
I love the new lighting. that looks fantastic.
We want a Shwubbewy!!! Can we have African and European Swallows next please?
I’d like Keen to push the envelope with NPC’s, given you also own an AI company. Like, what elements of generative AI or machine learning can be ported across to make NPC’s unique? Ir would be cool if you could have a conversation with them about anything. Speech recognition? Oh and give them personalities!
I really hope the lighting improvements also show in texture realism. Right now the textures are super detailed, but the shading looks super flat which makes them feel like a flat texture again.
NPC wise I hope for realistic movement and the ability to hire them and have them on your ship as crew members. That would make larger ships feel alive.
They could have jobs like repairmen, operating weapon systems (and beeing better than the default autoaim of turrets), or even as event controllers (yes, there are event controller blocks and I wouldn’t want to miss them, but it would visually add so much to a base if NPCs stand at consoles and actually trigger actions. Maybe they first need to run to the console, so the reaction is delayed.)
Hey team!
Love the direction the NPCs are going.
I hope something like Reputation can be tied in to NPC interaction. This driving their response to initial contact, and continuing interaction. Meeting a new NPC would be cordial, until I did something to reduce positive reaction escalating up to actual combat from individual NPC and their faction/local group.
I definitely like the more vivid and colorful lighting. The washed out white has always been a source of dissatisfaction in SE1.
I would love to know where these NPC’s are gonna be obviously they’ll probably be on planets and space encounters, but will they be on pirate ships and cargo ship ships?
hey, great improvements! im excited to see them ingame.
as an idea, it would ne cool if npcs will spawn at your base after reaching a specific size, or building a bed block, which the npc claims as its home. so the players base/ship is more alive. and maybe after hiring the npc it will help building or defending the base if needed.
thank you for your work
love the direction the npc’s are going!
will they be able to controle vehicles?
will they be able to mine?
how conolex do you guys want to make them?
will they only show up in missions or will they be sprrad out randomly in the open world?
those are my main questions.
something else I’ve noticed is we haven’t seen much info about water, how close would you guys say you are to reaching your next goal for water? (not when is it going to be finished, but when can we see more neat things about it!)
My heart is racing at the sight of living NPCs. I think this can be applied to many things. Sheepdogs and sheep, raiding forces sent out from dropships… and, something we haven’t seen before, aquatic and underwater creatures. They will move differently depending on the environment, and I’m sure they will surprise players. Of course, I’d also love to see something moving around in outer space!
Three question: In some dev blogs past, I remenber of thing call “Cable Trim”, they are just decorative or too show functionally? NPCs are being awesome, but you pretend add a local voice on the Space Engineers 2 on VS4? It would be funny speak with NPCs with our own voice. When we will more notices about water and whells?
There is one thing I would really like to see:
A crew/team management system where you can “engineer” behavioral rules and guidelines—for instance, using visual scripting (or reliable presets for those who don’t want to dive into the technical details). In my opinion, a semi-automatic system would be the ideal fit: one where your crew members act autonomously and don’t require constant orders, yet where you can still intervene and issue immediate commands on the fly without having to completely overhaul your entire settings.
I love rhe direction you are going with NPCs!
I really hope you make them crew ships (not just pirate ships or trade stations). Hiring NPCs as your crew should be expensive, but bring you great rewards or quality of life upgrades, so you can focus on what you like doing most, while the NPC crew does the rest and simultaneously makes your ship or base more alive!
Let me hire them at trade stations for a monthly salary and they help me repair/build ships, pilot my vehicle (e.g. via an option in the map to say “bring us there” and one NPC pilots the ship and brings you there, if possible). Or you say “follow me in this other ship” and it crews your second ship and follows your main ship with it. More ideas would be on foot combat (“defend our ship/station!”), Mining (tell them “I need this ore”, and they go search for it), Welding (“build this ship”, and they build it on their own or with a welding ship) or manual turret control to be more precise.
I would be even more amazed if you could integrate a language model into them. There are so many LLM options these days, getting NPCs with real personalisies and dynamic answers controlled by AI has to be possible. This way you could ask questions in your own words if you dont understand something (like a wiki but as an NPC, could be a wise and old character haha), or have actual conversations with them about the ship or whatever. Even if its a very rudimentary AI with text to speech, it would instanrly be 100 times better than only using scripted answers or just text like most (story) games do!