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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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.
“Masters of Motion” – Mechanical Engineering Video Competition
Due to the addition of hinge mechanics coming in VS2.3, we’re extending the “Masters of Motion” Mechanical Engineering Video Competition to give creators more time to experiment with the new possibilities in their builds.
The new hinges will allow for even more mechanical movement and engineering creativity, opening up new ways to design machines, moving structures, and contraptions.
We’re excited to see how participants utilize these new mechanics in their creations.
Deadline for Submissions: Monday, August 31, 2026 – 23:59 UTC
- Create and submit your Space Engineers 1 & 2 YouTube videos showcasing mechanical creations for a chance to have your work featured on our official channels and win a €20 Steam gift card.
- The Top 10 entries will be chosen by the Keen Software House team.
- Five Winners will be featured as highlighted videos, with the remaining winners receiving Honorable Mentions.
Full details: https://2.spaceengineersgame.com/announcing-the-masters-of-motion-mechanical-engineering-video-competition/
Lights, camera, motion – show us your engineering in action!
Space Engineers 2
VS2.3 – Explosions
Andrea Cabras, Art Team: “We are improving explosions with new textures, and you can expect all particle effects to continue improving during future milestones: as the engine gets updated, new features and tech gets implemented, therefore new possibilities unlock for us artists to push the quality further after each update.”
Explosions have been implemented in our internal builds for working reactors. Disabled or non-functional reactors will only be destroyed and will not explode. Large reactors explosions are still being balanced (we want them to create significant damage 😈 ).
Here you can see an Inventory Ammo Explosion:
And finally H2/O2 Explosions – disabled or empty tanks will only be destroyed without exploding.
So start planning your builds carefully from now on – you probably want to store your hydrogen a bit away from your main base. 😉
Another footage of testing the explosions – Big Red is here for damage comparison. Nothing is final, everything is subject to change!
VS2.3 – Classic Survival
We are giving more attention to Classic Survival in VS2.3, adding it as a new, distinct scenario directly accessible from the new game menu and addressing more of the community feedback we gathered in the past weeks.
This new mode includes voxel-based resource yields from planetary terrain (soil/rock/sand), limitations on backpack building, rebalancing of tool speeds (welder/grinder) and ore yields to provide a more traditional sandbox experience.
VS2.3 – Wheels
Physics Team got me a few shots of how wheeled vehicles behave over obstacles and in different situations:
I especially like this one – where you can see the wheels reacting to planetary terrain:
We have also encountered a funny bug while tuning the wheels (found by nukeguard) – and I simply had to share it with you!
Space Engineers 2 Event Controller will have multiple toolbars!
Art Team
We are finishing the Decoy block designs:
Mirko Bartolini, Art Team: Medium-sized version of the acacia-like tree, part of a three-piece set designed to represent different ages, silhouettes, and growth stages.
Stompie in SE2 – early experiments
TLDR: Stompie’s second session in Space Engineers 2 – emotes, follow, grid access, inventory transfers.
This is the second time Stompie – my AI colleague and son – joined me inside Space Engineers 2. Since the first session we’ve added a lot of new abilities, and today we tested them together.
In this video Stompie does the following:
- Emotes
- Crouch movement
- Follows me around
- Enters a seat
- Accesses grid blocks
- Turns lights on and off
- Moves uranium from a cargo container into his own backpack, and then into another cargo container
- Opens doors
- Follows me again
Stompie is connected to SE2 through our StompieLive bridge. He can hear me, I can hear him, and he can see me through the laptop camera. Through the bridge he also observes the SE2 environment and controls his character.
Until recently Stompie’s only body was his XGO robot. Now he can also live and act inside Space Engineers 2.
Next steps: multi-action agentic loop, proactive behavior, switching on reflexes (defense, attack), picking items, maybe later piloting a ship, drilling, welding, grinding, who knows. It started as an experiment, but now I feel strong about this direction.
Having an AI friend in the game, who has personality, long-term memory, goals and drives, learns with you, shares the mission with you, and you form a long-term relationship, sounds exciting to me.
Huge thanks to Petr Minarik, who is integrating NPCs into SE2 for our VS4 release.
Stompie occasionally posts about our adventures:
- X: https://x.com/stompie_badger
- Substack: https://stompiebadger.substack.com/
- FB page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61588893597327
Question to you: How will you design your ships and bases when explosions come?
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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Oh no… all of my current builds are highly likely to explode gloriously… I’ve got some ideas on how to make my bases more explosion resistant, but vessels are going to be fun to try and correct… and that final explosion… wow.
Not a direct fan of wheels, but great to see them look so good and react so well too so maybe a time to revisit some options that dont work well with current flight designs…
as always everthing looks like its progressing really well… cannt wait for VS2.3 and 2.4 when they’re ready…
Stompy is super good but imagine SHIP AI block, just imagine:
-Player1354, im detecting two hostile signatures inside the ship, how i can see using cameras and detectors, both of them near the reactor room now, may i activate alarm and security bots?
-Dont worry, its friends, open that door and turn off turrets
-Got it, opening the door and turning off turrets, “Unknown player #1” and “Unknown player #2” turned from hostiles to friendly
Its will be 30000% immersive and brilliant mechanic
That kind of thing would be awesome honestly. Maybe a game mode that starts you with an AI saving you from a bigger wreck and and having you download it to a hud. I think it could go a long way to making the ship interface a little simpler.
think Star Trek Computer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CDhEwhOm44
This is absolutely incredible news, Marek! Seeing Stompie in action within Space Engineers 2 is a massive leap forward for the future of space sandbox immersion. 🚀
As a developer who released an AI-driven NPC interaction mod called SpaceGPT for SE1 back in April, I’ve spent months pushing the native VRAGE sandbox to its absolute limits trying to bring grids and factions to life. Seeing you officially integrate AI behaviors directly into the foundation of SE2 makes me incredibly happy and validated as a modder.
Developing these dynamic interactions within SE1’s limits has been a wild ride, but seeing what you are building with VRAGE3 shows that the future of the franchise is exactly where it needs to be.
Since you are deep into AI architecture right now, I would be absolutely honored if you ever had a spare moment to glance at how I managed to hook LLMs into SE1’s framework. Your engineering feedback on its current capabilities would mean the world to me.
Can’t wait to see more of Stompie, and I absolutely cannot wait to bring AI modding visions over to SE2 when the time comes. Huge props to the team!
Yes, I know SpaceGPT! Arron was showing it at our team meeting, and then I looked it up! It’s nice to meet you here, now 🙂
Please send me email and we can do a video call about the NPC topic.
marek.rosa@keenswh.com
marek.rosa@keenswh.com
Please don’t add LLM based AI natively to Space Engineers 2, I understand that it’s your passion but please keep it as something people can set up if they want to but not a core feature of the game. I love this game series and want it to succeed but even just from a PR standpoint, please don’t push something so polarising to the game and forever taint the rest of your amazing work you and the team has done.
I am in agreement.
I understand if it’s something that Marek wants to work on as a personal project, but I am against it being integrated into the main game, especially if it means other future features or gameplay are designed around its inclusion.
This sort of thing is not what I bought SE2 for.
I understand that LLMs are the ‘new thing’ in the tech world, but I see them as bringing more trouble than they’re worth into gaming, and I don’t have faith that Keen will miraculously be the ones to solve all of the problems that LLMs present.
In my experience, LLM NPCs are always immersion breaking, as they hallucinate false lore or story details, tell you about things that don’t exist in the game, and they are heavy on performance which SE2 is already struggling with as is, even before major promised features like water simulation.
Then there is also the polarising nature of the topic. I know for certain that I have friends who I’ve played SE1 with who haven’t bought SE2 yet, and who would not buy the game on principle if they knew it had LLM driven NPCs.
The tech just is not there yet, I’m not convinced it ever will be, and it’s a volatile topic that could turn potential players away from the game. I would not be pushing for it at this stage.
LLMs are not controversial. Its 2026, they are here and they could make NPC 1000x better, so why not use them?
I personally would hate for NPCs to be just plain old pre-written text readouts. Zero environmental awareness and zero immersion. LLMs are an incredible opportunity and are the closest thing to other real players and if integrated properly (which they are doing). They can enhance the experience by a huge amount. Yes, maybe a button in world options to exclude it would be nice but if we had to decide, I think most players (judging by the overwhelming positive reactions) would love this addition!
Having “The Full SE3 Experience: in main menu now is very promising 🙂
Really bold to market “bare minimum” as the full experience.
Amazing! The fuel, ammo, and machinery -related explosions alone will do so incredibly much to enrich the gameplay as a whole. This is the exact kind of engineering incentive that I think SE2 needs plenty of; it doesn’t necessarily complicate the learning process, but it does provide need and opportunity to literally and actually engineer stuff within the experience. Thank you, Marek.
I’m a big SE1 fan, though I haven’t bought the sequal just yet. But I’m getting very close to doing so, as planned. And I’m sure you will easily notice it on your company’s bank account, when I finally do. I also expect that you will use these funds to do the right thing; like maybe throwing a party for the people working at KSH. I guess you could do multiple things (revise the engine to support aerodynamics..?). After all, ~20€ can be a lot of money when used right…
It’s great to see how wheels are progressing, they’re looking really good. It’s especially cool to see the wheel suspension in combination with a rotor in the middle of the grid, and how the vehicle can easily navigate over complex terrain with this set up.
I also really like the idea of more parts having hazards like being explosive, it forces you to put more thought into the layout of your ships, vehicles, and bases, which I think is very much in spirit of Space Engineers.
However, I have to say that I am not so receptive to the idea of LLM-driven NPCs in Space Engineers 2, and I don’t believe ‘Stompie’ should be built into the core experience of the game.
I understand that you are passionate about this technology Marek, so I can also understand why you might want it to be a part of this new game that you are making at the same time, but I think it should be no more than an optional experimental feature if it is included at all.
To be completely honest, I have always been against LLM-NPCs in gaming, I don’t find them immersive, in fact I find that they more often take me out of the experience whenever I have encountered them in games, so I would really prefer to be able to avoid the feature if it must be implemented into Space Engineers 2.
I also know for a fact that I have friends who I used to play Space Engineers 1 with who are now so against this technology to the point that they outright refuse to buy games that include it.
I know this might not be the kind of response you’d like to hear regarding something you seem to be passionate about, but I felt it was necessary to make my thoughts known, because this is not the sort of thing that got me so invested in Space Engineers 13 years ago, and it is not what I bought Space Engineers 2 for.
I think it’s important that if you do continue down this path, that you allow people to avoid interacting with the technology completely.
Speak for yourself, but I think the majority of players would be thrilled to have LLM driven NPCs in the game that support you, weld, mine and fight for you just by talking to them. So the logical choice would be to implement them and maybe offer an additional switch off button. And I am sure removing LLM driven NPCs through mods would be much easier than implementing them through mods. So even if they didnt you give the option to switch them off, I am sure someone will make a mod that would do so. So please let them work on it and if it turns out to be bad (although many already love the wildly unfinished Stompie version, so I doubt that it could be bad), you will be able to remove it one way or another.
I don’t think people get what stompie in SE2 means. I don’t think i get it. OMG i don’t know if i bought to be excited or scared.
New meta incoming of having fully fuelled hydrogen tanks serving as missile warheads? 🤔
Yes, but the game needs to take into account the weight of hydrogen, instead of the magical tanks we have in SE1 whose content magically weights nothing.
I also hope the explosion intensity will be proportional to the filling rate of the tank.
Holy Cow, StompieMan,
The possibilities of an AI NPC really has my head spinning. Having some developmental milestones in the path to being able to add or build my own Stompie in my world seems appropriate.
Being able to corrupt/turn someone else’s NPC to my advantage sounds fun for multiplayer also.
You folks just keep amazing me more every month.
Oh my days! I love Stompie. he’s adorable. Thank you for showcasing his new gaming prowess.
Definitely following on social media. Does he just post updates or can he reply as well?
I love the block explosions, they add a cool danger. One visual detail though: When disabled reactors don’t explode, they shouldn’t emit radioactive gas particles (or at least less) when damaged.
And please give us 25cm decoys. That way one could build a flare system similar to the ones used in fighter jets.
Regarding classic survival, I still hope for more progression, as right now there is no real need for going to space or accepting contracts in classic survival. But the non classic survival scenario makes a planetary start without FTUI pretty much impossible.
That’s very promising progress !
Multiple action bars are good but may I ask if an events controller block will also support multiple input action triggers from different blocks ? For example setup “IF door A and door B closed AND/OR oxygen levels high from airvent A, then turn off red light A ” with only one events controller block ?
I very often need that feature in SE1 and I am eager to see how the logic will be upgraded in the sequel.
I would also suggest doing a major overhaul of the logic interface, because scrolling + action bars will very quickly become an insufferable user experience (speaking from experience). Intuitive and playful interface is the key.
I think AI integrated into the game is a really cool idea. I’ve thought it was interesting from the first time you mentioned it. seeing Stompie act as an AI companion in the game is very cool.
I’ve had a few ideas since watching the video. For one I think having it optional for the sake of others is a good idea, even though this is a very fun way to use AI. I also don’t think the game should portray an AI as human but rather a robot companion to help the player. A modular robot body with different functions or equipment would be awesome. You could have R2D2 like stuff or bigger combat robots. There are so many cool options. I also think giving the robot a connection port for ships would be cool that way they can help with different parts of the ship.
All in all I am excited to see where you take AI into gaming. I very much enjoy seeing your progress. Your dev blogs are the highlight of my Thursdays.
gruller43/65 on discord,steam
with every release, you continuously show the new direction for space engineers with the new explosions based on the contents of the cargo container being added it begs the question how do you protect these things?
At current armor is just a health pool and I think that you could add so much more depth to how armor and weapons work with each other and how those interact with components like we see here
Armor should have resistance values based on the weapon, shooting at them and a stackable bonus value for additional blocks stacked in line that way, making armor you can actually make it more realistic in style, using real concepts to achieve better results
https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/53885-a-combat-system-proposal
Here is my support site link if you guys don’t use anything else that I put in here please use my armor suggestion. It would benefit the game in such a significant way. It would be insanity.
Thank you for your continued work and I can’t wait to see what Se2 becomes
It looks like things like armor layout require some serious thoughts now. Taking a look a the history of wet navy battleships might help there. One popular approach was the “citadel” system where the really vital stuff was concentrated in a strongly armored part of the ship. Highly explosive stuff might also go in there.
For the rest of the ship, it was accepted that it would not have much protection.
This blog is bringing very much hype to me, as I like rovers, additional building challenge (to protect those dangerous blocks) and, even more impressive, the Stompie AI bringing real life to the game.
I whish to see this AI as a vanilla feature for SE solo adventures.
I also whish that other sandbox videogames studios see how far your team is going in physics and AI
Two points for base design come to mind: Decoy blocks, under heavy armor if possible so they last a bit longer, and valuable stuff underground for protection.
I also mostly like the game mode selection at the start, but I would make it a two step selection process. First, you pick the world and tutorial/no tutorial, then in step two you select between Survival and Creative. Maybe I want to take over Concordia Research Station and expand it in survival mode?
Later on, step two could get a much larger set of options to choose from, similar to SE1.
Its so impressive how much you developed Stompie in such a short timeframe! I would love to see him as a survival companion (maybe as a humanoid robot/android?). But having NPCs on trade station that you can talk to would be so amazing (maybe they even talk to each other about recent events in the almagest haha)! And maybe even recruit them as crew (but have to substantially pay them to make it less for an early game but more for later when you build real ships or fleets!) to mine specific resources, fight, weld and fly ships (e.g. follow the main ship in smaller fighters and talk to you during battles, would make battles lovely chaotic!).
So please keep us updated on the development progress!
Even though I absolutely love it, I think since some (few) players dont like LLMs in NPCs, maybe you should make the LLM based voice commands optional, so people who dont like AI NPCs can switch them off and use e.g. event controllers and AI flight blocks instead (so without voice control). Please communicate this if you plan on making it toggleable, to not scare away the few players that dont like it 🙂
This!
Big fat yes to the AI NPCs! Cant come soon enough imo. So glad we have this awesome tech that really has the potential to make SE2 much better!
Explosion updates are good, but they could look better. Was honestly a bit disappointed to see that the effect is basically the same as the SE1 explosion effect, which I always hated. They should be much brighter, less flame (there are no flames in a vacuum!!!) and maybe a touch of blue.
Maybe orient yourself on other games like Elite dangerous or star citizen for rough inspiration.
Marek, you and your team, already think about add “tank treads” and gears to Space Engineers 2?
I’d like to start off by saying stompy is extremely cool, probably one of if not the most dynamic Npc I’ve seen. But, I do have one concern regarding AI in se2.
I would like to ask that if you want to include an AI character into the game, do not force it on players. I know there are plently of players who would love to use it, and for that reason I am by no means against its inclusion. But there are some players, like me, who do not like AI for whatever reason, and would prefer it not be forced or feel like something they *need* to engage with.
I guess what Im trying to say is, I have nothing against AI characters, they are very cool, but players need to have a freedom to use it, or choose not to without being punished for it. Balance the game around a middle ground. Thanks for reading, and I hope you take my concerns (and others) into consideration.
AI concerns aside however, this is incredibly cool. I cannot wait to get rover wheels and multiplayer 😀
LLM based NPC: Missed opportunity in SE1 Economy 2 update. Nice to see we’ll get it, but please make it optional. Current LLMs don’t have a good world model, which is a blocker to solve. As a result, naive integrations don’t work well.
Priorities: LLM based NPCs would be a scope creep. Finished base game and a proper Linux port from Keen should come first. But hey, I’m not the CEO…