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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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
Join us Monday, July 27th, for the release of the next update for Space Engineers 1: Prosperity!
Explore a new Factorum encounter, hunt down the new Prototech, track missing ships and enjoy improvements to Projector, Contracts, the Services Terminal and economy systems!
📅 Monday, July 27, 5 PM UTC (19:00 Prague time)
🛰️ Twitch: https://twitch.tv/keencommunitynetwork
🛰️ YouTube: https://youtube.com/user/SpaceEngineersGame
Space Engineers 2
I love that we have reached the stage of development where people have really started playing and enjoying the game!
What pleasantly surprised me was how positive the reactions to VS2.3 colonization were.
Our vision for Space Engineers 2 has always been straightforward: we want to build a living solar system that gives you concrete engineering objectives, where you can advance, expand, and colonize.
Of course, if you prefer a freeform sandbox, you can have that too. But we really want the game to feel like an active world that gives you meaningful reasons to progress.
Deformed Materials
In Space Engineers, there has always been a clear difference between how armor blocks and other blocks react to damage.
Armor blocks can deform when struck, while other blocks do not deform but instead show damage through their existing damage states. With Space Engineers 2, I want to push this further by introducing deformed materials – a new graphical and mechanical feature where blocks change both their shape and their surface appearance after impact.
This means that damage will no longer be represented only through geometry or predefined damage states. When a block is hit, new impact-specific materials and textures can appear on its surface, making damage more visible, readable, and believable.
The goal is to improve the overall feeling of destruction in the game. Impacts should feel heavier, damage should look more physical, and the world should respond in a way that feels more realistic AND satisfying.
Question to you: Are you ready for Prosperity?
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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mate will the be plans for a ps5/xbox version of SE2
Console will come when the game is more feature complete and optimised.
It still has a lot of performance issues on PC, and it’s missing major features like NPCs, multiplayer, and water simulation.
Don’t expect a console release until after these major features have been added to PC and optimised to run well. Which means a console port is still at least 1 to 2 years away.
There’s no point to building console ports at this stage of development where the game is still changing greatly between each major update.
I love VS 2.3.
You definitely feel rewarded for your colonisation efforts. I feel like the system is more alive.
The new blocks are great.
As a modder, I hope we get access to Veronica soon. also Id like to get an updated blender texture pack (I did post a ticket about this).
But yeah… Overall Im really enjoying just playing the game. Being inspired to be more creative with the new blocks and tools. missions are definitely more fun!
Estáis haciendo un trabajo ESPECTACULAR!! Seguid así, es hora de crear el mejor juego de exploración espacial de la historia!!!
nice progress but deformation needs to be localised if you really want to make block damage more convincing.
Also, is there a plan to make other blocks placement function like armor ? glass, for example, would largely benefit from that.
After 2000+ hours of SE1, I have to say that I absolutely have no fun with the simplified survival mode of SE2. It destroys a lot of the unique feeling that SE1 has.
I have made a suggestion on how the game could find a balance between accessibility and believability. It would be nice if you could take that into consideration.
https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/55438-make-the-survival-mode-appealing-for-both-new-players-and-veterans
Hi!
yes i’m always looking forward to se1 updates.
se2: ive been trying to get into more, i am finding the menu UI to be cumbersome. we definetly need refinement to make life easier, the current UI makes automation very tedious. what is 5 min in se1 is an hour in se2. when things like thrusters or lights are placed there is no sequential naming or way to determine what is what without either turning it off one by one or grinding it down to non functional. even thrusters in se1 display their direction, this would also help immensely. Rovers are fun so far!…but we need more wheel configurable parameters to fully utilize, especially steering on off, steering angles, braking strenght. overall se2 is running nice but yeah, we need some QOL work in regards to UI. also the HUD is very busy, gps signals are very large, to be able to adjust their size or intensity would be great. its just a bit of an eyesore with so much realestate being taken up. turning off gps points on the hud would be awesome too
I completely agree with H-E-I Shipyards. That’s why I am asking for a scenario with voxel based resources and no FTUI, but with colonialization progress, unlocking of blocks, etc. I don’t want a sandbox game, I want a game where I can progress, get reasons to build. But for that I can’t just get a bunch of stuff at the start of the game. For that it needs to be a challenge at every step of the game, especially at the start of the game. So there is an actual progression not only in terms of stuff you unlock, but also in terms of where you are. At the start of the game you are on Verdune. And you have to find a way to get to space. Not just using a ship you randomly get and weld two blocks to it.
I’ve just found the H-E-I Shipyards video. I see I could sign my name under everything he said but with much more cynicism. I fear Keen is going to do what they did many times in the past. Try an amazing new thing, do a bad job at it and then just make it optional and abandon all efforts to improve it.
No. Every patch the same cycle continues. I start a game, get bored after a few hours of mindlessly digging dirt and quit. I gave up on SE1 completely. I still have some hopes for SE2, but the very praise you keep showering it, even though it yet fails all of its promises, is discouraging.
Hear me out, join one if the modded SE1 servers, the game is exponentialy more fun with other people.
Tried that. Typically, I get attacked and lose everything after a few hours, at which point I quit. When I start with people I know, they usually start some giga-ship that never gets finished and it’s incredibly boring.
The deformed materials look great!
What damage is that deformation from? It looks like the blocks were smashed from all sides all along their surface, not from any specific impact point. I agree with what another person said that it should be more localized to where the damage occured on the block. The texture itself looks great though!
Also, at least imo the functional blocks already look 10x better when damaged than in SE1. I would really love to see armour blocks get some love next! I would love to see armour glow orange or red around holes from energetic projectiles for a time. Armour never shows any signs of heating up despite all of the energy that might be discharged into it, I’d really love to see that changed!
is steam deck support coming?
It works on Steam Deck. I did have to change a few keybind mappings as there was some things that just didn’t function with the default buttons. Now it works but with all graphic settings set to the lowest. I imagine once things get optimized better later on it will run better. I’d say it was an OK experience but I enjoy the game much better on my gaming PC.
Hi Marek, in this post you mentioned projector upgrades. I’d like to take the chance to say I cannot consider SE1 complete until multi-grid projector support is added to the base game.
It competely changes what is viable in survival and especially on PvP/PvE. Plus the added fact that ships get infinetly cooler.
In other words, can we have multi-grid projector support in SE1?
🥺*please*👉👈
I completely lost myself in SE2 thanks to the updated colonization.