About This Dev Diary
Every Thursday, I share some of what we’ve been working on – the challenges, solutions, and ideas that caught my attention. This is my unfiltered dev journal, so my thoughts and plans may change quickly, and nothing here is set in stone. And if you don’t like spoilers, don’t read further!
Space Engineers 1
Apparently, the Factorum have not shown us everything they have been hiding!
Join “Masters of Motion” – Mechanical Engineering Video Competition!
Deadline for Submissions: Monday, August 31, 2026 (23:59 UTC)
- Create and submit your Space Engineers 1 & 2 YouTube videos showcasing mechanical creations
- 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
Smoother, Stable & Faster
Please join us Monday, August 17, for the release of Space Engineers 2: “Smoother, Stable & Faster” Update.
This update is focused on making your experience smoother, clearer, and more reliable. We’ve introduced a new Save Game Screen with better autosave handling, an improved Flight HUD, stronger performance and stability, and a range of quality of life changes across the game.
We’ve also made your first steps into the Almagest System clearer, with updated early contracts, tutorial changes, and more guidance as you begin exploring, building, and surviving.
📅Monday, August 17, 5 PM UTC
Release Livestream:
🛰️ Twitch: https://twitch.tv/keencommunitynetwork
🛰️ YouTube: https://youtube.com/user/SpaceEngineersGame
Note: We decided not to use Vertical Slice numbering for our releases. Going forward, we want each update to be defined by what it actually brings to the game, rather than by an abstract version number.
And let me show you a snippet of what’s coming next after this update:
Making the Hand Drill Feel Right
Last week I spent a good part of my time working directly on the SE2 hand drill. It was already functional, but what the drill detected as contact didn’t always match what you saw on screen.
The first problem was collision detection – checking whether the drill is actually touching terrain or a grid. Before, this relied mostly on a simplified internal representation of the voxels. The drill could sometimes mine into empty air because, technically, there were still some voxels nearby.
The team improved this by projecting a capsule representing the drill against the actual visible geometry. Now we check whether the drill is really touching the surface the player sees, rather than some invisible, crude voxel representation.
Then I worked on the drill’s various state transitions. The drill has a surprising number of them: idle, punch, contact detection, drilling, fall-through and return. They all need to work correctly when you press or hold the button, release it, miss the surface, turn away or finish removing a piece of rock. I fixed and polished this whole cycle so the drill now behaves much more like a physical tool.
The sounds also weren’t playing as they should in various situations. Some were missing, while others didn’t start or stop at the correct moment. I fixed those cases and added a temporary contact sound, although the proper audio work is still coming.
I did this part myself because it needed many small prototypes and a lot of playtesting: adjust something, launch the game, feel it, change it again. For this kind of work, owning that whole loop myself was much faster than passing every tiny adjustment back and forth through the team. And honestly, after years of mostly CEO-ing, I wanted that hands-on game-development experience again.
It is not finished yet. Our animator will improve the impact and drilling-loop animations, adding more bounce when the drill hits and more pressure coming from the hands. Our sound designer will also make proper impact sounds for the moment drilling starts. Right now, the loop still does most of the work.
The video starts with how it looks now, then switches to how it looked before.
I love this job.
Almagest Map: Rings & Asteroid Fields
We’re adding more detail to the Almagest System map, including visible planetary rings and asteroid fields.
I think this is absolutely amazing! It will make Almagest feel more like a real persistent place and also easier to navigate.
Tree Fractures
I’ve also been looking at tree fractures. We’re improving how trees break apart so destroying flora feels more physical and visually satisfying.
Maximize Your Potential
I recently put this banner in our office because it captures something I believe in very strongly: your number one goal in life should be to maximize your potential. Everyone has some seed of potential inside them, and I think it is our responsibility to recognize it, nourish it, grow it – and remove the things that are holding it back. You choose your own direction: create, help, discover, build, protect, improve – whatever is meaningful to you.
But whichever direction you choose, hold yourself to high standards. For me, this applies to life, but also very directly to what we are doing at Keen: if we want to build something as ambitious as Space Engineers 2, we should keep asking ourselves how good we can actually become, instead of settling for what is merely good enough.
You can read more about our High Standards at Keen: https://www.keenswh.com/high-standards/
Question to you: What would make the hand drill feel more satisfying to use?
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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No… that looks awful. That is absolutely not how trees “fracture”. Especially if being shot by bullets… most trees are just going to ignore those bullets.
while yes that is not how a tree should react to regular bullets. This is the in game Debug Gun. according to Space Engineers 2 canon the debug gun makes anything it shoots simply fall apart. It is there for debug purposes and is just to see how the trees look when they fall apart.
Unless I miss saw then yeah rifles don’t do that to trees…
high firepower I guess 🙂
Debug gun for demonstration purposes.
In that video we are shooting with the ‘debug gun’ that is over-powered, just to show bigger destructions. It’s in SE2 since VS1.
I agree that something is a bit off with current drilling. Changes look pretty good so far.
When in doubt, just have SE1 open while you are doing your tests because it had a more satisfying drilling experience. I don’t think many people would say drilling in SE1 left much to be desired..
In SE2 I like the decals and the punching, the sound effects are good and sparks are great. The dust feels like it is intentially obscuring what little it is doing for me, and the chunks it takes out of terrain are so small.
If I was going to make my own changes I would make the current default drilling the “fine” drill mode, and default mode to “heavy” or “wide” drill mode, more in line with the current effect SE1 drill has on terrain. Keep the third “remove” mode, which would be affected by switching between “wide” and “fine”.
Maybe this more powerful mode would become available after tier 2?
Change of mode with R key, like in the welder, or a radial for other possible modes
e.g. “flatten”= flattens terrain by various means into a plane at the height of the players feet, perhaps with some granularity up and down.
It’s tough to balance, because you want there to be a feeling of progression between tier level of 1-4+ drills, but you don’t want the first experiences drilling to feel underwhelming. No Mans Sky terrain tool, and Empyrion should have some good inspiration for you
Long story short, make the drill feel like you are punching a big hole in the earth instead of nibbling in like a chipmunk, with some control how big of a hole
I meant to post a new comment not reply to yours sorry it is unrelated
I mean, if they’re Zerg-killing bullets they might…
It seems to me that large trees shouldn’t be destroyed so easily by a regular rifle. They feel way too fragile.
In that video we are shooting with the ‘debug gun’ that is over-powered, just to show bigger destructions. It’s in SE2 since VS1.
Since you’re asking about the drill, I’ll toss in my two cents.
The drill feels really floaty, like it doesn’t matter what’s in front of it, how far it is from a wall, or how close, the point of contact with the rock feels like it doesn’t exist. This is especially apparent when the character is facing the wall, and the drill pushes forward at the end of the animation, like it should be pushing into the actual rock, but is also still above it. Because of that, the drill lacks a sense of viscerality I feel like it should have. When the character’s close to the wall, and the drill is pressing against the rock, I expect there to be a sense of the drill being pushed back, or a cast shadow of the drill on the rock to show closeness, or something like that.
I guess another way to express this is that it feels like the drill is floating above the world.
That’s all.
As far as the drill goes it definitely needed work, and possibly more done yet, its one of the first things you do in the game and if it feels clunky or unpredictable its very annoying, same goes for the welder and grinder. Also the voxel holes, suddenly falling through the ground is a very frustrating thing! Im sure it all will be fixed eventually.
why dont people understand the difference between the debug gun and the guns we use?
its mentioned so much yet people seem to moan as if things actually fall apart in game after one bullet! they are working in destruction it would take forever if they used the normal gun to test damage
as for the drill it looked slightly better im hoping it means we wint have to deal with ghost blocks anymore! one thing about ship drills, iv noticed that ore keeps getting stuck inside the drill, could you also increase the width they drill just slightly as if i have 4 drills, one in each corner it leaves a thin line between them which stops the ship moving forward, its a very thin line so it inky needs a very very slight width increase. maybe your di them nxt hehe. keep up the absolutely amazing work tho people your just insanely amazing developers thank you
i dont like how the drill functions. having to focus a single spot and push it in then do that again and again on every little rock is tedious. the sparks are irritating to the eyes as someone whos somewhat photosensitive.
it may not be drill functionallity but i would orefer an option at least to hold and guide the drill around and erode whatever it touches. more akin to an ore chainsaw. stone/ore erosion being more granular and constantly than big slow giant chunks.
also when digging a tunnel/using jetpack. the hole you dig tends to be jagged and a little too small.
a big qol improvement would be smoothing dug spaces, or increasing the hole size a bit. so youre not constantly bumping into things or trying to wiggle through a slightly too small hole. when i dig laterally i have to dig the same spots 2 times at eye level and foot level just so i can walk through smoothly with a human sized space.
Thanks for the feedback.
The size of the hole – I agree, that’s something we will still have to look into.
Regarding how this particular drill works – in the future there will be also kinds of drill upgrades and new drills, so we will add more modes for drilling.
The number of blocks the tree breaks into when destroyed is excellent. You could even have more. 🙂 The destruction speed should be reduced if the goal is realistic behavior. I assume it was made this fast for demonstration purposes, so we wouldn’t have to wait too long. Thank you for the post!
The drill, for me, seems a bit odd in how the longer you hold it in contact with the face of the ore, the larger the yield amount gets. First touch yields 12 of ore. Continued drilling within some short time period yields more and more per contact, up into hundreds of ore per contact. Lose contact for more than a second and it starts over at low yield.
This seems rather non-intuitive for me. I would think the amount of ore should be influenced by how close to the ore I am, not how long I’ve been in contact.
I feel like there should be more damage with the drills to grids knowing how… slow they were in the first space engineers to destroy a block.
my only question about the trees…. is the grinder gonna cut into them like a grinder WOULD?
ive seen too many youtubers (and myself) jump into a nice area that looks great to build a base on, and…. hmm that tree just shouldnt be there… whips out grinder… nothing. not a move on it. but the drill.. oh yeah, mangle that thing to bits.
also just foilage in general… it. is. pervasive! plop down armor blocks and weeds grow right through them! (i know, its still early days, and its not super important for development, but man is it frustrating to log in and see 3 new saplings randomly pop up somewhere in my base.)
For the penetrating vegetation, could we perhaps have a version of Digi’s Concrete tool from SE1? I find the “replace with concrete” function excellent to get rid of the weeds. Just concretify the voxels the plants are growing in.
I know this isn’t really related to the post, but I’d love to know if you’re going to implement ingots in SE2. It’s a mechanic I’m passionate about in SE1 and I’d really like to see it in SE2. Please implement ingots 🥺
Just mod it in or atleast someone will since alot of players are happy with no ingots and the new component system not having to waste space. If we had Ingots I would definately make a mod to remove it and make it keens current way.
For the drill, I have two remarks, based on the video:
1) The hollow metallic sound when setting the tip to the stone is too loud and wrong in tone. It’s difficult to describe, so I can only suggest to get a pickaxe and do a light strike against concrete or stone. That’s far closer to how it sounds. Or even better, if you can borrow a _big_ electric rotary hammer and try it on stone, that would make a plausible sound. I’m thinking of something like a Hilti TE 70, just as an example.
2) Could the drill dig perhaps down in smaller but more steps?
In SE1, it is possible with some care to just take off a few centimeters of stone, for instance to make a corner of the base look more tidy. I somethimes also use it to smoothen a ramp for a small rover. I’d love to have that option in SE2 too.
An aftertought: In the second half of the video I did not the “clang” when putting down the drill any more. I might have mixed up things, or maybe you have already fixed it.
Love the work on the drill!
in one of your replies you mentioned oyher upgrades and drill types.
Are there any plans to look into other voxel manipulation other than subtractive?
It would be really helpful to have either additive or (ideally) the ability to “push” voxels. (think bulldozer)
I’m eager to check this out. The prosperity update was very poor, bringing new subgrid bugs, loss of function to the merge block and qol fixes that have become qol downgrades. Testing is vital!
Have you considered a beta version for public testing before updates are made mainstream?
about tree fall
it look like a spagetti paste drop in the pot
having a delay from the fall and the split would add more but tax the pc ressources
maybe removing the spliting thing and keeping it as a howl and go for a better fall mecanic could be a good trade off
still it is a nice annimation non the less
about the drill
the video doesn t show deapth or it is hard to see
maybe having a helmet light casting that shadow would sell it well
thx for the good game
big fan and master your potential to 🙂
BTW, I’ve decided to try out the latest version of SE2 and the impression is moderately positive. You’ve lost some story beats, but the tutorial is much less obnoxious and now actually encourages experimentation and creativity. A planetside contract station is something I recommended earlier myself. I actually got stuck for a moment looking for Cobalt before I read the mission briefing more closely and realized I can just buy some. I’ve tried some space contracts and they were improved, but building a ship that can fly to space remains the one and only fun engineering challenge I’ve seen.
SE2 is very promising, but we need merge blocks already!
Also the ability to attach a subgrid by two hinges/rotors/pistons.
A few ideas for the hand drill:
・Recoil. It kicks back significantly when cutting through hard bedrock but sinks deep when digging into soft soil. The tactile feedback upon contact with the ground would surely be satisfying. If physical strength is required to control the drill, there could be an option to upgrade the suit’s power-assist systems.
・More detailed component customization. Allow for granular upgrades to parts like the motor, bit, and battery. This provides an opportunity to inspect the tool closely on a dedicated screen, fostering a deeper attachment to it. It would also enhance the value of skins. Naturally, the same concept could apply to other tools like guns, welders, and grinders.
・Gemstones. When mining carefully by hand, there is a chance to discover small yet valuable crystals—the kind that massive mining rigs would otherwise shatter into dust. This gives players a reason to keep using hand tools even after acquiring a massive mining ship.
I have played almost every space game on the market. One thing I have enjoyed durning game play is mining. Don’t ask me why I just enjoy it. SE1 I thought was the most realistic mining experience I have had. SE2 greatly improved it. I love all aspects of mining in this game and alpha at that. You do it better than anyone out there. If I were to ask one thing I would ask to make the helmet light or the body light better. Get to close and complete darkness. Scary for us that don’t like the darkness. LOL. For an alpha game I think you are doing a wonderful job. Hope I am still here when you roll out the complete game. Thank you for letting me play.
any plans on making special munitions for the turrets and rockets? things like armor piercing rounds or even EMP-like rockets that can turn off a base or ships systems temporarily? this could be really cool, they would of course, have to cost and weigh a lot more but i think it could add more ‘range’ to the combat. Or even, in the oppsite direction, lighter ammo that does less damage but can engage the target from farther away. this would require things like SE cameras with magnification of course but, i was just wondering. loving the game, keep it up!
I agree with some other people about the drill feeling “floaty” in the before/after video. I feel like a big part of that may be due to there not being a proper “impact”-sound for when the drill first strikes the material. It wouldn’t have to be a big “thunk” or a heavy “clonk” but just something that differentiates the first 0.1-0.3 seconds of drilling into something from the rest of the continuous drill “loop”, whether that be a short “thud” around the 90-130hz range combined with some high-mids to just get the feel of an impact, or just a slight raise in volume for the first instant (3-4db).
But as you said the sound wasn’t final so take what I say with a grain of salt.
I feel that the drilling animation also could benefit from some more visual feedback in that moment of impact, just a slight recoil or resistance to show that the drill hit something might help the drill feel even more polished.
Oh and one more thing about how you could make the drill feel more realistic from a sound perspective would be if you incorporated a very brief “wind-up” sound where you can hear the drill accelerating to the proper rpm. Keeping it short is key as a long wind-up would make it annoying in the long run. You probably wouldn’t have to get a new sample for it you could probably just pitch the audio from a lower pitch to the proper pitch interpolated along a nice curve.