Marek’s Dev Diary: August 13, 2026

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.

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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