Marek's Dev Diary: April 11, 2025

What is thisEvery 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 itI 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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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 2VS 1.2 will be releasing in a few days, on Monday April 14In survival, players will build in projection mode (so first as a projection, and then weld it). We need a particle effect for it, so here's one prototype.The new IK is great, but when you walk up stairs or ramp, in first person mode, the camera goes up and down, and what you stop it continues in the movement for a tiny moment, and this is precisely what we wanted to clean up in first person mode (no secondary movements in first person mode, just clean abstract camera sliding through space). So we will look on this in the future in the polishing phaseThis week we had our regular playtest, and things I focused on where:Consumables - healing via medikit (automatic or manual)Death - from health damage or collision, and respawnCaves on the planets - we have a couple of caves but also a CSG merging algorithm, so we can merge (add or cut) many of them one through each other and create unlimited variations. They look good, realistic. What needs to get improved is the voxel material (stone) inside of the mountains (planet), it doesn't look pretty.Shooting from the debug gun has now correct recoil and camera shake. But I also realized that the way we portray the gun on the screen is not what I am used to in other FPS games - so we will move the hand a bit forward, and more to the center. Right now it's obscuring too much of the screen space and also the angle feels off to me. Here I used new ChatGPT image generation model to illustrate how it could look (the input was the screenshot from game + prompt to move it further from camera and more to the center)Nobody ever mentioned it but I think there's an audio lag in our GUI mouse over sound effect. Like, when you hover your mouse over buttons, it doesn't cling instantly, it feels laggy. We will be looking at it.You will be able to switch between the toolbars via ALT + CTRL + Mouse wheel. I hope in future we find some simpler shortcut.We also wanted to playtest ore detection mechanics, but that one got postponed to the next playtest.The deco prototyping is going better than I hoped for (these are the blocks that are not our usual big Deco blocks; they more like small things you can use to make your interiors look not so blocky and simple; they are not purely decorative like a painting or vase, because they have structural function). I expect players will use them to create rich looking blueprints!Equip and unequip animation is coming along nicely as well.More Flora! And as always, I'm amazed by the beautiful things our players are creating!

Apr 11, 2025 - 09:05

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

VS 1.2 will be releasing in a few days, on Monday April 14
In survival, players will build in projection mode (so first as a projection, and then weld it). We need a particle effect for it, so here's one prototype.
The new IK is great, but when you walk up stairs or ramp, in first person mode, the camera goes up and down, and what you stop it continues in the movement for a tiny moment, and this is precisely what we wanted to clean up in first person mode (no secondary movements in first person mode, just clean abstract camera sliding through space). So we will look on this in the future in the polishing phase
This week we had our regular playtest, and things I focused on where:

Consumables - healing via medikit (automatic or manual)
Death - from health damage or collision, and respawn
Caves on the planets - we have a couple of caves but also a CSG merging algorithm, so we can merge (add or cut) many of them one through each other and create unlimited variations. They look good, realistic. What needs to get improved is the voxel material (stone) inside of the mountains (planet), it doesn't look pretty.
Shooting from the debug gun has now correct recoil and camera shake. But I also realized that the way we portray the gun on the screen is not what I am used to in other FPS games - so we will move the hand a bit forward, and more to the center. Right now it's obscuring too much of the screen space and also the angle feels off to me. Here I used new ChatGPT image generation model to illustrate how it could look (the input was the screenshot from game + prompt to move it further from camera and more to the center)

Nobody ever mentioned it but I think there's an audio lag in our GUI mouse over sound effect. Like, when you hover your mouse over buttons, it doesn't cling instantly, it feels laggy. We will be looking at it.
You will be able to switch between the toolbars via ALT + CTRL + Mouse wheel. I hope in future we find some simpler shortcut.
We also wanted to playtest ore detection mechanics, but that one got postponed to the next playtest.
The deco prototyping is going better than I hoped for (these are the blocks that are not our usual big Deco blocks; they more like small things you can use to make your interiors look not so blocky and simple; they are not purely decorative like a painting or vase, because they have structural function). I expect players will use them to create rich looking blueprints!
Equip and unequip animation is coming along nicely as well.
More Flora!
And as always, I'm amazed by the beautiful things our players are creating!