What is this
Every Thursday, I will share a god diary about what we are doing in the past few weeks. I will focus on the interesting challenges and solutions I am facing. I will not be able to cover everything, but I will share what I was interested.
Why do I do
I want to bring our community on this journey, and I like to write the things I have enthusiast! This is my unfilter God Journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here is my thoughts and that you will read this will be old by the time, because many things change quickly. Any plans that I refer to are not set in stone and everything is subject to change. Also, if you do not like spoilers, don’t read this.
Space Engineers 1
- Fieldwork update is around the release angle!
Space Engineers 2
- V11 was published on Monday and it seems that players are happy with our choices: target -based grid control, -f -center camera and more!
- Dampener curves – a month ago (after we rebuild the target -based grid control and thrusters), I felt that the dislocation/damp of the gears and thrusters did not feel good, followed (slowing down) was very long and slow, and I wanted something steppe – but at the same time not an instant cut and a rich feeling. So I set the Call with Logon (one of our gameplay programmes) to organize that turn and plate it, but after a few minutes we realized that the turn looks really good (both thrusters and gears), so we left it like (what you have in Vs 1.2). I think after a slight arrangement of gears and throster dimensions, they were fixed by the designers in the meantime. I was very relieved because this could turn into a everlasting battle.
- Mike (our concept artist) is finishing the concept of one of the main characters. What do you say? It belongs to the engineers group’s legion.
- Discussed with Mikko (our level designer) and designers, and we will try to add simple objectives to creative mode, such as repairing this ship and transferring it to the cave station, or flying by a barrier course, target idols, etc. Because the players have to give some goals, which the players have to be ahead of the open-made creation. Now the plan is about 1 hour objective-based gameplay, and we will evaluate it later. Mostly in vs 1.6 (PS: deserves to change everything) I look forward to this. We already have a prototype of our mission scripting framework, and it works on some mission, but now the attention is V2, so it didn’t have time to develop further. However, it seems that the objectives for Creative Mode can be done with what we currently have.
- We want the SE2 to be more goal oriented, with special steps and progress players will want to try. SE1 ends more openly, players create their own goals. SE2 will have a meta loop and progress, with some steps players can understand and try. This week we were ending discussions on this topic with designers, and I feel very good about its current direction. Tell you later.
- We finished the formation of a safe motion. The safe motion is already in the game, not the cause of a collision loss under 20 m/s. But we need to move on: we need to communicate it well on HUD, plus the maximum speed will have a “adaptive cruise control” system (so you do not go beyond safe pace), or you match another grid with your motion, and so on.
- We have set the main principles of new build planners, block packages and area welding. It’s a huge topic, and it is still yet to be written as design D DOC, but generally:
- Players can use an assembler to output “block packages” (which is basically a block inside the inventory, so we will transfer it to the barrier). This will reduce the complexity of thinking, as you will find that you have 3 mortgages in your inventory, so you know that you can weld three mortgages. You do not need to go to the lower level of the components. Of course, the component system from the SE1 will be. Block packages here are like the second level of how to make things easy.
- We will also keep the “backpack building” We have already prototyped in SE2: a raw ore building, where the backpack automatically turns the ore into components and you weld the block without worrying about what kind of ingredients you need.
- Build Planner you will add blocks that you are automatically projecting in the organizer queue, and then with one click you can receive those queue from some inventory or order their product. We really want to streamline this process, making it as intuitive as possible, so that players can use it without just thinking. This is one of the things that bothered me in SE1.
- Field Welding: Different welders will provide the ability to weld the area (more blocks at a time) instead of point welding, where only one block is welded at a time and only where you point out.
