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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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
This week's work was mainly about survival gameplay - discussion with the designers and playtesting what already works.
Resource Gathering
Drilling and Ore Detection - The basics work! Now we need to polish it: better animations, particle effects, and voxel deformation (how terrain changes when you drill).
Building and Repairing
Projection Building - This is different from SE1. You place blocks as semi-transparent holograms first - just projections without physics that you can walk through. Then you weld them block by block to make them real.
Why we went this direction: You see what you're building before spending resources, you can place entire Workshop blueprints as projections, and we can bring creative mode features like undo/redo into survival - since you're just manipulating projections, not actual blocks!
Build Planner Queue - Every projection you place gets added to a build queue. This queue can be sent to production blocks to craft the components you need. It's all connected!
Repair HUD - A new concept we're working on. The game compares your current grid against the original blueprint (or a saved snapshot), shows missing blocks as projections, and displays them on your HUD (similar to GPS markers). Should make repairs much more intuitive.
Testing the Loop
I've been playtesting this myself. Placed cockpit projections around me - some on ground, some in air (supporting truss blocks are added to keep the block while welding it). Then I mined iron and silicon and welded them using backpack building. Very satisfying to see your build take shape!
Note: Backpack building (direct crafting) is only for early game basic blocks. Later stages require manufactured components and/or block wrappers (which I may talk about next time).
That's it for this week!
