Vertical Slice 1.1 Arrives in March, Marek's Dev Diary

Hello, Engineers!

We’re excited to announce the upcoming Vertical Slice 1.1 - Steam Workshop, arriving this March!

VS 1.1 won’t just introduce the Workshop for Blueprints and Worlds - it will also refine pivot controls, giving you more precision when copying and pasting. When you copy, cut, or create a blueprint, the pivot point will now be automatically set to the block you aimed at during the action. When pasting, this pivot point will be highlighted, making placement clearer and more intuitive.

Additionally, the snap size of the pivot point now determines the default snap size of the pasted grid or blueprint, giving you better control when positioning structures.

Space Engineers 1

• Update 206 is nearing completion.
• Here is a little sneak peek from yesterday's team presentation:

Space Engineers 2

• VS 1.1 is almost finished and we are testing it now, release will be soon
• Flora impostors for VS 2 - rendering all visible trees as real geometry would be too GPU intensive, so a good practice is to render distant trees as billboard impostors, which are not recognizable to the eye. Here's what the first prototype looks like.

• To optimize performance, animation on blocks with animated sub-parts should be culled (disabled) when the player is too far away to see it. This video demonstrates this feature, with the culling distance artificially lowered for visibility.

• The water team has made significant progress, with an updated "delete water dam" testing scene that shows improved performance and visual effects. The water surface now appears more realistic, accurately reflecting the velocity of the flowing water and various surface effects.

• This screenshot shows how the 25cm unified grid system allows for items to be placed on the Gearforge block's table, and for a light to be positioned on the block itself.
• Fracture simulation - because it's cool!

• Planetary flora progress
• Modding will come soon to SE2 (in VS 1.5). This is a modded skybox example.

• We are working to enhance first-person animations, with a focus on ensuring that the tool or gun remains steady and consistently forward-facing on the screen.

Full blog post: https://blog.marekrosa.org/

Please join us for Space Engineers 2 Developer Livestream!

• 🚀 Friday, February 28st, 6 PM UTC
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Image Credits: SE2 "Story & Universe" Sketch by DesertTusk

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https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/526461473225968958
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/526461473225965658
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/503942841152569364