Hello, Engineers!
This week’s release adds a new decorative block – the Toilet.
Enclosed vacuum toilet is compatible with any Space Engineers' suit. Works in both gravity and Zero-G. A fitting detail for ship interiors, stations, and planetary bases.
As always, all blocks and improvements are available now!
Today’s playtest was one of the most exciting in recent weeks. A few breakthroughs and surprises I want to share:
Safe Zone working in-game
We now have the safe zone system running. Once enabled, nothing inside can take damage. Simple and effective.
Safe Zone is still a work in progress - artists have to finalize the shader graphics, and it will come to play with future multiplayer release.
Camera glitch fixed (again)
A few weeks ago, I noticed a familiar annoyance: in first-person view, the camera had a subtle secondary motion – like it kept drifting a bit after stopping or turning. I personally dislike this in any game.
We had already solved this in VS1 and VS1.2, so it was strange to see it return. After some debugging, we found the culprit: inverse kinematics (IK) on the character’s feet, which caused slight camera movements.
Quick fix: we disabled IK in first-person mode – and it worked perfectly. Since nobody really checks their feet in first person, and the lack of IK isn’t noticeable, this was a win. The camera now feels solid again.
Creative Mode FTUE prototype
We’re prototyping a simple FTUE (First Time User Experience) in Creative Mode. It gives you a basic objective flow: expand a cave, add a thruster to a ship, fly it to a location, ram another ship, continue to a station, and so on.
While many players may ignore or disable this (we might add that option), I find it surprisingly helpful. Before, Creative mode felt aimless – should I build, destroy, explore? Now I don’t need to wonder. Even light guidance gives a sense of direction, and that feels good.
Survival Mode FTUE update
Work continues here too. We simplified the structure: objectives now guide you where to go and roughly what to do, but how you get there is up to you.
In my playthrough, I repaired the ship in the cave, flew to a station, fixed connectors, and then took a flying ship to the Orbital Station. It’s still early, but the core loop already works and is fun. We’ll keep expanding it.
Verdure Planet visual update
Verdure got another upgrade – and it looks 5x better than before. The new terrain, terraces, voxel materials, boulders, overhangs, trees, and flora bring it to life. It’s starting to feel like a real planet. Stunning work by the team.
We can now quickly drag the toolbar items away in our internal build – a small change, but one that makes further testing and iterations so much user friendly.
Water development is speeding ahead – here’s a look at our tests of water behavior on sloped terrain. We’re making steady incremental improvements, and it’s exciting to see how the system is starting to interact more naturally with the environment.
We have really beautiful and useful concept art – but we’re always pushing for more and better. That means sometimes we literally go back to the drawing board with certain blocks and characters, refining them until they truly match our vision.
In the development process, we run into plenty of bugs every day – and they get fixed long before players ever see them. But every now and then, one comes along that’s just too funny not to share. 🙂
Full Dev Diary: https://blog.marekrosa.org/
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