Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

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jztemple2
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Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by jztemple2 »

I picked this up since it was on Steam sale till Monday and I'm a sucker for space games. To say it's Minecraft in space is an oversimplification. There is a mining aspect to it, but you're mining asteroids, which is different. And the biggest appeal for me is that you get to build and pilot space ships. It's still very much an alpha situation, but I think there's enough content now for several hours of play.

The building of ships is a lot of fun since they are functional; they move through space and you can mine with them. They are constructed with a number of parts which as long as you have the minimums met (power, thrusters, gyroscopes) you can add on other parts to make it faster or at least more zoomy.

Here's my latest little ship, a four driller miner:
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Paingod »

I've got this one on my Wishlist (or, in the case of Early Release games, my "Wait and See" list) and have been curious about it.

I'm keeping my ears open to see how it turns out, but probably won't be an early adopter unless I hear something amazing about it.
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by jztemple2 »

Also turns out there are other things you can do in the game (I keep finding these things out as I play around with it). You can attack robot ships with guns and missiles. And you can board and capture them, which is really cool although it takes some practice. Then you fly them back to your base and disassemble them for parts. Beats having to mine for minerals, and it's more fun too :D
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Pyperkub »

Looked like it would be fun, but the backlog is too large... even just the active backlog.
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Tampa_Gamer »

Interesting, I am always looking for Minecraft replacements to play LAN games with my kids. From the description it appears it does support private LAN play, can anyone confirm this? Also, does the current alpha provide for persistent saves - in other words if we spend a few hours building a base/mining/ships, can we come back to it a week later or do you have to start over with a new 'world'?
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Unagi »

Tampa_Gamer wrote:Interesting, I am always looking for Minecraft replacements to play LAN games with my kids.
From the description it appears it does support private LAN play, can anyone confirm this?
Yeah, I've been playing this with my 6 year old for the last couple months, and they are doing pretty good with their updates... It's all pretty early, so there isn't as much fleshed out as Minecraft at all... (They *just* added their survival mode and made it so you can actually mine and create things...) That being said - just the 'sandbox' nature of it, we've had a good deal of fun just making ships and flying them around, shooting eachother up, etc.
Tampa_Gamer wrote: Also, does the current alpha provide for persistent saves - in other words if we spend a few hours building a base/mining/ships, can we come back to it a week later or do you have to start over with a new 'world'?
Your PC will own the 'world', and then your kid will join that world as a LAN game.

(I'm an update behind, so this may be improved) - Your Save will be the saves that you go back and find as your world, but it teases your guest with the ability to 'save' the world too, but we weren't able to have him 'clone' our multiplayer world so that he could play in it 'without me hosting'... but it looked like that should have also worked.

But- Yes, it works over LAN and you can save your world to keep building on it.

Clearly - the normal 'this game is in alpha' warning still applies.. (an update could result in you needing to re-start your world...)
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Tampa_Gamer »

Thanks Unagi, very helpful information. Now I just need to watch for the next sale!
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by wonderpug »

Tampa_Gamer wrote:Thanks Unagi, very helpful information. Now I just need to watch for the next sale!
It's $13.39 (33% off) for the next 14 hours as part of the Steam sales.
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Stefan Stirzaker »

I'm so tempted on this one. But I keep wondering if it'll be %50 later on in sale!
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Tampa_Gamer »

Thanks wonderpug, we bit. 4-pack for $10/each worked out great. Now I just need to find the time to play ;)
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by jztemple2 »

Update 1.042 has been released, featuring Workshop modding integration, character animations, gyro override, catwalks and control panel block.
Players can download mods (custom blocks, skyboxes, custom skins) right from Steam Workshop. Mods are per-world; that means that each world can have different mods active. And that’s not all –every client automatically downloads every workshop mod used by server while connecting. As a bonus; we have also added character animations playable from toolbar, small control panel access block, gyroscope override and more catwalk blocks – enjoy!
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by jztemple2 »

My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Lordnine »

We played around with this for about an hour last night. It’s pretty good. Controls definitely take some getting used to but the foundation is very solid and if they continue to put out content and polish it, I could easily see this being the NEW Minecraft.
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Sepiche »

I was pretty hesitant about getting this a while back because of Keen's previous attempt at a game: Miner Wars, but while I haven't played the latest version of this, the one I tried a few months ago seemed well thought out and much more professional looking than Miner Wars in every way.

I think the main thing keeping me from playing it currently (unless this was added at some point) is a lack of anything to do with your cool spaceships (fight pirates, explore, etc), but once they add something like that I'm looking forward to diving back in.
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Tampa_Gamer »

Agreed. My son and I had fun with it at first (legos in space he kept calling it), but once you build something there is really nothing else to do with it at the moment. 'Survival Mode' really need some love.
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by jztemple2 »

Been a while since anyone posted here, but I figured this was too good to ignore. The developer's followup to Space Engineers will be... Medieval Engineers.

Image

You know Space Engineers, the little sandbox game that could (sell one million copies in early access)? Turns out it’s the first entry in the Engineers franchise. The next is Medieval Engineers - about the construction (and deconstruction) of period cities, castles and fortifications.

The chief business of Medieval Engineers - if there is such a thing as business under the feudal system - will be in building and maintaining architectural works and mechanical equipment. Think fortresses and trebuchets; underground tunnels and drawbridges.

Keen Software House are, true to their name, eager to reflect the real physics of medieval Earth just as they did that of space. Their volumetric-based engine is all about structural integrity - meaning you’ll need to take into account an object’s mass and structure in both assembly and disassembly.

Medieval Engineers will launch soon on Steam Early Access, with a creative mode and prototype survival mode. There’s alpha footage of the former below:

YouTube link

Observe: landscaping tools that resemble those in Fortnite and Landmark, Engineers’ fellow Minecraft devotees in AAA. And a continuation of Space Engineers’ commitment to ensuring that player masterpieces can be taken apart as entertainingly as they are built.

Will you buy this one? Or perhaps more pertinently, when will you buy this one?
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Tampa_Gamer »

I think they are getting ahead of themselves. They should finish Space Engineers first. Its still fairly buggy and they have a ways to go.
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Lordnine »

If they offer support for a decent number of concurrent players and allow for the creation of unique machines and not just prefab stuff, than I am sold.
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by coopasonic »

Keen Software House are, true to their name, eager to reflect the real physics of medieval Earth just as they did that of space.
So how exactly do the physics of medieval earth differ from those of modern earth?
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by wonderpug »

coopasonic wrote:
Keen Software House are, true to their name, eager to reflect the real physics of medieval Earth just as they did that of space.
So how exactly do the physics of medieval earth differ from those of modern earth?
They hadn't yet invented inertia, the magnetic field, the laws of thermodynamics, the laws of motion, or even the law of gravity, so all sorts of nutty things were going on back then. I don't even know how they were able to walk down the street successfully without all those things invented.
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Anonymous Bosch »

coopasonic wrote:
Keen Software House are, true to their name, eager to reflect the real physics of medieval Earth just as they did that of space.
So how exactly do the physics of medieval earth differ from those of modern earth?
Because medieval Earth smelled many times worse than a taxicab floor, there's an additional stench dimension to contend with.
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Pyperkub »

wonderpug wrote:
coopasonic wrote:
Keen Software House are, true to their name, eager to reflect the real physics of medieval Earth just as they did that of space.
So how exactly do the physics of medieval earth differ from those of modern earth?
They hadn't yet invented inertia, the magnetic field, the laws of thermodynamics, the laws of motion, or even the law of gravity, so all sorts of nutty things were going on back then. I don't even know how they were able to walk down the street successfully without all those things invented.
The sun still revolved around the earth, too.
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by jztemple2 »

This email from Marek Rosa addresses a question that has been asked here:
Why Medieval Engineers when Space Engineers is still not finished?

We were expecting that many people would ask “why are they developing a new game when Space Engineers is still in development and not finished”?

First let me assure you that the development of Medieval Engineers hasn't had a negative impact on the development rate of Space Engineers - you can see this from the frequency of our weekly updates – culminating in major updates at the end of 2014: super-large worlds, procedural asteroids, exploration, in-game programming, modding SDK and API.

We didn't want to keep creating space games only. Instead we wanted to have a game where you get to experience life and nature.

By creating a second engineering game, we are leveraging our existing technology and experience.

The thought that we should postpone the development of Medieval Engineers for years was a no-go. We had to find a better solution.

We started to hire new people so that we would have the resources to develop both games in parallel without sacrificing any of them. The size of our team is nearing 40 people and we are still growing. There are separate teams for Space Engineers, Medieval Engineers and our secret AI project.

Very early we realized that even Space Engineers could actually benefit from the development of Medieval Engineers. A medieval setting has different requirements for volumetric environments and it forces us to look at the engineering genre from a different angle. To be more specific, these are the things that Space Engineers earned (or may receive in the future) thanks to Medieval Engineers:

Compound blocks – multiple blocks being positioned into one grid cell; this will allow better ship designs
Mechanical blocks
Auto-generated details for some blocks (e.g. roof endings in Medieval Engineers, armor edges in Space Engineers)
Voxel hand – a tool for modifying terrains (asteroids); you can alter shape and material
Structural integrity
Natural landscape
Procedural terrain generator (this is why we were able to easily add procedural asteroids to Space Engineers)
DirectX 11 (we decided to add PBR - Physically Based Rendering)


On the other hand, Medieval Engineers inherited (or will get) these features:

Multi-player
Physics, rendering and all 'core engine' stuff
Steam Workshop
Modding SDK and API


Developing two early access games with the same theme (Engineering) at the same time will be beneficial for both of them. As happened with Space Engineers, many of the features that were released later on were inspired and suggested by our players. Now we are expecting that player’s suggestions for one game might give us new ideas for other games – ideas that we might have missed due to the limitations of the environment of each title. Now everyone will have more options and possibilities!

In a certain way, the development of the prototype of Medieval Engineers was more challenging than the development of Space Engineers. In Space Engineers we could invent new types of blocks. In Medieval Engineers we couldn't invent something that wasn't present in the Middle Ages or something that one person in single-player mode wouldn't be able to operate. On the other hand, the possibilities of survival/realistic mode in Medieval Engineers are fantastic - just imagine starting the game with Stone Age technology and slowly building your way up to the Iron Age.
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by jztemple2 »

Space Engineers is on sale, 40% off for the next few days. It's also free to play for the next two and three-quarter days.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Frost »

Is anyone still playing this? I'm in a group with someone who's running this on a server and it's such a good game. I never thought I'd be into games like this but it's just grabbed me. It's like Legos....in space :)
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by gbasden »

I'm interested in it, but I've never pulled the trigger. Is it still in development, or has it released? What would you say the state of the game is?
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Frost »

gbasden wrote:I'm interested in it, but I've never pulled the trigger. Is it still in development, or has it released? What would you say the state of the game is?
It's still early access but it doesn't feel early access to me. It's just not optimized, IMO. Steam has it for $24, but GetGames has it for about $16 after coupon, which I used to purchase two copies from for friends. There's a little bit of a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it's really addictive. They continually update it weekly it seems, and have recently added things like NPC pirates I think, although the server I play on hasn't utilized it. Also has a very active mod community that utilizes the Steam Workshop. The game just really caught me off guard, as I didn't expect to like it so much.

http://www.getgamesgo.com/product/space-engineers
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by dbt1949 »

On sale for half price now on Steam.
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Re: Space Engineers (Steam Early Access)

Post by Blackhawk »

This is on sale on Steam. Has anyone tried it recently? All of the reviews/overviews I'm seeing are three or four years old, while it was still very early in development. How did it shape up?

Does the game actually have a goal (for example, both Minecraft and Subnautica have goals), or is it just a building simulator?
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