[PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

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[PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

Keen Software House, the folks that brought you Space Engineers, now announce Medieval Engineers.
Medieval Engineers is a sandbox game about engineering, construction and the maintenance of architectural work and mechanical equipment using medieval technology. Players build cities, castles and fortifications; construct mechanical devices and engines; and perform landscaping and underground mining.

Medieval Engineers utilizes a realistic volumetric-based physics engine with a focus on structural integrity: all game objects can be assembled, disassembled, damaged or destroyed, and the object’s mass and structure influences its integrity. The game comes with creative mode and an early prototype of survival mode.

Medieval Engineers is the second “engineering” game developed by Keen Software House. The first one was Space Engineers, which sold over 1 million copies in its first year and is still a bestseller.
Coming soon to Steam Early Access. I'll update this thread with further announcements.

And for those who want a bit more, but didn't go to their website, here's some more:
VISION

In 2002, Marek Rosa got the idea of making a physics-based sandbox game where players construct static and dynamic structures in a grid-like environment, with realistic physics and realistic volumetricity.

The inspiration for this idea came from his childhood, where he regularly played with the popular construction toys LEGO and LEGO TECHNIC.

Back then technology wasn’t ready for a full-scale approach, so the first phase of his “master plan” focused only on dynamic voxel terrain. This resulted in our first title, “Miner Wars 2081”.

The second phase started a year and a half before Medieval Engineers and materialized as our second title “Space Engineers” (Space Engineers is inspired by reality and by how things work. Think about modern-day NASA technology extrapolated 60 years into the future).

It is now time for the third phase, and we are proud to present Medieval Engineers.

Medieval Engineers is inspired by real medieval technology and the way people built architectural works and mechanical equipment using medieval technology. Medieval Engineers strives to follow the laws of physics and history and doesn't use any technologies that were not available in the 5th to 15th centuries.

Medieval Engineers concentrates on construction aspects, but can be played as an action game too. We expect players to avoid engaging in direct man-to-man combat and instead use their creativity and engineering skills to build war machines and fortifications. Medieval Engineers shouldn’t be about troops; it should be about the machinery you build.

STATE OF THE GAME

Medieval Engineers is in its alpha stage of development and will be available soon on Steam Early Access.

This means that the game is still under development and will be improved on a regular basis - through updates that add and polish features and content, optimizations and bug fixes. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and you will be notified on all updates.

Medieval Engineers will remain in development until we gather enough feedback from the community. We need to see how people play our game and what do they want us to focus on. Community feedback is expected and will direct our future decisions.

We have decided to only talk about features that are actually present in the game (either fully finished or work-in-progress). We won’t speak about planned features, our ideas, future dates, road map, etc.

More details about the decisions that led to this project and its development can be found on Marek’s blog:

Everything in the game is subject to change.

DEVELOPMENT

Medieval Engineers is the second title fully utilizing VRAGE 2.0, an in-house game engine developed by Keen Software House. VRAGE stands for “volumetric rage” and/or “voxel rage”. More info: http://blog.marekrosa.org/2015/01/medie ... rs_22.html

"Medieval Engineers" uses Havok®. ©Copyright 1999-2008 Havok.com, Inc (and its Licensors). All Rights Reserved.

See for details.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by Grifman »

Can't believe they don't mention building cathedrals. Beyond castles, nothing is more iconic.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

Grifman wrote:Can't believe they don't mention building cathedrals. Beyond castles, nothing is more iconic.
That's an excellent point. The write-up does mention that the players can build cities, so I would hope that includes cathedrals. Certainly I'll be sure to make that input if someone else doesn't.

I'm actually genuinely excited about this. Space Engineers is, even in it's alpha state, a lot of fun. If Keen puts in the same creative effort to make this game more than just a Middle Ages Minecraft (trademark pending :wink:) it's going to be a lot of fun as well.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

An interesting video, Medieval Engineers - Catapults, Gears & Winches, showing the mentioned items in-game.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by Lordnine »

So, early access Medieval Engineers OO server to replace the longstanding Minecraft servers? :)
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by Kelric »

Isn't Space Engineers the game that got dumped while an alpha build, upsetting a lot of folks?
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by Lordnine »

Kelric wrote:Isn't Space Engineers the game that got dumped while an alpha build, upsetting a lot of folks?
I think you're thinking of StarForge.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

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I think you're thinking of SpaceBase DF-9
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by Grifman »

Both of them would qualify for this dubious distinction.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

Space Engineers is an excellent game, even in Early Access. Over one million subscribers can't be wrong, unless it's a Ubisoft game of course :wink:

Another video: Medieval Engineers - Voxel Terrain Sculpting, Shape Your World
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by Nightwish »

jztemple2 wrote:An interesting video, Medieval Engineers - Catapults, Gears & Winches, showing the mentioned items in-game.
I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing, but I'm pretty sure people will spend a lot of time trying to make medieval tanks.
Probably a good thing.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

Nightwish wrote:I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing, but I'm pretty sure people will spend a lot of time trying to make medieval tanks.
Probably a good thing.
Da Vinci thought it a good thing!
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

Medieval Engineers releases in Steam Early Access on February 19th.
About This Game
Medieval Engineers is a sandbox game about engineering, construction and the maintenance of architectural works and mechanical equipment using medieval technology. Players build cities, castles and fortifications; construct mechanical devices and engines; perform landscaping and underground mining.

The game is inspired by real medieval technology and the way people built architectural works and mechanical equipment using medieval technology. Medieval Engineers strives to follow the laws of physics and history and doesn't use any technologies that were not available in the 5th to 15th centuries.

Medieval Engineers concentrates on construction aspects, but can be played as an action game too. We expect players to avoid engaging in direct man-to-man combat and instead use their creativity and engineering skills to build war machines and fortifications. Medieval Engineers shouldn’t be about troops; it should be about the machinery you build.

Medieval Engineers is the second “engineering” game developed by Keen Software House. The first one is Space Engineers, which sold over 1 million copies in its first year and is still a bestseller.

Early Access
Game modes
- Creative - unlimited resources, instant building, invulnerability, levitation
- Survival - this mode is a work-in-progress and only death/respawn, slow construction and no-levitation are implemented. To be added: resource management and inventory; material harvesting and processing; tools using

Single-player

First-person & Third-person

Voxel hand – shape the terrain and its material (right now only creative mode voxel hand is implemented)

Block types:
- Small: 0.25 meter (25 centimeters)
- Large: 2.5 meters
- Dynamic: can be used to construct carriages and machinery that is supposed to be moved around
- Static: immovable and connected to earth; if a heavy load breaks its structural integrity it cracks and unsupported parts become dynamic

Building blocks: stone walls (various shapes - from blocky to rounded), wooden walls and flooring, roofs (ceramic, thatched, hay), mechanical blocks (rotors, transmissions, transitions), power source blocks (wind and manual human labor), stored energy blocks (torsion spring), leverages, weights, swings, ropes, wooden beams of various length and shape, torches and other sources of artificial light, flags … More will be added in future!

Realistic physics – structural integrity, destructible objects (everything: from blocks to terrain), real proportions, volume, mass, storage capacity, integrity

Steam Workshop – share your creations with the Community

Modding - world files, 3D models, textures, shaders, API (scripting in-game objects in C#)

32-bit & 64-bit – 64-bit version expands the amount of objects and blocks (almost unlimited) and terrain

World management – generate new worlds, “save as” to multiple copies, auto-save every 5 minutes (can be turned on/off), edit world settings
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by Unagi »

Hooray, around my parts we have been waiting to hear a date on this.
Mostly my son.

While I do think Space Engineers is a pretty cool sandbox, and it's come a long ways from when I first grabbed it - there is sorta a soulless quality to it that makes it hard for me to jump into all that much.

I get sorta the same impression in this.

There is an element of "I worked so hard to make this really really cool thing, and then someone can just come over and blow it away with some cheap creative-mode missile."
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

I have quite a lot of time on Space Engineers but I burned out on it before a lot of the latest updates. I've never been one of those who wants to recreate the Millennium Falcon, although I did build the basics of The Death Cube :D

I'm looking forward to ME because of the idea that I can build structures that have functional purpose, although I'm not really sure that the Middle Ages is going to authentically provide that much of a model to follow. Not a whole lot of machines operating at the time. Still, building a cathedral might be interesting... building a cathedral with a retractable roof? Not authentic but probably a lot of fun :wub:
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

New video on YouTube, Structural Integrity Preview. "Castle Destruction Porn" (although it's more than just castles).
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by Lordnine »

Very cool. I hope they add something like scaffolding to allow you to hold things in place while you're building though.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

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Another good video, Medieval Engineers, Building, Blocks inside blocks posted by Video Sage. You'll see in the video how ME differs from Space Engineers in the way you can place blocks inside of blocks, which allows much more complex construction.

Update: Video Sage mentions (very quickly!) early in the video that he was asked to NOT show the user interface as it's still pre-alpha. Folks who just jump in part way through the video might be a bit concerned over that, so just to let you know, no need to be worried.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

Lordnine wrote:Very cool. I hope they add something like scaffolding to allow you to hold things in place while you're building though.
In my post above, the video posted by Video Sage actually mentions something about how in Survival Mode you will need wooden supports for building. Since it's still pre-Alpha I wouldn't hang my hat on it, but at least it's being mentioned.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

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Another good video, this time with some actual building, showing off the compound block functions. Also lots and lots of pretty countryside.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

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This just got posted over on the Keen Software House forum... Medieval Engineers – Early access to the early access – this Wednesday at 14:00 CET
Dear Engineers!

We have good news for you!

Medieval Engineers is going to be available for purchase during a 24-hour pre-launch window. This is your chance to get the game before it officially launches on Steam! Early access to the early access!

When? Starting this Wednesday, February 11th at 14:00 CET (8 AM EST).

Where? Only at our eshop: You will be able to activate the game on Steam through a link which will be available upon purchasing.

Duration? The sale will last for 24 hours, but you can keep playing as long as you want

Why? The game seems to be stable and playable and we want to make you a bit happier by letting you play it sooner. It’s also an opportunity to test-run the game thoroughly before the official launch. We already did this with Space Engineers and it was fun for everyone.

Can I play the game even after the 24-hour window ends? Yes of course. The time limit is only for the purchase, not for the gameplay.

Important note: Medieval Engineers will come with 25% two-week discount period for everyone who owns Space Engineers. However, during the 24-hour pre-launch window the discount will apply only for those who purchased Space Engineers through our eshop (we would love to be more helpful here, but unfortunately our eshop has no information about your Steam purchases).

Price: Medieval Engineers will come in two packages:

$19.99 for the basic game

$24.99 for the Deluxe edition (includes the official sound track)

And of course, there is going to be a bundle for “Space Engineers + Medieval Engineers” and a Four-pack.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

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You’re not excited about this one at all are you? :lol:
But don’t worry, unless the initial steam impressions are awful, I will be there day one as well.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

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I will be interested in hearing feedback after the 'soft' early access release tomorrow. It will probably be a day 1 Steam release acquisition in my household because I need a 4-pack (for my kids) and a 25% discount for owning Space Engineers becomes a bigger number at that point. Looking forward to the AI that will be incorporated (and subsequently modded) into both Space Engineer's and this one. Tinkering/building only goes so far for me until I am bored and want a purpose (like 7 days to die).
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

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Lordnine wrote:You’re not excited about this one at all are you? :lol:
I figure that as an OO member I should occasionally stand up as a "champion" to a lesser known game, to keep people apprised of it's arrival and other information. That doesn't mean I'd misrepresent it. I'll be getting the game tomorrow and if it's got problems I'll be right here to let folks know. And I'll be available to answer questions and test things out.

But yes, I am excited about the game :wub:
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by Lordnine »

I’m just amused is all. When I’ve tried to get people excited about games in the past I get resounding silence and an abandoned thread. :P

So is the only way to get the early access thing to purchase through their website? I was hoping to just order on steam.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

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Lordnine wrote:So is the only way to get the early access thing to purchase through their website? I was hoping to just order on steam.
It will be available on Steam on the 19th. Also, if you got Space Engineers through Steam, you can get a 25% discount.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by Sepiche »

jztemple2 wrote:
Lordnine wrote:So is the only way to get the early access thing to purchase through their website? I was hoping to just order on steam.
It will be available on Steam on the 19th. Also, if you got Space Engineers through Steam, you can get a 25% discount.
I was thinking about picking up the game on their site, but in that case they only offer the 25% discount if you ordered Space Engineers through them as well, so looks like I'll be waiting.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by Lordnine »

jztemple2 wrote:
Lordnine wrote:So is the only way to get the early access thing to purchase through their website? I was hoping to just order on steam.
It will be available on Steam on the 19th. Also, if you got Space Engineers through Steam, you can get a 25% discount.
I meant today's early access thing. I never purchased Space Engineers, only played during the free event, so the discount doesn't apply to me.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

And I've purchased and installed Medieval Engineers! I bought it through the Keen Software House store, since it won't be on Steam till Feb 19th.

Image

I'm going to post some videos and screen shots from the game, first one is a video of the various option menus and other screens you can go to before actually stating off in the world.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

Alright, five hours played and I'm enjoying myself. I did actually spend a lot of time this afternoon figuring out the intricacies of dynamic mode versus non-dynamic mode, compound building versus non-compound and how to make working wagons and winches. Then I got around to doing some building. I've uploaded a couple of videos showing my completed structures:

A tour of my first house.

A tour of my first stone tower.

The developers have released four hot patches during the day to address some issues:
Update 01.001.006
Fixes
- fixed help screen and G screen unavailable after pressing F1
- fixed startup issues on 64-bit windows due to missing redists

Update 01.001.007
Fixes
- possible fix for XML serializer startup crash
- unsupported GPUs are correctly detected
- compiled shaders are now stored in userdata (instead of program files)

Update 01.001.008
- GPU info stored in the logs for us

Update 01.001.009
- fixed cannot launch the game because of serialization issue
I am disappointed that some of the items that we saw in the Pre-Alpha videos, like flags, torches, barrels and crates didn't make the Early Access release. I'm assuming that they will be coming, they just weren't ready for prime time. A post from the chief developer Marek Rosa noted that he plans on continuing the Thursday release of updates for Space Engineers while Medieval Engineers will have their releases on Tuesdays. As noted before, he has two separate teams working the two games, but he does admits that there might be some Tuesdays or Thursdays where they don't release an update. I'm fine with that based upon what I've seen them doing on Space Engineers.

I've already uploaded several items to the Steam Workshop, if you want you can search their for my workshop (jztemple) and see them.

I'll be doing another hour or two on the game tonight, so if you have any questions post them and I might get to them before bedtime.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by Lordnine »

I picked this up as well but I didn’t get much time to play around with it yet. I feel like it has a higher learning curve than I was expecting. Too early to judge long term appeal but it seems pretty neat so far.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

I was interested in how some folks were making carts and found out that other folks were wondering as well. I figured out a method, not really elegant but it works, and I made a video showing the process. The video is currently being uploaded and should be online at 0145 EST, which is 0645 GMT.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

Another update!

Update 02.002.003.
Fixes
- tweaked destruction damage and structural integrity
- possible fix for black/purple/frozen/lagging main menu screen
- improved building of small blocks
- added more sounds into ModdingSDK
- fixed some crashes in destruction
- fixed crash in structural integrity
- fixed crash in mwm builder
- fixed mods not working
- fixed rope drum
- fixed roof destruction
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

So, day two of my playing of Medieval Engineers. I got in a little time this morning and then some more this evening. I managed to make a dynamic gate, but it wasn't too robust. I'll be waiting for some more updates before I tackle any more dynamic objects:
Image

The update this morning altered the Structural Integrity process, resulting in...
Image

That was a simple one story house but for some reason it just explodes when I load the world with SI enabled now. So I've turned offt Structural Integrity in the world options. Honestly it's really not very useful unless you're a masochist. Having SI enabled means you can be well into building something awesome and it will suddenly all come crashing down. And if you have autosave enabled and it happens to fire right then, well, you've lost your creation. So I'm leaving it off.

I spent time and built a fancy gate entrance with paired towers. As I've said before, I'm not into creativity, I'm focusing on functional. So the towers have internal stairs and a back passageway that allows access without undue exposure up on the walls. Yeah, I'm that kind of guy :D . What do you expect from a retired engineer?
Image

I have been uploading my creations to the Steam Workshop. Pretty soon the ME Workshop s going to be like the Space Engineers one, with thousands of mostly crappy designs. Ah well, democracy in action :doh:
Image

My current project is this, Astor Castle:
Image

I'm going to focus on making realistic castles for the time being, sort of playing with Legos, but requiring much more expensive hardware :shock: . It's actually rather fun and thankfully I've only had a couple of crashes and that was before the five fixes that have been released.

By the way, Astor Castle will be followed by Castle Carnegie and later on Fortress Fisk and Rockefeller Keep. Yup, I'm doing all the Robber Barons 8-)
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

Another interesting video: Medieval Engineers: How to use Ropes, Catch Blocks, Rope Springs & Wheels - The Basics

The game hits Steam tomorrow, however, I can't recommend picking it up yet for a couple of reasons. One, a lot of the content seen in the pre-Alpha videos is not in the current release. Since it is in Alpha, it might be understandable that they pulled back some of the content, but it does make the game a bit less appealing at this point in time.

Second, there is a really irritating bug that hasn't been fixed yet. Periodically, the game world goes black, like it's night in the game. The interface overlays are still visible, but nothing else. After about twenty seconds it starts to get light, like the dawn coming up. In another ten seconds it's back to normal. A number of people have reported it. And it doesn't seem to occur at any specific time or regularity. I've gone a couple of hours without seeing it, then I've had it hit three times in ten minutes. It certainly isn't a game breaker, but it's annoying.

There is content in the game right now for folks, but unless you have a big urge to get it on day one, I'd recommended waiting for a patch and some more content updates.
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Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

And of course after I post the above, they release a "just before going live on Steam" update, 02.004. I'm still checking it out.
New Blocks:
- King Statue
- Bonfire
- Fire Bucket
- Torch Stand
- Flag 10x10
- Stone Pillar Square
- Stone Pillar Round
- Wooden Barrel
- Wooden Chest
- Wooden Bed
- Wooden Table
- Wooden Chair
- Projectile Thrower with 10x mass

Features
- structural integrity view ('N' button)
- fractured pieces are now disappearing transparently
- improved building/pasting of small blocks
- updated help screen
- improved copy+paste
- changed default controls (freelook + zooming in 3rd person collided with compound blocks control scheme)
- small blocks now correctly fall down

Fixes
- fixed performance issues when structural integrity was turned ON
- fixed crashes and memory leaks in destruction
- fixed various other crashes
- fixed roof models and it's destruction geometry
- fixed blocks losing physics
- fixed collision models, walking through doorways
- fixed various rope crashes
- fixed large dynamic block without collision
- fixed missing textures
- fixed plane building
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
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jztemple2
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Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2009 7:52 am
Location: Brevard County, Florida, USA

Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by jztemple2 »

Example of Structural Integrity view on:

Image
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
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Tampa_Gamer
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Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2005 8:08 am

Re: [PC] Medieval Engineers (from the Space Engineers folks)

Post by Tampa_Gamer »

Bummer about not including the multi-player element already built into space engineers. Figured my kids and I could tinker around with it even if it was early, early alpha.
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