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[Space Engineers] Sandboxy space construction, out now on Steam Early Access!
VedicIntent
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Space Engineers was announced on September 9th by the developers, and it looks like a possible life-suck of immense proportion. From their announcement:
http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/
It seems based off their recent title Miner Wars 2081, which is why the assets and in-game content look so polished for a pre-Alpha title. Space Engineers looks like it takes that earlier space shooter foundation and makes a ship/base-builder sandbox out of it.
The best way to understand is their announcement trailer. Fom what I understand, this is working code that will be expanded upon once they get some community feedback. It has serious potential, looking at the footage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3b9e_KWO-I
An in-depth blog post about the project, from the lead dev, Marek Rosa:
http://blog.marekrosa.org/2013/09/space-engineers-announced-development.html
It's out! $14.99 on Steam Early Access! Hooray!
http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/
Keen Software wrote:Space Engineers is a sandbox game about engineering, construction and maintenance of space works. Players build space ships and space stations of various sizes and utilization (civil and military), pilot ships and perform asteroid mining.
Space Engineers utilizes a realistic volumetric-based physics engine: all objects can be assembled, disassembled, damaged and destroyed.
Space Engineers is inspired by reality and by how things work. Think about modern-day NASA technology extrapolated 60 years into the future. Space Engineers strives to follow the laws of physics and doesn't use technologies that wouldn't be feasible in the near future.
It seems based off their recent title Miner Wars 2081, which is why the assets and in-game content look so polished for a pre-Alpha title. Space Engineers looks like it takes that earlier space shooter foundation and makes a ship/base-builder sandbox out of it.
The best way to understand is their announcement trailer. Fom what I understand, this is working code that will be expanded upon once they get some community feedback. It has serious potential, looking at the footage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3b9e_KWO-IAn in-depth blog post about the project, from the lead dev, Marek Rosa:
http://blog.marekrosa.org/2013/09/space-engineers-announced-development.html
It's out! $14.99 on Steam Early Access! Hooray!
VedicIntent on
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Huge potential, and they practically already have my money for making a sandboxy builder that doesn't crib off Minecraft directly.
This looks like a total life destroyer.
Origin: Broncbuster
No idea why I got that? Maybe I voted for it on greenlight or something?
I was interested in the game before I found that out and this was just icing on the cake.
Do you own Miner Wars? They gave a free coupon to everyone with it, it seems.
Wishlisted this bad boy, since my game budget is nil until the wife finds a job. That's dirt cheap, though, does anyone know if they plan to hike it as development continues? I think Kerbal Space Program plans to do that, and I think it's a smart thing to do while the game is in "hyper-malleable proof of concept mode."
Which inevitably led to me buying this and playing around with it.
As they add more stuff this is gonna kill me, guys.
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It really is a missing a bunch right now but still is amusing. It's all creative, you can't die, you can build large ships, small ships and space stations. There are some cool things you can do with the Gravity fields you attach to the ships. The steam workshop has a "Gravity Ball" where you just get tossed around in it.
It needs some optimization but it playable. Tools/Weapons are disabled, so instant build times, unlimited resources to use and no mining from asteroids yet. So you can build these great models and crash them into other ships or Asteroids.
Thusfar, I built a small ship and piled it into the starter worlds large ships. Then took that large ship and piled it into another large ship. I haven't tried building a station yet.
Its a cool builder so far, it's just lacking features at the moment.
EDIT: just checked the patch notes. they added magnetic landing pads so you can dock ships on ships, which is cool. You would just get your small shipped wrecked inside of your big ship previously.
Origin: Broncbuster
A lot of player energy is centered around combat right now, since the welder/grinder don't work, and nobody but the host can mine asteroids (so no "harvest and build" functionality). It's all "Creative Mode" ala Minecraft, so naturally that means building ships and blowing them up.
Capsaicin came up with an incredible rotating turret (since the ones in game aren't functional); with maybe 8-10 players, we could probably run some proper small fleet battles. Trask is also a monster capital ship builder; everything I make looks like it came from a space episode of Ducktales.
Any damage done to asteroids or ships will completely bog down the host machine and the people connected, will get like 0 FPS for a while (depending on how big the damage is).
I'm also working on perfecting Inertia Torpedos and a delivery device (and maybe a grav cannon). @Vedic they penetrate much better when you've got a lot more speed behind them (and when hitting light armored and flat areas).
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Thats one of my turrets and in the background is a cargo ship @Trask built for target practice.
That said, the devs have also communicated much that says they have learned a lot. There is a pretty good chance they won't repeat the same mistakes. But it's definitely a buyer beware kind of situation based on their track record. I'm definitely not saying don't buy Miner Wars or Space Engineers. Just do a little extra reading and looking around before you make up your mind to spend the money.
They seem very conservative in their community relations, almost gun shy, which makes a lot of sense with what you're saying.
I think if they can flesh out the "survival" bits, which is just mining -> refining -> crafting components -> building/repairing ship blocks, create more varied assets, plus optimizations to multiplayer/physics, it'll be worth the money. Assuming they allow modding freely, the community could do some neat stuff with a good platform.
There is multiplayer survival? That might be fun!
(I haven't touched this game in over a month)
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if they make noise this is going to be so outrageous!!!
To be fair, the setting that creates the flaming ones is labeled "unrealistic." And...maybe they just happened to contain a naturally-occurring hypergolic material and catalyst in one inconvenient package. I agree they should be called meteoroids, though - that's unconscionable.
@VedicIntent where art thou?!
Not personally, though there are some different presets now (these are from memory and probably wrong):
Lone space (you start with nothing)
Shipwreck 1 (you start with a busted ship)
Shipwreck 2 (you start with a different busted ship)
Platform (you start on a platform)
Escape Pod (you start alone with a fully functioning ship w/ limited fuel and no supplies)
The world itself can be set to 4, 7, or 10 mine-able asteroids. You can set the inventory size, assembler speed, and refiner speeds to 1x, 3x, and 10x. You can also set the occurrence of random meteor showers. Other settings are number of players, objects visible, etc...
I tried out the new update, and liked the changes a lot, but I was in Trask's battlecruiser traffic simulator and that wasn't so great for the ol' FPS. I'll have to join you in a Survival game, where we don't have as much going on.
Recently they turned off AA and my FPS has skyrocketed.
I bought it this weekend. I know the devs have a bit of a checkered past, but I'm happy with the purchase. It's a lot like minecraft was in the very early days, a bit barren, but a lot of fun if you just want to putz around building contraptions in a relaxed environment. Survival is interesting, though I think it needs some balancing. Incorporating the steam workshop was a brilliant move. My one complaint is they need to add some sort of mini-gravity device or automatic collector for mining, as it's annoying having to deal with rocks flying off into expanse or bouncing willy nilly around caverns.