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Space Engineers overhauls multiplayer, improves performance, adds women
Popular sci-fi construction sandbox Space Engineers has always been fun to play solo, but multiplayer with more than a handful of players was a frequently miserable, laggy experience until today. Developers Keen Software reckon that with today's patch - update 1.187 - they've finally cracked it. They've even snuck in a few new features, such as multiplayer safe-zones (where you can't wantonly break stuff or…
The best thing about video games, experts agree, is particle effects that spray, ping, spang, billow, and zbloom all over the place. Crafty space sandbox Space Engineers has recognised this in its latest big early access update, adding a new particle system which showers sparks, glimmers, and clouds all over the place. As it right and good. The update also spruces up the game's looks…
Space Engineers [official site] is still in early access but has now officially reached beta status. I believe means Keen's software rocket is still risky enough that they wouldn't send humans up but if a few monkeys explode in the name of progress, so be it. Perhaps one such monkey is you. The update blasting the space craft-o-build-a-sandbox into beta has brought new multiplayer netcode,…
While Space Engineers receives a fairly steady flow of smaller updates, developers Keen Software House have been saving up for a big'un with their other early access sandbox game, the low-tech follow-up Medieval Engineers [official site]. This week has brought an update big enough that Keen call it a "re-launch", boshing in everything from a huge new world to land claims and female player models.
I haven't played anything like enough of sandbox building/exploration game Space Engineers [official site], but the recent addition of explorable planets looks like a solid gold reason to. They arrived back in November, but this new video makes a strong case for why they demand more attention.
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Last month, Keen Software House added planets and moons to their Early Access intergalactic sandbox adventure Space Engineers [official site] as "a result of some early access player feedback". In what Keen's founder Marek Rosa labels a "game-changing feature", players can now manipulate the landscape as they see fit - leaving behind a persistent footprint in their wake. In a new developer diary, Rosa explains…
As well as trying to trap a brain inside a computer, Keen Software House want to squeeze the whole dang universe into one too. Their latest Early Access update to Space Engineers [official site] last night added diddy 'planets' and moons to its sandbox space, so you can now leap off your spaceship and plummet all the way down onto a planetoid, if that's a…
Of all the fanciful claims made of video game technology, my favourite has always been neural nets and artificial brains. Imagine if video game men were alive! Your soldiers would learn from battle! They'd write letters to their virtual families - which you can read! Gasp as the life leaves their little digital eyes, and wonder what they believe comes next! Oh, it's always a…
145,000 lines of code got the Apollo Mission to the Moon, or so The Internet tells me. It takes a fair few more than that to crash a spaceshark into Space Station Homer's crotch. Don't believe me? Fine, go count the lines yourself. Space Engineers [official site] developers Keen Software House are giving people access to their sandbox space sim's source code, letting folks tinker…
It was only when Marsh prematurely evaluated all over Medieval Engineers [official site] that I realised its initial Steam Early Access launch lacked multiplayer. I'm inattentive, me. But developers Keen Software House (them lot also behind Space Engineers) had shown multiplayer in its trailers and screenshots and I'd blithely assumed... that doesn't matter now. Multiplayer arrived in the castle-building/smashing sandbox yesterday for both its creative…
Feature: Castle Doctorin'
Each week Marsh Davies punches a hole through the vertiginous walls of Early Access and comes back with any stories he can find and/or watches with grotesque, wet-lipped arousal as the entire structure disassembles in a shower of hot, hot physics. This week, he makes, then mounts, the battlements in Medieval Engineers, a castle construction sandbox. And then he unmakes them, too. Once you’ve built…
A touch over a month after announcing Medieval Engineers [official site], Keen Software have now launched the low-tech counterpart to Space Engineers. Well, they've launched it into Early Access. I can't imagine a sandbox crafty build 'em up doing it any other way, though. Actually. How would Minecraftbuts turn out if they did launch without that lengthy phase of large-scale testing and feedback? Perhaps closer…
While Space Engineers is still in Early Access, developers Keen Software House are looking for more engineering opportunities. Today they announced Medieval Engineers. Given that I used to cheekily describe Space Engineers as "a Minecraftbut in space," I don't know where this leaves me. Medieval engineers in their leather aprons will dig and landscape, of course, but it'll also have mechanical gadgets, and physics-based building…
Even as a casual observer of the genre, I get excited when sandbox block 'em ups add programmable bits. Some of Minecraft's redstone devices are staggering in their scale and mechanical complexity, and I suspect we'll see some awfully clever things in Space Engineers. An update last week added programmable blocks which are properly programmable, running C# code, which I imagine will power all sorts…
Space Engineers. I haven't been back since I accidentally broke Craig's space shark and sent a gigantic Han Solo hurtling into the distant reaches of space but there are now exploration-based plans afoot. The plans talk a lot about ships and stations in the game. Marek Rosa of developers Keen Software House said in a blog post earlier in December, "The exploration feature will add…
Feature: Gravity Boned
Each Monday, Chris Livingston visits an early access game and reports back with stories about whatever he finds inside. This week, space-based gathering, crafting, and dying in Space Engineers' new survival mode. There's a large red and white spaceship, its front end crumpled after what must have been a spectacular nosedive. There's a tiny yellow space engineer inspecting the wreck, armed with only a handful…
I have seen things in Space Engineers, readers. Horrible, crotch-related things. I got so wrapped up in seeing those things that I didn't actually notice if there was any sort of game in there. Now I'm fine with pure building and messing about being considered gaming, but if you absolutely insist on there being some drama then the newly released Survival mode might be for…
Feature: Pip Pip, Hooray!
I wanted to know what state Space Engineers was in, because it's been a few months since I last tried it out and it was already pretty impressive back then. How much could a game about building space ships and flying them change in a few months? Well, on my first playthrough I was slinging ships across the void, watching as they met and crumpled…
Feature: Space Cubed
There's not a lot to do in Space Engineers, but this is the first Early Access game I've played in a while that works, and, well, isn't completely broken. In fact, it's given me a bit of hope: the content is light, and it has crashed a few times, but it doesn't feel like a game being held together by good intentions and hope. It's…
Do you want to be an engineer? I can understand if you don't really feel like it's your cup of tea - especially if you'd rather be a professional tea brewer. But what about a space engineer? Well of course you're saying yes now. Space makes everything better, except breathing. Happily, Space Engineers would rather suck the life from your lungs via the good old-fashioned method: time.…
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