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, a tutorial campaign, redesigned and rebuilt blocks, magnetic boots, improvements to rendering and physics, and other such neat-o improvements. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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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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 thing you want to do. When their AI escapes, it’ll fire us at planets with a spacegun as revenge for trapping it, so we better get used to the idea. Or you could land to explore, build, fight, and all that, I guess. Whatever.

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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 load of tosh.

You’ll excuse me if my meatbrain smirks as I respond “Whaaat?” to Space Engineers developers Keen Software House announcing plans to make an AI brain “which operates at the level of a human brain and can adapt and learn any new task”. Bit late for an April Fool, isn’t it?

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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 with the game way more than its mod tools allow. Keen also announced they plan to put up $100,000 (£63k) to support folks making total conversions. Crumbs!

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