Windows Space Engineers (Steam)- Anyone Playing?

This is in pre-release at $20 on Steam. Anyone playing? If so a critique would be appreciated. Do you think it has longevity? Honestly my impression is that you are not going to build the most wonderful space ship, with a plush living quarters. Could I be wrong?

I forgot to ask, is there local coop with 2 computers? At one point it had not been implemented. Wondering if it is there now? Thanks!

Huntn said:

I forgot to ask, is there local coop with 2 computers? At one point it had not been implemented. Wondering if it is there now? Thanks!

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I have purchased this game (it's in beta on Steam $19) and it does have coop. Any friend you have on Steam can be invited. I've cooped on my local home network and it works well.

The attraction for me is building fancy space ships in Creative Mode. I don't see myself taking the time to mine asteroids for the material before manufacturing. I just don't have the patience. Speaking of fancy ships?

Check out Star Wars ships at PC Gamer.

Oh come on! Someone must be playing this. Minecraft in space. Maybe I can entice you!

Game is still in beta. More work to be done. Curved surfaces are blocky. There is virtually no furniture for the plush Captain's quarters I've allocated. On a recent update, they created pistons! Before that doors, large hanger style doors had to be "Rube Goldberg" rigged with rotors and arms. After I finish this, don't ask me what I'm going to do with it. Building in creative mode. It's addictive.

Mackilroy said:

I have Space Engineers. It's quite fun, especially when you smash your ship into something else and have to repair it…

Also, you should change your skybox.

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I had no idea! Thanks for the suggestion. Does the skybox change anything else other than the backdrop such as the numbers of asteroids?

Edit: I'll answer my own question: no.

After spending many hours on this creation, smashing into things is what I'd prefer to avoid and I wonder how a large ship can tool around and not collide with the bunches of asteroids?

Edit: There are not as many asteroids as I once thought.

Holy Smokes, thanks Mackilroy!

New skybox is using the Mars Skybox. Browse the skyboxes here. The process is fairly simple to update the default, butt-ugly backdrop.


BEFORE


AFTER


BEFORE


AFTER

Mackilroy said:

Looks pretty good! Below is the skybox I use.

You're right, but I enjoy tinkering and taking things apart, then putting them back together.

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I considered that skybox and was afraid it would be too busy, but it is gorgeous! Does it adversely effect your performance? I noticed on some of the skybox comments, people specifically said "this one does not cause performance issues". From that I assume some do?

Blast Door Building Issue: I'm having an issue with building blast doors in combination with pistons. I've noticed that when I build blast doors, that the blocks when pistons are involved have issues with not being fully connected to each other in both axis of the door, horizontal and vertical. In other words I can see that as the door moves, not all of the blocks are connected to each other, small cracks form along some seams. Is this because I'm trying to connect some of these blocks to both a piston and to another block?

For the example door it's large with 5 pistons. I connect a blast door block to a piston, then build the door sideways to the next piston and connect the block adjacent to the piston to the piston and not to the line of blocks I'm building. I always assumed in a situation like this the block over a piston would connect to both the piston and to the row of blocks that makes up the door. Is this not true?

Is this a bug? Is there a way to avoid this issue?
Thanks!

(I also posted in the Steam Community Forums: http://steamcommunity.com/app/244850...9681476646216/

Regarding the blast door issue with multiple pistons here is the answer. Some improvements can be made, but this makes it workable:

http://steamcommunity.com//sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=298117839

Is there a way to control pistons sequentially, with one button click per say? I'd like one set of pistons to operate, then another without me having to manually do separate commands. Pistons can be grouped to work together, simo. This would be step 2. Thanks!

I really dislike having to pull up the "k" page to make stuff activate. When you drag a command to the hot bar, how much flexibility is there? For example, I'd like to push a button outside of the "k" page to have hanger doors open and close, currently using the "reverse" command.

I've been experimenting with gravity drives which are amazing in small ships. Have not tried it on a large ship yet. The current ship I'm working on is 600k kilos and counting, but from what I've seen on small ships it should make a difference if a large enough gravity drive is built. I'd like to do the same thing there, a toggle button to turn on a group of grav generators and artificial mass blocks.

I built a small gravity drive test ship and it is amazing!

For anyone playing...
Gravity drives push the ship in a single direction. What would be cool to configure a set of them to assist in turning the ship. As I understand it, you'd need a set for left and a set for right turns and a configuration to roll both left and right. This is where button controls would be a huge help because to be functional, you need to be able to toggle different set on and off quickly. Thought? Thanks!

I posted a similiar message over in the Steam community. If any of our SE participants have comments, would love to hear them.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/244850/discussions/0/616187839223944523/#p1[/QUOTE]

Grav drive update- I've created a test ship which includes grav drive sets for linear, roll (CW, CCW), and pitch. Controls consist of toggle buttons accessed from the flight seat. They show you their status on or off. They work well and you can engage more than one axis simotaneously.

The ultimate would be translating this to a joystick so that the farther a stick is deflected, more grav gens would kick in for whatever the axis the stick is being deflected and in the neutral position they would be off. The issue is that the WSAD keys controls thruster nozzles so I don't see how the grav drives could also be responsive based on stick deflection.

NancyDukes said:

Not yet!

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Check it out, although I don't think there is a demo. :-/

THIS WEEKEND- Space Engineers 40% Off. $11.99 You have no excuse now.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/244850/

Several updates ago, guns would fire but now they don't, at least not correctly.
I'm in creative mode, Weapons enabled, Easy Start- using default fighter ship.

I've dragged my gattlling gun group to the Flight Seat, hot bar, #1 button. Both gatling guns will fire with the Left Mouse Button after the group is toggled to "on".

Then I dragged the rocket group to #2 button and both of them after toggled on, would fire, with the left mouse button, but when I toggle them off and toggle the gatling guns back on, the gatling guns no longer function. Its as if once the second group is added to the hotbar, they no longer toggle on and off properly.. I'm being careful that only one group is on at a time.

Was'nt the LMB supposed to do guns and the RMB rockets at one point, or something like that? Any advice appreciated. Thanks.

Steam post here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/244850/discussions/6/619568192947767356/

Ok, well, I've gotten distracted from this game, ignoring it since before Christmas and thought I'd ask, have they added any more functionality with curved surfaces? I got a bit frustrated trying to construct an exterior surface with compound curves using the blocks they had at the time. It looked pretty bumpy. If anyone knows, thanks!

Finally got back and took a look. They have added several rounded and angled pieces. Spent some time last night experimenting with the possibilities on a practice ship. It is headed in the right direction although problem I see is that when you are far from a ship, the curves parts don't appear as curved until you close some distance to the ship. I assume this is an issue with their render engine.

After 10 months, I relaunched Space Engineers to give it a serious try. (May was just a quick peek.) . To my pleasure they added new voxel shapes. As previously reported, the bad news is that these new shapes, curved edges and 30° versus 45° angles, revert back to looking like plain squares if the camera is moved away from the ship. Like what's the point of including these in the game if you can only see them close up?

I was working on a honking big ship, approx 2000 meters long. I've got a strong computer and this single ship makes the game lag with me alone in the server. Sigh. What it means that I'm building a large static display. If they could make some real improvements for adding curved surfaces, I'd consider continuing even if it is a static display. But like minecraft, things that look really good with curved surfaces don't look that good when approximating a curve and you have tons of blocky edges showing.

If you are playing this game, your perspective would be appreciated!

Here is the big boy, started as a wire frame, and then filled in:

keysofanxiety said:

Is this game native on OS X? I remember I had like 4 copies of it but none of my friends wanted to play it so I just dumped the codes free-of-charge online. Feel stupid now.

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No... Windows only. Bootcamp, yes!

http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/system-requirements.html

The first image in post No.4 includes a really good example of the shortcomings of approximating curves in a blocky voxel game. That cargo ship should have a nice smooth curved nose.

Thread Revival
I'm back to playing with my large ship project. Anyone playing? There have been some changes since I last played Questions forthcoming:

Dirty Windows- Can anyone tell me why they made the Windows look dirty or frosted over? I realize there is a difference between the inside and the outside, but the inside view looking out used to be sweet, and now they all look like dirty windows. Why would they do this? Or is there a setting, or maybe I just have the wrong windows?

Dark Interiors- I used to have some nice bright interior spaces, now my flight deck looks dark and all most foggy with light or dust particles. I did upgrade to Windows 10 and am wondering if this is a rendering issue and more importantly is there a solution? If I was wanted the dark Alien (Nostromo ship) look, this would be great, but I don't.
Thanks!