Please Help Save The Pressurization Feature

The role SE plays in human relationships, dating and things with bees and flowers has not sufficiently been investigated yet. Someone please do field studies and write his or her thesis about this.
Or do they multiply as treebeards and their new mates, the female not-so-bearded astronauts, spawning via medbays?? Interesting, to find out how SE influences real life behavior.

 

God Marek would make a terrible wingman. I can picture him at the table rambling on and on about GudAI, and deforrrmationz, and your dates friend just staring at him and saying "yeah, but why don't you want air pressure? Cindy, we should go".

 

A strong SE relationship usually eclipses human relationships... except with those who also have a relationship with SE.

 

Oh so true. Pressurisation is one of the settings I never want to be without. I'm still hoping we will have airtight airlocks between ships without merge blocks one day. Or that we'd not have to expend that much power per vent because it keeps me from building small and cramped ship sections to protect against atmo-loss.

 

Hey, so much time I wasn't here, from time to time I watch the forums and see what's going on and I saw this thread... I needed to say something about it.

After more than a thousand hours played it's really hard to imagine playing SE without pressurization. Honestly, what's the point to play... in space... in an engineer game... without pressurization? I know some players play without it and hey, everyone can play whatever way they want, that's obvious, but if you want an engineer game, in space... well, isn't it like the absolute minimum: blocks to make the hull, thrusters, and oxygen/pressurization? It's so obvious that it's almost stupid, if you want a minimum amount of realism you must have oxygen and you must worry to keep your ship/station/thing pressurized, in the end you HAVE to breath, so... I don't know, I can say that personally it would be really discouraging to play without that mechanic, so anti-immersive. Most probably I wouldn't play the game, it's one of those things that reach your head while you are playing and you have to do it, or it stays there bothering you continuously.

Well, anyway, greetings to all, I hope it all goes well

 

I think many of us identify with this appeal to realism. You'd think with a name that includes the word Engineering that there would be some engineering to do. This is reinforced by all the quotes regarding science and engineering displayed during the infinite loading sequences. In reality there is none, and very likely won't be.

Marek's grand vision for this game is basically an electronic Lego:TM simulator. Realism? Technical details? Nonsense in Marek's eyes. When you played Legos as a kid, did you worry about air pressure, or whether the engine thrust was balanced? No? Then why should SE?
Yes? You are part of such a niche population KSH won't care (note I didn't say 'shouldn't).

Really the audacity of us to ask to need to breathe realistically? LADDERS are too much to ask, and you want your ears to pop when a door opens? Come on.

I've come to realize that in order to understand Marek's vison for SE, and therefore argue successfully for improvements to it, we need to understand that SE needs to appeal to 10 year olds in a similar way Legos do. Those are the features we can hope for.

Can you mash blocks together into a shape that makes you want to pick it up, bob it in the air and say 'woosh'?
Yes?
Ship it!

To that end,


Apologies to anyone waiting for bug fixes or the survival patch, but all developers have been just pulled off their current task (again) and reassigned to getting air pressure out of experimental ASAP.

If anyone wants to argue for ladders, might I suggest something along the lines of:

 

Necro bump, should be pretty standard for a space game... That is unless we're not human. Otherwise anything with Airvents is a pointless waste of PCU points. Voted for it in your thread.

Come on guys Let's get the votes past 400 at least >_<

 

It is quite sad that we've had to resort to scavenging for people to support the restoration of a feature that in my opinion, is really the only engineering challenge the game has to offer right now (without mods). There's only so many times you can play in creative mode and build massive ships and manually setup large battles before it becomes "just-another-Minecraft-creative-sandbox-game". While many find that fun and can endlessly do exactly as described, I'm sure just as many would prefer some kind of challenge thrown into the mix. Just look at any sandbox game that started out as creative-only and see where they ended up over time.

I truly believe that some of the greatest strengths of Space Engineers are also some of the very features that Keen seems ... keen (sorry) to brush aside.

As @Malware previously mentioned in the feedback post, removing it would also kill the realistic sounds feature which I think adds some much-needed immersiveness.

I really hope discarding these features is not Keen's intentions and that they intend to overhaul pressurization into something equal or greater than it's current awesomeness.

On a side note, if I'm not mistaken, isn't programming block in the experimental list too? Why? Is Keen seriously discarding that too?

 

Well we've had people stomping around in the forum saying weird stuff like "This wasn't ever meant to a be a survival game" and "Why do we need hand tools?" "this is a sand box not a game" So I'm sure somewhere along those lines Keen got super confused about what the community wanted. I think the forums quieting down has lead people to want optimization, and then features later. Leading to stuff getting back logged.

That and the popularity of Escape From Mars has people pumped for this game to be a survival again. Before that scenario people where pretty hard line against Space Engineers being a survival/manual mode existing in the first place.

 

@Syncaidius I understand the programmable block. It's not controllable performance wise, and it's outright dangerous for servers, and it's not easy to fix. I don't like it, but it's a fact. The only way that comes back to nonexperimental is if there's a way to make it perfectly safe and controllable performance wise, and frankly I doubt it - first of all since the PB was never Keen's priority from the get-go, secondly because it's a serious technological challenge. Put those two together and you've got a rather low chance.

As for "scavenging for people", given how completely and utterly overwhelmed that suggestion is in comparison to any other suggestion on the site, I'm not so sure there's really a problem. Knowing Keen we won't actually get any feedback until they suddenly release non-experimental pressurization, so all we can do is push for more votes.

 

Not discarding. Deeming 'good enough'. Frankly I don't mind except that some of the functionality the PB allows should be basic to the game anyways. Things like LCD readouts/HUD, Aiming solar panels at the sun, improved targetting/turret control as my examples.

The problem with PB's is that the coding can allow for some crazy things, and the coder may not exactly be the best in regards to optimization. There are suggestions to improve Timerblocks and Terminal options to pretty much make PB's unnecessary, and I hope they are implemented.

Keep in mind that any experimental feature is not 'gone'. It's just not there to cause newbies problems until they're hooked and can know to expect the problems/performance degradation.

 

Utterly overwhelmed is a massive overstatement. The site itself says it has just 77 comments, replies with the same few people responding to each other and 373 votes after more than a month.

If Keen are making these crazy decisions based on some analytics from their whole player-base, then we need a lot more than a few hundred votes. If not, then I really hope they come to their senses and abandon sidelining the game's best features.

If their current state is deemed 'good enough' then we're in trouble. Pressurization hasn't had any love since the first month it was added, realistic sound is a broken mess and the programming block still has no execution time/cooldown restriction to prevent the insanely crazy scripts from lagging a server. If that is not enough, Marek said himself they no longer consider them "officially part of the game"

- https://blog.marekrosa.org/

This was also repeated on the "emergency broadcast" stream.

Eventually, if they refuse to work on the sidelined features, they'll have to decide on either fixing them up or removing them. Marek makes it pretty clear where Keen stands for the majority of said features.

@Malware is doing an awesome job in spearheading the restoration of one critical gameplay mechanic, but to remove programming blocks would be a huge mistake. If script execution lag is a concern, there are plenty of ways they could restrict that.




Now for a bit of crazy speculation. From my point of view it looks like they are slowly working towards removing certain features that a console (Xbox One) cannot handle efficiently so they can have a unified codebase between the two platforms and likely some form of cross-play.

I really do hope this isn't the case, because removing some of the best gameplay mechanics/features which they have poured money and time (months/years) into, in the name of a simplified codebase would be a whole new level of crazy and dare I say lazy, when the end-result will be something more akin to the fabled "Minecraft-in-space" than "Space Engineers".

Re-reading over this sounds crazy, but sadly Keen wouldn't be the first developers I've seen commit suicide by doing it, hence my concern about their direction with this whole "experimental" thing.[/user]

 

I'd agree that, along with air pressurization, the program block is what I miss most on the server. I wonder if it would be possible to introduce scrips as modded blocks as a way of controlling them? Like an MMaster LCD block, when you place it on your grid, you can do all of the things you'd normally do (including configure tags int the Custom Data field) but not actually edit the script. That way, server admins could essentially choose which scripts are available and even, through block limits, how many iterations of each is available per player, faction, etc. They would be still be experimental (since it's a mod), but they might be much more likely to be used.

Would that even be possible, if someone was willing to do it?

 

@Thrak Essentially; anything an ingame script can do, a mod can do more efficiently because they don't have to follow the rules of the game.

@Syncaidius It's not just lag. That's the least important. I can crash a server with a single line of code. It's about the feature actually being safe to use. I have spent a lot of time getting the programmable block to even work at all, so when I have to acknowledge that it's the right thing to do - believe me, I don't do it lightly.

And when I say utterly overwhelmed I mean in comparison to the number of votes for the other suggestions, which have been there as long. And comments don't matter; the votes do. We even have comments from devs supporting us in there. Stop being such a negative nancy

 

It's hard to be positive when some of the game's best features are basically on their road to being abandoned or at worst, removed. Marek already mentioned at least twice, will not be maintained or considered part of the official game. As for dev responses, those have meant little in the past. Actions speak louder than words.

Sure, programming block may not be perfect, but removing it when a massive amount of players use it would basically be suicide. I'm also curious why, if you can crash the server with a single line of code, why has it not been reported and fixed ASAP?

If it's something as akin to infinite loop you're talking about, there are plenty of ways to check and prevent that without resorting to extreme measures like removing/sidelining the entire feature. There doesn't even seem to be any kind of execution limit implemented for PBs, or any method of allocating execution time to a block and slapping a cooldown on it if it exceeds it. That would be a great place to start for getting it under control, if that is really the concern.

 

@Syncaidius It has been reported. Of course it has. They know this very well. That's why the PB is in experimental mode. Because it is a serious technical challenge to fix. Yes, there is an execution limit for PBs. You have 50000 instructions to do your stuff, or the PB stops dead. But you can't arbitrarily kill off a running program in the midst of running. If the program is in the process of modifying game state, it would leave the game in an indeterminate state. That means crashes. This means that you can't use time as a measuring device, because when it times out you can't stop the program anyway, so if those 50000 instructions take longer than expected...

No. It's not an infinite loop. We stop those. Easily. You can't expect me to tell you how this can be done though.

Look, I am pretty much the author of the current programmable block. There's more of my code in it now than there is Keen's. I know it up and down and sideways. We've been doing everything we can think of to get past this problem and we haven't given up yet. Multiple professional developers, Keen and non-keen alike, have been at it trying to find a way to fix it and we haven't been successful. This isn't "just a bug". It has its base in the very foundation of how the programmable block works, and any fix we can think of would break each and every script that's already out there - and, of course, as I said Keen isn't really interested in the programmable block (which is why I fixed it and not them) so they're not willing to put the money into the complete rewrite that's likely to be required to fix this. And I'm sure as hell not gonna do a job like that for free.

End point is this: Given that the programmable block was and almost always has been community made anyway, all that has happened is that you need to enable a checkbox to use it. Period. Nothing else has changed.

As opposed to the pressurization feature, which is 100% a Keen feature, and requires their work to update.
--- Automerge ---
Yes, there's every chance the pressurization feature will never go back to non-experimental. For me this highly likely means the end for this game for me. Which is specifically why I keep my optimism, and why I keep fighting for it. Because the alternative sucks.

 

I'm aware of how much work you've put in (and it's awesome). I know it's not as simple as that as a developer myself, but the issue isn't really how it works or even it's stability really, it's the fact they're even putting it on a path to being removed (or at least a very high chance of it).

As you've said rewriting the programming block it would likely break every script out there, that's obvious. But removing the programming block would have exactly the same effect, if not worse. Leaving it in and maintaining it's current level of functionality, is a far better alternative to letting it go to ruin/disrepair and eventually using that as an excuse to have it removed. The feature is already optional, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue if Keen actually intend to exclude it from other version of SE (i.e. Xbox One).

Marek hasn't helped things with the way he has worded his stance on the matter, intentional or not. I'm of course hoping they are not going removing anything. If it stays in experimental, that's fine too, but not maintaining them means they'll eventually break after a few updates and then have to decide on either removing or updating the features, making the entire "experimental" endeavor pointless to begin with.

 

I'll play devil's advocate.

Enjoying the multiplayer for the first time in a long time. Quirky but enjoyable (note: enjoyable, not just playable). I understand what they are trying to do performance-wise so just going to offer a compromise.

Let's say that a single air vent (which is really what controls pressurization) can pressurize 50 m³ (just treat this number as symbolic). It will calculate 3 dimensional space up to 50m³ and if the space is larger than area, it can't pressurize. Even if you add multiple air vents, it can't pressurize a larger area (it can pressurize faster/slower, but not a larger area.)

This gives pressurization in a controlled manner ingame for Keen, but still opens the door for players to do something via modding. If you mod an air vent to be able to check 50000m³ that is the player's decision in performance degradation. But Keen by default allows a 50m³ area to keep the feature but at least make it a little more performance conscious.

If you want to design around it, you'll have a lot of corridor areas. Large pressurized hangers won't be a thing. I think the Blue ship, red ship and the current Keen base assets can work with something around this by default.

 

This is already a thing. Pressurable area is limited and it's not based on airvents(because this would be exploitable and not performance friendly to scan airtightness based on every airvent on the grid). Whole grid is mapped by 3d flood algoritm(that have expansion area limit and ofc bounding box limit) and then grid is divided into individual airtight rooms to simplify pressure calculations and more important, block changes/destruction which is why airtightness is that demanding when combined with ship collisions and fights.

 

Ok. I think I see what the problem is here, since you keep repeating this. Experimental mode is something that was devised specifically to avoid removing things. They wanted a mode where they could to a reasonable degree guarantee performance. Thus they added experimental mode for everything they couldn't stand behind (like the programmable block). They explicitly chose to keep the features rather than remove them. This is why experimental mode even exists. They could just have dropped the problematic features from the game completely, that would have been well within their rights as the game isn't finished yet, but they didn't. Removal was never an issue, they won't do that. The issue is updates. And as long as certain people (including myself) are around that won't be a problem - hasn't even changed - for the programmable block. This is not the same for the pressurization feature. I'm fighting to make that a primary feature which will be kept updated and which will be taken into account with tutorials and gameplay. I have no fear for the programmable block as a feature.

 

Has anyone noted in the recent dev diary video:

..specifically this part:

.. meaning that things in experimental mode are not dropped, and never really were. This brings hope for my favorite aspect of space survival.

 

@Calaban That is what I am talking about, yes. Thank you for taking the time to link those.

 

@Calaban this needs to be implemented into the games description of Experimental Mode. As it stands, it is described as legacy features during development not supported by Keen. There should be a 'pending future development' or something so people stop losing their minds.

It really looks to me like the communications personnel (Xocliw, Blizz et al) are being thwarted by a management team with English as a second language. So many miscommunications that Xocliw would have prevented if left to his devices, but it seems he doesn't have the authority. Frankly, they should have kept Marek behind the scenes with any publications pre-approved (and non-spontaneous) by the PR director instead of live video interviews/q+a's.

Really, the MP patch did not take anything away, and made much needed improvements so all this drama and miscommunication really needs to stop. Experimental mode features will not be deleted, just put in a place new eyes won't see until the first impressions are over. Keen's clarification on pressurization is a good sign that Malware's campaign was successful and they've heard us.

Of course, this could just be damage control while they finalize the game to their specifications not ours, but only time will tell.

 

So, to recap, the goal here is to return Pressurization as a supported feature that will likely be in the full release version of SE. This was first and foremost a space game and pressurization should get the same love and attention they still give to planets, which didn't need to be in the game at all. I don't think being on a planet should be the most realistic thing in Space Engineers.

Just sayin.

 

I'm also in support of the return of pressurization. A survival multiplayer game where hits on your ship means having to rush to a lifepod or other parts of the ship that are still pressurized, via airlocks... I need this

 

<sarcasm> Why? Just keep your visor down and carry an O2 bottle. No need to make the game more complex than it already is. </sarcasm>

 

I thought it was "Debbie Downer".

 

#blink #blink huh? Which of their communication feeds was this posted in???

 

See the videos Calaban linked to above.

 

Give me pressure or give me death.

...Seems to fit well.