Space Engineers New! Review of 2019 & Plans for 2020

Im hyped about the NEW FANTASTIC PROJECT but this tells me, that the development of Medieval Engineers is "finished" and no resources will deployed on that project.

the steam reviews are going to the negative part as well

 

Not necessarily. At some other incidents lately I read announcements are going to come about the future of Medieval Engineers. I am just surprised Marek Rosa did not say anything in that style on his blog. Here is a youtube interview hardly paid attention to, which at least has also that affirmative short notice about ME:

 

@Cetric

"Keen Software House has continued a process of adaptation and development which we believe will ultimately bring great benefits for Keen Software House, as well as for our community. Rather than having a divided focus and spreading limited resources over multiple projectswe are now devoting 100% of our development time to the much anticipated Xbox release of Space Engineers and to continuing the development of Space Engineers for PC."
~ January 8, 2020 Marek Rosa
Taken from his blog:
https://blog.marekrosa.org/2020/01/review-of-2019-plans-for-2020.html

I am sure ME will be worked on again, just not anytime in the very near future.

 

I can understand Keen. The DLCs of Space Engineers are just a pay snack. A XBox game is a "new Game" with many new Customers. I think SE for XBox will cost at least 20€ to 30€. They will need a higher payflow to develop an entirely new game.

But they got a new Office (which looks expensive). This depends on the success of SE and GoodAI, I think.

Its sad that I paid for ME and got a laggy game (atm). But Space Engineers got great features in the last time (its little consolation)

 

"The Orangerie" certainly looks great as HQ. I would have decided the same if I had this option, to move out of a faceless modern office building and into an historic building, it will add to the company spirit as "unique". They should celebrate the new HQ by a competition given out to playerbase to rebuild "The Orangerie" on some planet in game and send in screenshots.

 

that would be a great easter egg. But instead of the monoliths, it should included into the solar system map...

 

The last update was not enough to last a long hiatus state for ME. Why? Because it came with bugged roofs and a lot of blocks that don't connect properly. Triangle pieces on roofs, for example, wooden supports under roofs.. A lot of building pieces that don't compound almost at all with other building pieces. Only the modding community has kept it alive. Or at least has the title on life support.

It would be nice to give modders support since you guys are not touching ME development.

Things like, how do you generate the maps needed for parallax mapping on blocks? Are they regular height maps? Yes, no? What's going on. How do you get them? No information.

How about documenting how to UV map properly for ME blocks? The UV maps you guys have do not make sense for a regular user. They are impossible to decipher if you want to make blocks that seamlessly tile with existing blocks.

How about a tutorial on making a block from scratch on the ME wiki site? At least with updated information.

A tutorial on generated blocks maybe? How do you get generated blocks to either stick to a piece or dynamically remove themselves when connecting another building piece? There is not enough information.

Or how about a tutorial on snapping points?

Lots to cover without developing any further code for ME. Just have one person document some stuff on their lunch break or something. You get the idea.

 

I suppose it's a long time since anyone has said this but, it's Early Access.

Here's the thing. ME, like SE, are in development, and everyone (mostly) was fine with that so long as updates, especially updates with new features, came along fairly frequently. Any gap that lasted longer than two weeks was a signal that Keen was just taking our money and never intended to make a game. So this veritable canyon of a gap we got here now surely means ME is doomed.

Marek bought his staff an office building. That's a commitment. Renting/leasing means you can disappear overnight. Owning means stability. It's not that simple, but you get the idea. When you are young and just starting out, buying a house means you're in it for the long haul. Plus, you can do whatever you want to it or with it, cause it's yours.

ME helped them buy that building. Wouldn't be right to pull the plug on it now. They're going to fix it, and you will be glad you already own it.

 

If the features of SE ( Economy, Decorations, stability ) comes to ME, yes I am more than happy. I am hyped to play ME. But currently its not playable online nor offline and I already got a highclass PC.

 

You've got my support, boys and girls. Keep up the good work.

 

And you know what? For a long time Medieval Engineers was envied by Space Engineers community because we have "compound blocks" there what SE players always wanted to have, too. Compound blocks means, you could place more than one block into the same grid-space and make them merge. Also add "small block" type of things (like wooden beam parts) anywhere to "larg block" parts like a stone wall or something...