Hello, Engineers! February 28, 2019 is the day for all Space Engineers. Today, we are moving Space Engineers out of Early Access. Getting Space Engineers out of Early Access has been planned for a long time. We have worked on it basically since 2016/2017, when the game entered beta. It was our goal to release the game in the state we consider to fulfill our original vision, including all planned features and core game components. Moreover, the game includes a lot of things that were not planned at the beginning of development (solar panels, planets, rotors, pistons, wheels, and many more features).
Space Engineers was one of the first Early Access games on Steam and one of the few titles to be successfully released after several years of passionate development. We keep our promises! Space Engineers has been in Early Access for 5+ years, and during this period we developed the game from a proof-of-concept to a feature complete space engineering sandbox. We sold more than 3 million copies and we have more than 200,000 monthly active players. Because Space Engineers development was open, you were able to see what’s happening under the hood. Contrary to other products, where you see the final product, but don’t see how the project has been developed and changed over time, and what challenges the development team had to overcome.
With this update, we are also setting a new price for Space Engineers to $19.99. According to our analysis and tests, this price better suits the majority of Space Engineers fans. This change also brings all regional prices on Steam to match countries specifications and regional differences.
Since Space Engineers is going out of Early Access on Thursday, February 28th, we will be wiping our servers on Monday, February 25th, 10 am UTC. Our servers will be down for 4 days.
We will upload all of our worlds to the Steam Workshop and start with an empty star system, as well as new settings on February 28th at approximately 5 pm UTC.
*The beginning of the test will be delayed to 11:00 am UTC. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Hello, Engineers!
Can there ever be too many public tests?
We don’t think so.ːsteamhappyː
We’re excited to announce that there will be a public test on Thursday, February 14th, beginning at 10 am UTC and running until Monday, February 18th, 10 am UTC!
CHANGES BASED ON FEEDBACK FROM PUBLIC TEST JAN 31, 2019
New Features:
-Intro video -Main menu background videos
Gameplay Tweaks:
-Landing gear components -Basic refinery components -Inventory size updated (Character: 3x, Blocks: 1x) -New settings for custom blocks multiplier -Respawn screen help in tooltip -Ore detector dependency in progression tree -Asteroid ores balance -Minimum distance when spawning near other players -Improved space spawn ship -Early gameplay has been sped up
Bug Fixes & Improvements:
-Invisible parachutes on client -Preloading of voxels, textures and models -Voxel related fixes (holes in drilled asteroids etc.) -Ragdoll fixes (improved ragdoll in multiplayer, various bugs fixed) -Don’t delete respawn ships in scenarios -Fixed fragile spawn ships (broken in catwalk) -Performance optimization on disconnected static grids -Players should be able to disable intro video in the settings or command-line -Many other smaller bugs
CHANGES BASED ON FEEDBACK FROM PUBLIC TEST JAN 17, 2019
-Shared progression tree in the faction -Rebalanced hydrogen engine and internal hydrogen capacity increased -Progression tree improvements -New progression UI -Spawn system toggle for new features in world settings -Anti-griefing changes -Put rifle and 3 x magazines to all drop pods' cargos -Add checkbox to world settings for weapon, disable by default in survival scenarios -Weapon shot distance -Remove random distance -Make better guns shoot on better range: 400, 500, 600, 700 -Reintroduced ragdoll for space engineer -Cargo/encounter PCUs reworked with its own pool, setup in world settings -Introduced maximum grid size limit in world settings -Survival rebalance -New voxel trash removal tool for admins -Unified functional colors for all blocks (powered, not-powered etc.)
As always, we encourage everyone to try out all of the new features. Players will be able to submit their feedback on all of these features via a survey at the end of the test.
Branch code/password: nt8WuEw0kdvF
Instructions on how to access the public test:
1. Select the game from your library, right click and select properties. A dialog box with a number of tabs will appear, you’re looking for one that says "BETAS". 2. You will see 2 things now, a drop down menu and a text box to enter a beta access code. Enter the password provided here and choose playtest branch from the drop down menu.
There will be 2-4 servers for the public test; the number of servers will depend on how many engineers suit up for this test.
