Space Engineers

[M0RT]

Space Engineers
"build your own space ship"

In Space engineers, each player controls his own space ship in an epic space battle. What is different from other space-themed games is that you need to design your own space ship. In order to succesfully compete with others, you will need both engineering and piloting skills, to build a ship that suits you the best and is capable of dealing with your opponents.

You are able to build a ship from scratch. The ship hull can be shapened tile-by-tile. It is not only cosmetic feature, both movement and collisions use the custom ship shape.
Then you need t place different devices on the ship, which define the ships movement and combat capabilities. The position of the device is crucial, for example engines affect ship differently, based on their position towards the center off mass. Also, devices inside the ship will likely be destroyed later than those exposed on the surface.

Shaping hull

Placing devices

Key binding

List of devices

- engines
- stabilizers
- weapons (laser/railguns/missile) + turret version
- shield generators
- bridge with upgrades
- energy generators
- crane + cargo bay
- gravity generator
- fuel tanks/ammo supplies/batteries
- impact weapons
- radar
- FTL drive
those marked in green are already implemented

Another difference between Space Engineers and most of other space maps is that Space Engineers has "reallistic" physics engine. If you place engines only one side of the ship, it will start revolving around as soon as you turn them on. Also the ships are affected by inertia, you need to consider that while building them (for example include some front engines, or you won't be able to stop.)

Ship in-game

Space Engineers will contain multiple scenarios, which will provide many different gaming experiences.

Scenarios

Demolition derby - an alternative to classic deathmatch, since it would be quite hard to detect, who killed whom (the ships fall apart slowly as they are hit), players score points for causing damage and lose for taking
Capture the asteroid - there will be one asteroid in the middle, and twi teams will have to drag it to certain spot, using some special devices (gravity guns, hooks, pushing them...)
Convoy - a cooperative game, where all players should work together to get a convoy of civilian ships through dangerous space areas. (Team has to cooperate not only in space, but while building the ships, some of the players need to load the civilians on their ships)
Fleet fight - two fleets, multiple rounds, the goal is to win as many rounds as possible by eliminating enemy fleets
Asteroid Race - some asteroids with rare ores will be scattered over map and multiple teams will have to mine them (again, players will need to cooperate on who will take mining ships and who fighters, or maybe fighter/miner hybrid ships....)
Space Race - run through all checkpoints faster than everyone else. You can choose to stuck your ship with engines to be the fastest, or guns to shoot everyone else down.

Also, the scenarios can happen in different areas of space, so there will be another option to select map for each game. Some of the maps will provide completely different game options and possible strategies than the "standart".

Maps

Outer space - default map, containing a small amount of asteroids
Asteroid field - this map will require very agile ships, in order to avoid omnipresent asteroid, some even travelling at high speeds
Planet - very interesting map with a planet in the middle, which affects the entire map with it's gravity. Keep orbiting around the planet, or the gravity will pull you down

Also, there will be option to limit the ships point cost, which limits the size of the ship.
More maps and scenarios coming...

Recently a very sophisticated physics engine was implemented. So far(ver. 0.3.8) it supports asteroid to asteroid and asteroid to ship collisions, ship to ship will be implemented soon. The results this physics engine produces follow the laws of physics (in simplified models).

Physics engine

Currently a beta version is avaiable, it contains some basic game modes, almost complete ship construction (however the selection of devices is limited) and is fully playable (except there are no victory conditions).

Currently working on

maps and scenarios
additional basic devices, higher-level devices
ship collision
improving device models/skins
further devices: radar, shield generator
turret weapons
missiles
further scenarios/maps

Thanks

Thanks to all of the guys here on hive for their ideas, and authors of the two biggest inspirations for this map, Vlaada Chvatil for the board game "Galaxy Trucker" and Callex for his Cruiser Command map

 

[Tleno]

Awesome! can't wait to see full version... do you need any spaceship device ideas?

 

[The World Is Flat]

Wow, this is a great idea! Testing now...

 

[Tleno]

Only one question: how much players its now? its quite hard to find anything in my map mess...

 

[M0RT]

it's set to 1 player now, althoug it should in theory work for 12...

Well if you got some you can surely write them down, though I have some ideas myself (even I can think of more than engine and bridge ), I will start implementing more devices soon.

 

[The World Is Flat]

Ok, wow, this game could be awesome, but, how do you finish building and get to fly? and could you add angled blocks? for looks or for asteroid deflection etc...

-UPDATE-

Devices wise you need missiles of all kinds, lasers, mass drivers, and micro-waves (for shorting out enemy devices, realistic. ) You need differen't engine types (oness that acellerate quickly but have low top speed and ones that accelerate slowly and have hight to speed etc. You also need Inertial Dampeners (Automatic Breaks) And things like gravity cannons (to puch and pull ships and asteroides) And also need armor and Impact weapons like spikes and boarding tubes... thats all for now...

 

[Tleno]

Great fun, great fun. Only you should increase ship controlability and thruster effects. And of course, weapons ^^. I'd recomend this weapon system:

There are 3 types of basic weapons: Laser beam (fast/weak), rockets (Long recharge time/powerful) and plasma (medium comparing to rockets/lasers). And in space there are boxes with weapon upgrades (you can use gravitational manipulators to atract them.). when your ship recieves upgrades, your weapons become more and more powerful. Later, you can even change their modes!

 

[M0RT]

you finish with ESC. (I am adding fourth phase, test phase, where you will be able to fly the ship without leaving construction mode)
I thought of angled blocks, but it would complicate things too much for now. Maybe later, when there is nothing more to add.

Ship controlability depends on how you placed engines (which are pretty weak now). Also, the ration between moving and rotating effect of engines need to be increased.
About the weapons: I though of just two basic types, energy weapons (which obviously, use energy to fire) and projectile weapons (missiles), which have ammo limitation. The energy weapons will be divided in two sub-types, lasers and, well, plasma or something. The difference is that lasers are weaker, but the "projectiles" travel at speed of light, while the plasma shots take time to get to enemy.
The same for engines, there will be two types, one that uses fuel and the other that uses energy.
Since energy is practically limitless (there will be multiple reactor types), energy-based devices will be weaker compared to ammo/fuel devices.
The idea with weapon boxes in space is interesting, I think I will use that (as soon as i implement some sort of crane or pull beam)

 

[warman45]

this game has some good points. controlling things like rotation is cool. you need more hotkeys as we'll inertial dampeners are a must. (they can be slow and therefore you may wish to just use rockets but inertial dampeners are required to get the ship under control.)

as we'll it would be awsome if you could place multiple decks on the ship. finally "turreted" weapons are a must

 

[M0RT]

More hotkeys are coming, most important will be arrow keys, which will even enable of binding different functions on press and release events.
What "inertial dampeners" are you talking about? From what I know, they are supposed to protect crew, they have no effect on ship movement. (Then again, I know nothing about sci-fi, so I may be wrong here)

Multiple decks are totally crazy, ofc it would make ships nicer, and "more realistic", but the complications.... maybe somewhen in future

Turreted weapons as in weapons, that can fire all around? There is a problem there, they would either have to be automatic, or very hard to control if they would have to be aimed manually. Automatic turrets would be nice, I'll see what I can do

 

[Gallin]

it is very hard to control and ship keeps drifting to one side and than it goes around in circles

 

[M0RT]

yeah I know that, i think i am going to add some sort of "space friction", which would slow down the rotation a bit, so that it will be possible to stop turning around. It is hard now, even with the very weak engine there is. I think I am also lowering the rotation effect of engines, the ships turn around too much.

 

[Gallin]

also might i suggest two things

First during the pointing phase be able to have an option to type in the degree measure you wont instead of just having you point (cant seem to ever get all the engines to point 270 or 90 degrees)
second have a easy medium hard control of the ship for beginners and such


Also maybe putting in a cruse control

 

[M0RT]

There is "angle snapping" althoug it doesn't work 100%, it sets the direction to a multiple of 90, if the given value is close to it (I think it's +-10 degrees).
Also, the model is wrong, it shows about +45 degrees to the correct facing of the engine. It is the "Ice Troll Hut" model, if anoone could rotate it for me, i would be glad.
How you image the easy setting? What exactly should it do?
I had a idea for beginners, to include pre-defined ships (hull+several engines placed in such way, that it would be easy to control)

 

[warman45]

ummmm inertial dampeners are essentially space friction creators. first off adding friction in space is just.... stupid (im working in refrence to you so for most people this would simply be lazy but you seem much smarter and more creative so this would be stupid for you.)

inertial dampeners would have 2 features. on and off (simple) they would reduce the ships velocity if on. you could also set them to stop rotational movement (onfront/onrotate/off)

also turrets are meant to be auto (thought it was obvious sorry bout that)

finally for multiple decks you could just have a feature that allows you to select the # of decks. then place deck 1/2/3/4 one at a time. then simply have the model's y position increased to compensate.

finally their should be some code to stop forward firing weapons going through the ship. (or you could have it count that as a hit.)

wouldn't that be funny some guy puts massive cannon in center of ship and fires it like crazy and doesn't know whats happening till his ship self destructs

 

[Gallin]

Ya i was thinking about making easy a hull with engines already set and such and you just add guns and the rest medium it has a good starting hull that is easy to add engines to that will work easily and the last one is you just build by yourself.

 

[M0RT]

Well I read something about the dampeners, usually they are supposed to keep the crew from splattering when the ship accelerates, but since they are completely made up with no scientific base, they can be anything (most of the articles I found were star trek references). Now what I need to the map is something that would stop the ships from revolving around crazily, so I just need giant magnets, which actually slow down rotation, if I am not mistaken.
Another thing is that I would like to keep as many of the devices passive as possible, so it won't get crazy difficult to operate.
So what I am going to do is add some sort of passive rotational slow-down device. That is also what I meant with the "space friction", some very small force which would eliminate the last bit of rotation (since you just can't manually stop ship from rotating)
Well the multiple decks are certainly very tempting, it would allow to build even more complicated ships, but I think I will really add them later.
I am not sure if I understood what you mean with the cannon issue, but cannons will have tp face out of the ship, just like engines, so they won't be able to destroy it's own ship. (ofc you can bypass this test by placing the hull 1 square away from the cannon, but who would be so stupid to fire in his own ship??)

Gallin: I see we had very simillar idea, I am of course thinking of some noob mods, I have many experience with players not being able to understand my maps (well they are hard to understand sometimes, all of them are very uncommon)

 

[The World Is Flat]

M0RT... did you read my post on page 1? i updated it...

 

[M0RT]

I have not since now. It is a load of devices, thanks. I notices you also mentioned iniertial dampeners, what universe are you guys talking about? All I found was some star trek reference, where they were practically "giant invisible airbags"
Also, "top speed" in space? dude... but ofc there will be more engine types
Gravity canon is propably going to be there, so that combined with crane you can somehow pick up items from space.
Boarding tubes seem totally unreallistic, you have seen how difficult is to control your own ship, now if you wanted to come to exact distance and angle to some other ship...that would just be impossible, even if it wasn't moving. On the other hand, I have though of ships that would damage oponent with impact, adding a device for that could be a good idea.

thx for ideas, going off for today, almost midnight here...

 

[Gallin]

Shields generators on certian parts of the ship maybe an energy source that you have to refill sometimes

 

[The World Is Flat]

Inertial dampeners, inertia is movement right? dampen means to reduce, slow, so movement slower in a sense, thats what i mean't, call it somthing else for all i care, and yes, top speed in space, you have to get a certin amout of thrust to reach a level of speed, you don't just keem accellerating. all of my ideas were attempting to be realistic. oh and btw you first have to stop the enemy and then you slam into them, and if your boarding module works, you are pinned to the enemy ship and you 'board it' damage or acual boarding...

 

[Landmine]

This map is a must on my list of thing to try (currently filled with 2 maps). Seems awesome. Just a few suggestions:
I haven't tested it yet, but you mentioned something to help stop rotation/revolving. How about miniature engines or mini vents. They would effect the movements only enough to slow/stop the craft, but not enough to replace the main engines.
Inertia Dampeners would technically only work as extra engines, because having a huge shield wont do anything to slow it down (space has no friction as stated).
As for ideas for items:
Ship Bay: Can build mini space craft, but can only hold up to 2.
Cargo Bay: A mandatory section on the ship, but depending on where its placed, it will effect the ships vertical rotation (basically making it flip and harder to control). Trick would be to have 1 in the middle, or 1 on either end of the ship.
Fuel Bay: More of these means faster acceleration and deceleration. However, they must be near the engines.
I do understand these may be more difficult then they sound, but they are realistic ideas.

 

[The World Is Flat]

Yes, acually, call them stablizers! they could automatically work or be manual, and they make shure, that you don't rotate or do anything to erratically. i think that the ship should be hard to control until you add stablizers etc. also you should have auto-turrets and gun bateries (space cannons) that are monted in the ship and aim to the side only... and fire powerful projectiles.

 

[warman45]

i like the word stabalizer's. they should only be on and off however you can set them to either stop rotation or decelerate the ship IF the ship is below a set speed.

example speed x < (preset variable) then speed = speed - 1 or something like that. (don't know jass)

as we'll auto turrets! (self targetting AI guns!) they would be less powerfull though. take a look at the deadalus from stargate. all those machine guns (their actuall naquada enriched railguns but whatever) that kind of effect.

will individual sections take damage (that would be cool)

when power cores are hit they should explode doing major damage (that's why most people would keep them inside)

add a feature that allows me to click on a tale and select angled tile.

i'm still pushing my 3d idea (sorry)

free firing missiles (like on deadalus class stargate ships)

you need more space to build the ship it looks small (because it's so blacky and 2 dimensional)

fighter bays sound cool but don't get to detailed just have a generic fighter/interceptor and a bomber.

 

[Gallin]

i would suggest different planets and space docks and make the space ship look very small and have a third person camera or something with the center on your bridge

also to add angles tiles maybe you could add another phase where you can select the tiles and do that also make the ship control on the ship

dmging differnt parts of the ship would be good and you could add an escape pod that is easy to control that maybe doesnt need engines or that could be another device by itself


I uploaded a space ship had pretty good control over it and it fly pretty good

 

[The World Is Flat]

Acually, i would suggest having a ship (interior) that you can keep troops and maintain guns in. you could use a system similar to your Dungeon Lords blocks...

 

[Gallin]

well that would be nice but i think it would be better to get this part done first and than do that

 

[The World Is Flat]

True...

 

[M0RT]

Wow that is a load of text, I hope I don't forget something:

shield generators: ofc, I just forgot to mention them, they just have to be there
top speed in space: there is nothing to slow you down, you keep the same speed unless some force affects you, so with engines on you'll just keep on accelerating until you hit something.
The boarding could be possible, depends on what speeds the ships are going to travel at in the game. I guess they could be added when the game works somehow, then we can better decide whether they would be usable.
mini engines: there will be multiple levels of engines, so for example large ship would definetelly have big engines for movement and some small for maneuvering. I am not going to add some special smaller engines, you can just use some weak version of a engine.
Ship bay: I don't really like that idea, I would like to keep players at one ship each
Cargo bay: sure, it will be used to store things you find and load in space. I didn't really understand the effects on the ship movement you described.
Fuel bay: Engines are supposed to consume some fuel in the full version, so fuel tanks will be necessary
Stabilizers: ok I like this word better, I will add two versions, magnetic (magnets tend to slow down when they are spinning) and gyroscopic, both version will just slow down the ships rotation (magnetic are slower, but they won't run out)
Damage: each tile will take damage individually, which would lead to cool stuff like ships falling apart, ship parts flying around in the space...
angled tiles, 3d ships: maybe later, I want to get the game playable first
free firing missiles: what is that supposed to be? (don't know stargate that good)
more space: maybe, I don't know how CPUs will hanle the current ship sizes (i did simillar map once, with sea ships, it also had physical engine similar to this one and it was unplayable with more that 5 ships)
planets, docks..: there could be some, depending on the game mode, but I am not planning on some zooms and inside-ship areas, this game is supposed to be about space ships, not space crews (maybe some day in the future, with boarding included, but really not right now)

I updated the first post, there is a list of devices we talked about here, with all subtypes. Here is some scientific base:
Ion engines: they basically shoot ions in opposite directions with a really high speed
Microweave engines: they radiate electromagnetic waves in a cone, which somehow makes it move towards the narrow part of the cone.
Radiactive reactors: (they are propably called something different). It is basically a leaden case filled with radiactive material. The radiation gets absorbed by the lead, which warms up in the process. The heat is then used to generate electricity. This generators are currently used on satelites.

 

[De.Facto]

Great idea! I'll try it later ..

 

[The World Is Flat]

Ok! great! but top speed in space is realistic, do space shuttles keep increasing speed to infinity? no. and some accelleration isrealistic also, especially within a planets, or suns gravitational field. i know alot about this stuff, trust me. and also, stablizers could also be mini-engines or vents that automatically slow down rotation etc...

 

[M0RT]

Space shuttles don't accelerate to infinity because they only fly to orbit and back. In free space, you could it theory reach near the speed of light. And you definetely don't need to keep engines on all the time like they do in TV, you just fly in the same direction when you turn them off (also, you don't get "stuck" somewhere in space when you are out of fuel or your engines break down, the inertia will carry you on until you hit something).

Some stabilizers are there now, vents and smaller engines would be more realistic, but let's see how these work.

Anyway, new version is out with the stabilizers, it should be much easier now.

0.1.1 Changelog

0.1.1:
- stabilizers
- fuel system (not applicated)
- stronger engines
- engine graphic
- test phase

You may notice the "flames" coming out of engine tiles. I would need someone skilled with particle emmiters to improve them somehow (so they look, better, don't disappear sometimes and can display multiple levels of power setting).
Also, the "test phase" is basically a forth phase of construction, you can acces it normally by clicing right arrow in the key binding phase. What is actually better is that you can return to construction and change anything on the ship if you don't like it.
And the last thing is I added second player, it should in theory work for him, too, but it needs to be tested, can't test on LAN right now.

 

[The World Is Flat]

Well, also, black holes exibit an immense amount of gravitational force to pull thousands of stars closer to them, thats what forms galaxys, i think what would bemost unrealistic is to find your ship in deep space. but its you map... testing now...

 

[M0RT]

Ofc there is nothing like "free space", but adding gravity here would just make the thing crazier. Besides the actual gravitational force of the black hole is pretty small, considering the distance. In this aspect, I am sticking to the "classic", which is gravity-free space. Moving around orbit is a completely different thing, which could be a theme for a map alone... (btw. there are games that base of moving on orbit, it's pretty interesting, for example if you want to "outdrive" someone, you have to slow down!)

 

[The World Is Flat]

Ok them map made war3 go so slow i couldn't do anything... but what i think would be more interesting is if you made your game act as if there we a sort of gravity, (but no decelleration ofc...)

 

[M0RT]

wow, adding blue player screwed everything up, I am going to look into that...
ok fixed now, the problem was in calculating center of mass, uploading fixed version in a minute...

 

[The World Is Flat]

ok...

Is the new one up yet?

 

[M0RT]

Ok like "i am glad you fixed it" or Ok as in "works ok"?

 

[The World Is Flat]

Ok as in ok i'm testing soon...

 

[The World Is Flat]

Ok... still a bit jerky, but, there needs to be a way to reduce engine power... or stop... how aboutt some sort of device that creates a gravitational field that holdsyou in place... like a space-anchor...

 

[M0RT]

Well that would make no sence at all, although it may be useful. (I just tried a different ship design, it was not that hard to control(I used ship with 5 propulsion engines and 2 steering).
I was thinking more of some auto-pilot, which would automatically control the engines in a way, that would make the ship stop. (still, unless you begin to spin around uncontrollably or fly out of the map, it can be stopped manually, it just takes some time to figure out.)
Besides, the engines work at three levels, I am always using the top level (binding all keys to / ), but you can (and it would actually be better) use lower level for the steering engines, so that the rotation is controlled with more precision

 

[warman45]

when i said free firing missiles i meant that you have a missile weapon that will automatically fire a missile in any random direction (it's facing) however it will imediately target a nearby enemy and head towards that ship. that way a missile could fire out sideways but hit something in front.

 

[Tleno]

Hey, maybe there should be some kinda like power generators that make evertything in one block radius work better? You know, more powerful engines, stronger lasers, faster rockets... and if generator is attacked, it cretes energy cascade, damaging all systems in the ship...

 

[The World Is Flat]

Or you nned these generators just to power the ship, not to give it extra energy...

 

[M0RT]

warman45: Well I was planning turrets, some of them will be firing missiles, so that's sort of what you thought
generators: Generators are already in the list (in the first post), there will be used to power some devices on the ship, such as lasers and ion engines, while other (rocket engines, missiles, gyroscope) can work even without energy

EDIT: new version out, it allows binding on arrow keys and fuel system. There is also one new device, fuel tank. Also multiboard, which will later contain much more information about the ship (like list of devices and their current power status, map of hull and damage...)

 

[Gallin]

I would suggest some key that makes you stop (idk maybe do something where the front and side engines turn on and go to just enough power to stop your movement

also new version no work i cant download it


also what about homing missiles that you can attempt to outrun

also random astriod meteorites that can dmg your ship


Also about the ship bay the ships could be automatic ships that protect you base


Also space mines that can be deployed

also something should happen when you go off the side of the map

 

[Landmine]

I played the map, and I realized that '0' did not shut power down, and '-' just lowered the speed. That got quite annoying. Maybe add a health bar to a dummy unit on the ship, and then have the health show the power. Full health for full power, and 1 health for off (if it was 0, the unit would die). Of course, it would really be effective if you have health bars showing all the time or you press alt.
Also, add a button to clear a tiles key bindings.
Overall, I'm happy with the current stuff. I'm keeping track of this for sure. Also, there was a glitch with the hydrogen (or whatever fuel/number was top on the multiboard). Every time I edited the ship, then went back to testing, the multiboard just was stacking with the previous data.

 

[Gallin]

You should be able to separate tile device things to four things and be able to make smaller divice like small engines should you can fit engines so you can have smaller ships

 

[M0RT]

I have already said I was thinking of auto-pilot, that would stop your rotation. Auto-pilot that would stop movement doesn't make sence, movement is relative, there is no way to find out whether you are moving or standing (in real life)
Homing missiles: I was planning that for some higher-level missiles, although instead of outrunning them you can just shoot them with lasers.
Meteorites: there will be, depending on map, which could be chosen at tbe beginning of every game (I will write some map ideas in the first post in a minute)
Ship bay: still don't like the idea of another type of ships, there will be cooperative mods, where some players will build these small fighter ships to protect some greater ships (convoy game mod, I will write about game mods in the first post in a minute)
Space mines: maybe, should't be that hard...
sliding off map: haven't decided yet wheter to kill the ship instantly or move it to the other side of the map, like in simmilar space maps

Landmine: Either I missunderstood what you meant, or you missunderstood what the keys are supposed to do. 0 should turn the device off, which it does (the engine graphic is not working correctly now, but you can check the mutiboard, you stop losing hydrogen once you '0' all your engines). And '-' is really just supposed to lower the power of the device by 1 level (engine has 3 levels, will add to description). Health bars could be useful, but that would require yet another unit. I was planning on showing the power level by 1) the engine graphic(the fire) will change with different levels and dissapear when turned off 2) in multiboard, there will be a list of devices and their current power level
Multiboard: I have never seen that before. I clear the multiboard, I set all values to "", nothing helps. I was hoping someone here will know what to do with that.

Splitting tile: impossible, the current way of saving ship is complicated enough. Only thing I was thinking about for smaller ships are "double engines", which you would need to put on a 1-square thick hull, where they will be able to work both ways (so that you could steer with only 1 device)

 

[M0RT]

New version out. Now with energy generators and plasma guns! Well, they won't damage any other ship yet, the ship damage system in not done, instead they will color the hit area in green, so you can see they actually work. Also, the game is for 12 players now, it should work for all of them, that is another thing I need to test.

Also, a little survey here, what do you think of the flavour text for devices? (the grey text explaining how the device works "in real") Do you find it interesting/stupid/just taking up space, nobody is going to read that anyway/i am just trying to make everyone look stupid by explaining totally clear stuff/whatever else you may thing??