Roadmap

This is the 2016 development roadmap for Space Engineers posted on Marek Rosa's blog on January 14, 2016.

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• Multiplayer - polishing, checking design, lag, compensation<
• Fix all sounds, 3D, arcade / realistic (ask programmers and our sound designer to make a list of all sounds used in the game and then have someone test them all – so that we don’t miss anything)
• Voxels: data cell cache, storage, optimization, profiling voxel runtime
• Render fixes (Ambient, environment map / lighting / reflections), occlusion query, ambient + backlight
• Occlusion culling - blocks / voxels (speed up the rendering)
• Disable object highlight on LCD screens (it’s annoying)
• Optimization and fixing the loading screen, and checking if there are worlds that take forever to load while not properly informing the player
  • Fix loading screen issues (e.g. the wheel gets stuck at the end and I can hear the in-game sounds)
• Red message box – make the background texture less transparent; it’s hard to read text on it
• Conveyor system optimization
• Drilling / mining optimization
• New animation system / caching (speed optimization) / other optimizations
  • Fix ugly animations
  • Add new animations – e.g. holding a weapon
  • Walking over small obstacles doesn't work - the player has to jump over them
  • Jumping and holding the forward-movement key doesn't result in a forward jump, and this doesn't feel right
• Shooting and weapons
  • A few more new weapons
  • We need much better animations, holding weapons, ammo reload
  • In general, we need a basic FPS experience
• "saving please wait" - hide this overlay text and do saving asynchronously without bothering the player
• Why does the game auto-save in multiplayer when I am the client and manual save isn't available?
• Remembering removed trees on planets
• Nvidia GameWorks – consider HBAO + Antialiasing (speed up)
• SE Indication of hydrogen fuel
• Spectator flash light / night vision
• Object highlight – outline – finish – also in ME
• Finish support for scenarios, mission scripts and sub-missions (will need for tutorials)
  • Better support for gradual tutorials (story-based tutorials), submissions
• Finish building from cockpit
• Rethink the way of respawning, respawn ships, landing ships, and rethink "mobile tools" (manual assembler – so player can respawn without a ship and still be able to start building)
• Rag-doll + IK, bullet impact, falling, four legged...
• Official persistent servers
• Automated tests for our testers + buy dedicated computers where the game will run 24x7
• Redo the GUI framework (this doesn’t mean changing graphics; it only means the underlying tech which has become very cluttered over time)
• Game logic optimizations + oxygen (mostly for MP) + oxygen sensor
• Add voxel material in survival
• Improve tutorials
  • Reduce the usage of text panels, deliver the info to the player via context-sensitive screen hints
  • When I launch the first interactive tutorial, I see two things that I shouldn't see – the respawn screen and "you have been accepted to faction"
  • Quickstart will be our interactive tutorial, with minimum text, HUD sub-mission navigation. Its purpose will be to engage the player and not to explain everything that happens in the game.
  • After we add this new tutorial, remove the video tutorial message box
• Development of Xbox One version