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Yeah, I've been playing this with my 6 year old for the last couple months, and they are doing pretty good with their updates... It's all pretty early, so there isn't as much fleshed out as Minecraft at all... (They *just* added their survival mode and made it so you can actually mine and create things...) That being said - just the 'sandbox' nature of it, we've had a good deal of fun just making ships and flying them around, shooting eachother up, etc.Tampa_Gamer wrote:Interesting, I am always looking for Minecraft replacements to play LAN games with my kids.
From the description it appears it does support private LAN play, can anyone confirm this?
Your PC will own the 'world', and then your kid will join that world as a LAN game.Tampa_Gamer wrote: Also, does the current alpha provide for persistent saves - in other words if we spend a few hours building a base/mining/ships, can we come back to it a week later or do you have to start over with a new 'world'?
It's $13.39 (33% off) for the next 14 hours as part of the Steam sales.Tampa_Gamer wrote:Thanks Unagi, very helpful information. Now I just need to watch for the next sale!
Players can download mods (custom blocks, skyboxes, custom skins) right from Steam Workshop. Mods are per-world; that means that each world can have different mods active. And that’s not all –every client automatically downloads every workshop mod used by server while connecting. As a bonus; we have also added character animations playable from toolbar, small control panel access block, gyroscope override and more catwalk blocks – enjoy!
You know Space Engineers, the little sandbox game that could (sell one million copies in early access)? Turns out it’s the first entry in the Engineers franchise. The next is Medieval Engineers - about the construction (and deconstruction) of period cities, castles and fortifications.
The chief business of Medieval Engineers - if there is such a thing as business under the feudal system - will be in building and maintaining architectural works and mechanical equipment. Think fortresses and trebuchets; underground tunnels and drawbridges.
Keen Software House are, true to their name, eager to reflect the real physics of medieval Earth just as they did that of space. Their volumetric-based engine is all about structural integrity - meaning you’ll need to take into account an object’s mass and structure in both assembly and disassembly.
Medieval Engineers will launch soon on Steam Early Access, with a creative mode and prototype survival mode. There’s alpha footage of the former below:
YouTube link
Observe: landscaping tools that resemble those in Fortnite and Landmark, Engineers’ fellow Minecraft devotees in AAA. And a continuation of Space Engineers’ commitment to ensuring that player masterpieces can be taken apart as entertainingly as they are built.
Will you buy this one? Or perhaps more pertinently, when will you buy this one?
So how exactly do the physics of medieval earth differ from those of modern earth?Keen Software House are, true to their name, eager to reflect the real physics of medieval Earth just as they did that of space.
They hadn't yet invented inertia, the magnetic field, the laws of thermodynamics, the laws of motion, or even the law of gravity, so all sorts of nutty things were going on back then. I don't even know how they were able to walk down the street successfully without all those things invented.coopasonic wrote:So how exactly do the physics of medieval earth differ from those of modern earth?Keen Software House are, true to their name, eager to reflect the real physics of medieval Earth just as they did that of space.
Because medieval Earth smelled many times worse than a taxicab floor, there's an additional stench dimension to contend with.coopasonic wrote:So how exactly do the physics of medieval earth differ from those of modern earth?Keen Software House are, true to their name, eager to reflect the real physics of medieval Earth just as they did that of space.
The sun still revolved around the earth, too.wonderpug wrote:They hadn't yet invented inertia, the magnetic field, the laws of thermodynamics, the laws of motion, or even the law of gravity, so all sorts of nutty things were going on back then. I don't even know how they were able to walk down the street successfully without all those things invented.coopasonic wrote:So how exactly do the physics of medieval earth differ from those of modern earth?Keen Software House are, true to their name, eager to reflect the real physics of medieval Earth just as they did that of space.
Why Medieval Engineers when Space Engineers is still not finished?
We were expecting that many people would ask “why are they developing a new game when Space Engineers is still in development and not finished”?
First let me assure you that the development of Medieval Engineers hasn't had a negative impact on the development rate of Space Engineers - you can see this from the frequency of our weekly updates – culminating in major updates at the end of 2014: super-large worlds, procedural asteroids, exploration, in-game programming, modding SDK and API.
We didn't want to keep creating space games only. Instead we wanted to have a game where you get to experience life and nature.
By creating a second engineering game, we are leveraging our existing technology and experience.
The thought that we should postpone the development of Medieval Engineers for years was a no-go. We had to find a better solution.
We started to hire new people so that we would have the resources to develop both games in parallel without sacrificing any of them. The size of our team is nearing 40 people and we are still growing. There are separate teams for Space Engineers, Medieval Engineers and our secret AI project.
Very early we realized that even Space Engineers could actually benefit from the development of Medieval Engineers. A medieval setting has different requirements for volumetric environments and it forces us to look at the engineering genre from a different angle. To be more specific, these are the things that Space Engineers earned (or may receive in the future) thanks to Medieval Engineers:
Compound blocks – multiple blocks being positioned into one grid cell; this will allow better ship designs
Mechanical blocks
Auto-generated details for some blocks (e.g. roof endings in Medieval Engineers, armor edges in Space Engineers)
Voxel hand – a tool for modifying terrains (asteroids); you can alter shape and material
Structural integrity
Natural landscape
Procedural terrain generator (this is why we were able to easily add procedural asteroids to Space Engineers)
DirectX 11 (we decided to add PBR - Physically Based Rendering)
On the other hand, Medieval Engineers inherited (or will get) these features:
Multi-player
Physics, rendering and all 'core engine' stuff
Steam Workshop
Modding SDK and API
Developing two early access games with the same theme (Engineering) at the same time will be beneficial for both of them. As happened with Space Engineers, many of the features that were released later on were inspired and suggested by our players. Now we are expecting that player’s suggestions for one game might give us new ideas for other games – ideas that we might have missed due to the limitations of the environment of each title. Now everyone will have more options and possibilities!
In a certain way, the development of the prototype of Medieval Engineers was more challenging than the development of Space Engineers. In Space Engineers we could invent new types of blocks. In Medieval Engineers we couldn't invent something that wasn't present in the Middle Ages or something that one person in single-player mode wouldn't be able to operate. On the other hand, the possibilities of survival/realistic mode in Medieval Engineers are fantastic - just imagine starting the game with Stone Age technology and slowly building your way up to the Iron Age.
It's still early access but it doesn't feel early access to me. It's just not optimized, IMO. Steam has it for $24, but GetGames has it for about $16 after coupon, which I used to purchase two copies from for friends. There's a little bit of a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it's really addictive. They continually update it weekly it seems, and have recently added things like NPC pirates I think, although the server I play on hasn't utilized it. Also has a very active mod community that utilizes the Steam Workshop. The game just really caught me off guard, as I didn't expect to like it so much.gbasden wrote:I'm interested in it, but I've never pulled the trigger. Is it still in development, or has it released? What would you say the state of the game is?
Call me in 2028Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“Our plan for keeping the Space Engineers 2 in Early Access is approximately three years (end of 2027).”
