Space Engineers #4 - Scenarios and Settings

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So, let's go back and take another look at the available starting scenarios in a little more detail.

Scenarios

• Easy Start 1 - You begin with a platform, 1 large ship, and 3 small ships.
• Easy Start 2 - You begin with a platform/station and several small and large ships. OMG, you absolutely need to check this out. In fact, you'll find a video at the end of the post that provides a brief tour.
• Lone Survivor - A single platform and basic functionality. No ships.
• Crashed Red Ship - A single damaged ship.
• Two Platforms - A multiplayer starting world. Platform and basic functionality only.
• Asteroid (Not shown) - Start in a functional rescue ship with minimal resources and systems.
• Empty World (Not shown) - Nothing but you and the asteroids.

You may want to start out with one of the first two scenarios in Creative mode if only to use now and again to learn how things are put together, fire the imagination, and for experimentation.

Now let's take a quick look at the settings.

Basic Settings

• Name - What you want to name this world.
• Description - Additional verbiage to describe your world. No idea where or if this is displayed.
• Game Mode - Creative/Survival. This determines whether you have infinite resources, no death and instant build time. Creative mode is great for simply building things or testing out how the different systems behave and interact.
• Online Mode - Offline/Private/Friends/Public. Determines whether you need an internet connection and whether you can join multiplayer worlds and who can join your world. Friends/Public refer to Steam friends or any Steam member.
• Max Players - 2 to 16 currently. Maximum number of players that can join your world.
• Environment Hostility - Safe/Normal/Cataclysm/Armageddon (unrealistic). Determines frequency and intensity of 'Meteor Showers'. These can damage or destroy equipment and you.
• Asteroid Amount - Normal/Large/Extreme/Infinite (w/Low, Normal, or High density). Number of (mineable) asteroids in the created world. Adjusting this higher will affect game performance.
• Auto Save - On/Off. Your game will be automatically saved periodically. This currently causes a brief lag spike, so you may want this off. Also turn it off if you want control over your saves (like just before trying out a tricky or dangerous maneuver).

Advanced Settings

• Game Mode - Creative/Survival. Same as in Basic Settings.
• Inventory Size - Realistic /x3/x10. This is measured by volume, not mass. After all, it's outer space, and unless you are under the influence of a gravity generator, mass only affects inertia, not how much you can "carry". I recommend going for x10 unless you are sadistic and want to make a million trips back and forth.
• Assembler Efficiency - Realistic/x3/x10. The amount of time it takes to "assemble" items from refined ore. x3 is sufficient for most purposes. I like observing the process, but not waiting forever for it.
• Refinery Speed - Realistic/x3/x10. The amount of time it takes to refine ore. x10 because you could run out of Uranium just waiting for it to refine more. This is also fun to observe, but not that fun.
• Welding Speed - Realistic/x3/x10. I like to leave this at realistic.
• Grinding Speed - Realistic/x3/x10. I like to leave this at realistic.
• Max Objects - 256. This slider allows you to adjust how many objects are created in the game at start. You can increase this but be aware that it will affect your PC's performance.
• Limit World Size - 10/50/100/Unlimited. Leave it at Unlimited.
• Respawn ship cooldown - Various. Leave it at the default.
• View Distance - 5 - 50 km. Leave this at the default unless you think your PC can handle it.

I'm not going to bother covering the checkboxes as you can go ahead and leave these set at their defaults. The only exception to this is to make sure the "Permanent Death" checkbox is turned OFF unless you want to start over from scratch whenever you die.

For the purposes of this blog, I will be creating a couple of custom worlds (subject to change). They will likely be

1. Easy Start 1 in Survival Mode
2. Easy Start 2 in Creative Mode
3. Asteroid in Survival Mode

I have decided on a mix so that we can review various systems in each of the modes. Creative Mode allows us to goof around with the systems to learn about them, and then Survival mode so that we can do some mining, refining, and assembling (which is basically bypassed in Creative mode).

Well, I said I'd leave you with a short video of the Easy Start 2 Scenario Tour, but I'm running a bit short on time, so I will leave it for the next Space Engineers post.

Space Engineers #3 - Lift Off!

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All right, time to get crackin'. Remember that 'New World' button? Let's mash it!

Crap. More options. No worries, this will just take a sec...

Quickstart puts you into the 'Easy Start 1' scenario (more on this in a moment), but in 'Creative' mode (as opposed to 'Survival' mode). What's the difference? Well, similar to Minecraft's Creative mode, in this game you will get infinite supplies, instant build times and no death and that is why you will never pick it.

Select 'Custom World' and you can do whatever you want with the World settings (including all of those from Quickstart if you really want to).

Now, in the interest of getting into the bloody game, I will postpone the explanation of the Scenarios and World Options until next time. Suffice it to say for now, a great place to start is with the 'Easy Start 1' scenario with the default settings shown...

and Advanced settings changed thusly...

finally, we rename the world and give it a description...

Mash the 'OK' button, and whoila! You are somewhere out in the asteroid field on your own little outpost consisting of a mining platform, 3 small ships, and one large ship!



Press 'v' to move the view into 3rd person perspective...

hold the 'Alt' key down to move your camera around for a selfie...

then use the mouse wheel to zoom out, and...

get an overview of the whole operation. Sweet!

So, before we go, let's take a little spin around the platform and check out some basic controls...

 

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Space Engineers #2 - Getting Set Up

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When you fire up Space Engineers, you will be presented with the Main Menu. A video will be playing in the background demonstrating the real physics engine in all its glory where the devs are having fun crashing objects together.



 
Over on the right, you will see a 'Recommend' button where you can announce your new interest to the world via the usual social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. Beneath that, a text window will announce the latest news whether a new patch or company update. A link is provided that you can follow for details.

On the left, you have the following buttons.

In the first group:

• New World - Create a new game world
• Load World - Load a saved game world
• Join World - Join a multiplayer game hosted by another player
• Workshop - Load a game world that has been uploaded to the Steam Workshop by another player/designer

and in the second group:

• Options - Set Game, Video, Audio and Key-bind options
• Help - Link for Tutorial Videos, Displays Key binds
• Credits - Um... rolls game credits
• Exit to Windows - With a Save Game prompt!

Prior to actually starting a game, you might want to visit the Options area to set up your video and audio settings.

Clicking the 'Options' button brings to the Options screen where you can select subcomponents to set options for

• Game
• Video
• Audio
• Controls


The 'Game' options can be left at the defaults for most purposes.

'Video' options should be adjusted to your system's capabilities.

The 'Audio' options, well, meh. I have the music volume turned down so that when I record a video for this blog, you will be able to hear my voice over the music...

... whether you want to or not.

And, last, but not least, the Control options allows you to do remap/restore your key binds for

• Navigation
• Tools / Weapons
• System (3 screens)
• Spectator

Here's the Navigation Controls key bind map. As you can see, you can map each function to up to 2 keys and a mouse button.

 Bored yet? Yeah, I'll bet. Ok, next time we'll get into creating a new world with a brief description of those options. I promise. No, really, we'll actually get a game going.

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