Space Engineers

Dave said:

You know what the solution is, right? You need to make more videos.

And for goodness sake! MONETIZE THAT SHIT!

Click to expand...

I got too much copyrighted material in them. The Paddy Wagon video, for example, uses a great deal of the Tie Fighter game soundtrack. That's Lucasarts. That's Disney, now. And they got a whole building full of lawyers looking to stomp on guys like me making "homages" to old games we love.

AshburnerX said:

I'd stick to using the Space Engineers music then... I don't believe the developers are going to shit on you for making videos to support their game, and even if they did, I don't believe they have the resources to pursue action.

Click to expand...

Yeah, as a commercial producer, I've got access to quite a bit of royalty-free music that I can use, it'd just be a hassle to go back and re-dub it over again when what it's got is so very fitting. Also there's other stuff, like the Vindicator using cutscene footage from Wing Commander 2, etc.

AshburnerX said:

Visual cut-scene footage is usable under fair use. It's music where you run into issues...

Click to expand...

You're right. And back before I thought this would take off/go anywhere, I used a lot of it. Ghetto Bird's got Major Stryker (though I doubt Apogee would bother at this point), Star Control 2 (maybe the same), and X-Com in it (More likely to object), Paddy Wagon's got the Tie Fighter soundtrack, and Vindicator's got music from Wing Commander 2 and Masters of Orion. The latest one though is all royalty-free/Space Engineers soundtrack, though.

PatrThom said:

There's a good chance that you could MIDI up a serviceable replacement, if necessary one that is only a sound-alike rather than a direct performance. Hey, if Vanilla Ice can get away with it, then so can you.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

... pretty sure Vanilla Ice got sued over it though didn't he? He might have come out on top eventually, but that's a hassle I don't need. Still, I might just pull the trigger and see what happens, and bite the bullet and do a redub if I get a C&D on those videos.

Well, anyway, I've enabled monetization. Seems it automatically excludes any video from monetization if the robots match the music content, which is handy, I didn't have to go through and do it myself for some of my older videos, and though it didn't tag the couple SE videos I was worried about, I went ahead and turned off monetization for those individually.

Anyway, now that KSW is entering a "bug squashing" phase, I submitted a bug report,

http://forums.keenswh.com/post/1-05...umption-7145811?pid=1284864067#post1284864067

and included in that bug report is the following video -

Dave said:

That song. My god that song!

Click to expand...

Heh, you never heard Star Trekkin' before? It's old as the hills!

Frank said:

Gas, make this sad civil servant a happier person and build a Star Control 2 Precurser vessel.

Click to expand...

Now THAT would be a challenge. Lots of diagonal diagonals going to the engine pylons in that one. It'll probably be a bit though, I can't get anything done in SE this week really because of all the bugs introduced last thursday.

So, since enabling monetization, youtube estimates I'm making a smidgen over a dollar a day.

That's more than my gaming blog ever made.

AshburnerX said:

Hey... that's a night of pizza and beer/cider a month. Not too shabby.

Click to expand...

And ironically, despite all the new content I've added since then, it's still the first 5 tutorials bringing home all the bacon (both in views and ad clicks).

Dave said:

Wait until the game actually gets released. Your videos will be the go-to standard. And I mean that sincerely.

Click to expand...

They might be out of date by then. The G screen has already changed to the point to almost make that part of the tutorial useless. I may have to refilm at that point.

Frank said:

Gas, make this sad civil servant a happier person and build a Star Control 2 Precurser vessel.

Click to expand...

Hah, even MORE ironically, the default name of the SCII flagship is the Vindicator. Womp womp.

But renaming aside, I'm starting to plan how to do this. Obviously it'll be somewhat similar to the enterprise what with having "outriggers" with navigational components (in our case thrusters and gyros), and I think with a litttle paintwork I can make the central primary hull look segmented, as if made by multiple interchangable segments, without having to actually leave a 2.5 meter gap of empty space between them.

AshburnerX said:

You'll basically need to ether paint the connectors a dark color or cover them with walkways painted a dark color.

Click to expand...

I'm thinking just ever-so-slightly-different colors (since the color selection pallette uses 256x256x256x256 RGB sliders, which will make the painting routine put "separator" polygons between the sections.

The community waits with bated breath to see the results of the first week of "focused bug squashing" in the thursday patchmas.

/drums fingers on desk
/twiddles thumbs
/antsy

Thursday is (finally) patch day:

1.054

Summary
This week’s update includes the first batch of bugfixing. As we already informed you last week, Space Engineers is entering into a temporary stabilization period where we will focus only on bug fixing and stabilization of the things that are already in the game. This is just a temporary transition period that will last for a few weeks. There are still many big and important features to be added, but first we want to make sure that the game is free of bugs and in a much more stable state.

While waiting for the new features to come again in the game, it is a good time now, in case you haven’t done already, to start using and experimenting with the mods that our modders have created. For this, we have prepared a small video for you with selected mods created in Space Engineers.



List of Mods:
- Industrial Thruster / Ecto Sage: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=318305397&searchtext=
- SektanSky v1.0 / Sektan: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=305108339&searchtext=
- Damageindicator / STORM: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=332491557&searchtext=
- SANCHINCORP(hoverbike) / sanchindachi666: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=296661800&searchtext=
- Automated Inventory Sorting / tyrsis: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=321588701&searchtext=
- Gesture Pack / Virakotxa: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=303948455&searchtext=
- Command Console Pack / kolt16: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=304571628&searchtext=
- S Guns Rocket Launcher / Sektan: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=333093940&searchtext=
- Docking Ring / Darth Biomech: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=294619787&searchtext=
- SANCHINCYBORGS / sanchindachi666: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=296683251&searchtext=

Features
There are no new features this week

Fixes
- fixed major lag/freeze after drilling any asteroid
- fixed groups disappearing when player left the server
- fixed gatling gun damage is too soft
- fixed assembler co-operate mod unchecking itself in multiplayer
- fixed sound levels resetting after loading the map
- fixed exploding piston after grinding it on small ship
- fixed crash when exporting a model from the game
- fixed crash when pasting grid with mods that you don't have
- fixed advanced rotor staying in control panel
- fixed various crashes when player was shooting
- fixed mass blocks acting weird on dedicated server
- fixed large reactor model being too small
- fixed music issues when loading a map
- fixed issues where player could not place a block
- fixed performance drop issue with many turrets
- fixed not being able to reload reloadable rocket launcher from the front
- fixed emissivity for spotlight block
- fixed issue with choosing reloadable rocket launcher in toolbar
- fixed bullets having no visible particle effect
- fixed placing light armor block under interior light on platform
- fixed missing particle effect when player is welding
- fixed remote control not working when ship flights over 250m away from the platform (DS)
- fixed unfinished assemblers unmarked in production menu
- fixed pressing "Y" shuts off all reactors regardless of ownership and sharing
- fixed re-spawn ships not being deleted after logout
- fixed connector keeps disconnecting
- fixed missing aiming dot for missile launchers on large grids
- fixed texture issue on small reactors
- fixed question about ownership in re-spawn screen
- fixed missing audio files message in logs
- fixed joining issues when character died
- fixed wrong size of the floating objects
- fixed warheads exploding but doing no damage
- fixed collision with attached parts in 3rd person view
- fixed broken piston while deleting the top part in some situations (creative mode)
- fixed master assembler pulling small amounts of material[DOUBLEPOST=1414695804,1414695564][/DOUBLEPOST]It's a start. Most of the really really irritating bugs on that list were only introduced in the last week or two. Mayhaps they'll get to some longstanding ones now.. like ammo consumption/missiles not detonating/etc. Too much to hope for for dedicated server network sync issues at this point, I think.

AshburnerX said:

Gatling Gun damage was too soft? Does this mean that it got a damage boost to make it more viable?

Click to expand...

Now I hope they fix gatling turrets doing damage to themselves on dedicated servers.

Otherwise, I see small fighters (with gatling guns) now being in the ascendant, depending on how well they punch through large heavy armor. (Previous ascendant was large, heavily armored ramming ships, when the changes to missiles made heavy armor basically invulnerable).

Of course that's also assuming the "small gatling guns chewing through 100s of boxes of ammo per second" thing gets fixed.

Of course, something I'd actually kind of like to see, even though I've used it myself a lot in the past, would be for them to "fix" gravity drives... IE, break them. Make it so artificial masses only react to gravity fields not generated by the same grid to which they are attached. So they'd still be useful for making racetracks/etc to hold vehicles to the "ground" but would disallow large ships from instantly accelerating themselves to maximum speed from a standstill without something like a warpgate.

It's gotten rather ridiculous, really, how much PVP now REQUIRES stupidly powerful gravity drives just to stay competitive. I think it'd be good for large ships to be ponderous and slow.

AshburnerX said:

If they fix Gatling Gun damage, they probably did it for turrets as well... so a large ship with turrets is still going to shred a small ship with guns.

Click to expand...

Assuming the turret doesn't shred itself first. What I said was I hope they fix gatling turrets damaging THEMSELVES - which I demonstrated in my Star Trekkin' video.

Yeah, but then what would happen is people trying to use rotors/closed pistons to segment a ship so they could still use gravity drive.

Click to expand...

That's assuming that the sync errors of rotors and pistons don't cause such ships to rip themselves to shreds. Fixing that would probably also fix the workaround you describe.

Honestly, I think they need to just make thrusters more powerful. You need to have too many to move at a reasonable pace on large ships, when even something as massive as actual rockets can get away with a few. Ether give us more powerful/less efficient thrusters or leave gravity drive as it is.

Click to expand...

IMO they need to adopt the Titan Engine mod as vanilla. Or perhaps the Industrial thruster, since they're so in love with it they featured it in their list of mods.

I'll not be getting a lot done this week in SE. Just about everything is making the server crash, and assembler production queues are horked.

In other news, I'm still amazed that my Tutorial 1 still gets about 100 views a day, with over 58% audience retention (meaning more people watch at least most of it than exit out early).
Monetization estimates ~$1.30 a day at this point.