What happened to medieval engineers?

[TheMadSpider]

a brief history and look-back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pujgrtmbryo

[[GER] N3XU5]

Reading these posts is hurting really much. It reminds me of the good time we all had and our clans, factions and friends as the game was running, but with all this bad behaviour of the devs the community is slowly taking there last and final steps, before disappearing. Slowly we had lost friend by friend and one day we will all have left this game behind. Then there is only this sweet little redeeming of a good time, but with a bad shadow and leaving a bad taste ...

RIP ME, greetings to my lost brothers of the Templars

[nyannokonekko]

Isn't ME's code based off of SE's code? So releasing the source code for ME would also be (pretty much) the same as doing that for SE. Why not instead have them make moding easier? Like a modding update? But unfortunately I don't think they'll be touching this game xd

[Buckshot]

Originally posted by Xelthia:

KEEN got lazy and greedy lied to us and abandoned it

It is really a shame. This game had so much potential. I played it for a while before someone told me all the Devs have moved over to Space Engineers. That was so sad to hear. I really enjoyed ME.

[fabricator77]

Originally posted by nyannokonekko:

Isn't ME's code based off of SE's code? So releasing the source code for ME would also be (pretty much) the same as doing that for SE. Why not instead have them make moding easier? Like a modding update? But unfortunately I don't think they'll be touching this game xd

SE is VRage 1.0, ME is VRage 2.0.
Basically Keen rewrote large parts of SE's game engine to create ME.
They then promised features from ME would get backported into SE, and things missing from ME that SE had would also get transfered.
None of that really happened, one reason why is SE's code is so bad, the ME team refused to touch it.

[Arcturus]

Originally posted by Xelthia:

if only SE had ME compaunding blocks

If I recall, that was kind of the reason they even started ME.
To "give them a different perspective".
I remember there was some mention of crossing features over both games.

That kinda annoys me... because one of my main (out of many) issues with SE as well is how every item seems to take up an *entire block*. It makes stuff like bridges on larger ships very massive targets because you can't cram all the stations into a smaller area.

Plus I know this is a major issue that their engine just can't handle, but flowing water would have worked really well with both games... but I would consider it as *essential* for ME. A lot of medieval engineer and even just power generation was centered around rivers, and it seems really odd that we can't build boats. As for SE, you would think that pumping water out of lakes would be a good means of gathering hydrogen, oxygen and even deutrium for reactor fuel, but nope.

I believe that the "extra perspective" could have worked wonders for both games... but Keen's pure laziness with this game (and SE, but that's a different topic) have essentially ruined what could have been two very incredible games.

[Kindred Spirit]

Originally posted by Cy:

Originally posted by Xelthia:

if only SE had ME compaunding blocks

If I recall, that was kind of the reason they even started ME.
To "give them a different perspective".

I remember there was some mention of crossing features over both games.

That kinda annoys me... because one of my main (out of many) issues with SE as well is how every item seems to take up an *entire block*. It makes stuff like bridges on larger ships very massive targets because you can't cram all the stations into a smaller area.

Plus I know this is a major issue that their engine just can't handle, but flowing water would have worked really well with both games... but I would consider it as *essential* for ME. A lot of medieval engineer and even just power generation was centered around rivers, and it seems really odd that we can't build boats. As for SE, you would think that pumping water out of lakes would be a good means of gathering hydrogen, oxygen and even deutrium for reactor fuel, but nope.

I believe that the "extra perspective" could have worked wonders for both games... but Keen's pure laziness with this game (and SE, but that's a different topic) have essentially ruined what could have been two very incredible games.

That is why people consider KSH (or whatever they're going to call themselves now) to have boldly lied.

https://blog.marekrosa.org/2015/01/medieval-engineers_22.html

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.

(Imagine a game where Marek Rosa put in all the things he tells you to imagine being in his games!)

https://blog.marekrosa.org/2020/03/medieval-engineers-update.html

Q: So what is happening with the game?
A: I feel that the Medieval Engineers fulfilled all the plans we had at the beginning. I understand that some players may feel that the game has a greater, unrealized, potential. For us, Medieval Engineers is a successful project which helped to shape our games and our team.

And this repeat of Miner Wars 2081/Miner Wars MMO was why many didn't buy ME... but the company cites low numbers being the reason why they pulled the plug (after saying there were more plans before months of silence from the company about ME - another lie). Truly, the company has gone fully cart before the horse, as the only way they got anywhere with SE was by their community keeping them in check before the company (again) self-rekt.

FFS, I remember when they were selling SE with features shown in trailers but weren't actually in the game yet.

[Arcturus]

Originally posted by l'Original:

snip snip

Yeah that's pretty much it. This company is proven time and time again that they will lie and "move the goal posts" so to speak.

There is no shame in saying you massively overestimated and you have to cut down content to meet deadlines. I mean hell, pretty much every Halo game to date has had massively reduced content from its original plan, the devs don't hide that fact.

But actively lying about it by either pretending you never made those promises or claiming you fulfilled all your goals is just dishonest. This is the Internet. It doesn't take a genius to look up some old dev-blogs to see that their claims of "meeting all their goals" is a straight-up lie.

The fact they can do that proves they don't have a proper roadmap in place. They aren't cutting content because its too ambitious, they're cutting it because they legit didn't have a plan to begin with... even SE's stream of DLCs lately had shown they're largely just taking from mod content instead of finding things that would actually fit into the game as big updates.

Then you take into consideration that they just *abandon* games when it seems to be struggling rather than pushing it through that "middle marathon" (as we say in the indie world) to completion. Plus "starting a new project instead of finishing your current one" is the hallmark of every failing indie developer who can't seem to get themselves off the ground...

I think the scariest part is when you look at the reviews of these games. Steam has its issues with really reflecting the "quality" or "importance" of reviews. A lot of the good ones seem to be along the lines of "10/10 can slam phallic shaped objects into friends". Stuff you'd expect from bots. But the negative reviews? God ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ grief, most of them have hundreds (some even thousands) of hours of gameplay, and are short essays in their own right starting with "I would have given a positive review years ago-"... just looking at them, you can see just how much KHS has failed their own fans and are pretty much riding on new players as much as possible to stay afloat.


I knew KHS had a lot of problems, but actually now that I've written up just some of my thoughts on their behaviour... it really does *amaze* me that they are still active. The only reason I can think for their survival is pure luck at this point. Luck that they got attention in the first place, luck that players chose to mod their game instead of moving to others, luck that some big space Youtubers took interest in the game.

[Kindred Spirit]

That's the rub.

A lot of Steam's Early Access watchers were started because of the previous screw jobs like Miner Wars 2081/Miner Wars MMO, as when SE's early forum days were KSH doing much of the same act it sent up warning flags. It took getting the company to stop destroying its own community for SE to get anywhere.

A LOT of the negative reviews were once positive, so that the flip weighed in much more. I had hoped that KSH would go back and do things right, but if ME was any indication (and the shifty company name change as well), then they are going to take another foray into Miner Wars again. Problem is, they already burned a lot of folks on Miner Wars 2081/Miner Wars MMO.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/223430/Miner_Wars_2081/

Now the company are back to their old tricks, willing to screw over those who took a chance for them on dubious product and left hanging, they have earned the distrust all over again.

Those who liked SE, look forward to SE2, will see another title they could buy to support the company in Miner Wars. When not enough buy it, as KSH already destroyed their rep in the 6DOF genre, then it will likely be shelved like ME.

Even the hardcore SE folks are having some doubts because of the direction of the DLCs and more.

Marek Rosa needs to stop playing Discount Demis Hassabis with his also-ran AI company and tend to his responsibilities of the titles he leaves in his wake, or else he will lose his core audience.

All over again.

[Guybrush]

damn it. I hate showing up to a game I already owned but didn't really play until after this hay-day is like showing up to a party when the host is cleaning up beer bottles and some dudes asleep on the concrete outside using his vomit as a pillow.

[Arcturus]

Originally posted by Guybrush:

damn it. I hate showing up to a game I already owned but didn't really play until after this hay-day is like showing up to a party when the host is cleaning up beer bottles and some dudes asleep on the concrete outside using his vomit as a pillow.

Yeah I get that feeling. Unfortunately, I don't think Medieval Engineers ever really had that big party to begin with. More like one or two people turned up and had an okay time but it was nowhere near what was promised.

I enjoyed ME at first, but it felt completely lacking since its initial release. I think the biggest boost in interest it got was when *players* made the water-mod and stuff like engines. Going back to the party analogy, that's like someone else called up those two guys and said there was a better party elsewhere.

[Arcturus]

Originally posted by Xelthia:

medieval engineers was very popular at one point. 100s of servers full of players and a large community. even cross server wars and so on just as much as space engineers. but again keen / Marek Rosa got lazy and greedy. and went with SE and all the paid. DLCs

I think this pretty much sums up why people dislike KHS itself rather than the games.
Sure the games have their issues, even one that's been actively worked on for years...
But KHS' poor business practices, and their transparency in following them, is the thing driving people away at this point.

[Havokrider]

He has laughed at us. After more than a year of abandonment, they dare to say that for them it is finished and they put it out as a finished game. I have never regretted a purchase so much.

[Arcturus]

Originally posted by The Havokrider:

He has laughed at us. After more than a year of abandonment, they dare to say that for them it is finished and they put it out as a finished game. I have never regretted a purchase so much.

Kind of curious, is there not some kind of legal action that could be taken for this?
Surely there are roadmaps, devlogs, etc, that all prove they shipped a different product to what they promised?
Like I understand games sometimes are missing certain features when shipped, either they're added in later or the devs admit they couldn't do it, but KHS are straight-up lying to the customers by claiming they shipped with all the content they planned on having.

[ZOMBIE 999 TP]

I'm actually interested to buy this game, but it seems it has serious problems at this moment. There is a lot of people in this situation, and i don't know why the devs don't fix the game, there is still a lot of money to be made with this game, if problems are fixed.

[Arcturus]

Originally posted by ZOMBIE 999 TP:

and i don't know why the devs don't fix the game

They abandoned it. Plain and simple.

Originally posted by ZOMBIE 999 TP:

there is still a lot of money to be made with this game, if problems are fixed.

There isn't. Anyone who's tried selling to Steam before (starting from early access, not gold release) is that the first few hours of sales are the most important. You might get peaks once in a while due to DLC, or some really good post-release marketing, but your first few hours of sales pretty much make-or-break the game.

They won't fix it because Space Engineers is far more popular (I blame Youtubers and mod-makers) and they know they can just steal content that mod-makers have made and put them into official DLC to keep the cash flowing in, rather than trying to make a game that people want.