Developer Diaries – Episode 16

Summary:
Greetings, Engineers! In this week’s developer diary, we’re bringing you a Q&A with Medieval Engineers Producer Tim Toxopeus about the new World Map and fast travel system we previewed last week. Also, be sure to take a look at this week’s video, where we reveal the winners of the Medieval Engineers banner contest! The winning designs will be implemented in the Medieval Engineers vanilla game.
For the rest of the banners that won’t appear in the core game, you can still mod them in (banner system will be fully moddable) – so don’t throw away your textures! We will release full guide how to add your favorite banner

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Q: (KingdomBragg) Will there be anything to prevent players using fast travel to escape a fight?
A: Currently, you cannot fast travel while in enemy territory, or in direct combat. After fighting, there’ll be a short cooldown that needs to pass before you can fast travel somewhere.

Q: (waterlimon) How about low-res player activity indicator instead of exact location (highlight region on map for example)?
A: The player activity indicator is only a rough indication, not accurate GPS, and it only portrays your and your allies’ positions. An enemy position is not revealed until they attack.

Q: (Mathers) Will the player need to build a claim block in each region, or will there be a more intuitive system to expand your claim?
A: For now, you will have to place a claim block in each region, but we are playing with ideas for different methods

Q: (entspeak) For modding purposes, do the 6 kingdoms correspond to the 6 tiles used for the planet heightmap?
A: Yep, they do. During development we actually named them after the corresponding heightmap, for example, the up face was called Updog.

Q: (Merandix) Will it be possible to build a hidden base by foregoing a claimblock, at the risk that anyone can enter if you don’t design it carefully?
A: We are still experimenting with that idea. It goes against the idea of making people findable on the planet, leading to Space Engineers’ submarine warfare gameplay where it’s all about staying hidden. On the other hand, it’s cool.

Q: (beelzerob) Will fast travel be limited to areas you have physically traveled to first (aka skyrim), or can you jump blind into an area you’ve never seen?
A: One of our fast travel settings, which was not finished during the last update video, allows you to disable fast travel to any area, and only allows you to travel to areas that are considered developed. An area is considered developed when it is claimed, or has enough large grid blocks.

Q: (Ash87) Can we get a release Date for the planets and the map, and… the other 4 trillion things KSH has been working on? At video 10, the devs were past the 50% mark on their list of work, has the same rate of work continued and we’re at like… under 5 weeks now until it’s all out?
A: Don’t want to give exact date yet, but the estimate at video 10 isn’t far off the mark seeing the current state.