Keen Software announced today the release of a new pre-alpha update for their upcoming, fully destructible space shooter, Miner Wars 2081. The big news is that this pre-alpha update includes an in-game editor and prefab modules which basically means that you can now build your own space ship, space station or any sort of space-like edifice you can think of.

These structures are be made from prefab modules, and in the future the company is looking to feature ’total destructibility’ for these objects. Prefab modules include tunnels, lattices, beams and panels as well as diverse chambers and special devices. In addition, you can upload your hand-made sectors to the server and let your friends play them.

Miner Wars 2081 is slated for a late December 2011/Q1 2012 release. Furthermore, Keen Software revealed the new game and rendering features, as well as the upcoming ones and some brand new images, that can be viewed bellow.

Enjoy!

New game features, including:

•Completely new GUI including lots of cool HUD icons.
•New player weapons.
•Improved AI (added waypoints, guard mode, more realistic combat behavior).
•New physics engine with multi-core optimizations.

New rendering engine, featuring:

•Image Space LOD (Level of Detail) – seamless LOD with no popping artifacts.
•Deferred rendering with unlimited light sources.
•Dynamic shadows / Cascade Shadow Maps (CSMs) with blended cascades
•Improved ship lighting from engine thrusts.
•Upgraded shaders, looking even more gorgeous.
•New render quality setting – EXTREME – designed to take advantage of newer hardware.

Upcoming game and editor features:

•Modular mothership weapons – large weapons and turrets that can aim and shoot at enemy!
•Special prefab types – lights, speakers, particle generators.
•Personality-Based AI Behavior and Group AI Behavior – simply set the AI behavior within the editor, choosing from several pre-scripted AI pilot and commander behaviors (coward, aggressive, sharpshooter, defensive and more).
•Event-driven music – many new music tracks programmed to fit within the context of the current gameplay situation (fight, chase, harvest, deep space…).
•Special prefab types – lights, speakers, particle generators. –
•Hundreds of new sounds by Dan Wentz and prefabs from our 3D artists were made (http://www.minerwars.com/ForumTopic.aspx?id=1943), they are just waiting to be brought to life and interlinked with other game content.

Upcoming rendering engine features:

•Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO).
•Image-Based Anti-Aliasing (FXAA).
•HDR with tone mapping, environmental textures, bloom/blur.

John Papadopoulos

John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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