Space Engineers: Get Your Debug On
62In September 2016, Keen took away the debug screen from Space Engineers. For those of us who make creative content such as artwork, YouTube videos, or streams, the loss of this menu was a significant blow in that it took away a vital creative tool. The fact that it was removed at the same time a screenshot competition was announced has not sat well with us, and though it was promised we would get it back at some point, another competition has been announced with still no return of the tool.
For those not aware, the kind of features this screen makes possible are things like being able to stop sun rotation in the game without having to exit, change world settings, and reload... as well as the ability to move the sun... modify ambient lighting... and other things like physics and render settings. So you can imagine things like this are a big help when you're focusing on the creative aspect of the game and not survival.
Keen's stance at the time was that it was removed because it was "dangerous". Only they didn't remove it -- they just disabled the method of getting to the debug menu in the normal game. It has been alive and well in the Mod SDK this whole time... and no-one at Keen has felt the need to communicate that with the community at large.
I'm correcting that deficiency. Ladies and gents, here not only is a set of instructions that only just reached me last week courtesy of the #w4stedcave on the ARMCO Discord after I noted that Xocliw had made use of the debug screen in a recent stream. I can confirm the method works, and I've also cooked up an improvement to the way this change is made that should make it more tolerant of future updates and hotfixes.
Keen should have made this kind of information available to the community after the outrage the removal of this screen caused. Why they didn't and insisted on the "it breaks the game" story, I wish I knew. This one's dedicated to all the content creators out there for persevering in the absence of the debug screen.
Update 11/24: For those looking for an in-game alternative that doesn't require moving files or mucking about with the Mod SDK, check out Meridius_IX's "Sun Rotation Control" mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1206952895&searchtext=
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