The machinery around Space Engineers.
SE Launcher is a plugin launcher and loader for Space Engineers. It hosts the game on a current .NET runtime, precompiles game assemblies, and loads plugins from NuGet packages. These pages cover the parts you touch: installing it, building for it, and running a server with it.
What it does
Space Engineers is built on an older .NET runtime. SE Launcher starts the game on .NET 10, patches the compatibility seams, and keeps the game's own files intact. Before the game window appears, it can run crossgen2 over the game assemblies and cache the result. On later launches that cache is reused until the game build changes.
The other half is the plugin layer. Plugins are NuGet packages with their own dependency graphs, load contexts, JSON configuration, Dear ImGui interfaces and Harmony patches. A plugin manager inside the game lists what is installed, updates packages, and can reload local builds during development.
On Linux the same loader runs the client through an AppImage and the dedicated server in headless mode. The server can load dedicated plugins, run several instances, host Torch as a provider, or be deployed as a Docker container.
Choose a path
- Installation — Windows setup, the Linux AppImage, Steam launch options and the places people usually get stuck.
- Plugin development — the template, the plugin lifecycle, configuration, ImGui, Harmony patches and publishing.
- Dedicated servers — the Linux server, world setup, multiple instances, Torch and Docker.
Where things live
The project's public name is SE Launcher. The application, installer paths and package IDs still use the original name, CringeLauncher. That is expected: a path that says CringeLauncher belongs to this project.
- Windows data — %APPDATA%\CringeLauncher, with configuration under config\ and the crossgen cache under cache\.
- Windows install — %LOCALAPPDATA%\CringeLauncher\current.
- Dedicated server — everything writable lives in the instance directory, by default instance/ in the working directory.
- Plugin packages — resolved into the launcher cache from the configured NuGet sources; the default source includes the project's own feed.
Getting help
The project wiki is the canonical reference and may be ahead of this site during preview development. The Git repository has the source and the issue tracker. For installation problems and plugin questions, the Discord server is the support forum.