Underspace News

Hello starchasers! How are you- Cat pictures? Oh alright, fine. I keep waking up with 30 pounds worth of meowmeat on top of me so here you go. These Things.



Now I'll be out of town next week which means there will be no patch next week. This is fine as we're ramping things up for our first big EA milestone release: Gods & Corpses, which will bring lots of new little bits of content and a lot of background optimization stuff to the game as well. Until then, here's a smaller patch to tide you over.



Onto the changelog!

[h2]NEW FEATURES[/h2]

• Added a setting that lets you set what your mouse wheel or throttle on a joystick controls, so you can use it for your whatsit, your engines now instead of the quickmenu (which now also has keybinds for that).
  
• The frienddrive interface is now radial and has some small improvements to readability. On the subject of frienddrive improvements, NPCs now also jump in much faster.
  
• The navmap now displays if a station sells ships.
  
• Added new effects to campaign mission 9 to better communicate just how screwed you are.
  
• While disrupted, lanelines will have a persistent effect showing that they’re offline.
  
• The Peerless Casino is now open for business! There’s been some small changes to some of the gaming stations, but more relevantly it now has its full interior with some initial detailing. More detailing will come later, of course.
  
• Peerless Casino’s quexben tables now have different risk levels.
  
• Hat, Creon, Tyrono, and even Candrial can all be spoken too when off-mission, and have extensive dialogue trees!
  

[h2]CHANGES AND REBALANCES[/h2]

• Completing the campaign won’t reset your reputation with certain special factions.
  
• Expanded and changed what factions the Absolutionists don’t like (hint: a lot).
  
• More stations sell station plating now.
  
• Adjusted the hitboxes of some of the Cannonfiend’s attacks.
  
• Adjusted the triggerzone of the space mirror.
  
• Made the items that let you craft unique dungeon weaponry stackable.
  
• All buyable ships now have icons.
  
• Added more lodestones in more locations. You still need the same amount to complete the quest, this just gives you more opportunities.
  
• The Loco Star now has its proper gameplay stats and is worthy of being the endgame spacetrain it was always meant to be.
  
• Removed more quest systems that could be reached via unstable jumps unintentionally.
  
• Gravecity’s quests now have a reputation requirement attached.
  
• Autopilot when manual docking is enabled will no longer disable manual docking. In order to take advantage of autopilot’s auto docking feature, you will have to turn off manual docking. Goto still works normally, of course.
  
• Hostile Delivery now has appropriate icons for characters in dialogue and some events have been shored up to work even if you missed them the first time.
  
• Some improved support for HOTAS and joystick. This is still very vestigial (remember: mouse and keyboard will always be what we HEAVILY recommend) but it will try to automatically identify valid axises for controls based on what you have plugged in.
  

[h2]FIXES[/h2]

• Fixed some typos in dialogue.
  
• Fixed issue where reversing into a station would cause docking weirdness later on.
  
• Fixed issue where the Suncracker would respawn.
  
• Fixed various lighting issues on stations.
  
• Fixed some closing issues with the new radial menu.
  
• Fixed some button rebinding issues, including overdisplay and some buttons not allowing for rebinds.
  
• Fixed issues where some records in the codex file would disappear.
  
• Fixed some misnamed ships in game.
  
• Fixed several more issues with big-kill-based missions.
  
• Fixed issue where courier missions wouldn’t tell you the name of the area you need to courier to.
  
• Fixed mission issues with several mission items that couldn’t be sold.
  
• Fixed issues where wave-based missions would spawn too few enemies.
  
• Fixed issue where some secret systems could be reached with unstable jumpholes. This will eventually be a thing, for sure, but not THESE particular star systems.
  
• Fixed issue where the player would randomly become a ten foot tall robot woman for no reason.
  
• Fixed issue where some ancient gates could be randomly unstable.
  
• Refactored how longrange scans work to be more reliable.
  
• Fixed further issues with the creatures inhabiting the great egg in Pard-12.
  
• Adjusted some issues with several questmarkers in Black Borm’s Treasure.
  
• Crafting menu now displays value and valid hardpoints (if any) of the crafted item.
  
• Fixed issues with loading quicksaves via the quickload option.
  
• Randomization Console Commands now also properly updates your UI.
  
• Fixed issue where some lodestones couldn’t be looted.
  
• Fixed graphical errors where several systems would have skyboxes that were too low resolution.
  
• Fixed issue where avoidance code wouldn’t work when autopilot was trying to dock with something.
  
• Your ship’s onboard AI narrator will now correctly announce things for minefields, explosive gases, dock denials, and docking.
  
• Fixed issues with Hostile Delivery where players friendly with the Washers could have their reputation reset.
  
• Fixed some lonely startrawlers that had been blown off course.
  
• Fixed some drift when using joysticks or controllers.
  
• Fixed some inventory UI where old data would still be displayed.
  

[h2]Linux Build[/h2]
We're working on trying to get out a native Linux build, right now this is sort of in testing and it'll take a while seeing as a 10gb upload on my 1970s internet isn't the easiest thing. Ideally, this Linux build will also make it easier to use with Steam Deck.

Anyway, one more closing cat.

Attention, Starchasers!



Thank you for your attention.

It hasn't even been a month since Underspace's Early Access release but the community's response has been overwhelming -- so much so that we feel it's time to let this amazing community in on our plans for the rest of the year (and some change).



Here's the rundown in case the image doesn't load:

Update: GODS & CORPSES (May)

• New Planet: Gravecity
  Late Game Boss Overhauls
  New codex and scanner options
  Knowledge acquisition system
  New ship customization options

Update: [REDACTED] (Summer)

• Bounty hunting questline
  15+ new quests
  More NPC interactions
  New special equipment

Update: [REDACTED] (Fall)

• All missing planet models
  Station interior overhauls
  Character customization overhaul
  Station detailing overhaul
  Cockpit elements and customization

Update: [REDACTED] (Winter to early 2025)

• Multiplayer
  Main storyline continuation
  Freeplay mode
  Additional mod support

IMPORTANT: this is not the list of ALL the updates you can expect on the following months; rather the biggest ones we will be focusing on.

We will obviously be improving all features of Underspace's base game and, as always, we will continue to fix bugs and listen to suggestions from starchasers inside the Steam Discussions and the Underspace Discord server.

Once again, we'd like to thank you so much for your continued support of Underspace. It's indescribable to see so many people appreciate the blood, sweat, and tears this team has put into this wonderfully weird game and love it as much as we do. For that, you all get a bonus cat pic.



You're welcome.

See you in Underspace, starchasers!

Welcome to next week starchasers! Another seven unfortunate days have passed through our shadowy midst, and another seven days of hardcore patching have came and went. Don't burn yourself out you say? Buddy I was at the farmer's market all day today. Did you know you can whip honey into something called honey cream? It's as divine as the gods you've been killing. Where was I? Cat pictures, right. The little brats love the new tower you guy funded into existence.



Anyway, serendipity (that fickle mistress that determines whether or not I can fix a bug) has smiled her mascot-horror-level smile upon us this week, and a bunch of annoying longstanding issues were able to be reproduced and fixed. Plus, we have a ton of new UI quality of life stuff, some new effects and music, and best of all: Some stuff.



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



[h2]NEW FEATURES[/h2]

• You can now see how much space you have in your ship as a numeric value.
  
• You can now sell your scanned data to stormtracker ships!
  
• You can now view scanned data in your information UI.
  
• Control inverts are now separated out into station controls and ship controls respectively.
  
• Added an option to control the speed of campaign cutscenes when on stations.
  
• Added a dialogue history component to the pause menu.
  
• Viewing the information of any local lucrative fields will now tell you if those fields offer any resources.
  
• Added a small indicator to let you see if any nearby asteroids are mineable.
  
• Added new music to the game.
  
• Added a new quick-access menu to go to your various actual menus.
  
• New effects for tractoring in items: Including trails, different sounds based on whether or not you CAN tractor things in, and more.
  
• Added new accessibility options for motion sickness. These will be gradually updated as we identify places that cause it.
  

[h2]CHANGES AND REBALANCES[/h2]

• Imbo’s guns now no longer require reputation to buy. Why would they? All you need is Imbo.
  
• Defense Drones and Autoturrets have been rebalanced to be much more viable. Defense drones now do much more damage, while autoturrets now do more damage and take comparatively less energy.
  
• Buffed mining: Many more mineable asteroids will spawn, and asteroids have much higher yields and chances. Minable asteroids also now move slower and are slightly easier to shoot.
  
• We’ve refactored the background lightning effects you see in storms. They should no longer introduce shader errors and have higher resolution textures and glows.
  
• Weapon platforms are no longer considered space stations, which means missiles will now target and track them much better and they are no longer considered taxable income.
  
• True Struggles of a Modern Artist now has updated dialogue and entries, making it easier to find the things you need.
  
• Adjusted base LOD distances for rendering to improve performance.
  
• Optimized large ship rendering to increase performance in areas with a lot of those fat bastards.
  
• Optimized ship rendering a bit, you should see some performance increases in heavy traffic areas.
  
• The Great Spacetrain Robbery can now let you properly loot the cargo cars it has.
  
• Terminals, such as repair things, mission boards, news boards, etc, now have proper screen textures for the vast majority of them. No more black monitors filled with the inky uncaring abyss.
  
• You can now use abyssdrives in storms so long as there are no active hazards.
  
• Quest waypoints prioritize jumpgates over jumpholes for pathing now.
  
• Target closest hostile now can target a wider variety of things (such as battleships, weapon platforms, and fish) and the button for that on your UI now works.
  
• The Moonshiner now contacts you more easily and you can comm his train in order to get what you so deeply desire.
  
• Higher level scanner upgrades can now show you the health of mines.
  
• Reworked sudden suns in storms to surge better, do their damage more consistently, last much less, and have new sounds and effects.
  
• The Hellmouth Prince now has a custom talky speaky icon for talking, to better communicate that he’s not some random dude but a giant mass of living fire piloting a battleship (though not very well).
  
• Hellmouth Prince is now invincible until the fight starts. He’s always invincible mind you, just so very stupid.
  
• You can now quickload during combat.
  

[h2]FIXES[/h2]

• Fixed some mislabeled lanelines.
  
• Moved the location of some rifts in Yasta and Redemeliat.
  
• Fixed some quest markers not leading you to proper locations.
  
• Refactored some shaders in the game to hopefully prevent THE VOID from consuming one’s screen. At least as frequently…
  
• Speaking of which we’ve done a passthrough on shaders to hopefully clamp down on THE VOID once and for all. The VOID is our enemy. It is yours too.
  
• Fixed hair rendering issues in places.
  
• Fixed some cloak and buff rendering issues that caused overdraw.
  
• Fixed issues in the Amber Forest in Turnways where nodes would just go flying off. Weeee.
  
• The Vauldwin taxi service will now appear more consistently.
  
• Fixed issues with black screens persisting due to pausing or alt-tabbing.
  
• Kaon Shapebinder now activates better and has his invincibility mechanics reimplemented.
  
• Kaon Shapebinder will also now actively follow his persistence node. Maybe he does come back to life sometimes, but not this time. Dude’s fricking dead.
  
• Chapters that require mining items or acquiring items to rank now work properly. Go Trash Pandas!
  
• Exhibition and challenger matches will now work for arena champions.
  
• Fixed some softlocks that occurred rarely via random missions taken in lower population systems such as Bastic.
  
• Fixed issue with the Research Retrieval random mission.
  
• Fixed issues with patrolling cruisers flying through planets.
  
• Fixed issues with world persistence saves not working.
  
• Fixed issues with wrecks spawning inside asteroids.
  
• Fixed quest issues where you could use the Ticker Shunter to leave the relevant boss fight.
  
• Fixed many mission issues relating to wave killing missions, including better clamping on potentially endless fights there.
  
• Fixed issue where many of the rocky cliffs in the Ijuni regions had no colliders.
  
• Fixed some floating geometry on some stations.
  
• Baton Broken will now progress properly if the player leaves the initial quest elements and comes back later.
  
• Creon! and the White Fleet chapters will now work properly for ranking up. Both chapters now have a wider range of enemies that count for their chapters now too.
  
• Fixed issue where the space egg’s inhabitants could be viewed from a distance.
  

We'll have another patch coming next week of course. I'm aiming to make these weekly except under special circumstances, with larger updates coming each quarter. Speaking of those larger updates, we'll be showing off our Early Access Roadmap this coming Wednesday, May 1st. Be there, or be a square. One more cat picture, but you'll have to make it last.

It takes a lot to get me immediately invested in a sci-fi universe’s backstory and lore, but Underspace got its hooks in the moment it recounted the story of The Speaker, a public orator of legend. When interdimensional conquerors threatened the galaxy, his unbroken 46-hour speech shamed the invaders so thoroughly that they turned around and went back home embarrassed. And that’s just the tip of an iceberg of weirdness...
Read more.

Hello starchasers! Happy weed day or whatever. Is it weed day? It's weed day or something. That's important enough of a holiday to release a NEW patch, isn't it?

It's been just over a week since Underspace has released now, and about a week since our last patch. As you know, sleep eludes me as I don't want the skin man to catch me in my dreams, so I've had plenty of time to work on plenty of stuff.



This is just a small patch nevertheless, our truly big updates will be happening after our roadmap in May gets released. Let's get into the patch notes! Also, some screenshots!



[h2]NEW FEATURES[/h2]

• Added quicksaving and quickloading. These aren’t bound by default, but work all the same.
  
• Added new UI elements on windows to easily hide the background effects.
  
• Commodities now display how many cargo slots they take up.
  
• You can now use the frienddrive and your cloaking device from the quickmenu.
  
• You can now set the number of values the autosave system generates via the options menu.
  
• Added many new tutorials explaining menus or mechanics. Remember: You asked for this.
• Translated ancient gates will now give hints as to where to find the appropriate booze needed to open them.
  
• The in-game radio now shows the song currently playing on your radio.
  
• Added a new option to have the in-game radio not suppress ambient tracks (such as nebulas, stations, and asteroid belts).
  
• Mister Maudlin will now buy commodities from you. Don’t ask what he’s using them for.
  
• Starchasing chapters can now display their home bases.
  
• Repair items now have unique models and graphics for each one. Now that shrunken battleship actually is, in fact, a shrunken battleship in a bottle.
  
• Added a quest that lets you track the Marching Star during its campaign missions, to better keep an eye on it.
  
• Deleting saves now gives you a confirmation menu before doing so.
  
• When buying a ship, you now have an option to just buy and add it to your garage, or buy and transfer all your equipment to your new ship.
  
• There’s also a confirmation menu when quitting to the main menu now.
  

[h2]CHANGES AND REBALANCES[/h2]

• The under-construction jumpgate in Pard-130 now has a proper model.
  
• You will no longer have to wait for your energy to recharge when loading a save.
  
• Frienddrives will now only start to recharge once the party member has jumped out.
  
• Repair drops are now weighted towards repair items you actively need.
  
• Ammo for your equipment can now drop from NPCs. Space truly is nature’s farm. For missiles. Or something. How did the saying go?
  
• Obscurus Galacti does a better job of hiding itself amongst its many clones.
  
• In-game radio is now controlled entirely by the music slider option.
  
• Friendly battleships will now become hostile against you if you fire at them.
  
• Exiting abyssdrive via a key will now simply drop you back down to cruise.
  
• Added some more dialogue to Colonel Eltmoor to hint on what you should do.
  
• Tweaked the beam attack settings of some late-storyline bosses.
  
• The Hangman has been buffed.
  
• Unstable jumpholes are now even more unstable: Every unstable jumphole has a chance to rocket you to a completely different region entirely.
  
• When reassigning inputs, conflicting inputs will now swap keys rather than remove them, mainly to prevent softlocks.
  
• Escape will now clear the keybind of an input in the input menu.
  

[h2]FIXES[/h2]

• Fixed some additional quest soflocks
  
• Fixed some mislabeled jumpholes.
  
• Fixed stormeyes not spawning when a storm is killed or spawning when a storm shouldn’t be killed.
  
• Fixed issue where the suncracker could only die if you out-DPS’d it hardcore style.
  
• Fixed some engine display issues with Ijuni fighters.
  
• Lodestones can now stack.
  
• Fixed issues where the Tierra jumphole would disappear early.
  
• Fixed issue where radiation alerts wouldn’t occur when jumping into a system.
  
• Fixed issue where Pyrona’s freighter couldn’t be seen in Between Spaces.
  
• During hyperstroms you can now kill yourself without issue.
  
• The Lower Lanes can now be looted.
  
• Fixed THE VOID being all consuming during Box of Memories.
  
• Fixed issue where some tutorials weren’t firing at the point of need.
  
• Fixed issue where the game would process inputs even when unfocused.
  
• Fixed various tutorial typos and added some new tutorials to the manual.
  
• Fixed issue where you couldn’t view data on systems outside your current one on the navmap.
  
• Redfaces now sell their weaponry during the campaign.
  
• Fixed issue where some party members were using their upgraded models too early.
  
• Fixed some softlocks with even more missions.
  
• The Remaining Eye cargo trader now buys cargo.
  
• The Hellomard can now be damaged and looted.
  
• Translated items will now save their translations. Note that they will need to be translated again for this to happen.
  
• Fixed some holes in the harvest gate.
  
• Fixed some softlocks that would occur with campaign mission 7.
  
• Updated some main quest dialogue to not go out of bounds.
  
• Added tech to help stop possible memory leaks in minefields. Naval mines aren’t that powerful. Yet.
  
• Some opening tutorials are slightly easier to follow now.
  
• Fixed some UI issues with the chapter stuff.
  
• Fixed some UI issues with the character skill menu.
  
• Fixed some UI issues with numeric readouts.
  
• Fixed some issues with out of system waypoints not working.
  
• Fixed some small graphical errors with civilian freighter headlights.
  
• Game resolutions should now save between game sessions.
  
• Fixed issue where quests could complete multiple times.
  
• Fixed some softlocks and typos in mission 9.
  
• Fixed some typos on lanelines and records.
  
• Fixed some softlocks with Baton, Broken.
  
• Rebalanced higher tier frienddrives augments.
  
• Fixed some potential softlocks with campaign mission 4.
  
• Fixed some campaign saves not loading fresh from a dock.
  

We'll be back next week with another patch, with a few various features. We're still working on refactoring a lot of internal input stuff to get controller support working (look, Unity's input systems, even alternative ones like Rewired, are a freaking mess. This takes a lot more effort than simple stuff like adding new questlines or multiplayer). They'll be some improvements here, so have some early previews of things like:



New radial menus for summoning party members or accessing menus.


New interiors for things like the Peerless Casino!



More billboards featuring my evil orange cat.

We'll see you next week, have fun and kill the storm!