Underspace News

February! Welcome back starchasers. It feels like this month has lasted forever, at least on my end. Probably my fault, time passes slower for me than it does other creatures. The game’s received some pretty major coverage recently, and dealing with all the subsequent attention has taken up a lot of time.



I believe I’ve previously stated that new demo versions are going to be largely less of a priority now as we focus on finishing up the game. Our next demo, 2.2, will be bringing in some actual interior models and textures, along with ambient NPCs. But I don’t have a release date set for that yet.

Anyway, onto progress. As always you can check out our current demo and check moment-to-moment stuff in the Discord, and you can read the full article here.



Sure combat and questing is fun, but sometimes you want to relax and do something else. There’s lots of new side activities added to the game (and soon to be in a final state). You can race out in the Ballden Solar States, become a gladiator at the arena, and gamble your life savings away at the Peerless Casino.

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We’ve also added a unique traveling merchant, whose outrageous prices are worth it for his wholly unique and strange guns.
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We’ve been expanding our roster of bugtesters, which means a lot of feedback has come in. Lots of background fixes and polish have been going on, including new console commands and lots of rebalances on weapons and equipment.

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Tutorials are also more robust, and piggyback off the game’s music heuristic system to better show the player what to do.


Not too much work in the way of assets. Mostly preparing furniture and fixtures for interiors. But we did add a little something special. We’ve added dynamic shadows to the game!

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I’d say it looks pretty good, and it’s going to be applied to a lot more places in the coming months.


That’s all for this month. Progress next month may be a little slow (I’ve got some prior obligations that need obligating), but rest assured: things will get done!

Welcome to the new year Starchasers! Hopefully your holidays have been filled with lego trains and fat cats. Mine was. Now, since this is the start of a new year and we could sit around twiddling our thumbs and pretending to look busy, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover (since it’s the new year) so buckle up.

First thing’s first, a new year means a new demo version! Demo 2.10 is now out for all platforms! This features… well a lot of new things, but primarily it offers lots of new opportunities for pirate players, including a safe port of call, and battleships being able to annihilate your pirate butt out of the skies.



Like any major release, be sure to check out the changelog. It’ll be a fair amount before a new demo version, as I want to start adding actual interiors to stations, voice acting, and more finalized stuff.

Now, onto… everything. As always, check out our Discord and the aforementioned demo. And as always, you can read the full article here.



So. Last year around this time I said I was committed to getting Underspace out by 2022. That… didn’t happen. Why? Well, my life has kind of changed. Long story short, I’ve got a lady and a cat relying on me to stay alive. Staying up to 2AM working on the game is no longer something I can do, especially as I get older and the steam-and-gearwork patchwork that makes up my homunculus body starts to decay and negatively impacts my health. I can’t kill myself working on the game anymore, as much as I joke about it.



And that’s the long and short of it. The good news is in 2022 a massive amount of actual work got done on the game. We finished the first draft of every sidequest, every boss, every point of interest, the main campaign, and half of the multiplayer campaign.

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So… you can fly to every system, fight every boss, join every faction, do every quest, get every piece of equipment, complete the main quest, explore every space dungeon, and fly every ship. Storms are also more or less complete, you can chase them in every system, encounter every hazard they have, and get assisted by almost every starchaser. There’s a HUGE amount of the game done, with easily over a hundred hours of content in the game as it currently stands.



So, what still remains? There are three major blockers outstanding, not counting things like bugfixing and balance passes. The first is station and planet interiors. There’s around 150 stations in game that need proper interiors, people in those interiors, and dialogue for most of those people. Despite the high number of stations, this isn’t nearly as big an effort as it sounds. We’ll be having additional level designers help out, and most stations tend to pull from common tilesets and templates (remember: On-station stuff is NOT the focus of the game).



The next one is the multiplayer campaign. This is of course, halfway done, but multiplayer boss fights take a fair amount of effort to code. Ideally this’ll be another month to finish at least the first draft on it, as dialogue triggers and the like are already in.



Finally there’s that bigass folder labeled “misc”. This is things like the racing and arena sidequests, mission types for all factions, dialogue for all the party members. This is where the majority of the work is. It’s smaller stuff, but without it this game will feel significantly less without them.



So, as you can see, the light at the end of the tunnel’s visible, but we’ve still got a bit to go. A 2023 release date is what seems most likely. So, onto progress!




It didn’t seem fair to me that everything else in the game uses the scripting system, but randomly generated missions fell behind. Especially when there’s a lot I want to do there.
Missions now use the rest of the game’s scripting system, giving them a total overhaul and all kinds of potential variations.

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Think of something where you get a mission to retrieve cargo from a smuggler only to find him jumped by police or finding that he hid it in a minefield in a secret stash, or trying to take down an enemy base only for your support squadron to be replaced with an incoming miniboss, or trying to deliver supplies to a base only to get a new objective to raid a nearby cargo depot for them instead. There’s possibilities, and you can see a few of them in the latest demo itself.



Each major region of the game has had smuggler circles added. These run-down bases are a safe port for any player, and offer ways to adjust your reputation, take low-level jobs for pirate syndicates, or even talk to other smugglers and get advice on how to avoid Space Johnny Law.

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You can find the first of these bases, Kaisus Circle, in the demo proper. If you’ve ever wanted to get arrested for being a smut smuggler, now’s your chance!



All big things in the game now have proper loadouts. That means every big battleship, boss, and more, all have missile arrays, beam cannons, and more to take you out. We’ve also fully outfitted weapons platforms: Large immobile sentries bristling with weapons.

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Big ships can also come with forward cannons, dangerous superweapons that you want to stay well clear of.
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Finally, starchasers are all (mostly, minus party members and backer-created ones) implemented. You can find these fellow stormchasers/monsterhunters out in storms, and there’s over 30 of them, all with their own unique loadouts and lines. The AI for them was also improved, with them attacking what you attack and avoiding firing directly at you, just in case.

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And that’s it for this month! As always, check out the demo, check back next month, and don’t eat any plastic bricks. Please.

Happy holidays starchasers! It’s the Christmasty season, and while the shadow government of the world is hard at work making sure Santa Claus doesn’t emerge from slumber once more, we’ve been hard at work working on the game to make sure it works. Mostly. Long story short: I have a cat now and it’s hard to develop things sometimes when a fuzzy little asshole is constantly meowing at you to be pet.



But he’s a good boy most of the time, so we’ve got lots of progress to show off this month. Ready? Here we go. As always, be sure to check out our latest demo, and join the Discord! And of course, read the full article here.




Last month I talked about how the main campaign was almost done. And this month guess what? It’s done! The entirety of the singleplayer main campaign can now be played to completion, complete with epilogue and all.

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This is just a first draft, later drafts (which are being worked on now) will add additional effects, like systems for distant battles and constant fighter spawns.

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Meanwhile on the multiplayer campaign, about half of all the missions there are playable to completion! And the entire thing has all its dialogue triggers and scripts put in. There’s a lot more emphasis on raids and boss fights in this campaign, but there’s some fun moments. Hope your engines are strong enough to outrun THE FIELD.

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This month also saw lots of new storm minibosses put in. One can control the storm better via console commands, and there’s tons of new bosses. Ever wanted to have tea with an ancient spaceship ghost? Or how about fight multiple types of space snakes during a raging thunderstorm?
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Needless to say, we’ve got you covered. For the sake of letting the player experience storms easier, the storm growths and surges in the demo are going to be far more aggressive.




For a while now I wanted to redo the game’s radio and custom AI voice… talky… thing. To do that, I had to refactor the radio system, and to do that, I had to refactor the game’s music system and to do that I had to refactor the game’s option menu. Phew, that’s a lot to say. Let’s go down the list.



The options menu is more concise and data-driven, so modders can easily expand upon it. The music system is even better and works by analyzing what the player’s actively doing, which also means that the radio system has been expanded and can have custom playlists for things like combat, being in an asteroid field, and more.

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Finally, we’re adding an AI that alerts you when certain things are happening, with a calm, cool voice telling you if you’re taking radiation damage, incoming missiles, etc. Best of all? You can create your own custom voice packs and override some, or all, of the lines, or just turn off the AI voice entirely.




Not too much going on here: We’re reworking some of the jump effects on ships to be better, that is, the jump out effects for large capital ships.
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And some concept art for some higher tier bosses.


And that’s all for December. Check in next month and next year for a special announcement and our yearly recap, it’ll be a big important one.

Welcome to November starchasers! Feel that warm winter air and hot, blazing winter sun. Ain’t it grand?



A bit of a preemptive apology, I was ill and bedridden for much of the month so a lot of progress that should have been made didn’t get made. Nevertheless, I powered through the first fever I’ve had in some twenty or so years to release our next demo: Alpha 2.05!



This will be the last demo release of the year, and mostly focuses on quality of life features and bugfixes. But man, there sure are a lot of those suckers. You can check out the full changelog and demo download here.

In the meantime, read on below to see some of the work done this month. And as always, feel free to join our Discord and check out the full article here!



The biggest thing this month was the main campaign. Illness kind of hampered a bit of my ability but we’re sitting at 15/16 missions playable to completion, and the entirety of all dialogue having been added and scripted in.

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There’s also been new tech added for things like followers that follow the player at their pace, coloring overrides in nebula zones, and much more.

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We’re hoping to finish up the first draft of the singleplayer campaign in the following weeks, and then going for a deep dive on the multiplayer campaign.



Lots of combat bits too! I’ve been getting into lots of fights and making sure the areas for those flow correctly and can be just fine.

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Missiles, mines, and all those things that go “kaboom” have had a total overhaul (as not many people used most of them). Missiles track better, can bypass shields, disrupt highengines, and more. Mines can leave behind damaging fields after a wide area, and both of them can have variable ammunition counts.

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Missions can now have much more advanced overrides, and are able to parse text tags for much more in-depth descriptions.

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Finally, we’re working hard on getting the last few minibosses added to the list of monsters and worse that can appear in storms.

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You do strange things when you’re working off a fever. There’s been all kinds of new UI stuff. The tutorial UI now has subcategories and is video based, while there’s some subtle new UI elements, such as a charging animation for highengines and a notification for gaining or losing money.

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Finally you can now skip the opening cutscene from the menu, and objectives in quests and campaign missions can offer hints.

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And lots of lots of assetwork this month! We finally implemented things like space farms and sleeper ships around the galaxy, explaining lore questions like “What do these people living on these entire fertile planets even EAT man???”.

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More cockpits were also modeled out and many of the demo ones were implemented into the game properly.

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And finally there’s more non-mechanical assets being worked on. Bosses and characters and the like.




And that’s all for this month. Check in next month for a very important end-of-the-year update!

Alright starchasers. Another month has passed, so pull up a chair, get yourself a strong alcoholic drink, and let’s get this over with so we can go back to dressing up as skeletons and demanding strangers give us candy.
So: we’re aiming to have a new demo out soon. This Demo, 2.05, will largely be bugfixes and a few gameplay shifts. Its main purpose is to coincide with a major testing release for our full game testers.


Now, this devlog’s probably gonna be one of our shortest. I’ve been traveling much of this month, so opportunities for progress have been limited. Still, work’s been done where it’s been done. Let’s get to it, shall we? As always, you can check out the current demo and join our Discord for more moment-to-moment updates, and you can read the full devlog here.

Oh and just a heads up, things might get a bit spoilery from here on out.




The big thing this month? Campaign missions. 7/16 of them sit as playable to completion, while a smattering of others are in a mostly to semi-playable state. There’s also new enemies and new effect technology to really make certain scenes. It’s all very nice.
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Campaign stuff is the big blocker right now, so expect to see even more of this coming up.




There’s also been lots of UI stuff added in. Chapter and syndicate ranks can be accessed via your information menu, the in-game codex is more organized, messaging system’s more verbose, and even the cockpit now has UI elements!
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There’s been a lot of smaller changes too. In addition to a ton of bugfixes, we’ve got some special stuff like the targeting reticle finally being accurate, storage boxes able to use broken items and be expanded via space lobster capitalist magic, new effects for scanning scannable items, as well as gameplay changes liking docking code being more aggressive in how it positions you and armor changing thrust drain rate rather than turn rate.
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Models were made, pacts were formed, contracts were signed in blood. Typical monthly assetwork stuff. For this, we created various new doors for the eventual interior visual overhaul, along with new cockpit interiors for the final version of those.


And finally, we’ve made various head-based accessories for characters: earpieces and eyepieces and hairpieces and other pieces.


That’s all for this month. Things are a bit calmer for me in the coming weeks, so expect lots and lots of progress for next month’s devlog, hopefully.