Underspace News

Hello starchasers!

Halloween will soon be upon us, which means another month has come and gone. The years really do start coming and they simply do not stop coming, do they?



Please enjoy this festively appropriate cat picture.

As is tradition, here is another Underspace video -- this time from The Escapist's new show, Yahtzee Unscripted. Yahtzee Croshaw (of Zero Punctuation fame) found Underspace and decided to give the demo a go (in addition to Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Thief Simulator 2). It was streamed live and starts around the 1:20:00 timestamp (you might spot us in the comment section starting right from the beginning, though).

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Although there were some hiccups, it was a good stream and provided some really valuable feedback that is reflected in the most recent update (due to said hiccups). And because I want you guys to know how awesome these updates are, I've made a new demo for you including said updates. So you can test out the updates. And then update me. On Discord.



If the link doesn't work (I suspect Steam doesn't like linking out to itch), please look for pastaspace on itch,io to find the latest demo.

[h2]NEW CONTENT & FEATURES[/h2]

• First drafts of random faction missions for all factions in the demo! Stop runaway trains, clear ancient minefields, commit corporate espionage, and more!
  
• First detailing passes on many station bars and taverns
  
• Starchasing chapters! You can now join and rank up with these syndicate-style folk, who offer rewards for completing challenges and activities in game.
  
• Voiced HUD effects. Meet MOIRA, the Union’s personal in-game assistant, who will inform you of hazards, actions, and more.
  
• New game options, including options to enable MOIRA, override her with a custom assistant, have music play on lanelines, and more.
  
• New details for trains on Planet Vauldric.
  

[h2]CHANGES & BUGFIXES[/h2]

• Your ship will naturally move out of the way of other ships on lanelines, and ships won’t spawn behind you when exiting said lanelines. I’ve had my fill of laughing as people get rearended by a space hauler.
  
• Waypoint markers on lanelines now correctly show which way you are meant to enter a laneline to follow a path.
  
• Enemy chasing has been removed as a default mechanic. The keybind still exists, but players would get confused.
  
• Keybinds can now be remapped on certain categories without having to worry about unbinding other keys.
  
• Shift, alt, ctrl, and other keys can be used as keybinds now.
  
• Missions now give more detailed objectives in the objective UI window.
  
• Players can now intimidate service ships during assassination missions.
  
• Added new opening graphics to the title screen.
  
• Storms will not start surging and changing until after the into is over.
  
• Changed several default volume settings and sounds to be less loud.
  
• Battleship Caladan now has laser turrets. Have fun.
  
• Improved several aspects of the opening cutscene a bit.
  
• Shipdealers now show pictures of the ships you can buy.
  
• Fixed issue where asteroids would stop working.
  
• Fixed issue where lightning in nebulas would have weird graphical artifacts.
  
• You can now use the quick equipment menu to fire all your missiles at once. Rejoice!
  
• Fixed softlocks occurring from various random missions.
  
• Fixed issue where players couldn’t open menus after the intro was over.
  
• Fixed issues where NPCs without missiles could use missiles, or NPCs with missiles would use missiles too much.
  
• Fixed several flickering cityscape models.
  
• Fixed issue where spacetrains would spawn with the wrong amount of health.
  
• Fixed several internal softlocks.
  

[h2]KNOWN ISSUES[/h2]

• Voice acting is currently unimplemented, unbalanced, or placeholder for several quests and dialogue lines.
  
• Interior detailing on many rooms are not in.
  
• Joystick and controller support vestigial and more or less not implemented and having a controller plugged in can introduce weirdness.
  
• Trading in ships may have a UI mismatch between ammunition counts on a ship and the actual ammunition.
  

Great? Great. Here's what I did this month (note, I'm going to try writing the changelogs like this, tell me what you think):

+ Added the ability to fire all missiles via the equipment menu.
+ Added more missions.
+ Fixed some scaling issues on trains.
+ Rebalanced some game audio stuff.
+ Fixed some sound and light issues with trains on stations.
+ Adjusted various aspects on interior textures.
+ Fixed issues where asteroids wouldn’t work properly.
+ Fixed issues when removing items.
+ Improved opening cutscene a bit.
+ Cinematic controls now disable full controls on first person characters
+ Debugged lots of missions.
+ Service ships can now be intimidated.
+ Fixed some lighting issues.
+ Restored hardpoint damage mechanics and buffed hardpoint health on NPCs.
+ Added new tutorial quests and tutorials to the tutorial.
+ Added new tutorial snake boss (optional).
+ Added new indicators showing when the demo adds.
+ Added new on-station conversations.

Again, thank you all for your continued support, It's really cool to see your videos, tweets, comments, and posts about Underspace. Want to shout at us if you haven't already? Please give the Underspace socials a follow:

[h3]💥💥💥 UNDERSPACE 💥💥💥[/h3]
Twitter TikTok Instagram Facebook Reddit YouTube Discord

And, because obviously:

[h3]🚂🚂🚂 TRAINWIZ 🚂🚂🚂[/h3]
Twitter
Tumblr YouTube

Thanks for checking out this week's devlog -- stay tuned for more Underspace updates!

S T A R C H A S E R S

Cat.



You know the drill by now. Special guest Mimi's lil fang.

Continuing with last week's trend of sharing an Underspace video by a content creator, I'll be showcasing Young Sliver's playthrough. He was definitely very excited to play Underspace so that was some fun energy. Give him a watch and subscribe if you feel like; also, if you have other content creators you think should be featured, comment below and we'll spotlight them.

Anyway, Young Sliver:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Want to give Underspace a go yourself? Feel free to play the demo here. If you have any issues with it or just want to chat, feel free to join the Underspace Discord as well.

Onto what I did last week:

Missions, mostly. Like, mostly missions. I reorganized mission code to make it easier, and quests can now call mission code (and vice versa -- missions can call quest code). I've also added scaling settings and new functions (not to mention new scaling functions, which are a separate thing, promise) for missions. Additionally, icons and scripting have been added to tons of missions, and mission descriptions now properly reflected in UI.



Speaking of UI -- I've added a UI assistant, UI alerts are now quieter and make use of the volume slider, and I've fixed issue where UI voice overrides wouldn’t work. Oh, I've also added a small option to enable music when in highways or not.



Not to mention you can mod in whatever voice you want for said assistant. You're welcome.

Some smaller things include flickering model fixes, noise reduction in the intro, and storms no longer grow until the intro is over. I've also added in-game credits and -- be aware -- cargo can now expire. So be sure to sell your stuff before it's too late.



As I've said many times before, I want to thank you all for your continued support, It's really cool to see your videos, tweets, comments, and posts about Underspace. Want to shout at us if you haven't already? Please give the Underspace socials a follow:

[h3]💥💥💥 UNDERSPACE 💥💥💥[/h3]
Twitter TikTok Instagram Facebook Reddit YouTube Discord

And, because obviously:

[h3]🚂🚂🚂 TRAINWIZ 🚂🚂🚂[/h3]
Twitter
Tumblr YouTube

Thanks for reading this week's devlog -- stay tuned, next week we'll have more Underspace updates!

M'Starchasers (oh God I'm so sorry).

How are we already about halfway through October? I swear time moves differently when you make video games.

For the obligatory cat open I offer an additional story -- if the void boy can't get immediate attention he hops up on the side desk and licks me.



Don't worry, he gets all the pets and warm laps he could ever want.

These past two weeks have been pretty cool because a lot of content creators have been... you know, creating content. But like specifically about Underspace, so that's the cool part. And I thought it would be equally cool to showcase one each week as a way of supporting them supporting Underspace type thing.

This week I want to shout out Captain Collins, who I feel like went fairly in-depth in his gameplay video. Cool guy, cool video, gave him a subscribe and, if you want, could totally do the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOF1CluYFqI

Onto what I did last week:

The biggest focus this week was on missions. I worked on random missions -- including writing up all descriptions and outlines for random missions -- and rewrote generic mission descriptions. I also implemented general mission stuff: missions can now spawn general objects and track them, they can now override the mission control character, and mission code can be called by quests, Finally, I changed how mission difficulty scales the health and power of spawned enemies.



Only about a third of the random missions are fully implemented at this time. There's a decent amount of variety in these random activities, from participating in ritual sacrifices to being a product tester for experimental ship equipment.

The other thing, though it's still a WIP, is that missions can do some further overrides on the fallback elements of the mission generator system, in particular random missions can have unique characters as mission control, so particular factions will have characters from other quests or storylines oversee one, instead of the generic fallback mission control character.

There's about 130 of these so there's a lot of work to be done, but you can check out what's been done so far here.



Lanelines continue to get more work. Lanelines now have offsets based on the number of travelers, and now players won't have their butt smacked by incoming starships on lanelines. Video of the smooth, non-butt smacking transit here.

Last but not least, I implemented some new tileset stuff.

Well, technically that isn't the last thing I did, but it's spoiler stuff. So if you wanna see it, join the Underspace Discord and go to the Game Updates channel to check it out.

I feel like this devlog was a little light on images, so here's another cat pic.



How do you know it's Mimi's chair? Simple -- everything is Mimi's!

As always, I want to thank you all for your continued support, It's really cool to see your tweets, comments, and posts about Underspace. Want to shout at us if you haven't already? Please give the Underspace socials a follow:

[h3]💥💥💥 UNDERSPACE 💥💥💥[/h3]
Twitter TikTok Instagram Facebook Reddit YouTube Discord

And, because obviously:

[h3]🚂🚂🚂 TRAINWIZ 🚂🚂🚂[/h3]
Twitter
Tumblr YouTube

Thanks for reading this week's devlog -- stay tuned, next week we'll have more Underspace updates!

Ahoy starchasers!

That's not how I talk.

Anyway.

Boy, last week, am I right? That was some crazy news that if you haven't already heard you should definitely go ahead and read.

I mean, I know I'm tired, but the cats are simply bushed.



Sometimes I wonder if that one orange braincell works harder than I do... nahhhhh.

Before I get into things, I just want to give a shout out to YouTuber Aerali, who -- if you saw the new Underspace trailer -- gave us that fantastic quote we used. He's made some great Freelancer videos and found Underspace through that; he's been covering us pretty consistently ever since. If you haven't already, check out his newest video that kind of sums up everything we've been up to this past month-ish and subscribe to him if you feel so inclined.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9o2KQoK8Ic

Onto Underspace -- if you haven't already, you're welcome to check out the latest demo. And, as always, please feel free to join the Discord and share cat photos. Oh, and feedback on the game, naturally.

As for what I've been up to last week:

I added all chapters to the game. Huge milestone. I've also hooked up generalist events and item acquisition events to the game code.

Lanelines continue to get more love, as I've fixed an issue with manual docking not being properly enabled and another issue where players could dock with the wrong lane ring during campaign missions. Lanelines also now reflect what way you go with a waypoint, and I've stopped ships from spawning on lanes too close to players.



Watching a lot of content creators pick up Underspace for the very first time was helpful and inspired me tweak a few things, including removing enemy chasing as a central input due to new player confusion. I've also fixed an issue where players could open menus during the opening cutscene.

Speaking of fixing issues, I've addressed problems with formation points, where NPCs could use missiles in a non-missile context, and where ordinated legendary enemy would just fire off shit like crazy.

I've added new unique weapon lines for various subchapters and characters. Also, starship chapters can now be modded in.



Additionally, I redid some parts of a tileset for the multiplayer main campaign because I really was not sold on how the original exterior bits looked.



Finally, some smaller tweaks -- I've marked various items with proper keywords and increased velocity for ships.

Guess you could say it was a busy week, but when the end result is seeing a game you've been working on since 2017 come to fruition, it's the good kind of busy. I'm not complaining.



Mimi, on the other hand...

I want to thank you all for your continued support, it means a lot to see your tweets, comments, and posts about Underspace. Want to shout at us if you're not already? Please give the Underspace socials a follow:

[h3]💥💥💥 UNDERSPACE 💥💥💥[/h3]
Twitter TikTok Instagram Facebook Reddit YouTube Discord

And, because obviously:

[h3]🚂🚂🚂 TRAINWIZ 🚂🚂🚂[/h3]
Twitter
Tumblr YouTube

Thanks for reading this week's devlog -- stay tuned, next week we'll have more Underspace updates!

STARCHASERS

Remember that big news I mentioned a few devlogs ago?

Well here's a cat instead.



For real though, remember how I said there would be really big news? Well, surprise! We have three exciting pieces of news!


After years and years of development, Underspace is finally launching. It's crazy to think about! So stay tuned for the first half of 2024 to see Underspace come to Steam Early Access.


What's nice about this is now I can focus my efforts completely on finishing up the game and I don't have to worry about marketing or other non-development stuff.


Check it out, leave a comment, give it some love, watch it repeatedly until your phone dies, leave it on loop in public places like a library or an apple store, send it to ten of your friends and then tell them to send it to ten of their friends (who would then send it to ten of their friends)... you get the idea.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Also, if you haven't already, download the demo and give your feedback on it, preferably in the Underspace Discord. You know. If you want to.

So yeah, I guess you can say it's been a busy month with a lot of changes; one thing that has stayed the same, however, is the fact that I am essentially tied to my desk as I code away on Underspace. Here's what I accomplished this week:

I tweaked a few things with the newest demo, including some laneline docking issues. Big thanks to some of the streamers who have tried Underspace for the first time including dadflaps and insanekittens, watching their streams helped figure out that issue.

Some of the biggest tasks I've been working on pertain to multiplayer and quests, including finishing up the first drafts of the multiplayer main quest and the NPC loyalty quests.





Additionally, all party members can now be recruited. And speaking of party members, I've updated appearance of some missing party members. Tenuously related to party members, cutscenes now disable NPC interaction.





I've also started adding new starchasing chapters and have allowed the chapter system to have chapters outside of/independent of the regional system.

Finally, I've implemented some title screen popups and have added new furniture pieces for level designers.

So yeah, busy week and busy month, but it's all good news so can't complain one bit. Next month will see more work on the multiplayer quests and other fun stuff. Hopefully some caffeine too.

If you want to stay updated more immediately with Underspace's ongoing work, please give the Underspace socials a follow.

[h3]💥💥💥 UNDERSPACE 💥💥💥[/h3]
Twitter TikTok Instagram Facebook Reddit YouTube Discord

And, because obviously:

[h3]🚂🚂🚂 TRAINWIZ 🚂🚂🚂[/h3]
Twitter
Tumblr YouTube

Thanks for checking out this week's devlog -- see you next week with more Underspace updates!