Underspace News

Welcome starchasers! It’s summer and life is good, which means lots of new things and new news to showcase!



The biggest bit of news is that demo 2.20 is now out! This is our largest demo release in… well, quite a while, perhaps even ever. There’s a lot of overhauls, some serious quality of life improvements, and of course models in interiors. You can check out and play the demo yourself, or read on to see all the new things that are in said demo that we added last month!

Either way, be sure to check it out, as well as join our Discord for more immediate updates!



As promised, a major amount of work has been done modeling out the REAL interior models! This includes texturing, modeling, UVing, you name. The point is, these things are in game and ready to be explored. I’d have more to say here but I’d rather just show it all off.

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It took a lot of new background tech being added in to really get these things to pop. In addition to some new shadow rendering tricks room interiors can also control clip distance, 3D skyboxes, fog, ambient light intensity (useful during some cutscenes) and more.

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Cutscenes during the main quest have also been redone a bit, to fit these interiors.

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Right now we’ve currently modeled interiors for one racial style and what I call “generics” (interior styles made to just go anywhere). You can see them for yourself in the demo, but as the months roll on we’ll have the three other styles made as well as the remaining interiors for planets.




That’s rendering on engines like ship thruster engines, not redoing the rendering of our game engine. We’ve switched over from them being particles, to them being shader based. These are much more internally efficient, and allows for a wider variety of things to happen to them, including new animations.

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Don’t worry though, you can still fully customize engines how you see fit, and even control the intensity of the color!

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These engines are on all ships in the game, so you can see it for yourself.

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While most of this month was focused on interior work, I did get some time to fix up and improve NPC AI. First off, factions have a bunch of extra override settings for AI that are conditional. That’s a mouthful but basically: NPCs in the game world can change their combat styles based on things you’ve done. Maybe one particular faction gets REALLY mad if you fly a certain color, or NPCs fight harder if they know you’re carrying better loot. There’s fun stuff here.

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The AI has some new moves now too! It could dodge, but now it can dodge with a ton of new settings to keep you on your toes.

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Finally, heavy attacks are now possible for the AI now, along with allowing for heavy equipment to have different more AI appropriate behavior if it’s wielding one (as heavy equipment might be fun to use but not always fun to fight).

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And that’s all for this month! Our big focus for the next few weeks is on testing out campaign and vignette stuff, to make sure it all works for release as well as our testers. See you next month!

Welcome to April starchasers! I believe it was some guy that once said that April is the cruelest month, which may or not be true, but at least it’s stopped snowing here and has just gone down to tornadoes and giant balls of hail.

Unfortunately things are kind of hectic on my end. We’re in the middle of a move that was sprung upon us (thanks landlords) at kind of an inopportune time. I’ll try to get as much done as possible and hopefully aim for demo 2.2 sometime in May, but, well… Yeah. Have a picture of my cats as compensation.



Thankfully, we’re getting closer to release! Lots of things being locked in or finished up, so onto progress for this month! And as always, check out the latest demo and join our Discord for more moment-to-moment moments! You can also read the full article here.



We finished up modeling all the bits and doodads for interiors, now all that’s left is actually making those interiors and detailing them. There’s lots of things like vents, distant buildings for cities, and furniture galore.



Don’t worry, for actually making interiors, we’ll be recruiting some help. Of course, it’s not just stations and planets getting ready for interiorwork, as all starship cockpits have been modeled out now too.



We’re still texturing and implementing these (it was the last thing being done before this devlog), so next month hopefully you can see the finished versions of these in all their glory.



Ship painting is finally fully in! All ships have their color maps implemented, so you can paint away to your heart’s content. Furthermore, we’ve switched things over to a dye based system, where you’ll unlock new paints for your ship through exploration and gameplay. Vanity items like this can also be acknowledged by the quest system, and you can change the lighting in the customization hangar to see how you look under different circumstances.

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Lights on ships are also fully implemented, so prepare to toggle your headlights on and off constantly!

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Finally, NPC ships can have their paints overridden, which is great for things like party members, because we’ve now implemented all their abilities and their custom looks, as well as the looks when you upgrade said party members.

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We’ll have more on NPCs like this and conversation passes as we get closer to release, of course. All that ship customization will also be in the next demo release!



As our testers uncover various things and as we play through the game, lots of things get improved. AI, particularly avoidance AI and some boss level avoidance AI, have gotten improved massively.

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For sounds, we’ve redoing and expanding conversation logic, as well as adding more ambient noises and such to space dungeons (hey, they count as interiors too).

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Photomode has gotten some improvements! The controls work a lot better, the UI’s less intrusive, and it can actually load in new presets from mods!

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Finally, lots of minibosses and actual bosses in points of interest are having passes done on them, either replacing outdated ones with their updated versions, or adding proper effects and some missing bits to full bosses.

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That’s all for this month. Check back next month for stuff. AND things!

Happy March starchasers! I’ve been doing this for so long that I’m starting to run out of jokes and intros, so let’s keep it simple this time around.

You’ll notice again that this month’s devlog is rather short compared to the old ones. This is more the nature of things as we get closer to release. There’s less content or features to implement, and it’ll be more about polishing and finishing up what’s there to get it ready.

Without further ado, let’s get into it! As always, check out our demo and join our Discord for more moment-to-moment updates. And you can check out the full article here.




As we move closer to release, I’ve created a huge tracking sheet for testers to keep track of and more easily report bugs on all the content in the game.



And of course, that content is being finalized. The player can now fully gamble, and race in starship races (after getting sponsors) or become a gladiator in a combat arena (along with the appropriate questlines for each section. There’s even new UI widgets to help with that.

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We’ve also been adding various other improvements, such as the ability to see train travel routes, some basic voice acting in key demo parts, and some improvements to NPC AI along with randomization of their loadouts and abilities.


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For that last bit it means by default it’ll do things like give some more random equipment to various NPCs (so expect to see more mines and missiles), but you can also expect to see cases where, for example, doing a quest that accidentally ends with a shipment of ancient weapons being set loose on a galaxy means you’ll start seeing smugglers and pirates carry those weapons sometimes.




Shadows! I talked about this last month but they’re now implemented completely into the game, and will filter in color and intensity based on what nebulas you’re in, if you’re in them.


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A lot of older models or things got redone and improved. The normal jumpgate mesh was the first model I ever made, period. It was time for an update, along with updates to its wrecked variants and its active effects.

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Furthermore, flickering logic has been separated from ship corpse logic, so now you can get ancient flickering ruins, like the remains of this aeons old whaling ship.

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Fauna can also die now. I won’t tell if you won’t.

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Finally, we’re redoing a lot of textures here and there to have some space saved in anticipation for all the new space station and space interior models. Finally, no more floating grey cubes in the void.




And that’s all for this month! Check back next month, we’ll be doing station stuff. Lots and lots of station stuff.

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.