Underspace News

Is it the middle of September already? Time flies when you're developing an open world lovecraftian spacefigter RPG! Hope you're enjoying these smaller devlogs, they're definitely more digestible than the big monthly chunks. Let me know what you think!

As mentioned in last week's devlog, we have some exciting news coming up soon, but that won't be announced until later this month. The cats are excited, clearly.



Mimi used her one orange brain cell to enact a rare rear leg cuddle. It's super effective!

First up, we have a new demo in the works (like, actively being worked on in this very moment) that should be coming out in the next few days. You're of course still welcome to try the current demo if you don't want to wait, and, as always, feel free to check out the Underspace Discord for more immediate updates.

Anyway, onto progress!

One of last week's biggest tasks was an overhaul of the interiors. As mentioned previously, this is an ongoing task but their implementation is now at a stage where it's just a few missing ones here and there (as well as some quest location interiors which is part of quest implementation).



Some missing space tilesets were implemented as well.





Additionally, on-foot doors were implemented and animated, which meant that some issues that popped up were also fixed. You can see a video of them in action on Twitter / X. If you've ever been curious about why doors can be a massive headache in video games, feel free to give this a read.

Another "pretty" task has been adding more elements to the spaceship cockpits, as well as the ability for cockpits to have visual radar and other readouts. These implementations will be available in the upcoming demo, and I want to get them textured before sending out this new demo. The textures aren't in just yet. But soon. Like, SOON soon. You'll see.







Some issues with the character controller were also fixed.

Drafts of party member recruitment and personal quests have been finished. For multiplayer campaign and party member quests, the dialogue has been implemented; getting the scripting hooked up will be one of next week's bigger tasks.

If you want to stay updated more immediately with Underspace's ongoing work, please give the Underspace socials a follow. Doing so also helps boost Underspace's visibility to others!

💥💥💥 UNDERSPACE 💥💥💥
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And, because obviously:

🚂🚂🚂 TRAINWIZ 🚂🚂🚂
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YouTube

That's it for this week -- stay tuned for next week's devlog!

Happy September, Starchasers! This week has absolutely zoomed by but progress on Underspace is steady. There's some really exciting news coming up soon but that'll be dropped in the second half of this month. Until then, enjoy this cat photo.

when you stare into the void and the void stares back

As you might have surmised from the title, devlogs are now going to be a weekly event instead of monthly. They are also going to be posted here on Steam instead of Kickstarter. Don't worry if they look smaller than their monthly counterparts, as there will be more of them throughout the month (because, you know, weekly basis). Guess you can say the devlogs have been... refactored.

Anyway, onto progress! As always, check out the latest Underspace demo and be sure to join our Discord for more immediate updates!

One of the "prettiest" tasks as of late has been an overhaul of the interiors. This is an ongoing task -- and they're still pending detail, mind you -- but here are some screenshots of the progress thus far:









How the game loads maps has been totally refactored. Loading times have been greatly reduced between star systems and entirely when viewing different maps. Video showing the new load times on Twitter (errmmm... X).

In fact, did a total refactor of the game’s loading system. Shaders will now no longer load upfront on the start screen, which should address the black screen issue some players were experiencing and just dramatically decrease loading times all around.

And speaking of maps, various other issues with the game’s map system have been fixed.

Cargo affected by the dynamic economy now displays as such (check out the little symbol that's been added -- now you'll know when the best times are to buy or sell).



Opening tutorials have been completely redone with a focus on the amount of controls thrown at new players upfront. It should be less overwhelming now.

Camera controls are now assigned to a single key that cycles between modes rather than dedicated keys for each. This reduces the amount of keys you have to remember for camera controls -- now it's just one.

Various quests on stations have been fixed; also, added more piecemeal scripting stuff for campaign scripting.





Finally, factions can now define items that make them instantly hostile, and new console commands for manipulating timescales have been added.



Note: update does not allow demon cats to define items that make them instantly hostile.

On a separate front, Underspace now has its own social media presence (at least, in a more "official" capacity). Please give the accounts a follow if you can, it helps boost Underspace's visibility to others!

💥💥💥 **UNDERSPACE** 💥💥💥
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Also, because of course:

🚂🚂🚂 **TRAINWIZ** 🚂🚂🚂
Twitter
YouTube

As for next week, the focus is on quests -- particularly party member quests and multiplayer quests -- as is the ongoing interiors rework effort.

That’s all for this week. Check back next week for more!

Hello Starchasers! Did you know I hate ISPs? I really really do. So much. You don’t even know. This devlog’s gonna be a kind of hectic, last-minute thing. Mostly because it is. We just finished a move to a new place which has taken up the past week or so with sheer idiocy in what’s happened. The good news is the cats appreciate the space.



Still, I’ve got some good news: Demo 2.25 is now out! This is mostly a smaller patch that fixes a few softlocks, black screens, control lockups, etc. But there’s some new features there too! Currently the PC version is available, with Mac and Linux versions to follow sometime today. Check it out!




Anyway, let’s get onto progress! As always, check out the latest demo and be sure to join our Discord for more immediate updates!


I promised last month focused on content testing, namely quests. About half (30/60) of quests are now absolutely playable to completion. Sometimes this was a small fix, other times this took a LOT of work to get them functional.


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There’s a few small improvements done to quests here and there, mostly to make them flow better or to fix some non-breaking graphical issues.

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This isn’t the full pass on these quests, after all of them are confirmed playable, there will be a second draft for things like cutscenes, better bosses, etc. But this month will be focused on making the other half of them playable to completion.


What kind of space RPG would we be without space dungeons? As they are often involved in quests, dungeons this month got all their enemies, loot, and quest elements added in. These can be simple stuff like beam attackers and having to blow up fans to pass through, to complicated background effects.


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Raids also were added in. These are similar to dungeons but are more open areas. They still involve enemies, traps, as well as complicated background effects.

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For example, what if you destroy a huge battleship only to discover it was maintaining a massive illusion across an entire star system? I think some of you will understand what I’m talking about.

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A few of these things need tweaking of damage values and similar, but for the most part they’re in and done.


As part of this month’s fixing pass, I went through a lot of things that weren’t working or half-implemented and made them fully implemented. For starters our in-game manual had a massive amount of improvements: There is full text and full video for every subject now.

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The in-game resolution options, as well as options for different resolution modes, FXAA, and many other graphical options were re-enabled and fixed. Yay.

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Weapons platforms weren’t able to die and had some issues with their loadouts. No longer the case, so blast away at sentries with total impunity, if you please.

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Shadows now work! We’ve improved the draw distance on them, as well as several flickering issues.

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Finally, remember Minimine? Probably not but pets are getting re-animated and re-added to the game. Some games have cats, dogs, maybe a cool bug as a pet. Here we’ve got sentient naval mines. Don’t worry, they can explode safely. Safely for them, that is.

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Lots of little gameplay fixes and improvements this month! Starting off, distant objects in storms are now fully animated. This was always planned but have you ever rigged and animated tentacles? It’s kind of a pain in the ass.

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I added loadout and AI randomization to every normal faction in the game. This means that NPCs have a bit more in what they can be carrying and their AI can be tweaked to better utilize that. Sometimes they'll have better shields (or worse shields), use missiles in situations where they wouldn't normally have them, maybe some extra laser guns, etc. This just covers the basic loadout randomization, I'll be getting to special cases (where NPCs can have additional loadouts and AI changes based on things like quests you've completed or whatever) later when I go back over quests for their next drafts.

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Going closer to jumpholes causes your screen to distort, since being that close to a giant hole in reality probably isn’t healthy for you, or anyone really.

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Text in conversations can either be a scrambled mess of eldritch nonsense, or display in alien fonts. Both of these can be translated, if you have the right equipment or the right amount of time. Also ancient gates can have their text translated to give you hints about how to open them!

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A few requested features were put in, including lock times on laneline travel, and, if you kill an enemy, it will automatically target the next nearest one for you.

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Headlights now illuminate a wider area around you. Physically accurate? Heck if I know but it’s much more useful now.

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I refactored door logic a bit. You can define additional things to open them, mostly in cases where there are space dungeons where there are other ships flying through these dungeons. It could also be used for some cool stuff like you having to physically bait some sort of organic bit towards a monster door to open it in a fleshy organic dungeon.

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Things other than ships can have levels now. Mostly bosses use this because I like to freak people out by showing them facing off against something that say it’s like, level 1500 or something.



Finally, stations are getting some lighting and texture presets tweaked, along with some new interior parts getting added in. With this latest demo, feel free to visit the Vauldric trading center.




And that’s all for this month. We’ll have more stuff next month. You know we do. We always do.

Summer’s upon us starchasers! Welcome to June, this feels like a big spacey month and I’m not quite sure why. Must be something in the wind and the cornfields.

We’ll be having a major announcement in the coming months. I’m not sure of the ETA on that, we’re working things out on our end, but when it comes in, you’ll be like “Yeah that’s a pretty major announcement”. No spoilers though. Not yet. In time, you’ll see.

Anyway, onto progress! As always, you can check out our demo and our Discord for the latest updates!



The big focus this month was bugtesting and making sure things are playable to completion. This is different from the final polishing pass content gets, it’s about making sure that the baseline gameplay and scripting works. And hooo boy was the main campaign broken. Thankfully nothing that really required any programming work or internal engine changes, but after a LOT of effort I can confirm the main campaign is playable to completion!

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It’s still got another pass of course, needing things like mid-mission saves, ambient NPCs, more cutscenes, better failure states, etc. In total though, if you were rushing through the game to ONLY do the main campaign, it’d take you about 11 hours in total. A good length, I feel.

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Bosses are also getting a pass too. A few had some pretty serious bugs that needed rectification, a few others needed their health, attack, etc, just so every slightly adjusted.

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I also am not a fan of beating something only to die from some errant stupidity while the thing is dying. Defeating bosses can also disable their ambient attacks as their thrash and scream and explode. You know, typical boss stuff.

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This month will also be about focusing on more fixes, in this case it’s about going over sidequests and making sure those are all playable.



Working off feedback from players regarding various things, and my own experiences, I made the hard decision and spent a weekend improving highengines (players of… other games might call these “cruise engines”). For starters, there’s now some improved animations when entering highengines, including a delay, effects, and better pullback and camera animations.

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But moreover, players have been asking for an increased cruising speed. There’s a lot of issues with balance, timing, etc, that just increasing the base speed would bring. So instead, we added a SECOND level of highengines, wherein you activate a sort of powerful hyperdrive that causes you to move three times faster.

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Using this has some downsides and is dangerous though! You can’t use it too close to large solar bodies (so stations, planets, etc) or asteroid fields. And hitting something at such a speed without the protection of a laneline can do serious damage to your ship. Still, engine tuning kits can be used to improve and reduce these penalties.

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Our next demo will have this, and it’s perfect for cruising over long empty distances.


Feedback like feedback from the game, not player feedback. There’s elements in the game that, to an observant player, I’d like to be available in terms of visuals or audios. So, there were a lot of smaller UI changes done.

Starting off, after certain quests or events, some factions can become permanently friendly, or permanently hostile towards you. And this is now reflected in the UI.

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You can also now see at a glance if you can craft an item recipe, and how much time is left on that item.

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Scanning a legendary enemy will also now create a little icon next to it to indicate what kind of enemy it is, allowing you to plan your battles a little bit more tactically. We’ve also overhauled how legendary enemies spawn, separating out nonhostile NPCs and NPCs into their own spawning rules.

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Equipment now has more in-depth descriptions as well. Heavy weapons will give you a full list of their abilities and damage, and chaff will display how effective it is against incoming ordnance.



Finally, you can access the bank menu from any cargo trader, which saves you having to locate a storage panel on a station.





We’ve added way more musical stings to the game. Little jingles that play when you do an action. In addition to having music when you level up or complete a mission, there’s now tunes for defeating bosses, reaching the max level, completing a campaign mission, or killing a storm.

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Loot! Who doesn’t like a big box of whatever? Space dungeons have lots of loot now, from components that can be crafted into unique weapons, to artifacts that can help with leveling up (or just be sold for tons of money).

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Piggybacking off the aforementioned legendary spawns, I’ve also recoded how NPCs spawn, using a new rules system. This means you’ll get much greater variety in the NPCs you see in encounter zones, as well as avoid things like multiple police checkpoints spawning over one another.

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I’ve also been optimizing various star systems to run better, with some places seeing almost 20 more FPS, even in heavy traffic areas. Lighting in customization hangars has also been improved.

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We've added eye adaption as a graphics option, for those who want some additional clarity in their game.



Finally, ships! Some previously ships that were only able to be flown by NPCs can now be flown by players, such as this zombie mushroom freighter.

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And some NPC only ships that had no textures now have them. Will they ever be flyable by players? Maybe one day. Maybe one day…




And that’s all for this month! Next month we hope to have a few more ship thruster effects to match that new hyperdrive! Check back then!

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!