Underspace News

Welcome to September starchasers! We’re out of the frying pan now, and now it’s time for Father Winter’s cold grip to freeze everything solid. Other metaphors and silly lines would be appropriate here, but I’d rather simply move to all our major announcements!

For those unaware, we now have a new demo out! Alpha 2.0 is another step closer to a release candidate, and brings a lot of new features and fixes into the game. Check out the full devlog here!


What’s more, we have a new teaser trailer out showcasing tons of the work these past few months, check it out!
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Now those are two big things for sure, but we’ve got lots of other tidbits of progress for you this month. So, onward! And as always, be sure to check out Discord in addition to the aforementioned demo, as well as the full devlog here.



As I teased last month, this month saw the first act (out of four total) of the main campaign be completed, at least the first draft. It’s playable to completion, but that requires a lot of new tech as it turns out. From advanced camera controls to adding in support for video playback on TVs and billboards, which also are able to accept video files via multiplayer!
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Robots! Did you know we’ve got AI companions available in this game. We do. And they needed a few bits of them redone. So, we got some across the board improvements for drone companions. Mining drones have improved movement capabilities and physically mine the lucrative rocks they’re after, while defense drones now fire and attack your current target in combat.

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What’s more, many drones now have new textures, check out the assetwork section below for more on that!


And because I had the time to do it, we’ve got lots of new UI improvements and elements. There’s typewriter text for dialogue, an EXP bar, an audio option for ship engine sounds, and campaign objective displays for that particular UI window.
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We also integrated feedback from users based on our last demo into various UI stuff. Asteroid fields and nebulas display if they’re lucrative or radioactive, and you can disable the background effects on the navmap.
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Multiplayer UIs are also improved, as are other aspects of multiplayer. Player-to-player trading has been re-implemented, and server hosts can now specify a variety of server options, including server type, description, death penalties, players joining factions, and more.
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And we’ve got tons of non-UI, non-drone, non-campaign work done too. Every single shipwreck had their loot tables filled out, and every single fast travel train station point was implemented, along with UI support for train travel.
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There’s just more everything overall too. Factions got their loot tables redone and filled out, and Kickstarter backer names were implemented for every race, ghost, and alien. For better or worse.


Legendary/Ace enemies have updated effects too, to better indicate that they’re doing things like buffing their party members.
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There’s probably even more stuff than that, but so much work has been done this month that I’ve kind of forgotten a lot of it


Finally, assets! We’ve got new textures for drones and automated, some basic blockers for ships, and tons of models for interior, on foot sections. Including flying cars. Also some other things, but I won’t acknowledge those if you won’t.
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And that’s all for this month! It’s a spooky spooky month next month, so ideally we’ll have something appropriately spooky for you that time!

Welcome back Starchasers! Things are still hot and humid this summer, and they’ll be like that until suddenly they aren’t. So while you’re dealing with the hell-weather, why not retreat from all that by checking out the latest progress we’ve made on our game about hell-weather in space.

I can’t remember if I’ve said this before, but we don’t have a current time frame on the next demo release. Since the demo is largely content complete now, our goal is working on getting out the updated drafts of station and cockpit interiors before we do a new release.

As always though, you can check out our current demo release, and join the Discord for more moment-to-moment updates! You can also read the full article here.



The biggest news this month, and the biggest portion of progress, is the first draft of every sidequest has been finished and implemented. That means over 55 quests are playable to completion! And as usual, they’re full of twists, turns, and lots of craziness.

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A few bits of questwork also required some new script commands and tech: Docking and undocking at different locations for a single station, forward cannons on battleships. You get the idea.

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Now all of this only covers sidequests. Minigames like the racetrack and the arena, and of course the main campaign and main multiplayer campaign, are still to be done. For this month’s progress… Who knows? Maybe. Maybe…



Now quests take a LOT of time to make and stuff, but because I don’t sleep and my mental health is constantly on the precipice of total breakdown, I always have time to do a few extra things.

For starters: Mods! Users can finally FINALLY truly create mods that can override and recombine game and item data, then package them and send them to other users. This means you can now do stuff to create things like, most commonly, mods that change the highengine setting to be SUPER fast. The next demo version will have full support for these kinds of mods.

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NPCs on stations now have icons above them showing the services they offer, or if they’ve got a quest available. This makes navigation when docked a lot easier.


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Finally, while this isn’t quite assetwork, we’ve taken the old snake movement and reanimated it, alongside reworking how trains move and adding some new space snakes as well. To put it simply: they don’t suck anymore.


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And the Us, those lovable mushroom zombie scamps, have their own icons and hooked-up models now.



And that’s all for this month’s devlog. It’s fairly short, so check in next month for hopefully even more as we edge closer to release!

Happy continued summer starchasers! Grandiose thunderstorms are streaking across the sky here in Wisconsin, and we had a whole tornado warning right in the middle of all this game progress. My wife didn’t appreciate getting dragged down to the basement and interrupting her playing videogames, but there’s something appropriate about all these storms rolling in for this month’s progress!

By the way our next demo release is 2.0! With that, we hope to have actual interiors in stations, as well as full graphics for cockpits. Doesn’t sound like much of course, which makes sense given that we’re getting closer and closer to release. Now, onto progress! As always, feel free to check out our current demo, and join the Discord for more moment-to-moment gameplay! You can also read the full article this was paraphrased from here.


Bosses! This month was all about implementing every ambient (that means non-quest related) boss into the game! Over 20 bosses now have full mechanics, rewards, and more, though being the first drafts, many are missing smaller non-mechanic based attacks, voice acting for taunts, etc. Either way, have a sample!
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Another big blocker of content that was hammered out this month was storm hazards: Those anomalies, monsters, and other spooky things you encounter in storms. From a greatly expanded pool of possible ghost ships, hellbeams from deep below, nests of strange stellar beasts, exploding rifts, etc, there’s a lot to go around here.
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Regions can also control the color of hazards inside them, which saves me having to make a billion variations of each of them.


Also storm logic has been sped up. I wasn’t happy with the rate that storms spawned, surged, and moved across the galaxy. That’s all been greatly increased!


And of course, I always have time for some QoL and background work. You can view maps on star systems via clicking jumpgates, and capships now leave behind debris.
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Train stations and train travel have a small graphic and cutscene for when you travel on them, and can have random events happen: For example waking up aboard a train with the entire crew dead and the ship stuck in warp.
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Finally, a bit of asset stuff. Cockpits are getting their final models ready for texture and implementation, possibly even… working monitors that actively reflect your ship’s stats? Possibly. Possibly friend.


Interior work is also a thing now, as things like light fixtures and similar are being done to help detail those coming models.


And that’s all for this month. Not the longest update we’ve ever done for sure, but still a lot of stuff implemented and in. Check back at the end of the month for what will be a month of quests and more. But, mostly quests.

Summer is here once more starchasers! Rev up those grills, grill up those revs, and kick your feet back and eat a strawberry, as you enjoy a fabulous two weeks of humid overcast skies, before nature’s middle finger that we call winter rolls back in.

I don’t have much else to put here, testing on the game is going well and we’re making huge strides on everything, so… onto progress!

As always, you can join our Discord and check out the demo for all the latest cool stuff! You can also check the full article that this was paraphrased from.



The biggest thing this month is that all points of interest and vignettes are now in their final, ready to launch or near-ready-to-launch state. That’s over 70 or so custom hand-made activities that all are fully implemented and ready-to-nearly-ready for release. And there’s a LOT of stuff for them, from space races, our previously showcased dungeons, tracking giant leviathans, dodging security systems in lost star factories, exploring radioactive caves, restoring ancient machines, figuring out combination locks to lost ancient gates, taking down forcefields, dueling tiny angry planets, avoiding lost superweapons, and much much much much more.
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It’s a huge step forward for the game, so rejoice, as we’ve inched a big inch closer to release.



Big ships now have death effects: Explosions, catching fire, crewmen begging you to stop because they have families. You know how it is.

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Don’t worry, they DO have debris. But that’s not done yet. For now, because big things can do big explosions, I’ve reworked a few bosses to die properly, while ALSO having some new mechanics, like Cahgurine here.
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I’ve done a few improvements to UIs based on watching people play through the demo. Some tutorial alerts are more obvious, and I’ve added keycode shortcuts for UI controls. For example, being able to deactivate guns via keys or go through dialogue on stations using keys.
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Ship visuals have gotten an overhaul, featuring new effects for cloaking, buffs, self destruct, etc. Self destruct also does massive damage in multiplayer: Kill yourself for the sake of your friends, finally!
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Cargo collection has a bunch of new stuff now. I restored some of the effects for it, you can tractor in just a single item, and you can run into cargo to collect it now.
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And on that topic of redoing some fundamental mechanics, scanning pulses are much more readable now, and can have custom icons instead of just a normal pulse. I’m using these mostly for quests, to allow more specific pulses and instructions about said pulses to be given.
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Not too much assetwork was done this month. I’ve been prepping a lot of accessories, hats, armor, etc, for character models, but I also found the time to redo the graphics on some big forward capitalship guns.


As well as redoing and remaking ambient sounds in places, like space dungeons. I’m also working on animating a few things for… reasons.
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That’s all for this month. Ideally next month we’ve got more quests and more bosses to show off. Welcome to the age of content, starchasers!

Hello starchasers and happy sunny May! For the first time since the start of these devlogs, we’ve missed a posting date! Shocking, I know, but yesterday, the 8th, was Mother’s Day and thus I had to make my cosmic journey to the edge of the universe to pay tribute to the infinite quasar that birthed me. We had brunch, she’s doing well.

Of course, in case you missed it, our latest demo is finally out! Demo 1.100 brings a host of graphical upgrades and behind-the-scene optimizations, as well as new mechanics which we’ll be talking about below.




You can download the demo for PC, Linux, and Mac at our itch.io page, check it out! Also consider, if you haven’t already, joining our Discord for more immediate updates. Now, onto progress. As always, this is a paraphrasing of the main article, which you can read here.



The biggest thing this year? Space Dungeons. Vast interiors and structures completely explorable out in space and filled with traps, enemies, treasure, and bosses galore. They’re got fully animated doors, removable hazards, everything.


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Of course, while working on the tilesets for these we also went back over existing places and improved the models and tilesets there.

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Hooking up all these space dungeons and going through all these vignettes will be this month’s focus!



I have to apologize to you all, as I violated my core axiom of “no feature creep” and spent two hours adding in a dodging mechanic and hooking it up to thrusters. But damn, if it don't look good.

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Lots of across-the-board improvements now too. Saves now display if they’re overwritten, the decal
system has returned with a vengeance, and the navmap is easier to work with.

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Higher tier equipment now costs stomeyes to purchase. Hope you’re ready to fight storms and bosses alike.




And of course, lots of new assets about. We’ve modeled, textured, and animated new gates for various ancient races.

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We’ve also animated robots! Good old robots, you can’t go wrong with those.

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Finally, we’re doing lots of interior work: retexturing customization hangars and hammering out models for things like planetside cars, trams, trucks, and trains.



That’s all for this month. Check back next month for another big dose of progress, mostly likely more quests, vignettes, and such. And of course, check out the new demo!