Underspace News

Welcome to March starchasers! I quite enjoy March, it’s the month I started my existence in, so it’s pretty good all things considered.

Now we’ve got good news and bad-ish news. You’ll get to hear the bad news first, because that’s how we roll. So the bad news is that there’s about a week of this month where just nothing got done. I’ll spare you the details, but it amounts to there being not as much progress last February (already a short month) as I’d like.

The good news is a lot of milestones have been met in this past month! For starters, the first draft of act 1 of the campaign was finished up (there’s four acts in all). The enormous “to-do” list of tasks for the game to launch also (as far as I can tell) seems remarkably free of anything in terms of actual gameplay features now, the majority of work from here on out is pretty much content, content, content.

Finally we edge ever closer to the release of demo 1.8. There’s a few remaining tasks for this that I want to do before it’ll reach its testing stage, but the big features (the new campaign and such) are ready and working.

With all that in mind, let’s get into all the progress made in the last month! As always, this is just a paraphrasing of the main update, which you can read here.


All flyable ships now have all their basic cockpits modeled out, meaning that first person is, at basic, a viable thing.


What’s more, cockpit customization is now fully hooked up and implemented. You can freely enable aspects of the cockpit as you choose, as well as acquire items to place inside said cockpit. There’s a precious few items right now, but the system is extremely easy to expand.
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As promised, a lot of quest work was done this month. That means writing, scripting, etc. There’s a variety of new quests added, and will give players the chance to confront a legendary pirate king, resolve disputes over ancient artifacts, and more. To help better support some of the more esoteric quests, I ended up replacing the old quest scripting system with the far more robust campaign scripting system.


Redoing quest scripting meant going back over existing quests and quest elements, giving me time to polish those and add things like new effects, as well as finally make dialogue have some backgrounds (and thus making things much more readable).

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This also meant redoing and improving things in the game’s event system. If you ever stole from communication relays, you might have encountered the Tickers: a mysterious automated drone fleet that protects them. Those machines have gotten an overhaul, along with new ships with new attacks. For example: grappling hooks that can pull your fighter in and harvest you for spare parts.

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This month we also worked on adding lots of new boss content to the game. Fighting monsters and worse is an essential part of your job as a starchaser, so it feels good to finally get to the point where players can face down against a variety of starry horrors. The past month we worked on and more or less finished two new bosses.


First, you can face down the Haywire Hulk, an enormous rogue construction drone that’s turned into a mad artist. Chase it down, avoid its attacks and art installations, and see if you can’t rid the Haywire system of its unwanted sculptor.


Second, out in the deepest hottest regions of deep hot space, you can find yourself at the mercy of the Hellmouth Prince. If you’ve ever wanted to beat a living mass of fire into submission, wreck its custom-made battleship, and then befriend it, now is your chance.


Both of these are in a near-complete to complete level, and the aim as the months follow is to really dive deep and implement all these various bosses once and for all.
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And of course, assets! We’re back on with taking ships and wrecking the hell out of them, in this case shipwreck models are being made for larger ships and remaining storyline and quest ships.


That’s all for this month, as always check back next month to see what new wonders we have to offer.

Welcome to February, the shortest month of the year, but hey at least there’s that Love Day or whatever the hell it’s called in the middle!


Part of the work this past month has been what I call an “inventory overview pass”. This doesn’t actually have anything to do with the in-game inventory, rather it’s a passover of each individual star system, checking what wrecks, quests, bosses, and content exists in it. What we’re trying to achieve with that is a good, even distribution of content over the whole 70 star systems, like an evenly spread dab of mustard over the bread of a delicious sandwich.

And of course, part of that pass is also to go back over tons of content and hook it up to be fully working, or add in content that’s planned on paper but wasn’t in just yet. It’s a short month, but this is a big update, so strap yourselves in kiddos.
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As always, this is a paraphrasing of the full update, which you can read here.


You may remember rescuing a certain someone from the depths of a hyperspatial gateway. Starting now, they’ll become a party member. And dear Pyrona is not alone, the entire party member has been redone and is game ready. You can summon forth party members to help you in anything, and they’ll grant bonuses, and additional bonuses when you find and complete their unique loyalty quest.

Your last summoned party member comes with you on docked stations, and you can talk to them to get their opinions, backstory, hopes, dreams, etc.
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A few demo players might have noticed that though we’ve got a system for heavy equipment and ultimate attacks, but basically no heavy equipment. Some didn’t work, some didn’t exist, and some just weren’t implemented. We’ve got back through the entire thing and added in every single heavy equipment piece, got it working, and also added a couple new ones. Fantastical nukes, huge railguns, gatemakers that summon forth anti-bullying robots, even cannons that tear open nodes in spacetime.
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We also added special equipment. These are just basic components that can set their own values and independently bypass the normal equipment system, they’re generally used for aesthetics and quests. They’re also the perfect system for modders, who will probably be able to take advantage of a lot of the stuff they offer.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


There’s been a massive amount of work done across the board in terms of background tech, bugfixes, and QoL features. Let me just highlight the most major ones.

First off, the game’s memory usage has been slashed in half (at the cost of slightly longer load times), going from a whopping 5-6GB of RAM to a more manageable 2.5-3GB on average. Quite the cause for celebration I feel.


We’ve also added in a storage system, which lets you store unused equipment. With it also comes quick-actions, where holding shift + click or ctrl + click will let you quickly sell, bank, transfer, eject, and otherwise perform default actions.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

There was a huge pass on AI pathfinding, solving a lot of key issues while making the NPCs smarting about avoiding things like planets, other ships, stations, etc.



Big ships doing a job will also attempt to continue doing that job, even in the face of attacks. After all, they’re not getting paid to play with pirates,
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Do you think I was lying about there being mods? I only ever tell the truth. The game can now process changes to objects and items, put them into an easily shared format and file system, which the game can subsequently read and load as mods.
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You can sort, enable, and change the load order of plugins in the game itself, and what’s more the game will report possible conflicts between plugins, as well as where the conflict occurs. The system’s pretty nascent right now, but much like a baby that grows up into a nine foot tall 400 pound monster that could eat god, it’ll only get more extensive from here on out.



Finally, we’ve added in the finished models for everyone’s favorite nine foot tall robot waifus. They spew pollution, they run a tollroad through space hell, it’s the Veilers!
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They’re quite popular.


We’ve also redone skyboxes and scrapfield models in a variety of places, in a way that I’m finally satisfied with.


That’s all for this month, check back next month, ideally we’ll have some more campaign missions and quests.

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A new year, full of new promises to fill and deadlines to watch go zooming past us.
But I think the question everyone is asking is: what’s the current state of the game?
As mentioned, a huge amount of work was done across the board.

Our base races, battleships, equipment, and stations were all fully built and implemented, and systems and stations had their data filled out, encounters refined, and more.


Tons of vignettes, quests, and side-stories were filled out. Missions and trading on stations were properly implemented, as were storms, bosses, etc.


So, to summarize a huge amount of work is done and a huge amount of the game is complete, but there’s still work to be done. The biggest blocks of content in our way are quests, the campaigns, and station interiors. That sounds like a lot, but it’s even more because of all the background tech and modeling behind that. During this year, you’ll start to see updates shift more towards that kind of thing.

Our next big milestone is demo 1.8, which will bring a substantial amount of content into it, including the first two campaign missions, storms (and the mechanics for such), and party members. As well as the usual host of improvements, optimizations, fixes, etc.

This month’s overall progress wasn’t as extensive and broad as previous months mind you. Read on below and you’ll find out why.

As always, this is a paraphrasing of the main article, which you can read here.



Finally, after so much time promising and setting up, campaign missions are finally starting to become a thing! This last month saw us implement the first two of fifteen campaign missions, as well as the massive amount of background work needed to drive them.

Mission #1 will have the players getting jumped by pirates, witness a shipyard getting bombed, and have a jumphole collapse right on top of them. Typical first-day-on-the-job stuff, you know?


Meanwhile mission #2 is much more dialogue heavy, and starts diving into the meat and potatoes of the story as you pose as a smuggler in order to shoot down another smuggler and take his place!


As mentioned there’s a lot of background work that had to go into these, including quite a few features I think modders will enjoy taking advantage of, like tons of scripting commands, campaign failure trigger zones, etc.

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Working on the campaign highlighted a few issues and things I wanted changing. For starters, you can turn off the fancy UI graphics to just see the game running normally.
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Docking autopilot will try and steer you through proper docking points much earlier and much better. AI following has been redone too. They’ll follow you through lanes, jumpgates, via highengines and thrust, etc.
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You can also hail things that, normally, can’t be hailed! Ever want to talk to a sun and have it shill its social media at you? Now you can!


Rooms can have their lights dimmed now too. Very convenient for slideshows!
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And finally, unstable jumpholes (which form in storms) have their own custom graphics now.




And last but not least, assets! Ever wanted nine foot tall pollution spewing… things to charge you toll road fees? Meet our last race, the Veilers! They’re quite popular.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

That’s all for this month. We’ve got some exciting upcoming stuff (sadly unrelated to the campaign) next month, so check back in then!

Hello Starchasers! God this year went by fast. Too fast. It seems like only last month that we were in what, March? Yeah last month was March. Anyway, as Santa slides down the Chimney at the end of the month just remember: it’s your sworn duty, as is mine, to make sure he doesn’t escape to assume his final form. To help you in the unfortunate trial you’ve untaken, I’ve prepared for you a series of updates detailing all the progress we’ve made in the past month. Check it out.

As always, this is a paraphrasing of the main article, which you can read here.


The first real, tangible bits of the campaign are now in. Some of this month was spent working out another (this is what, our third?) scripting system, which has a lot of robust options for spawning and managing things in the game.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

There’s also situations where multiple characters need to have a conversation. To that end we made it so that the comm UI can easily switch between multiple people at once.
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Missions now have additional kinds of things, such as being able to override or offer unique rewards. There won’t be too many examples of this in the normal game, but modders could do things like add missions that only appear in storms that award unique weapons, for example.

Finally, we’ve been adding and implementing more capital-class ships, mostly as encounters during the main campaign. For example, this here pirate gunboat, which often serves as an early game miniboss.



Storms received a huge mechanical overhaul, because the old system had a lot of issues (limited saturation and spread, localized itself to only a few systems). Plus, most of the underlying mechanics weren’t hooked up.


Storms now are based on a regional growth and intensity system. They spawn in a specific node, then slowly spread or intensify as time goes on. A storm that’s too powerful might be destroyed by another starchaser, or warp into a very dangerous and deadly hyperstrom. You can also claim a storm, which will stop other starchasers from going after it.


When in a system hit by a storm, there are many various effects. The ships that spawn will go up several levels (dependent on the intensity), and prices in a system for buying AND selling go up by 50%. In place of normal legendaries and ace pilots, strange ships with strange abilities spawn. And finally, jumpholes (but not gates) become unstable, and can sling you across to random systems.


When in storms, things get freaky. Various hazards spawn, lightning flashes light up distant objects, and everything is chaotic as you try to make your way to the central rift (which will let you destroy the storm). Don’t worry though, you’ll often encounter other unique starchasers that might help you out!
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And as always, there’s the usual batch of fixes, tweaks, and features.

Docking’s gotten some improvements; manual docking will display where it wants you to go, while we’ve tried, once again, to rectify autopilot docking spinouts.

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There’s lots of new UI feedback elements too. Ace pilots have icons, repair items report how much they repair, and more.


You can also fast forward through cutscenes!
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Finally, if you don’t want to interact with station UIs, things like the job board, news board, and ship services now have physical objects in the world that can be activated to do the same thing.



Finally, there’s the usual crop of assets. This month we implemented animations and texture variants for everyone’s favorite screaming swear crystals: the Ast.
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That’s all for this month, check back next time for more campaign work and party member stuff!

November! It’s here and it started snowing before Halloween because we couldn’t even make it the end of god damn October before Jack Frost decided to just crap all over the state. Oh well, that’s Wisconsin for you, can’t have any sunshine.
Anyway let’s get into all the new goodies!


Starting off, we’ve got a new demo out! Demo 1.75 isn’t a full big time release (hence why it’s only gone up by 0.05 points), but has a lot of bugfixes, solves a HUGE memory leak, incorporates a lot of feedback, and has some new features for missions and news stories that I’m sure you’ll appreciate. Check it out!


I’m aiming for our next big demo release to be in December or January, which will bring ideally the first and possibly even the second campaign mission in. For now, enjoy all the new progress we’ve made!

As always, this is just a paraphrasing of the full update, which you can read here.


Want to get caught inside a space fairy circle? Face down a planet carver. We’ve got that. I’m quite certain we do. There’s been not as much content made this month, but take a look!


We’ve also added nav buoys, which highlight certain routes in less civilized systems.



Previously we showed off battleship AI for patrolling, jumping, and moving. This month, work was done to make more of those controlled able to be controlled by the cinematic system, making ships jump in and out on whims.
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We also worked on combat AI, so that capship turrets can track, target, and fire huge beam cannons at each other and other things. Imagine about ten of these in a battle, and it can get pretty hectic.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


Lots of improvements have been done to missions. We gave all them some much needed variety, so that things like the military will offer military appropriate missions and such. Hostile fighters will defend big targets (which now have a greater variety), deaddrop contraband will be scanned for by police and others, and helpful fighters can often spawn during missions to, well, help you.

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We’ve also started adding news stories to stations. There’s about 100 written so far, which is about one sixth of all planned news stories. Do they do anything? Heck no, but they give the world some much needed flavor.


All of these are in the new demo, so check it out!


As mentioned in the changelog of this month’s demo release, there’s been a lot of memory optimization done. Probably the most major was the tracking down and violent quashing of a HUGE memory leak, which could find some players using a whopping THIRTEEN gigabytes of memory during longer player sessions. That’s fixed, and many incoming memory optimizations are coming, though this entire thing is a pretty big endeavor to begin with.

We’ve also incorporated lots of feedback from players, all of which is in the latest demo. This includes things like timestamps on saves, DPS displays on guns, the ability to input values directly into the options menu.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
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Remember, we do appreciate demo feedback, and many of these minor features are the result of that.


And finally, assets! The Ballden have had their variants made up and implemented in game, while work continues on the first of the non-playable races and everyone’s favorite angry screaming swear crystals: the Ast!


That’s all for this month, check back next month to see the various things we have in store. Because we have a lot of those things. In store.