Underspace News

Happy October starchasers! It’s the spooky month, and what’s spookier than a heaping dollop of progress. But we’ve got more than that. It’s Halloween, which means Christmas has come early, and we’re proud to present our first demo release in over half a year!

Demo 1.7 represents quite a bit of work on the part of pretty much all the team, and contains a lot of major improvements across the board. It’s not a 100% completed version mind you, and while we’d certainly appreciate feedback please please keep in mind the known issues section. But other than that, check it out!

Now obviously the majority of this month was spent preparing for this new version, but fear not, we’ve had plenty of progress to still show off, so take a look!

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


I’ve mentioned previously that I wanted to give NPCs more variety with the occasional beefed up, unique enemy spawning amongst its lesser peers. That system is now implemented, and now whenever you encounter fighters or freighters there’s a chance (with higher chances the longer you go without seeing one and higher chances during missions) to encounter these so-named “ace” pilots, who come with special abilities and faction-specific titles.


You might encounter NPCs that can fire off EMP blasts, heal their squadmates, or violently explode upon death. But if you manage to defeat these enemies they can drop rare, special loot!


Way back when the game was first in development individual hardpoints on ships were given individual health pools. The eventual goal was that these hardpoints could be blown up and individual components non-functional, but the feature was put on the backburner. This month I had a few hours to spare so that system was re-implented.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This also extends to big transports, which will carry around cargo that you can break open for the juicy succulent meat inside it.



Because so much of the time spent this month was on the demo, a lot of work got done just debugging and optimizing the hell out of a ton of background systems.


A lot of common freezes and memory leaks were patched up, and on the more visual side of things we redid the visuals for many projectiles.



I’ve also been redoing how chatter channels work. What was previously a resource-intensive system that let NPCs talk over each other and was generally chaos has been refined, with global channels limiting and tracking how NPCs talk. This system is still being tweaked, mind you, but it runs and works much better for anyone’s purposes, especially our own.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


We’ve also implemented fully the last two playable races. Last month you were shown a brief preview of the very smart and very tiny Macrovari, now take a look at the full animation sets for both them and everyone’s favorite religious hiveminds: the Ballden!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


That’s all for this month, as always check back next month for more progress. As a final note we’re looking to make demo releases more frequent, ideally with each one advancing the main campaign in some way.

Extreme weather batters away at my wrongly-installed sliding screen doors, an ambiance most appropriate for making a game about fighting space storms I feel.
With the weather taking a turn towards the garbage and quarantine further emphasizing that fact, there’s been a lot of time for me in the past month to really get a lot of content done.

On that note, I’m happy to announce that we edge quite close to the release of the next demo version (and you’ll soon see why)! There’ll be lots of new content in this one, mainly the opening cutscene, tons of fixes, optimizations, etc etc. It’ll be a big update for sure, and I hope to have it out fairly soon, ideally this month or the next.

With that in mind, let’s show off all the things that have been workulated into existence these past few weeks!

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


Space eggs, space skeletons, space starfactories, redone giant spaceships whose power cores serve as the sun for an entire star system! I’ll keep this spoiler free but take a look at the various content that’s been committed into existence these past few weeks.



As promised, we’ve gotten off to a great start on the campaign. There’s been a LOT of background tech to make this all work, but we’ve gotten that all up and running. Take a first look at the rough draft for the opening cutscene. Sound, lighting, movement, and Todd Howard are all obviously not final.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

After that action packed opening, you’ll be treated to something even more exciting: an elevator ride and talking with your lawyer about legal issues!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

It’s not just talking and cutscenes, we’ve also been working on the unique enemies of the campaign, and the encounters for such.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



Outside of the campaign a lot of work went into audio and dialogue stuff. NPC conversation variation was greatly expanded; stations informing you if the docking queue is full, ships talking about activating lanelines, mission control telling you of your objective over comms. That sort of thing.


Some of this was linked up to game systems. Smuggling now works off the in-game dialogue rather than its own independent thing, and works fully now.


We’ve also added some new custom, modular audio pieces for your ship’s onboard computer’s voice. These aren’t fully hooked up yet, so ideally next month you might see more progress here.



I didn’t forget all the little QoL and tweaks that make up the bulk of game development of course. Let’s cover that next. To start with manual docking is now available on stations.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Explosive mines got a rework, both in terms of optimization, bugfixes, and damage variety. Generally we’ve done a lot of under the hood optimization, gaining some serious frames in heavy-traffic areas. There’s been some color tweaking as well: ship trails are brighter and nebula lightning more color appropriate.


Factions and pirates got an upgrade too. Pirates will actively scan for cargo they want, and you’ll encounter smugglers and guards around their bases. Meanwhile faction tables were totally filled out so now inter-regional factions will react appropriately to one-another.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]




We didn’t forget models of course. From the microbiological Macrovari to the coffinesque Ballden, the last few character models and animations for our four main races are almost in.


These are, like their previous lobstery and balloony friends, fully customizable and playable (in multiplayer at least).
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Wew! That’s all for this month. When you check back next time ideally we’ll have more stuff. Campaign, audio, maybe even MORE space eggs, who knows?

Welcome to August starchasers! Summer draws to a close here in Wisconsin, and we enjoyed our whole two days of sunshine, but now it’s starting to get back to that lovely lovely constant snow. How enjoyable. But hey, nobody leaves their house anymore, so that means lots of things are up and working, check it out!
As always this is just a paraphrasing of the full article, which you can check out here.


Last month we showed off the basics of battleshipping. This month, we added battleships to every system that has them, improved their effects, and worked on a sexy sexy world persistent system. This means battleships can die and stay dead, though it could be applied to several other aspects as well.... One thing at a time though.


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We also had a lot of content this month, with a particularly organic bent to it. I’ll leave these spoiler free.



As the campaign’s script nears its finished state I had a look-back through it to see if there was any tech that needed to be drafted up to support it. There was by the way. We needed a system, first off, for the player to be able to talk back during conversations, which we added.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The second thing was a way for Unity’s Timeline system to control cutscenes by calling arbitrary code. That took a bit of doing (as Unity’s Timeline is kind of sucky) but we managed to get it to work!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

If you use Unity’s Timeline system, you can try this tech out for yourself here.


We gave the UI some background textures, to make it easier to read under some circumstances.


And eagle-eyed players might have noticed that the atmospheres on planets had some rendering issues, which are fixed.


More relevantly we’ve been doing another pass on system lighting, during which we experimented with lights on engines. These looked so good we spent an hour adding them to every player ship.



Cockpits are starting to come along. When I first began work on them I was debating whether or not to have screens on it, then realized that I could just easily make it so you, the players, could remove or put in those screens in your cockpits.


Speaking of new features, we added an in-game radio and music player. You can place sound files in a folder (or multiple folders for multiple channel), and listen to your own tunes.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Also when your inventory/journal updates there’ll be a small icon next to it.



Lobsters! Lobster variations! Hairstyles, wrecked transports, and a certain spoilery ship from the campaign. Those are the assets we’ve put out this for your viewing pleasure.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


That’s all for this month. What will September bring? Knowing where I live probably snow, but maybe other stuff too! Check back next time!

It’s July! Another month of summer, which would probably be more exciting if we weren’t all being responsible and staying inside to prevent the plague-borne death of civilization. Right?
So how has your summer been going? Still setting off fireworks long before and long after the holiday that’s meant for setting off fireworks has passed? Well stop doing that, nobody is going to give you attention. Give us attention instead, because we’ve got a lot of big things to show you. Emphasis on big, since there’s a lot of capships. Come check it out!

And as always, you can read the full update on Kickstarter here.


I’m happy to report that not only all the big bad capitalships of the game graphic’d and implemented, but we’ve set up a system for these juggernauts to patrol and chase after you in civilized systems. If you’re a pirate that’s drawn too much attention to themselves, you might find a huge ship chasing after you. Hope you can run blockades!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Luckily most of these enormous ships can’t follow or detect you in asteroid fields and nebula. You could always try taking them down, but battleships are complicated and have many subsystems involved in protecting them, like shield generators.



Ever wanted to track down a ghost train, buy moonshine from a weird guy in a junkyard, or explore an ancient lighthouse? Now, have you ever wanted to do all that but in space? Well now you can! We’ve got plenty of new content and vignettes set up, as well as the tech for them. I’ll try and keep this spoiler free though.



The initial first bits of the campaign, mostly the prologue, are up and running. Most of the work here was plotting out the basic rooms and effects, as well as allowing dialogue to control the campaign’s state. There’s still more to be done before this is ready for release mind you.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]




And finally where would we be without the requisite lobsters and starships? Nowhere. We’d be nowhere.


That’s all for this month, check back next time for more content, cockpits, and wreckage.

Hello starchasers, and welcome to the lovely month of June. Summer has rolled in, pushing winter back for the next three days before it starts up once again, and that means humidity, blazing heat, sudden freak lightning storms, and bugs larger than your car flying about. Good thing we don’t leave our houses anymore, right?
We’re approaching our first anniversary of our Kickstarter, and at this point I’d like to thank everyone who donated for their help and their bullion. It’s thanks to you guys that we’re able to make the game that much better.
Now come see the fruits of that funding!
As always this is just a paraphrasing of the main Kickstarter update, which you can read here.



Is there anything more important to a game than content? I mean could you imagine a space game that’s just completely empty and has nothing to actually do? Sounds pretty horrifying to me. Luckily, we’ve spent the past month adding tons of content. I’ll keep this all spoiler free, but take a look!




As always there’s a smattering of bugfixes and improvements across the board on things. For starters, the spawning placement code for NPCs had a lot of issues. It was too slow, it often placed NPCs in planets or outside of the range, and I couldn’t do some effects I wanted (like having NPCs that were warping in play a little effect). I spent a few hours totally redoing that system, and now it does everything I want it to. Including the little warp-in effect.


In multiplayer we worked on world synchronization, things like tracking the docking states of gates, stations, etc. It was quite a bit of work to get it… working, but everything you see in this video is managed by the server and sent back to the player.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


We also did work on cockpits, starting to give them support for proper models, but also support for vanity items on your dashboard. If you’ve ever wanted to hang a picture of what you love most up in your ship’s cockpit, now’s your chance.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Speaking of vanity, what game is complete without character customization? The system for character parts was overhauled, allowing for things like enable/disable states and material swaps. Take a look.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

And of course, there’s always bugfixes, optimizations, and tweaks in the background.



The first steps of the campaign have been taken. It’s fairly barebones right now, but a big new feature is the campaign journal. Think of it like a codex, or an appendix. It shows in-character thoughts on events, people, places, things, etc.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



Do you like capitalist space lobsters? I do. Have some capitalist space lobsters, and of course the required amount of big old battleships.



That’s all for this month, check back next month, we’ll probably have some more content, more lobsters, and more battleships to show off.