Underspace News

March! The best month, as it was the month that I decided to grace the world with my existence, moreover it’s also the month where Father Winter’s cold probing digitalia finally recede back into his gaping frosthole, and springs spews forth a helping of bugs and allergies. Of course, I’m not being besieged by boxelder bugs or drowning in my own snot, because I have an air purifier and an automated low-power laser defense system in my house, so hey perfect time to sit down and do things with stuff, and that stuff is progress!
As always this is just a paraphrasing of the Kickstarter, you can read the full devlog here.

First, our nice and biggest announcement: Demo 1.6 is now available for everyone everywhere forever!


It’s been a few months since the last demo, so obviously a massive amount of work has gone into this and that massive amount of work will bring in a lot of changes. Everyone should see clear graphical and performance improvements across the board to just about every part of the game and a fair amount of polish and bugfixing. Even if you’re on a higher-end computer, your basic day-to-day spacey stuff should all run soooooo much smoother and look soooooo much better.

Now, this past month was mostly spent working on the demo for MDev 2020. We had a great turnout, and a lot of positive feedback, but because that demo took most of my time, this month’s log is going to be a bit shorter than usual. With that in mind, let’s go see what else is new in the galaxy!

[h2]Multiplayer[/h2]
Our multiplayer rework is going as smooth as butter (but not the spray-on kind that you shouldn’t cook grilled cheese with. It makes it taste like a happy meal toy). Players can fly around, shoot each other, login and create accounts and connect to servers, and the whole system works a heck of a lot smoother than it used to. We’ll be focusing mainly on getting the player experience smooth before starting on anything involving NPCs and that level of world-state synchronization though.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Polishing[/h2]
The MDev demo and a few subsequent five hour playthroughs revealed to me a heck of a lot of little quality of life issues and bugs that needed addressing, and around over 50 of those issues have been thoroughly knocked out. Camera rolling is better, indicators better, NPCs taunt properly, and much much more.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



[h2]Detailing[/h2]
Outside of things like quests and vignettes, a big portion of the game’s content comes from just detail work. Fishing ships, lighthouses where they need to be, and what we call “racial elements”, specific regional statics like windmills, power lines, space lampposts, and more. And of course, billboards!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Only one region has been really completed with this so far, but more are soon to follow!


[h2]Asset Work[/h2]
This past month also saw plenty of new freighter models, all of which are in-game and flyable now, plus new models for dropped loot and equipment, some billion-year-old whaling ships, and and the last few guns and hardware getting proper, textured models.



That’s all for this month’s devlog (like I said it was kind of a short one) tune in next time for all the fun things we’ve got coming down the pipeline.

Mother Nature’s icy cold grip has relaxed upon this Midwestern world ever so-slightly. Which means it’s snowing constantly but at least it’s 20 out instead of -4 farenheit. But ah, what is weather to a man with cheap central heating? Basically nothing. Which means there’s plenty of time to bunker down and get some work done.
But first, some announcements!
If you’re near, in, or want to be near or in the Madison, Wisconsin area, we’ll be exhibiting at this year’s M+Dev Conference! Some of our team will be there, along with a playable arena demo, plus all the other nice stuff you find at conferences, like people giving talks on things!



It’s coming up on Valentine’s Day, but tickets are still on sale, so if you’re interested, check it out!
Of course, a big event means a new demo. Demo 1.6, bringing all kinds of new features, optimizations, new grafics, and all the typically massive amounts of stuff you’ve come to expect from our major demo releases. It won’t be exactly at the same time as M+Dev, as their demos are different beasts, but close to it!
Onto progress! As always, you can read the full article on Kickstarter here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pastaspace/underspace/posts/2749635


Much of the time last month was spent overhauling the rest of the UI (those bits that aren’t the HUD) to make it prettier and in line with the rest of it graphically. We also went through and fixed a great deal of bugs, polished icons, and much much more.


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

First person interactions while on stations have much more too! The player can frob objects such as switches, buttons, levers, read books, hack into emails and command terminals, and use keypads. All of this is used to give the world more flavor, as well as puzzles and special interactions during quests.


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


At some point we realized that we could either spend a bunch of time trying to make our old, extremely, hyper-suck multiplayer netcode work, or we could take the same amount of time to redo it from the ground up and do it right. Luckily, a fair bit of our old code logic is still usable, and already a good bit of progress is being made.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We’ve also redone the internal code that handles input, mostly to support mouse, keyboard, joystick, and controller mappings and such. We’ll be doing a controller survey closer to release to get a better idea of the average user’s preferred flightstick in that sense.


Jumpholes! Wormholes! Rifts! Singularities! Long before the Union built their great steel gates between the stars, these swirling vortices of potential and nightmare were often the only way to cross great distances. Now, every system that has jumpgates has (with some exception) hidden, far less legal jumpholes that anyone is free to use.


But be wary, jumpholes are unstable, and can fail. And you don’t want that to happen.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


And we’ve got plenty of new assets to show off, from character models, freighter models, ruins, to bosses and shipping container mimics!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


That’s all for this month, the next time we check in, demo 1.6 will ideally be out!

January! January! The year of new beginnings, of missed resolutions and miserable cold without any of the holidays to redeem it. With the previous year in our rear view mirror and the military having safely wrangled Santa Claus back into his prison with only minimum civilian casualties, let’s take a look at the things worked on in the last month.


If you missed it patch 1.52 is out for Underspace’s official demo. This is mostly a bugfixing pass (with special thanks to our fans for catching a lot of these), so if you had any issues with saving or buying ships in 1.5, check this one out. At the same time we are working to get patch 1.6 out fairly soon.

As always, you can read the full devlog on Kickstarter here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pastaspace/underspace/posts/2726199



You may recall in many of these devlogs that we’ve teased redone models for all stations. With a new year ahead of us, I’m happy to say that all the station models have not only been redone, but every station has those redone models now fully implemented.


More than that, we’ve optimized, staggered, and redone rendering for stations, greatly increasing the framerate across pretty much any system. This, after asteroids, is the second biggest optimization pass, and even lower-end computers should benefit greatly from it.




The first parts of December were mostly focused on getting out demo 1.5, which meant finishing the tutorial, which meant creating the technology behind the tutorial. Some of this was simple stuff like advanced tooltips and better background controls, but perhaps the most relevant and interesting new feature is the self-contained level system. For the tutorial, this is used for its simulations, but it has a very wide range of applications such as challenges, missions, dream sequences, memories, and much much more.




Of course, the majority of the month was spent going through various mechanics, playing the game for hours on end, and quashing bugs and tweaking things that didn’t feel quite right. We also introduced new quality-of-life features and elements to help things along, such as more detailed messages, and a new “auto-follow” feature that will let your ship automatically follow waypoints and let you take a break for a while.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


And, as always, there’s a whole bunch of new assets being worked on.This includes the fabulously explosive leviathan, the Disium, parts for space dungeons (dungeons that are in space), and a whole host of capital ships.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]







And that’s all for this month. We’ll be trying to get 1.6 to you soon enough, but if you have bugs to submit for demo 1.52, feel free to submit them!

As promised in our last update, demo 1.5 is now available on PC, Linux, and Macontash.

PC Linux Mac itch.io Mirror

This new update represents around four months of hard, grueling, back-breaking game development, and as such there's a ton of new features, most of which you've seen in the previous development diaries. If you haven't, here's a brief summary of all the new things, in funny image form:


And lastly, here's the full changelog!

• Joystick mode does not work beyond the basics, as input is going through an internal rework.
  
• Input remapping is going through a rework, and has issues. Macs in particular may need specific remappings.
  
• The game is currently unoptimized in many demo systems, due to station models not having been optimized.
  
• Spish will generate a phantom shape that appears when light shines on it.
  
• Countermeasures may sometimes fail to work.
  
• Wrecks still drop intact versions of equipment.
  
• Setting the resolution ingame doesn’t work. This has been disabled due to issues.
  

• Added over 30 new ships in the form of bombers and freighters.
  
• New trading mechanics: station commodities will be affected by supply and demand.
  
• Included several new item types and allowed for missiles, mines, and countermeasures to work properly.
  
• NPC pathfinding and combat AI improved, with such features as missile use, using lanelines properly, and more.
  
• New models for fixtures such as lampposts and lighthouses, ticker relays, and buoys.
  
• Major graphical passes on asteroids, suns, and nebula.
  
• New effects for ships catching fire, explosions, engines, highengines, jumptunnels and weapons.
  
• New games now start with crappy low-value new-game ships.
  
• Complete nonHUD UI overhaul for better functionality and clarity.
  
• New UI features include the ability to check best prices, track recent reputation changes on a faction, and more.
  
• Many under-the-hood optimizations on existing things, such as colliders and physics.
  
• Addition of a meta-inventory with meta items.
  
• Added decal system.
  
• New camera systems and effects, including a classical dynamic “loose” camera and the existing “close” camera. You can switch between the two in the options menu.
  
• Scanned data will give out items in addition to cash rewards.
  
• Adjusted leveling curve and properly hooked up RPG mechanics to skills and levels.
  
• Added long range waypoint system.
  
• Brand new tutorial level and functionality to help new starchasers better learn the insandouts of the game. The tutorial can be accessed from the main menu by pressing the “new game” button and selecting the tutorial option.
  
• Suns now kill you if you get too close to them.
  
• And much much much much much more!
  

• A lot, most of which I’m probably going to miss due to the sheer amount of them.
  
• Fixed issues with docking and NPCs docking incorrectly.
  
• Fixed UI formatting issues, especially ones with money.
  
• Fixed issues with contact HUD not updating when it should.
  
• Fixed issues with asteroid fields and nebulas not properly updating or having the effects and clearances they should.
  
• Fixed issues with explosion and damage effects not resetting properly.
  
• Improved and fixed issues with mining asteroids where they wouldn’t be destroyed properly.
  
• Fixed item duplication issues.
  
• Fixed issues where undocking would freeze the game.
  

Now, I know it's been ages some time between demo versions, and we'll try to rectify that as best we can. At the same time, we have specific milestones that need to be complete before each new demo version. Our hope with the next demo is to have greatly improved performance, new station models, a new input system (that will allow full use of joysticks and controllers), and various polishes and fixes.

December, the good old final month in the year. It’s when the weather gets cold, the stores start stocking eggnog, my heating bills shoot up, and of course it’s when Santa Claus emerges from his cocoon of meat and amniotic fluid to once again wage his forever-war against mankind. Meanwhile I’m still trying to shake off the last bits of the turkey haze of November, but said is not hazy enough to stop all kinds of important Underspace work from being done.

The goal now is to get demo 1.5 out by the end of the year, obviously it hasn’t come with this devlog, as the main thing still missing is the tutorial, but that’s written out and nearly scripted out. In the coming weeks I’ll be grinding away at finishing said tutorial, as well as going over the demo for bugs. I’ll post another update when the new demo is launched and ready.

As always, this is just a taste of the full update, which you can read on our Kickstarter page here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pastaspace/underspace/posts/2705150


You may recall in a previous update I went over creating new assets for nebulas and suns. These weren’t fully implemented, and last month I went over all 70 star systems, giving them an updated pass for graphics on stars and clouds.





This isn’t done yet, as the only real way to get a good sense of what clouds work and what need adjusting can only be done through regular play.

Of course clouds and asteroids aren’t the only thing getting a touch-up! Explosions, fire, and everything burny got an overhaul, and both run and look better. Now when fighters and freighters die, or when you launch a missile or mine, they’ll look much better.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

There’s also been some other graphical work done, with things like color-grading zones and lights flickering on wreckage (still a WIP, as wreckage assets need to be made from existing ship models).

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



Perhaps the biggest and most exciting new update is a total overhaul of our asteroid rendering system. Previously this was a major source of performance issues, due to the nature of how Unity renders things combined with how our system works. This is no longer the case, and asteroids run far far better now, with my own computer seeing a 30 FPS increase while in heavy fields.
Because they run so much better, we also took the time to completely overhaul their graphics, making them look much nicer. We also added a few new asteroid types on top of this!





This system’s not done yet, as the new asteroid types (and new variants for existing types rather than just replacements) aren’t all in yet.


Previous all items in the game were tied to your ship’s cargo hold, but we’ve made a new system that has player-specific inventory items.This meta-inventory tends to hold more abstract possessions, or items used in quests and for crafting materials. This change coincides with a change to how looting wrecks work. Wrecks now give damaged equivalents of existing equipment, which have to be repaired with special repair meta-items (gained as rare drops, or through quests, exploration, and bossfights).




Items also have reputation requirements now too! If you want that shiny new gun from the military, you’re going to have to get them to trust you first.





Last month I talked briefly about getting mines working. In addition to giving missiles and mines new explosions, NPCs are now able to use them. Unfortunately, they’re also able to use them.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Luckily most NPCs also have a limit as to the number of missiles and mines they can use, and all in-game ordnance has all been adjusted for speed, power, clarity, etc. Countermeasures also work properly now, so when you’ve got thirty million missiles chasing you, you can take some of the heat off you.


Ancient space highways, bioluminescent space deer, battleships, new station models, frog… things! And more! As the game edges closer to release this kind of thing (namely actual content) is what you’ll start to see more and more of.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]








And that’s all for this month. As always, take a look at our Kickstarter page for more information and in-depth info! We’ll be back next month with another update, and keep an eye out this month for demo 1.5!