Underspace News

It takes a lot to get me immediately invested in a sci-fi universe’s backstory and lore, but Underspace got its hooks in the moment it recounted the story of The Speaker, a public orator of legend. When interdimensional conquerors threatened the galaxy, his unbroken 46-hour speech shamed the invaders so thoroughly that they turned around and went back home embarrassed. And that’s just the tip of an iceberg of weirdness...
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Hello starchasers! Happy weed day or whatever. Is it weed day? It's weed day or something. That's important enough of a holiday to release a NEW patch, isn't it?

It's been just over a week since Underspace has released now, and about a week since our last patch. As you know, sleep eludes me as I don't want the skin man to catch me in my dreams, so I've had plenty of time to work on plenty of stuff.



This is just a small patch nevertheless, our truly big updates will be happening after our roadmap in May gets released. Let's get into the patch notes! Also, some screenshots!



[h2]NEW FEATURES[/h2]

• Added quicksaving and quickloading. These aren’t bound by default, but work all the same.
  
• Added new UI elements on windows to easily hide the background effects.
  
• Commodities now display how many cargo slots they take up.
  
• You can now use the frienddrive and your cloaking device from the quickmenu.
  
• You can now set the number of values the autosave system generates via the options menu.
  
• Added many new tutorials explaining menus or mechanics. Remember: You asked for this.
• Translated ancient gates will now give hints as to where to find the appropriate booze needed to open them.
  
• The in-game radio now shows the song currently playing on your radio.
  
• Added a new option to have the in-game radio not suppress ambient tracks (such as nebulas, stations, and asteroid belts).
  
• Mister Maudlin will now buy commodities from you. Don’t ask what he’s using them for.
  
• Starchasing chapters can now display their home bases.
  
• Repair items now have unique models and graphics for each one. Now that shrunken battleship actually is, in fact, a shrunken battleship in a bottle.
  
• Added a quest that lets you track the Marching Star during its campaign missions, to better keep an eye on it.
  
• Deleting saves now gives you a confirmation menu before doing so.
  
• When buying a ship, you now have an option to just buy and add it to your garage, or buy and transfer all your equipment to your new ship.
  
• There’s also a confirmation menu when quitting to the main menu now.
  

[h2]CHANGES AND REBALANCES[/h2]

• The under-construction jumpgate in Pard-130 now has a proper model.
  
• You will no longer have to wait for your energy to recharge when loading a save.
  
• Frienddrives will now only start to recharge once the party member has jumped out.
  
• Repair drops are now weighted towards repair items you actively need.
  
• Ammo for your equipment can now drop from NPCs. Space truly is nature’s farm. For missiles. Or something. How did the saying go?
  
• Obscurus Galacti does a better job of hiding itself amongst its many clones.
  
• In-game radio is now controlled entirely by the music slider option.
  
• Friendly battleships will now become hostile against you if you fire at them.
  
• Exiting abyssdrive via a key will now simply drop you back down to cruise.
  
• Added some more dialogue to Colonel Eltmoor to hint on what you should do.
  
• Tweaked the beam attack settings of some late-storyline bosses.
  
• The Hangman has been buffed.
  
• Unstable jumpholes are now even more unstable: Every unstable jumphole has a chance to rocket you to a completely different region entirely.
  
• When reassigning inputs, conflicting inputs will now swap keys rather than remove them, mainly to prevent softlocks.
  
• Escape will now clear the keybind of an input in the input menu.
  

[h2]FIXES[/h2]

• Fixed some additional quest soflocks
  
• Fixed some mislabeled jumpholes.
  
• Fixed stormeyes not spawning when a storm is killed or spawning when a storm shouldn’t be killed.
  
• Fixed issue where the suncracker could only die if you out-DPS’d it hardcore style.
  
• Fixed some engine display issues with Ijuni fighters.
  
• Lodestones can now stack.
  
• Fixed issues where the Tierra jumphole would disappear early.
  
• Fixed issue where radiation alerts wouldn’t occur when jumping into a system.
  
• Fixed issue where Pyrona’s freighter couldn’t be seen in Between Spaces.
  
• During hyperstroms you can now kill yourself without issue.
  
• The Lower Lanes can now be looted.
  
• Fixed THE VOID being all consuming during Box of Memories.
  
• Fixed issue where some tutorials weren’t firing at the point of need.
  
• Fixed issue where the game would process inputs even when unfocused.
  
• Fixed various tutorial typos and added some new tutorials to the manual.
  
• Fixed issue where you couldn’t view data on systems outside your current one on the navmap.
  
• Redfaces now sell their weaponry during the campaign.
  
• Fixed issue where some party members were using their upgraded models too early.
  
• Fixed some softlocks with even more missions.
  
• The Remaining Eye cargo trader now buys cargo.
  
• The Hellomard can now be damaged and looted.
  
• Translated items will now save their translations. Note that they will need to be translated again for this to happen.
  
• Fixed some holes in the harvest gate.
  
• Fixed some softlocks that would occur with campaign mission 7.
  
• Updated some main quest dialogue to not go out of bounds.
  
• Added tech to help stop possible memory leaks in minefields. Naval mines aren’t that powerful. Yet.
  
• Some opening tutorials are slightly easier to follow now.
  
• Fixed some UI issues with the chapter stuff.
  
• Fixed some UI issues with the character skill menu.
  
• Fixed some UI issues with numeric readouts.
  
• Fixed some issues with out of system waypoints not working.
  
• Fixed some small graphical errors with civilian freighter headlights.
  
• Game resolutions should now save between game sessions.
  
• Fixed issue where quests could complete multiple times.
  
• Fixed some softlocks and typos in mission 9.
  
• Fixed some typos on lanelines and records.
  
• Fixed some softlocks with Baton, Broken.
  
• Rebalanced higher tier frienddrives augments.
  
• Fixed some potential softlocks with campaign mission 4.
  
• Fixed some campaign saves not loading fresh from a dock.
  

We'll be back next week with another patch, with a few various features. We're still working on refactoring a lot of internal input stuff to get controller support working (look, Unity's input systems, even alternative ones like Rewired, are a freaking mess. This takes a lot more effort than simple stuff like adding new questlines or multiplayer). They'll be some improvements here, so have some early previews of things like:



New radial menus for summoning party members or accessing menus.


New interiors for things like the Peerless Casino!



More billboards featuring my evil orange cat.

We'll see you next week, have fun and kill the storm!

Hail Starchasers.

I trust by now you know the drill.



It's been almost one Earth calendar week since Underspace's release and we've already had two hotfixes out due to popular demand.

Also now on Steam due to popular demand is the Underspace demo; if you've been on the fence about buying Underspace during its introductory sale price, now's your chance to try before you buy.



But, you know, play quickly. The sale over in less than 24 hours and time waits for no man (or Veiler, or Ast, or...).



That is all, Starchasers.

Hello again starchasers! I hope you've been enjoying space. What's that? You fell in love with a microbe? Well don't do that. She views you more as a friend. She just won't love you the way Lady Mimosa here loves plastic bottles.



Anyway, a bit of news: The demo will be coming back to Steam! We were waiting for a few hotfixes and were patching stuff up, but expect it to be back up this week. The 10% off sale will also end this week, so if you want to save a whole TWO (2) dollars, get it while you can.

Anyway, onto the patch. This is a big one with a lot of bugfixes, plus some small requested features. As a reminder, we do NOT do wipes on saves and make a point to try and make previous save versions always compatible with the latest version of the game.



[h2]NEW FEATURES[/h2]

• The abyssdrive, when unusable, now gives more accurate information as to why you cannot use them (comms, storms, etc).
  
• Completing Baton, Broken will allow you to mention it to Hat when it becomes relevant.
  
• Pard-130 now has a connecting jumphole to Shipstar.
  
• Canceling a mission that involves unique cargo will now remove that cargo from your inventory.
  
• Added new options to the options menu to control text scrolls speed and a multiplier for how long text stays on the screen. This can be found under the audio tab in the options menu.
  
• Cloud saves are now enabled and working!
  

[h2]CHANGES AND REBALANCES[/h2]

• Radios can now play on stations. The radio will use the ambient folder for this, if you’re using specific folders in that way.
  
• The escaped ship in Great Rescape is now recovered after you find it out in the minefield.
  
• Adjusted the distances of several hazards so that they can’t catch you quite as much by surprise.
  
• Adjusted the spawning areas of storm rifts inside several nebulas such as Thoroughfare.
  
• Added higher tiers of radiation hazards as storm hazards.
  
• Added many many more stupid names to the Ballden’s name generation.
  
• You can now craft higher tier repair items from lower tier repair items (Such as shrunken battleships from unstable refabricators), provided you can find them!.
  
• Crafting recipes now show the stats and description of the crafted item.
  
• Ammo now displays in ship descriptions.
  
• Turn rate now displays in ship descriptions.
  
• Forgiveness isn’t considered a virtue in the Union, but they’re still willing to forget. Attacking a neutral or friendly station, jumpgate, or laneline will gradually cause it to stop being hostile, provided you’re far enough away. By default, if you’re more than 35k away from a base for around a minute, it will stop being so damn angry at you.
  
• Extreme collision damage now only occurs while using the abyssdrive.
  
• Gone Adrift will no longer show scannables for the ships you’ve already found.
  
• The Gate and the Code has more hints on how to figure out the Code for the Gate.
  
• Shooting missiles at a station doesn’t instantly incur a hostile wrath. They know you didn’t mean it. Right? RIGHT??
  
• Taking a further look at Us Missions, we’ve decided to make them award a VERY meager amount of reputation, to prevent softlocks. The Us are slow to trust unless you like, blow up an ancient jumpgate to stop a racist guy from attacking them or something. That gets them a bit happier.
  
• We’ve adjusted how the leading pip works with projectiles. Should be more accurate.
  
• Increased the target framerate option to go up to 300.
  

[h2]FIXES:[/h2]

• Mod support has been restored to the game.
  
• Fixed some typos in dialogue.
  
• Fixed some quests that were displayed as being available when the requirements for them were not met.
  
• Many quests have had their objective text adjusted to make the actions that need to be taken more obvious.
  
• Hardpoints on Ballden ships now have proper rotational values.
  
• Hypercharged webbing now works and the Curshian Death Cube can be overcome. Have fun in Curshia Prime!
  
• Unpausing from the save menu no longer locks the controls.
  
• Abyssdrive colors now save.
  
• You can now set waypoints to locations outside of your star system (though you’ll need to know the path) and set waypoints while on stations.
  
• Fixed issue where chapters wouldn't acknowledge storms being killed.
  
• Fixed issue in Box of Memories that could cause softlocks.
  
• Fixed issues in the Lords of Croft and campaign mission 14 that could cause softlocks.
  
• Saves made in space during a random mission will now acknowledge that you’ve launched to space with that random mission and update accordingly.
  
• Bugfixes for the following random missions: Runaway Train, Corpse Collection, Carcass Sorting, Starchaser Teamup, Military Assistance, Washer Sacrifice.
  

And that's it for today! Have fun with the Death Cube. Who knows what waits beyond it?


We're aiming for another patch at the end of the week. This one will start bringing in some of the aforementioned features in our previous patch, along with new things like radial menus and unstable jumpholes getting a bit more crazy. Keep an eye out!

One more cat pic for the road? Fine.

Hello starchasers! We've still got a patch coming on Monday but I had some time today so I figured "Why not". Is it some special occasion? Some holiday? Homestuck day you say? Well Homestuck's terrible now so no. It's just a nice present for you all.



[h2]CHANGES AND REBALANCES[/h2]

• The best price tab now shows the star system of the station you can sell things at.
  
• Off-Track now has some more crazy nonsense to help you figure out the puzzles within.
  

[h2]FIXES[/h2]

• Fixed issue with options resetting on a restart.
  
• Storms received some optimization with some effects, which should help with GPU load.
  
• Starchaser ships now properly color both highengine effects.
  
• Fixed saving issue that would cause unstable jumpholes to reset the game.
  
• Fixed some possible softlocks that happen during campaign mission 10.
  
• Storms now properly save in save files.
  
• Us ships can now be customized.
  
• Fixed cargo duplication bugs when transferring a ship.
  
• Fixed some small UI errors when transferring a ship.
  

Cat picture.