Underspace News

Attention, Starchasers!



Thank you for your attention.

It hasn't even been a month since Underspace's Early Access release but the community's response has been overwhelming -- so much so that we feel it's time to let this amazing community in on our plans for the rest of the year (and some change).



Here's the rundown in case the image doesn't load:

Update: GODS & CORPSES (May)

• New Planet: Gravecity
  Late Game Boss Overhauls
  New codex and scanner options
  Knowledge acquisition system
  New ship customization options

Update: [REDACTED] (Summer)

• Bounty hunting questline
  15+ new quests
  More NPC interactions
  New special equipment

Update: [REDACTED] (Fall)

• All missing planet models
  Station interior overhauls
  Character customization overhaul
  Station detailing overhaul
  Cockpit elements and customization

Update: [REDACTED] (Winter to early 2025)

• Multiplayer
  Main storyline continuation
  Freeplay mode
  Additional mod support

IMPORTANT: this is not the list of ALL the updates you can expect on the following months; rather the biggest ones we will be focusing on.

We will obviously be improving all features of Underspace's base game and, as always, we will continue to fix bugs and listen to suggestions from starchasers inside the Steam Discussions and the Underspace Discord server.

Once again, we'd like to thank you so much for your continued support of Underspace. It's indescribable to see so many people appreciate the blood, sweat, and tears this team has put into this wonderfully weird game and love it as much as we do. For that, you all get a bonus cat pic.



You're welcome.

See you in Underspace, starchasers!

Welcome to next week starchasers! Another seven unfortunate days have passed through our shadowy midst, and another seven days of hardcore patching have came and went. Don't burn yourself out you say? Buddy I was at the farmer's market all day today. Did you know you can whip honey into something called honey cream? It's as divine as the gods you've been killing. Where was I? Cat pictures, right. The little brats love the new tower you guy funded into existence.



Anyway, serendipity (that fickle mistress that determines whether or not I can fix a bug) has smiled her mascot-horror-level smile upon us this week, and a bunch of annoying longstanding issues were able to be reproduced and fixed. Plus, we have a ton of new UI quality of life stuff, some new effects and music, and best of all: Some stuff.



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



[h2]NEW FEATURES[/h2]

• You can now see how much space you have in your ship as a numeric value.
  
• You can now sell your scanned data to stormtracker ships!
  
• You can now view scanned data in your information UI.
  
• Control inverts are now separated out into station controls and ship controls respectively.
  
• Added an option to control the speed of campaign cutscenes when on stations.
  
• Added a dialogue history component to the pause menu.
  
• Viewing the information of any local lucrative fields will now tell you if those fields offer any resources.
  
• Added a small indicator to let you see if any nearby asteroids are mineable.
  
• Added new music to the game.
  
• Added a new quick-access menu to go to your various actual menus.
  
• New effects for tractoring in items: Including trails, different sounds based on whether or not you CAN tractor things in, and more.
  
• Added new accessibility options for motion sickness. These will be gradually updated as we identify places that cause it.
  

[h2]CHANGES AND REBALANCES[/h2]

• Imbo’s guns now no longer require reputation to buy. Why would they? All you need is Imbo.
  
• Defense Drones and Autoturrets have been rebalanced to be much more viable. Defense drones now do much more damage, while autoturrets now do more damage and take comparatively less energy.
  
• Buffed mining: Many more mineable asteroids will spawn, and asteroids have much higher yields and chances. Minable asteroids also now move slower and are slightly easier to shoot.
  
• We’ve refactored the background lightning effects you see in storms. They should no longer introduce shader errors and have higher resolution textures and glows.
  
• Weapon platforms are no longer considered space stations, which means missiles will now target and track them much better and they are no longer considered taxable income.
  
• True Struggles of a Modern Artist now has updated dialogue and entries, making it easier to find the things you need.
  
• Adjusted base LOD distances for rendering to improve performance.
  
• Optimized large ship rendering to increase performance in areas with a lot of those fat bastards.
  
• Optimized ship rendering a bit, you should see some performance increases in heavy traffic areas.
  
• The Great Spacetrain Robbery can now let you properly loot the cargo cars it has.
  
• Terminals, such as repair things, mission boards, news boards, etc, now have proper screen textures for the vast majority of them. No more black monitors filled with the inky uncaring abyss.
  
• You can now use abyssdrives in storms so long as there are no active hazards.
  
• Quest waypoints prioritize jumpgates over jumpholes for pathing now.
  
• Target closest hostile now can target a wider variety of things (such as battleships, weapon platforms, and fish) and the button for that on your UI now works.
  
• The Moonshiner now contacts you more easily and you can comm his train in order to get what you so deeply desire.
  
• Higher level scanner upgrades can now show you the health of mines.
  
• Reworked sudden suns in storms to surge better, do their damage more consistently, last much less, and have new sounds and effects.
  
• The Hellmouth Prince now has a custom talky speaky icon for talking, to better communicate that he’s not some random dude but a giant mass of living fire piloting a battleship (though not very well).
  
• Hellmouth Prince is now invincible until the fight starts. He’s always invincible mind you, just so very stupid.
  
• You can now quickload during combat.
  

[h2]FIXES[/h2]

• Fixed some mislabeled lanelines.
  
• Moved the location of some rifts in Yasta and Redemeliat.
  
• Fixed some quest markers not leading you to proper locations.
  
• Refactored some shaders in the game to hopefully prevent THE VOID from consuming one’s screen. At least as frequently…
  
• Speaking of which we’ve done a passthrough on shaders to hopefully clamp down on THE VOID once and for all. The VOID is our enemy. It is yours too.
  
• Fixed hair rendering issues in places.
  
• Fixed some cloak and buff rendering issues that caused overdraw.
  
• Fixed issues in the Amber Forest in Turnways where nodes would just go flying off. Weeee.
  
• The Vauldwin taxi service will now appear more consistently.
  
• Fixed issues with black screens persisting due to pausing or alt-tabbing.
  
• Kaon Shapebinder now activates better and has his invincibility mechanics reimplemented.
  
• Kaon Shapebinder will also now actively follow his persistence node. Maybe he does come back to life sometimes, but not this time. Dude’s fricking dead.
  
• Chapters that require mining items or acquiring items to rank now work properly. Go Trash Pandas!
  
• Exhibition and challenger matches will now work for arena champions.
  
• Fixed some softlocks that occurred rarely via random missions taken in lower population systems such as Bastic.
  
• Fixed issue with the Research Retrieval random mission.
  
• Fixed issues with patrolling cruisers flying through planets.
  
• Fixed issues with world persistence saves not working.
  
• Fixed issues with wrecks spawning inside asteroids.
  
• Fixed quest issues where you could use the Ticker Shunter to leave the relevant boss fight.
  
• Fixed many mission issues relating to wave killing missions, including better clamping on potentially endless fights there.
  
• Fixed issue where many of the rocky cliffs in the Ijuni regions had no colliders.
  
• Fixed some floating geometry on some stations.
  
• Baton Broken will now progress properly if the player leaves the initial quest elements and comes back later.
  
• Creon! and the White Fleet chapters will now work properly for ranking up. Both chapters now have a wider range of enemies that count for their chapters now too.
  
• Fixed issue where the space egg’s inhabitants could be viewed from a distance.
  

We'll have another patch coming next week of course. I'm aiming to make these weekly except under special circumstances, with larger updates coming each quarter. Speaking of those larger updates, we'll be showing off our Early Access Roadmap this coming Wednesday, May 1st. Be there, or be a square. One more cat picture, but you'll have to make it last.

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...
Read more.

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.