EVERSPACE™ 2 News

Everspace 2 is getting a free Unreal Engine 5 upgrade to make future updates and expansions easier

Rockfish have announced that they're updating arcade dogfighter Everspace 2 to run on Unreal Engine 5. The engine rollover will arrive as part of or alongside the game's Incursions update in spring 2024, which includes tweaks and bugfixes as well as extra legendary items and a new game feature of some description. The idea is less to take advantage of UE5's various whizbangs and bellwhistles, like the new Nanite geometry system, than to grease the launch chutes for future Everspace 2 updates and expansions.

If Starfield space battles leave you cold, or you've ever wished Diablo 4 had a more intergalactic setting, Everspace 2 is a must-play. The loot-driven space flight RPG is, at least for my money, the most exciting space game to launch in 2023, and following its first huge free update developer Rockfish Games has big plans for its second major upgrade including a switch to UE5 - although it's taking a little longer to make sure everything's shipshape and correct.

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The Path To Unreal Engine 5 Is Paved With Crushed Bugs

Migrating to Unreal Engine 5 has key quest locations shifted around.

The title says it all! TL;DR: The team is getting under the hood and giving EVERSPACE 2 an engine update as a maintainability upgrade. We’re taking this time to experiment with the tools and overcome growing pains while our creative team continues work on our future expansion.

Dax, ain’t that the truth.

Looking at our roadmap, there’s a sizable gap between our two free major updates, and there’s a good reason for that. The Armed & Dangerous update brought all kinds of set items, gameplay tweaks, and bugfixes to EVERSPACE 2, and our next one is going to be just as big. We’ve shared that the Incursions update coming later this spring will include more gameplay tweaks and bugfixes as well as new legendary items and a new game feature. If you tuned into our 2023 End of Year Stream, you may have caught a sneak peek at some of what will be contained.

Honey! I’ve shrunk the planet! (How’s that for a dated film reference?)

One of the main reasons that this update is taking so long is that we’re bringing EVERSPACE 2 to Unreal Engine 5, which is no small task for our small team. As part of this update, we’re also looking at some of the community-requested features and fixes set aside as they were not viable on the Unreal 4 version we were sticking to during development. Very likely, we will only be able to include a few, and things like native Linux support are currently not in the plan.

Firing the "Last Rites" legendary railgun currently results in four visible shots, two nowhere near the ship.

Why are we doing this? We don’t plan to use many of the amazing features such as Nanite and Lumen in EVERSPACE 2 as tests we’ve performed in-studio have shown that current solutions in-game already have better optimization, but having them available does open doors for the future. Mainly we’re looking at this as a way to help future-proof the game so we have less difficulty bringing updates and expansion content down the road. We want to be able to support EVERSPACE 2 for a long time.

Seems like Ghost has spent time on a high-grav planet.

Let’s get real about Unreal Engine 5! The engine is phenomenal, and many studios who embraced it early have been able to deliver fantastic visuals, but taking a significant leap between versions is breaking all kinds of things. Experienced EVERSPACE 2 pilots know just how big the game is, and that there are many, MANY systems threaded throughout that create our game. All these systems make for an incredible number of things that can go wrong when migrating to a major engine upgrade. By taking this time, we’re aiming to ensure our next major update is as smooth as possible.

Uhhhh… where’s the rest of the beam laser? That’s the last time we buy weapons from the discount shop!

Now as a bit of fun, we’ve decided to put together this blog to give you all a gamedev peek behind-the-scenes at some of the issues that popped up during our first few weeks of porting EVERSPACE 2 to Unreal Engine 5. One caveat before diving in, by no means do we want to cast shade on the engine itself by highlighting these bugs—moving versions always creates some issues.

Another example of graphic issues. TRON crossover, anyone?

What else is broken? We’re still finding that out! So far, we’ve seen missing and swapped sounds, quest markers moved, volumetric fog seems to be behaving differently, thruster exhaust particles don’t look quite right, enemies and loot group together incorrectly, weapon fire in cutscenes is a little over the place, weapon effects such as EMP missile trails are broken, and many, many other little issues all over the place.

A prime example of why time is needed. See how the map labels are just a little too close to the icons? We’re going through the game with a fine tooth comb to ensure we don’t miss anything.

Flickering lights, sparks, and environmental explosions are all too big and bright.

Spot the difference! Lighting is one of the places where EVERSPACE 2 shines and clearly, we have a lot of work getting things back to as it should be.

Those lines should definitely not be there.

That’s just a taste of what our devs and designers are experiencing. The team is busy crushing bugs and prepping for the future. Though we have a lot of work to do, we’re loving all the new tools and features now at our fingertips. Hats off to Epic for creating this fantastic engine!

Lee & your dedicated ROCKFISH Games Team

Winter Sale | Artbook Print Edition | Soundtrack Volume 3 & 4 | Incursions Tease

The Steam Winter Sale is here and we salute all you deal hunters who’ve held out until the end of 2023 to pick up games you’ve had your eye on. With our games in good shape, the ROCKFISH Games team is about to head off for a much-deserved winter break. Before we go, we wanted to share a little news!

This year has had us busy! After more than two years in Early Access, EVERSPACE 2 launched on PC to critical and community acclaim and we followed shortly on consoles. The Armed & Dangerous Update made news and super-fans fell in love with our digital artbook and soundtrack. Development on EVERSPACE 2 isn’t done yet—We’ve got big plans for 2024!

Without support from fans, our journey through the stars would not have been the same. We truly value the feedback and praise the EVERSPACE community has shared over the course of development and we hope our frequent updates adding content, tweaking gameplay, and making community-requested changes are appreciated. This holiday season, we ask that you leave a review on our games or those of another indie studio—every single positive note means the world to independent studios like ours.

[h3]EVERSPACE Series Discounts[/h3]
Everything EVERSPACE is on sale! Both of our games and all of our expansion and DLC content is discounted for the Steam Winter Sale. If you already own an EVERSPACE base game, make sure to check out the bundle deals to maximize your discount.

Winter Sale Deals:
EVERSPACE 2

EVERSPACE

It’s been a YEAR. Go on and treat yourself. You deserve it.

[h3]The Art of EVERSPACE 2 Print Edition[/h3]
As recently shared on our social media and Kickstarter, print copies of The Art of EVERSPACE 2 will soon be available on Amazon! This 280+ page hardbound artbook collects a significant amount of the concept art, character sketches, environment illustrations, ship designs, and more from EVERSPACE 2. Owners of The Art of EVERSPACE 2 digital artbook know just how much art is packed into this volume. If you’re a collector of fine artbooks and sci-fi adventure concept art, this book is for you.

During our Kickstarter, we promised a 52 page artbook to backers at certain levels. As we began production on this physical copy, it became impossible to curate so much amazing art into so few pages, so we decided to go all out and create an absolute beast of a book.

We’ve had amazing feedback from the EVERSPACE 2 community on the digital edition of The Art of EVERSPACE 2, so much so that we’ve gone ahead and printed additional copies so fans with FOMO can get their hands on this book. We expect that books will be available to purchase early in the new year.

Oh, and owners of the digital artbook, we fixed a few pages based on community feedback back in October, so make sure you’ve downloaded the latest edition.

[h3]EVERSPACE 2 Official Soundtrack Volume 3 & 4[/h3]
Great news for fans of our in-game music, you’re about to get a whole lot more of it!

We’re adding twenty-seven remixed and rearranged tracks across two added volumes to the EVERSPACE 2 Official Soundtrack for free! Even with all this added content, the price of this dlc remains the same, so existing owners can download these new tracks and new ones can get the full set—No pilot is left behind.

For a full track list, check out the EVERSPACE 2 Official Soundtrack store page on Steam!

[h3]EVERSPACE Series Sneak Peek Stream[/h3]
Want a sneak peek at what’s coming in 2024? Make sure to tune into our last stream of the year! In addition to a look back at our launch year, Erik and Garry, our Community Ambassador and Community Manager, will be showing off a few legendary items coming in the Incursions update. They may just give a quick look at a new feature we’re working on.

We’ll be live on Twitch, YouTube, Steam Broadcast, and Facebook this Friday, December 22nd at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm CET. If you miss the stream, we’ll have it up on YouTube shortly after.

That’s all for us this year, but there’s lots to come next year—the series roadmap is just the tip of the iceberg! We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season filled with gaming. See you in 2024!

Lee and your dedicated ROCKFISH Games team 🚀🫡

EVERSPACE 2 End of Year Stream | Incursions Tease

Greetings, pilots!

What a year it’s been, and it’s not over yet! We’ve got a few little surprises for you.

Our Community Ambassador, Erik, will be live Friday, December 22nd at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm CET with his last stream of the year, and as part of it, we’ll be showing off a few legendary weapons and a little peek at a new feature coming in our spring free update next year. Make sure to tune in!

As recently shared on our social media and Kickstarter, print copies of The Art of EVERSPACE 2 will soon be available on Amazon! We expect these books will be available early in the new year and we’ll be sure to share on social media as soon as they are.

This 280+ page hardbound artbook collects a significant amount of the concept art, character sketches, environment illustrations, ship designs, and more from EVERSPACE 2. This is a must-have item for EVERSPACE fans and sci-fi enthusiasts!

Finally, the EVERSPACE 2 Official Soundtrack will be getting a not-so-little update. A slew of additional tracks will be added to the DLC for free! We’ll have more details to share later this month.

Lee and your dedicated ROCKFISH Games team 🚀🫡