Our multiplayer beta is now public! Mostly to stress test servers and expand the number of people playing, because I want to see just how much our master server can take before exploding. To celebrate this inevitable exploding, the game is also on sale!
Our HUGE new update for Underspace is now live! Customize your ship, your cockpit, your life, your house. Customize the GODS WHO DARE TO QUESTION WHETHER OR NOT YOU CAN PAINT A SHIP GREEN AND PINK.
Or talk to a lady who makes perfumes for a living. That’s cool too.
The Color Out In Space is out just in time for the Steam Summer Sale!
Underspace’s next milestone update, Intergalactic Architecture, is now out and ready!
Check out the patch notes here!
Hope you’re ready to explore space cities and fly new ships, because there’s a hell of a lot of meaty stuff here.
Welcome starchasers! It’s the Steam Autumn Sale (which takes place in the heart of winter for some reason) and predictably, we’ve got a patch just in time for you. I know you love patches, in the same way Mimosa loves her mechanical duck toy and Prince loves his string.
This update’s got a few new tidbits that I finally got around to doing. No it’s still not the big milestone update, seeing as that includes a lot of huge stuff like full planetside interiors, it obviously takes a lot of doing. But there’s still some neat things!
Update HighlightsYou ever make use of drones, autoturrets, or those fishing platform thingies that heal you (did you know that?). Well been completely changed in how they function. Rather than actively draining your energy, they now work off an active time amount followed by a cooldown. This leaves your AI skill a bit more useful.
We’ve also got a new weapon type, one of our most request types: summoning pods. These launchers pump out weapons platforms that attack your nearby enemies, but their health decays over time. Again, your AI skill increases the time they’re able to stay alive.
There’s also been some lighting changes. Turns out there’s some old code from like five years ago (back when lightning wasn’t actual lightning) and it was causing issues. Now it’s not. Very atmospheric.
Finally, you kept wanting to see more activity throughout space, so now there is! Asteroid fields, nebulas, and the deep reaches of space now have encounters for various space pirates, smugglers, and more.
Onto the patch!
Changelog is as follows:
NEW FEATURES
- Total overhaul of how AI and the AI skill works. AI now no longer drain energy, but instead have a maximum amount of time they’re able to be active before they go into a cooldown. The AI skill now increases the amount of time the AI can be active. Mining drones are unaffected by this change (as they don’t drain energy to begin with).
- Added summoning pods: These are missile launchers that go into your AI slot and can be used to temporarily summon forth weapon platforms that attack nearby enemies. These platforms decay over time, with your AI skill affecting how long they can stay active. You can find a variety of these pods sold through stations across the galaxy, with a special few able to be crafted with… certain materials.
- Station descriptions now include a list of the equipment sold at the station. Remember: You asked for this.
- Points of interest that haven’t been found now have a new scan pulse icon, to help colorblind players.
- Increased ship presence: Pirates now inhabit many forgotten corners of the galaxy, and if you’re off the beaten path in nebulas and asteroid belts you’ll often encounter them.
CHANGES AND REBALANCES
- Train lines are now colored based on inbound and outbound services. There will be no service to Miami.
- Conceptual primers now stack.
- Several crafting items are now special items instead of cargo items, and are held in your overall, nonspecific ship inventory.
- Made scanning for the courier ship in Long Legacies more reliable.
- Adjusted drop tables of knowledge items to base 10% (down from 30%).
- Adjusted drop tables of repair items dropped by NPCs. Tier 3 ships now have a base 5% chance (up from 1%) tier 2 ships now have a base 3% chance (up from 1%)
FIXES
- Fixed some text culling issues with the Apocalypse’s cockpit.
- Fixed culling issues where some nebulas still showed objects.
- Fixed some rendering issues aboard Battleship Greatclaw.
- Fixed old as balls lighting issue with lightning in storms. Ambient lighting during a storm should generally have smoother transitions now.
- Fixed issue with drop tables for several larger ships during random missions.
- Fixed some secret dialogue where the speakers were incorrect.
- Added better restrictions to the Omadaz to prevent docking on it.
- Fixed some mismatched icons and names in the Bigger Picture.
- Fixed issue where out of system waypoints wouldn’t work if you had ever discovered a space leviathan.
- Fixed issue where you could quickload a savegame mid-jump, causing issues.
- Fixed issue where the Volatile Planetoid would play a victory sting, even if you didn’t actually beat the boss.
Welcome starchasers! It’s the first week of Steam’s Space Exploration Fest, which we’re proudly in, and with it comes our next milestone update:
This is a massive update that I’ve spent months prepping for and that adds a huge amount of new content for players of all levels. It’s been quite a major task getting it all out, and my cats started to freak out over my own stressing out, of course.
But it’s here now, and oh my sweet space baby lord dying-as-they-circle-a-singularity if it ain’t a big one. Let’s get into it!
UPDATE HIGHLIGHTS:
First off we have bounty hunting! You’ll find various bounty boards throughout the galaxy that can be accessed now, which will give you regional postings about various felons, ghosts, and evil clowns that require the tender touch of magical laserfire.
These bounties give you the chance to experience static versions of many storm bosses (such as snakes, living mines, ghost ships, you know the deal), as well as static spawns for many ace pilots and ships with special abilities. But there’s more!
Taking on the strongest bounties can net you special new rewards, including ingredients for new weapons and our newest class of heavy weapon: Dynamos! When dynamos are active your ship is far faster and far more dangerous, able to ram through nearby ships for tons of damage or send out an absolute mess of deranged missiles. It’s one of our most requested weapon types, which makes me worry about all of you.
Next up is quests! Quests! You know, where the actual content is. We had many many quests and bits that weren’t ready to be implemented at launch, and now finally are ready and finally here. Escape from supernatural space prisons, help assist a group of ex-military soldiers take revenge, perform space rituals, solve a medical mystery, rob a starship convention, and more!
There’s new rewards, new sights, new finales, and of course, new monsters to face. New quests also mean new dialogue, and there’s a ton more ambient dialogue across the galaxy to find.
And finally, party members! All six party members now have their full dialogue trees implemented, but more than that every single one now has certain things they want to do with you on their adventures. Take them where they want to go, learn their life story, and you’ll find yourself able to take on new party specific quests.
These character centric stories, once completed, will let you upgrade your existing squadmates, giving them new appearances, new abilities, and new dialogue (of course).
Patch 1.26.0 for Underspace is now out and features a lot of new (old) things added (re-added because I accidentally deleted them and never noticed) to the game!
This includes things like new storm bosses.
New graphics for stations, docking, and new cutscenes for takeoff/landing on planets, and even new graphics for new unique weapons.
Oh and the ability to mod in new ships.
Underspace’s next big roadmap update is coming this summer!
With Faces In The Fog, prepare to embark on even more esoteric adventures into the abyss.
Consort with giant lobster kings, speak to sentient stars, and indulge insane cosmic priests.
With over fifteen new quests, as well as new areas, a new bounty hunting and wanted system, and new supercharged weaponry, this summer is about to get strange.
Underspace Patch 1.24.0 is now out!
In this latest update, we ask and answer that timeless question: What if starship transports were full of mimic eggs?
Underspace’s first major update — Gods and Corpses — is out now! To mark the occasion, we’ve launched the update with a discount so be sure to grab the game if you haven’t already!
Hello starchasers! As you know last week we didn’t have a patch, mostly because I was in no position to be patching things, mostly because I was on the other side of the country, mostly because I was talking to people like Todd Howard.
He told me I was an inspiration for trains everywhere. Which is correct, seeing as people are already modding Underspace quite a lot. We even have a Nexus Mods page, of all things.
This is normally where I’d be talking about patch notes and all that stuff, sadly I’m going to disappoint you this week, we’re still delaying this patch until May 27th. Why?
Because May 27th will be the launch of our first major update: Gods & Corpses.
I thought I’d talk a little bit about what you can expect with this upcoming update. The centerpiece of course is the secretive and sprawling Us homeworld of Gravecity and its moon: Tombwise.
It’s no easy feat to reach this undead metropolis, as the Us are rightfully distrusting of outsiders and people who aren’t colonies of corpse-mushrooms, but within are many secrets and more to discover. Gravecity already exists in game, but this update will come with a full suite of NPCs to talk to, news stories to discover, and of course updated graphics to the various characters and locations within it.
Second to our major update is a big redo of many of the highest level bosses, including that deranged mass of cubic malice that many players have affectionately dubbed “God”. I’ll keep most of this stuff under wraps, but players disappointed with many of these bosses being too easy will be in for a surprise. We’ll be providing some simple ways to refight these things in time, of course.
There’s lots of new gameplay features coming too. Players late in the game will be able to make use of… certain things with a few fast travel system. This lets you mark specific locations and jump to them, as well as perform blind jumps to random systems.
There’s lots of new gameplay features coming too. Players late in the game will be able to make use of… certain things with a few fast travel system. This lets you mark specific locations and jump to them, as well as perform blind jumps to random systems.
Cloaking devices have received an overhaul as well. Much like scanners, they now come in different levels of power. Each level can hide you from progressively more and more powerful enemies. Perhaps one day these cloaking devices can even hide your sins from God. Maybe.
Besides these, there are some big technical optimization bits here, which will see improved initial loading times and a MASSIVE reduction in RAM usage. This is because we’ve offloaded a lot of resources that were loaded at runtime (namely stations) to be loaded on a case-by-case basis. This was something we always planned for, but actually sitting down and implementing this for over 200 interiors was something that takes a while.
Acquiring and learning about the world around you has become much easier now too. Ships now have a chance to drop data packets, which when looted can randomly mark locations they’ve discovered within the region. You can also pay Ijuni pricemen to scan a star system or region for locations of a specific trade good that you want. And of course, you can now scan many hazards encountered in storms for money and that sweet, sweet nectar we call lore.
And there’s even more beyond that. There’s lots of new functionality for the UI, including the ability to use the navmap to view other systems via gates and jumpholes, the ability to view what ancient gates you’ve unlocked, more detailed UI elements, more confirmations when doing things like selling ships, the ability to ask for directions during courier missions, auto-detection of joysticks and controllers, the ability to sell wrecked items to certain junk traders, the ability to cancel crafting jobs, and more!
And that’s all for this week. We’ll see you on the 27th. Have some catpost to cap this post off.
Nothing much has happened this week. Except, you know…
THAT UNDERSPACE IS NOW OUT IN EARLY ACCESS.
We’ve been out for less than three days and are already sailing above 100 reviews, and in that time we’ve also done several hotfixes and new features, like being able to customize Us ships.
We’ve got a huge roadmap upcoming next month showcasing the upcoming features, but for now this month will focus on bugfixes and smaller features. Come check that out.
UNDERSPACE RELEASES IN EARLY ACCESS ON APRIL 10, 2024!
That’s right, you’ll all be able to play Underspace in just a few short months! Are you excited? You should be! Because I’m really tired – but happy – that this is finally getting off the ground and into your hands.
Can’t wait until then? Well, we’ve announced this already, but for the record:
Underspace will be participating in Steam Next Fest!
Once again, we’ll have a playable Steam demo up and running AND I’ll be personally playing during the developer stream (naturally). I know there will be a lot of games to try, so it’d mean a lot to me if you’d test out Underspace and see for yourself what’s coming out in just a few short months. See you on February 5, 2024 at 10 AM PT!
Welcome starchasers! It’s a new year! A new you! A new us! New gods, built to burn down the old ones and establish a new pantheon inside their corpses!
We like to do yearly recaps at this point, to summarize everything that’s happened in the past 2023s. So… what is done?
The answer: Everything. The game is content complete. Both campaigns (multiplayer and singleplayer), every quest, system, station, dungeon, boss, random mission, party member, flyable ship. There’s several hundreds hours of play here. As our testers can attest to, the game is absolutely MASSIVE.
Last year saw some of our most important changes ever. In addition to pumping out the majority of the content, we signed on with a publisher, started uploading our first steam builds, got quite a lot of coverage, and acquired a secondary orange cat.
The publisher’s probably the biggest one there. Our publisher, Camlann Games, will be spinning all the plates that my decaying and bruised body simply can’t spin anymore. That includes promotional work, community management, translations, ports, and the eventual subsumption of the continent into our lunar-based hivemind. Typical stuff.
They even filmed a fancy new trailer for us, check it out!
So with all this in mind, you’re probably asking “what’s left?” or more appropriately you’re probably asking “where the hell is my quirky space game you train-eating bastard?”.
The answer: It’s coming. And sooner than you might think. We’re now in the polishing and completion stage, which brings with it a LOT of testing, which itself takes time.
Still, two major blockers remain: The first is station detailing. This is going at a breakneck pace, in no small part because we have multiple level designers out there turning stations into stations with things on them.
The second is finishing up multiplayer. Again, this is going at a breakneck pace but testing can often be slow. If anyone ever tells you developing a multiplayer game is easy, they’re right. If anyone ever tells you that testing a multiplayer game and making a stable multiplayer game is easy, they’re wrong and you shouldn’t be speaking to them.
With that in mind, our release on Steam will be considered Early Access. The game you will be getting will be content complete and utterly massive, but at the end of the day this is a very small studio taking on a game as large as my ego. An early access release will allow us to better incorporate feedback on systems and tweak the game to make it as good as possible. There will not however, be less trains. There will be more trains if you ask for less trains.
As part of that release, Underspace’s demo will officially be coming to Steam quite soon! This brings with it a whole host of advantages, not the least of which is a much smaller download size and an easier way for us to push patches.
And that’s our yearly recap! We’ll return to your regularly scheduled updates now.
We’re so, so excited to announce that Underspace has three new things:
A publisher (Camlann Games)
A release window (Q2 2024 – more info to come as we get closer to that time!)
A shiny new trailer to commemorate the occasion!
Please give the trailer a watch and, if you haven’t already, Wishlist Underspace on Steam!
