Top of the morning to you, starchasers! Welcome to March, the month that hopefully sees the end of a long and mildly annoying winter and the start of the exact same winter. Wisconsin is fun like that.
Our next demo, demo 1.10, is scheduled to be out soon. This will also coincide with our first round of testers being chosen and the first beta testing build being released to those testers.
As always, you can check out and apply for testing in our Discord, and you can check out the current version of the demo here! Now, onto progress!
And of course, this is just a paraphrasing of the main article, which you can read here!
Quests and Quest Technology
Last month I talked about how we were finally ready to implement the some 60 sidequests that make up Underspace’s content. This month, around half of those were added and are currently in a playable state. They lack polish and often voice acting, but they’re there and playable. There’s a great variety of quests too, from starship heists to facing down ancient monsters.
A lot of background technology for quests got improved, and I think modders will have a fun time with the scripting system we’ve implemented (since it’s pretty easy to work with).
Stations got some improvements as well. NPCs can have conversations with one another, while you can use taxi services during some quests to get where you need to go.
Texture Improvements
Points of interest also got an improvement. All those ancient jumpgates, lost superstructures, and more all have custom textures. Surprisingly, thanks to the magic of actually properly compressing your assets (remember that AAA studios? Remember that???) the total file size of the game has actually gone down.
Next up for getting proper textures are bosses, that’ll be fun!
Game Improvements
In an effort to preserve my sanity, I also spent the time doing some non-quest related things. Station descriptions now properly display things with COLORS, like what ships you’re able to afford. Certain station UIs now have animations too.
Storms have lots of improvements now too. Ones that spawn bosses will automatically shift your target to said boss, and approaching a storm now plays appropriate music, and treats it like the battle it is.
There’s also new hazards. I hope you always make sure to avoid the giant ancient space train!
Assetwork
And last but not least, a few assets. We’ve got a lot of various new characters and monsters. You’ve heard of chest mimics, but how about… space station mimics?
Also, space taxis and new models for things like say, computers and such.
That’s all for this month. Check back next month, we’ll have more quests, textured bosses, a new demo, and more!
