The Understate of Underspace, 2019
With 2019 getting underway, I’d like to give a recap of all the things that happened in 2018, and a sort of indirect roadmap of Underspace’s development.
Underspace began development about a year and a half ago, and originally, I had planned to have released it at this point in time. But plans are a fluid thing. No big, life changing revelation happened to cause this delay. There was no seed money stolen or New York game studio we opened up that ran out of money or sun god telling me to burn the game away. It’s merely a large endeavor and, while that original deadline could have been met, it’d mean cutting a lot of corners and features (including big ones like multiplayer). Underspace has a clear vision in mind, and I want to stick to that vision.
To that extent, I’d like to give an overview of the game so far, since by no means is it in some unplayable state.
So, what’s currently done?
On the gameplay side, things are what I’d like to call “action-complete”. Every base thing the player is expected to be able to do (fly around, dock, talk to other ships, use weapons, cloak, repair their ship, etc) functions. Players can level up, take missions, equip their ship, and so on.
Every station and system can be docked on and visited. These areas are connected, and have gas clouds, asteroids, minefields, spawnpoints for ships, etc. All these stations sell ships and equipment that are appropriate to their owning faction. Stations also buy and sell tradeable commodities.
On that matter, every piece of equipment and every fighter exists. Every fighter can be bought, and most every piece of equipment can be acquired in some way.
Every faction exists, spawns ships, and reacts appropriately to one another. Factions also react to player actions, and their reputations change accordingly. Factions also offer missions and various activities for the player to complete.
The framework of more advanced features, such as quests, dialogue, and bosses, is fully implemented. A few examples of these are already implemented, but, as you’ll see, there’s a lot more to go there.
Finally, multiplayer is close to parity with singleplayer. This feature by far has the most to be done on it, but in that sense it’s the difference between something being 85% done and 99% done. Most of these to-be-done features are small changes or features: not being able to see other players when they cloak, dealing with sudden disconnects, or smoothing out synchronized movement between clients. For the most part though, if you can do it in singleplayer, you can do it in multiplayer.
The stage that development is in now is sort of a multi-part endeavor. I wouldn’t call it the last leg, rather, it’s the leg where the game really shapes up and content starts really coming out, and existing content and features are further polished.
Starting off, there’s the remaining content. A few ships (namely bombers and freighters, plus some NPC ships) are missing, and still need to be modeled and implemented. On the side of modeling, we have quite a few solars (celestial bodies including stations, wrecks, and other special things we can’t talk about) that need to be modeled.
On that matter, stations need a rework: both inside and out. This involves taking those station models (if you haven’t noticed, our stations are basically white cubes at this point) and placing them down, while interiors obviously need both structure, decoration and population. This means each station needs to be able to be walked around in, but also have unique NPCs one can interact with in a variety of ways.
Similar to stations, star systems also have more to go. While plenty is in, systems are in a constant state of rework: tweaking colors, population density, hidden jumpgates and jumpholes but more than that, systems need detail beyond just what’s on the beaten path: points of interest, side stories, wrecks, etc.
I call these vignettes, and most always every system has a few of these to tell. They can be simple as a decrepit train in a scrapyard with some leaking coolant, to a fighter squadron caught inside light sensitive coral.
On the questing side of things: most bosses, quests, and both campaigns (singleplayer and multiplayer) need to be implemented. There’s a lot of neat scenes and moments here that I’m not going to spoil, you’ll have to play the damn game yourself. In some ways this is the bulk of the work.
And of course, we have a few remaining features. These are never large things anymore, they’re mostly internally technology: saving features, support for extra keybinds, alternate control schemes, etc. You won’t see too many updates on these,
The last of these steps is polishing what’s already there. Graphical improvements, optimization, rebalancing and such. This is, of course, always an ongoing process, and even after release there’s obviously tweaks and bugfixes and patches to be expected. Ultimately the goal with this stage right now is to look at the game and say “Is it fun?” (The answer is yes) and “Does it play without filling your computer with wasps” (The answer is sort of). This is probably the most important step, and though it’s not the biggest part, it might end up being the longest.
Where do we go from here?
So, ultimately as you can see there’s still a lot to be done. As always, I’ll try to give regular development updates, both here and on my Twitter. There are however, more major milestones and updates coming up. In addition to more graphical overhauls as the game advances, I’m going to start doing larger posts and media bits about the game. Expect more trailers and development videos as the year starts up. At the same time: expect long dark periods of postlessness, there’s a lot of deep deep work I’ll be doing here and there.
And, most importantly, we do have a Kickstarter coming up! This will be early this year, expect it late February to early March.
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