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. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35321791/636182a20d6866a28ec1306d91ee425b9d55779d.jpg[/img] He told me I was an inspiration for trains everywhere. Which is correct, seeing as people are already modding Underspace quite a lot. [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/underspace]We even have a Nexus Mods page, of all things.[/url] 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? [b]Because May 27th will be the launch of our first major update: Gods & Corpses.[/b] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35321791/992ae2b30351a90996bd89fecb066f586df392bb.png[/img] I thought I’d talk a little bit about what you can expect with this upcoming update. The centerpiece of course is [b]the secretive and sprawling Us homeworld of Gravecity and its moon: Tombwise.[/b] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35321791/84daf0f5b5b1cebeb54974fc6d2524e5d692505f.png[/img] 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 [b]is a big redo of many of the highest level bosses[/b], 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. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35321791/a03b3435bee1e74e71e2a9bc0fe8a207dc04db65.png[/img] 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. [previewyoutube=14WpyTULN9Y;full][/previewyoutube] 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. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35321791/b28c8235e4be9b86e1e3674407186508a323c7e6.png[/img] 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. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35321791/6cb45426420e4b4f187dcf2ad837b75ee452a5c4.png[/img] 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. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35321791/b9eabf18ed200d08e64f61382418e2a98f0af185.png[/img] 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! [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35321791/69331c485eb8facaacd58cd94f2aa0b9415dd137.png[/img] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35321791/0bf7d740592790db0804c75248c46be40df5d746.png[/img] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35321791/43dd3e1e2d97b5089314425724dbc36f4f605735.png[/img] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35321791/a732b71e4edf994bd8cbc4363b8cb2c59d2191cb.png[/img] And that's all for this week. We'll see you on the 27th. Have some catpost to cap this post off. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35321791/a57327ee79da2e37145587a17e382d17e935d5eb.jpg[/img] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35321791/8c8d07157625a0958e154d28a7fb387476e091db.jpg[/img]