Progress Update #32
by Gilles
Hello, hello! We’re glad to have you here once again for our progress update blog post, where we showcase the cool stuff we’ve been working on. As always, not everything made the cut—some very important contributions are hard to capture in this format. For a more comprehensive list of changes, be sure to visit our Changelog Page.
Spooky Season Is Here
In tunnels dark and winding,
Where whispers start to grow,
Take a crewmate close beside you,
For it’s haunted where you go.
Specters roam the halls at night,
It’s the spookiest time of year,
Through conduits and vents they glide,
Haunting all who come near.
Spooky season is upon us, and we're already celebrating in Unitystation with the Halloween seasonal event. Beware of the ghosts lurking in the halls!
Food Can Now Be Instantly Delivered!
Science has been hard at work, bringing us an exciting new invention: the pneumatic cannon, thanks to Atner! All it takes is some piping, a valve, and a trusty emergency O2 canister, and you’ve got yourself the ultimate potato cannon—or any item cannon, depending on your preference.
The pneumatic cannon can be researched and built in game now!
This new contraption is bound to be used for good... and definitely not for recreating certain YouTuber shenanigans.
Cloning Paperwork
We heard you—who doesn't love some good old paperwork? Well, MaxIsJoe just added some to the cloning console! Now, the cloning machine can print a cloning record on paper for medical staff to use. This record can even be fed back into the machine to clone the person registered in the data.
Memory space is scarce anyway, so why not fill the cabinet with records of everyone on the station?
The UI of the cloning console has also been improved to better align with our diegetic design style, and navigation should now feel more intuitive and user-friendly.
Abandoned Crates
Atner has introduced some sweet new loot to the exploration away sites, but this time you’ll have to earn it! Abandoned crates now come with an exciting new feature: minigames. The first minigame added to Unitystation is called Reflection Golf.
To access the contents of these crates, you’ll need to solve a logic puzzle. If you’re unsure of the rules, you can check out our wiki for a detailed explanation, or swing by our Discord for help. (I definitely didn’t get it on my first read)
Smoking Is Even Cooler Now (and Deadlier)
Last time, MaxIsJoe gave nicotine some internal effects, but now she's gone a step further—cigarettes actually animate, making you look even cooler while slowly destroying your lungs. Not only that, smoking now releases gases into the environment and produces smoke!
Ready for a hotbox in the dorms? Maybe think twice if you're a moth, though—your delicate lungs might not survive the experience!
Is It Chilly in Here, or Did You Just Release Freon and Tritium?
Bod9001 and Autumn have teamed up to bring a frosty new reaction to Unitystation! Freon now reacts with tritium, cooling the station to dangerously cold levels—cold enough to create a layer of ice on the floor that can make you slip and fall.
So, if you see that sparkling gas floating around, watch your step and stay alert—it’s going to get icy!
Mapping, mapping, mapping
It feels like forever, but Bod9001 has been hard at work implementing in-game mapping, and while we’d love to say it’s finally here, it’s at least rounding the final curve of the race.
Some cool improvements have been made, including moving all stations and key scenes to the new mapping system. There are still a few bugs here and there, but they’re being quickly ironed out. And as a secondary effect, since the new mapping format is less expensive than Unity scenes, we have seen some cool build time reductions!
In the meantime, you can get a taste of mapping by opening the game right now, heading to the map editor mode (without joining a server). It’s pretty barebones at the moment—a simple scene where you can experiment with building the station of your dreams—but it’s being iterated on. Eventually, this mode could evolve into a fully-fledged creative mode, where you and others can play and build together! Stay tuned for updates!
And let's wrap it up for today. Did I forget something? Let me know on Discord and I will make sure to include it for the next progress update! Also if you want to play with us, just join our Discord and participate in our weekly playtest sessions.
My most sincere thanks to everyone involved in this project: patrons, developers, players and friends. You make all of this possible!
