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Spacebase DF-9 trailer marks launch. Free copy of Hack’n’Slash for owners

spacebase df-9 release date double fine

Double Fine fired the Spacebase DF-9 launch trailer across our bow this morning. It’s postively teeming with space bugs, raider attacks, and aliens doing weights in their space gym. Bundled into the trailer torpedo was the announcement that owners of the space station management sim will also get a copy of Hack ’n’ Slash.

Here’s that Spacebase DF-9 trailer:

When Double fine announced that they were wrapping up development on Spacebase DF-9 owners of the Early Access build were disgruntled that it didn’t have all the features detailed when the game was announced.

Tim Schafer explained the premature release, saying that “We started Spacebase with an open ended-production plan, hoping that it would find similar success (and therefore funding) to the alpha-funded games that inspired it. Some of its early sales numbers indicated this might be the case, but slowly things changed, and it became clear that this was looking like a year and a half of production instead of five or so.”

Still, that does little to calm the hurt of cut features like time travel, a holodeck, and killer robots. A free game might help.

“As a bonus for the customers who have supported us thus far, anyone who already owns the game gets a free copy of Hack ‘n’ Slash, and anyone who owns Hack ‘n’ Slash gets a free copy of Spacebase,” writes Spacebase’s director JP LeBreton.

The 1.0 release shouldn’t be considered a quitting effort by Double fine, it comes with some hefty new additions. “This release adds a Tutorial Mode for newcomers and a Goals screen that gives players objectives to work toward,” says Breton.

More importantly for those missing the cut features, Double fine have released the LUA source code, opening up the possibility for modders to make what’s missing.

The full patch notes for v1.0 can be found on the next page.

Spacebase DF-9 1.0 released

Major Features / Enhancements:

  • New Tutorial Mode teaches basic game concepts. Access Tutorial Mode by selecting “Learn to Play” from the pause menu or by picking Tutorial Outpost EZ-101 on the Galaxy Map.

  • New Goals Screen tracks player progress towards persistent goals, such as “50 citizens on base”, “Researched all technologies”, etc.

  • Later in the game hostile forces now show up in greater numbers and combinations, culminating in a visit from the Pirate Megafleet once your base becomes successful enough. Survive the onslaught to complete the game’s hardest goal.

Minor Improvements / Bug Fixes:

  • All “Famous Citizen” tier customer names added to Credits and random citizen name pool.

  • Disaster Menu can be enabled with a secret key combination and used to unleash disasters on your base.

  • Many new sound effects, including crowd noises in rooms based on their current population.

  • Many small UI polish items. Look and feel of UI in the Citizen/Zone/Object Inspectors is now more consistent.

  • Brig and Residence assignment UI improvements: X button to clear an assignment, clicking the assignment button a second time cancels out of pick mode.

  • “Execute” button in citizen action tab causes security to immediately target this citizen. Use responsibly!

  • Asteroids are treated like walls for the purposes of object placement.

  • Citizens who are sleeping in beds that get destroyed wake up and become annoyed.

  • Clicking an object in the Contents section of a container’s Stats Tab selects it.

  • Improved mouse wheel, middle mouse, and keyboard view zoom behaviors.

  • Vaporizing a wall with an object hanging on it vaporizes the object and refunds its matter.

  • Dropped research datacubes will preserve their “claimed for research” state. Scientists will try to drop them off somewhere in the base even if there isn’t a Research Lab.

  • Citizens flee when someone is having a tantrum nearby.

  • Emergency Alarms in rooms with no/disabled alarm panels turn off.

  • Price of Dark Matter Reactor increased from 450 to 600.

  • Tooltip for a research datacube shows the blueprint it contains.

  • New Spaceface logs: cuffed, escaped from brig, needs shelving, security starts exploring a beacon, security finishes exploring a beacon.

  • Duty skill increases when morale is high, up to a 25% bonus per duty task.

  • Security citizens take their helmets off if they get into a brawl with another citizen.

  • “Flavor” text and descriptions for all objects that were lacking them.

  • Start new bases with time paused.

  • Balance: Many small changes to citizen morale and duty efficiency.

  • Balance: Turret damage output increased.

  • Balance: Buildable objects are more resilient.

  • Fixed: Dozens of crashes and AI issues.

  • Fixed: Scrollable views such as the Job Roster don’t display correctly in non-16:9 aspect ratios.

  • Fixed: Decals remain after a tile is vaporized.

  • Fixed: On loading a savegame, citizens who were sleeping are awake and restart their sleep cycle.

  • Fixed: White helmets display on citizens when playing certain animations.

  • Fixed: Citizens exercise, play games, and hang out in functioning airlocks.

  • Fixed: Lower right UI buttons shift to left even if there are not enough alerts to warrant this.

  • Fixed: Job Roster columns highlight on hover incorrectly.

  • Fixed: Non-citizens in unclaimed derelicts do not react to dangerous situations.

  • Fixed: Botanists do not repair damaged or destroyed hydroponics cultures.

  • Fixed: Citizen talk and thought bubbles do not draw correctly.

  • Fixed: Exiting Job Roster / Research Assignment screens minimizes the Hint pane.

  • Fixed: Killbots bleed.

  • Fixed: Killbots get sick.

  • Fixed: Player can hover and select some objects or rooms within hidden areas.

  • Fixed: Security duty citizens flee in rooms with active alarms while doing certain tasks.

  • Fixed: Removed debug power visualization mode.

  • Fixed: Security Beacon location isn’t preserved across save+load.

  • Fixed: Flipped text on the Alarm Panel.

  • Fixed: Turrets in space can’t be deactivated.

  • Fixed: Breach ships don’t play VFX when taking damage or exploding.

  • Fixed: Text overlaps UI in several miscellaneous places.

  • Fixed: Matter counts up/down from previous session’s total when starting a new base.