Devlog #2 — Shipbuilder Overhaul

Hey Wranglers,

It's been a busy month at Buried Signal Studios.

Our most exciting update is a full overhaul to the Ship Builder.

You will now need to place thrusters, fuel tanks, and cargo bays yourself. The tradeoffs you make will determine what your ship is like to fly.

Mass, hull, fuel, and cargo capacity are all derived from what you place — no more abstract stat sliders. Want more range? Bolt on another fuel tank. Want to haul ore? Build a bigger hold. Want to turn on a dime? Strip it down and pack on more thrusters.

Cylinder thrusters render as tapered bell nozzles and drive your ship's main exhaust — where you place them is where the fire comes out.

Paint Your Rig

Every face of every block can be painted and finished separately. Hull materials have their own shader signatures — brushed steel has real anisotropic highlights, titanium and tungsten look distinct from iron, and aluminum is the cheaper lightweight option.

Building ain't free

Every building block for your ship costs materials. You will need to scan and find the right asteroids to mine these — or buy what you're missing from the station without leaving the builder.

New Materials

To upgrade your ship hull, we also added 5 new materials:

• Tungsten

• Aluminum

• Graphite

• Titanium

• Silicon

Each one has its own color and crystalline noise, so you can read what you're looking at once you know the signatures. Ice, silicon, and aluminum now form veins rather than scattered lumps.

The Void Got Crowded

You're not alone out here anymore.

• NPC ships have hull health, take laser damage, and leave debris when killed

• Ambient NPC miners drift through the belt doing their own work, with radio chatter and proper spatial audio on their thrusters and mining lasers

Distress signals in the void

Should you run out of fuel, you can now emit a distress signal to NPCs in the sector. Hopefully, someone will come rescue you...

Cleaving Laser

A new upgrade. Sweep it across an asteroid to cut it clean in two — molten sparks at the impact line, and scars that stay behind on the pieces after they split.

A Bigger Sky

System generation was rebuilt: full 3D cluster placement and an asteroid belt you can actually fly through. Draw distance extended out to 50k. Sector map markers are now miniature voxel asteroids that match the real thing in shape, composition, and rotation — no more featureless ellipsoids.

Missions & People

• Ice Comet Harvest — a new first mission with crosshair targeting

• A dedicated despin tutorial; encounters wait until you've actually learned to wrestle a rock

• Repeatable wrangling contracts from Chief Martinez after your first despin

• Rescue quest UI

• Character portraits with a CRT radio effect during dialogue

Tether & Tow

• Taut-cable harpoon with persistent wrap points that integrate with the physics — the cable wraps more nicely around asteroids.

• Inertial dampener upgrade to your ship, to stop quicker

• Cockpit LED and ambient pulse to show which equipment mode you're in

Look & Feel

• HUD themes — Flat or Angled, Amber or Blue. Default is Angled, which slots nicely into your cockpit frame.

• CRT boot and close animations on HUD panels

• Spin ribbons around asteroids so you can read their rotation at a glance

• Redesigned main menu with an animated title and background

• Contextual hints rendered with proper icon glyphs instead of raw key names

Graphics

• MetalFX spatial and temporal upscalers on macOS

• FXAA option for everyone

• glTF PBR wired into the cockpit, with emissive button glow and luminance-compensated bloom

• Braided wire-rope tether with directional sun lighting

Audio

• Context-aware music director with OGG support

• Menu music

• Radio static when you enter station dialogue

• A dedicated explosion SFX

Economy

• Fetch dynamic market prices in your ships' terminal, sort and drill-down

— Buried Signal Studios