DSPACE

democratized.space

🌙 Dark mode

Home

• Latest update: April 1, 2026

  It’s been a while! Time for a DSPACE update.

  What’s DSPACE, you ask? You must be new around here, and if so, welcome!!! I’m glad you’re here. DSPACE is a space exploration game that I’ve been working on for a while now. It’s still in its early stages, but I’m excited to share it with you. You can learn more about the game on the About page.

  

  DSPACE v3 is a major content and platform release focused on three goals:

  1. Much more to do (quests, processes, and items)
  2. Better creator workflows (build and submit custom content in-game)
  3. Safer, local-first player data (migration, backups, and cloud sync)

  If you are new to DSPACE, start with About.

  v3 at a glance (vs v2.1)

  The current v3 release snapshot includes:

  • 248 quests across 19 quest trees
  • 311 processes
  • 507 items

  Compared with v2.1 (current main):

  Category	v2.1	v3	New in v3
  Quests	22	248	+226
  Processes	36	311	+275
  Items	90	507	+417

  That means v3 delivers roughly 11.3x more quests than v2.1, exceeding the original 10x target.

  Custom content (headline v3 feature)

  v3 ships end-to-end creator tooling for player-generated content:

  • Custom quest creation, including validation and preview
  • Custom item creation (with /items/create preserved as a legacy alias)
  • Custom process creation, including requires/consumes/creates modeling
  • Bundle submission workflow for grouped quest/item/process contributions

  Like custom quests, your creations are stored locally by default. When you’re ready to contribute, package everything into a bundle following the Custom Content Bundles format and submit it through the in-game interface. This keeps related content synchronized and makes reviews more efficient.

  Reference docs:

  • Quest Submission Guide
  • Custom Content Bundles

  Navigation, docs, and UX polish

  v3 also promotes many previous placeholders into working destinations:

  • /stats, /titles, /toolbox, /leaderboard, and /settings now ship as active pages.
  • /docs/changelog now has a dedicated release-notes landing experience.
  • Docs navigation was improved with section manifests and search filtering.
  • Mobile usability was improved across custom-content forms and menu navigation.
  • Theme preference (dark mode) now persists across reloads.

  Notable docs updated for v3 workflows and gameplay:

  • Quest Trees
  • New Quests (release delta)
  • Rockets
  • Guilds
  • Authentication Flow
  • Cloud Sync
  • Backups

  Local-first saves, migration, and backups

  v3 moves canonical save storage to IndexedDB and keeps migration from legacy v2 saves built in.

  • On first launch, v3 detects legacy localStorage save keys and migrates data to IndexedDB.
  • Save and content backup workflows are available in-game.
  • Cloud backup and restore is available through GitHub Gist integration.

  AI chat in v3

  v3 launches with OpenAI-only chat in production.

  • NPC personas (such as Sydney, Nova, and Hydro) are available in chat.
  • token.place integration is coming in v3.1, bringing free LLM usage instead of the metered usage that currently requires an OpenAI API key.

  See:

  • v3 Release State
  • token.place rollout notes

  dChat knowledge upgrade

  dChat now ships with an in-game knowledge base that summarizes canonical quests, items, processes, and the player’s local inventory snapshot. This gives the assistant immediate context to answer gameplay questions without waiting for future updates or external documentation lookups.

  Self-hosted

  DSPACE 2.1 was migrated from Netlify to a local Mac Mini M4. DSPACE v3 now runs on-premises on a k3s cluster across 9 Raspberry Pis.

  Switching to MIT License

  While 0BSD sounds like a nice license, it is in some cases not on the list of accepted OSS licenses on the Internet. Therefore, I’m switching from 0BSD to MIT, which is still very permissive but much better supported.

  Looking Forward

  These changes reflect a commitment to keeping DSPACE focused on its core mission: democratizing space exploration through education, simulation, and real-world impact. By removing unnecessary complexity, the game is more accessible while strengthening the connection between virtual achievements and actual space development.

  v3 is the biggest DSPACE update yet, and it lays the groundwork for faster content releases moving forward.

  View all updates
• prod v3-3ec45a5

  Online

  Hydration time: 0 ms