erin-roberts
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Here's what CIG accomplished on Star Citizen in June
It's the beginning of a new month, which means it's time for Cloud Imperium Games to recap last month's Star Citizen progress. The big news was the release of Arena Commander and its four patches, but there are plenty of other interesting nuggets packed into the the latest update wall-of-text. Foundry 42 studio director Erin Roberts says that capital ships are coming together, and his team has also begun work on multi-crew vehicles. CIG Austin studio director Eric Peterson says that his bunch has been "busy working on the persistent universe and backend server component," while Behaviour producer Mathieu Beaulieu says that his studio is hard at work on hangar revamps as well as Star Citizen's mobiGlas development. Read all about those initiatives and more at the Roberts Space Industries website linked below. [Thanks James!]
Star Citizen issues its monthly report to backers and fans
As they do every month, Star Citizen's studio leads have just posted the latest report for Cloud Imperium's upcoming sci-fi sandbox. The highlights? Dogfight Producer and holder of one of the most epic job titles ever Travis Day recaps the Arena Commander demo at PAX and discusses technical strides made by his team. Austin director Eric Peterson details work on overall code integration, the planetside module, and the persistent universe part of the game. Manchester lead Erin Roberts steps up to talk Squadron 42 and capital ship controls. Other team leads mention work on art, audio, finalizing multi-orgs membership, and at least a million other things. It's probably more information than anyone but Massively's Jef wants to know, but hey, if you wanted transparency, this newsletter is it.
PAX East 2014: Erin Roberts on Star Citizen's development
Star Citizen's backers have been waiting to see the game's dogfighting module in action for quite some time now, and it finally happened just before PAX East 2014. Unfortunately, it also wound up having some technical difficulties right at the beginning, which wasn't exactly what anyone had in mind when showing off the whole thing in action. It wasn't quite as bad as having the computer running the module burst into flames and die, but it was bad. Do the developers regret it? Not a chance. We got a chance to sit down and talk to Squadron 42 producer Erin Roberts and were told, in no uncertain terms, that even hitting technical hiccups like that don't make a more private development cycle feel better. In a way, having the development cycle be so public actually makes technical hurdles less problematic for the company when they're encountered because the language is in place to keep a meaningful dialogue going with the fans.
Star Citizen livestream happening right now, and Massively's liveblogging it
Guess what, Star Citizens? It's time for another Cloud Imperium livestream, that's what. It's not one of those 24-hour marathons, fortunately, but today's presentation should give us a better idea of where development stands on the space sim sandbox's dogfighting module. According to the teaser post on the official website, Chris Roberts and company will also be talking up the latest hangar module tweaks as well as the Squadron 42 stand-alone campaign. If you're stuck at work or otherwise unable to tune into CIG's Twitch broadcast, don't sweat it. Massively's Jef is here to liveblog the full event. Be sure to refresh this post and its comments every so often to see what's happening.
Roberts on Star Citizen's immersive mining and Squadron 42
Ho hum, Cloud Imperium collected another windfall this week for Star Citizen, pushing the crowdfunded space sim sandbox's total take north of $29 million. Chris Roberts returns with the obligatory chairman update, and there's plenty of interesting stuff in there relating to enhanced Squadron 42 functionality and more. The team at Foundry 42 has big plans for Squadron 42, and we're going to provide extra funding to make it a true spiritual successor to Wing Commander! Squadron 42 can go above and beyond anything you've seen before. From opening with an epic battle instead of a training patrol to missions that seamlessly combine boarding and space combat, we aim to put you right into the action! Additional funding will let the team realize this, with enhanced mission design and more resources and animations to enhance fidelity. If you're new to Star Citizen fandom, it's worth noting that Squadron 42 is the single-player story campaign that serves as an optional introduction prior to entering the SC persistent world. And speaking of that persistent world, Roberts also says that a resounding number of citizens asked for a mining ship. "We're happy to oblige," he writes, "but I'll go ahead and warn you that mining in Star Citizen is going to be a lot more immersive than what you've seen before; you won't be clicking on an asteroid until you've collected metal!" Click past the cut for a six-minute video featuring the Foundry 42 dev team.
Stick and Rudder: How to be an informed Star Citizen
Massively's podcast fielded a listener question about Star Citizen and various other Kickstarters a couple weeks back, and while I answered it on our weekly show, I'd like to expand on it in more detail here. Call it a public service for people who are mildly interested in Cloud Imperium's space sim but not interested enough to scarf up the considerable amount of news flowing out of the studio these days. The question, in a nutshell, was how can a 30-person dev team make a triple-A title. There was more to it, including the usual concerns about crowdfunding, trust, and bits about investing vs. donating, but the dev team portion is the portion that I want to highlight.
