dogfighting-module
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Star Citizen's Arena Commander is live
Cloud Imperium has released Star Citizen's dogfighting module, more commonly known as Arena Commander. Qualified backers can now access the Vanduul Swarm and Freeflight modes using three different spacecraft: the Aurora, the 300i, and the Hornet. The current version includes limited multiplayer for a handful of backers in the form of the Battle Royale and Team modes. CIG says that these modes will open up to more players as it hunts down lag and synch issues. The announcement post also features a lengthy blurb from Chris Roberts on the future of open development as well as a poll to gauge interest in internal date targets. Finally, there's a launch trailer with gameplay footage after the cut! [Thanks everyone who tipped us!]
Star Citizen's Arena Commander delayed
Despite the best efforts of a dev team that's been working around the clock for the past two weeks, Cloud Imperium has decided to delay today's planned Arena Commander release for Star Citizen. CIG's Chris Roberts offers a lengthy explanation on Star Citizen's official website, complete with a list of critical bugs soon to be squashed. It would be foolish to release an unstable build, even if pre-alpha for the sake of meeting an internal deadline. This is the power of the crowdfunding that made Star Citizen possible: a publisher would make us ship tomorrow regardless of the current build quality... but as you are all focused on quality rather than a financial return for shareholders we are able to take a few more days to deliver something that is stable. I know that's not the news you wanted to hear tonight. No-one would like to see the community get their hands on Arena Commander more than I would. This is what can happen with an open development process, especially when we are sharing code and content long before one normally would in traditional development. [Thanks Kommissar K!]
Star Citizen's Arena Commander is launching on May 29th
Star Citizen fans, mark your calendars for May 29th. If all goes well, you'll be playing at least a single-player version of Arena Commander as Cloud Imperium begins to roll out portions of its long-awaited dogfighting module. CIG chairman Chris Roberts has posted his weekly recap, which contains the tentative date and a preview of what to expect. "The goal is that every backer will have access to the single-player Free Flight and Vanduul Swarm games mode on this day, and the very first batch of multiplayer testers will get access to the game's multiplayer game modes," Roberts writes. "We will scale up the multiplayer as quickly as possible starting on that date, increasing the number of players as it is stable and stopping to fix bugs where needed." There's much more to the weekly studio report, so click through to the Roberts Space Industries website to read it!
PAX East 2014: Star Citizen and the DFM are 'more than just PvP'
Chris Roberts took the stage at a backer-only pre-PAX event in Boston last night to show off some of Star Citizen's alpha dogfighting footage. Despite a few technical glitches, fans were able to get an extended glimpse of the game's first playable module, which Roberts said will likely release in a month or so. The dogfighting module will be presented as part of the in-universe fiction and thus will take the form of a space sim called Arena Commander which released to gamers in the year 2944. Players will load into the DFM through their pre-existing hangar module where they'll choose between five alpha game modes: Free Flight, Battle Royale, Squadron Battle, Capture the Core, and Vanduul Swarm (basically a horde mode). Cloud Imperium is including leaderboards and plenty of stats which will show up both on Star Citizen's web-based player and organization profiles as well as in the finished game. The upcoming module will also feature co-op capabilities along with PvE AI. "At the end of the day, for me, it's not all about combat," Roberts explained, "so if [combat's] not your thing you don't have to worry about it." Click past the cut to watch the full livestream.
Stick and Rudder: Getting perspective on Star Citizen's development
I recently spent a week enjoying the hell out of Elite: Dangerous. CCP's Valkyrie project -- a virtual reality EVE Online riff powered by Oculus -- is apparently far enough along to merit public demos and a slow-burning hype train. And Star Citizen? Well, I can still solo around in my hangar, fitting ship guns and firing them at cardboard targets. I bring all this up not to pile on Cloud Imperium. On the contrary, I'm OK with SC's development pace, and if you're on the world side of the world-vs.-game debate, you should be OK with it too.
212 devs are working on Star Citizen, dogfighting launch 'shortly after PAX'
Feel like you're not getting enough info on Star Citizen's development progress? Cloud Imperium chairman Chris Roberts has penned an epically long update that's now live on the game's website. "The concept is simple -- a high level monthly production progress report from the various teams from around the world working on Star Citizen," he writes. Those teams include a whopping 212 developers, which Roberts says is more people than typically work on a triple-A console title and which makes SC the largest space sim project in history. In terms of alpha progress, Roberts says that CIG will unveil the long-awaited dogfighting module at a special backer-only pre-PAX event. It will be playable "shortly after PAX." There's much more to the post, including updates from all of CIG's studios, so grab your favorite beverage and click through the links below to get caught up.
Star Citizen's Roberts talks dogfighting module, Elite alpha, and more
Cloud Imperium has released Chris Roberts' latest 10 From the Chairman video blog. If you haven't seen one of these before, it's basically a 10- to 12-minute show where Roberts answers gameplay questions submitted by members of Star Citizen's early adopter community. This time around, he elaborates on the reasons behind the recent dogfighting module delay decision, server backbone and integration between the game's various modules, and the size of the dogfighting alpha's map (20 kilometers cubed, including an asteroid belt and a nebula). Roberts also addresses the possiblity of tutorials as well as the fact that he's been playing a bit of the Elite: Dangerous alpha.
