Star Citizen is an absolutely massive space sim which first found success on Kickstarter in 2012 before embarking on a crowdfunding campaign which continues to this day. To help facilitate its continued expansion in all angles, they devised a “module” system. Want to play a FPS? Jump into the FPS module which is being developed by its own team! Well, that plan in particular is seeing some issues. In the latest Letter from the Chairman post by Chris Roberts, it was revealed that the FPS module (named Star Marine) is officially delayed. If you’ve been keeping track, then you’ll know the last they mentioned of this was that it would be available “shortly” after PAX East this past April.
Here’s the most basic explanation as to why Star Marine is delayed:
The challenges facing the FPSlaunch are a mix of technical blockers and gameplay issues. The most significant technical hurdle faced today is the networking backend.
Basically, they’re now developing new code from scratch rather than using legacy code. Once completed, it’ll be capable of a lot more than the existing code would have allowed for, and work far better at getting players networked together for matches. Of course, if you want to know the nitty gritty technical information about all the team’s tweaks then you can read the full post to learn much more.
Beyond creating new code and tweaking existing features, another hurdle for Star Marine is the playability itself. The team feels its graphics are not where they need to be yet, specifically with animations. Although Star Marine is delayed, Star Citizen as a whole is still progressing well. After all, it’s just 15% of the development team working on the FPS module – not everyone. For now, they are considering “releasing a build [of Star Citizen] with Star Marine disabled.”
Would you mind getting an updated build of Star Citizen without Star Marine or would you want as “complete” of a new build as possible?
