Delay of Star Citizen’s FPS module due to a mix of "technical blockers and gameplay issues"
Star Citizen's FPS module Star Marine has been delayed due to a mix of "technical blockers and gameplay issues."
Speaking on the Roberts Space Industry website, Chris Roberts said the current build "doesn’t feel like it lives up to the standards we’ve want to achieve with Star Citizen."
"The most significant technical hurdle faced today is the networking backend," he stated. "Going into further detail on the technical side of these systems, one of our big hurdles was the creation of the GIM. This new system will be responsible for all the game servers that make up Star Citizen, and we’ve built it to have far more direct control over the internal state and operation of each game server than was available before.
"The GIM not only manages Arena Commander and Star Marine instances, but also provides a solid framework for instanced multiplayer Hangars as well as the instanced Universe game servers that will form the persistent universe. The GIM allocates and recycles game servers at a much faster rate and in a more reliable way than before, helping to get players into the action more quickly and keeping them in their games with less incident.
"A second challenge has been the need to rewrite the game’s Matchmaking system from scratch, taking an entirely different approach to the process that will eliminate long waits during the Match search process. I’m happy to report that, as of this week, the new matchmaking software has been integrated and is undergoing testing."
Other than the technical aspects, which Roberts goes into great detail on, one of the "biggest issues" was with getting gameplay visuals "right". While tech engineers work on the backend, other teams will continue to work on Star Marine. Roberts said 15% of the studio is working on the FPS content, and the rest on continued Star Citizen development.
Originally set for release after PAX East in April, a new timeframe release was not noted, but don't expect it any time soon. However, the team is going to "investigate releasing a build with Star Marine disabled" so players can experience some of the changes and updates made over the last few months to the core code base.
"When will we see Star Marine? Tonight, I don’t have an absolute answer for you. What I will tell you is that we know exactly what we have to do, and we’re already well on our way to doing it," said Roberts.
The detailed post is through the link, and it is a rather long read.