Star Citizen’s Squadron 42 campaign is ‘complete’ after 11 years

Eleven years ago, Wing Commander announced designer Chris Roberts star Citizen, An online multiplayer game that he said would “change the way people look at PC gaming”. Roberts told Ars’ Kyle Orland shortly after that he hadn’t enjoyed developing another song for four years, independent, because “spending that many years away from your audience, working alone, was not creatively interesting for me.” with Star CitizenRoberts said he could prevent development from slowing down by involving fans and using a pre-designed engine, as opposed to Roberts saying it would take “two years” to build his own engine.

Roberts certainly engaged his audience Star Citizento the tunes $616 million raised From over 4.8 million Star Citizens. It took a little over two years to give them a real release.

After about 11 years Star CitizenThe initial announcement contained it, then nine years after its first potential release date, squadron 42, The single-player campaign is now “featured” and has “entered its Polish phase”. Roberts announced This is in Video released on Sunday As part of the annual CitizenCon for supporters, along with screenshots of the game and details about its development.

Richard Terrier, Senior Games Director Squadron 42He says in the video that the team is “extra focused on ensuring things feel fun.” This includes the immersive feel of the cockpit, the ship’s flight, and the ship’s artificial intelligence. The development team was divided into “self-sufficient attack teams” focusing on individual areas. There’s plenty of evidence of the action in the 26-minute video, including plenty of cinematic footage of the game’s Hollywood star cast: Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson, Andy Serkis, Gary Oldman, and more.

The thing that fans and backers of crowdsourcing the game are most eager to see, a release date or even just a release window, has likely yet to come. “When we have a release date set, you’ll be the first to know,” Roberts says. “The Polish phase could take some time.”

Running in history Star CitizenThe development of the game is a kind of single-player campaign in itself. After raising nearly $50 million in crowdfunding, a kind of training/simulation version of the game dog fighting and other aspects, Arena Commanderwas released in general release in 2014. Ars’ Lee Hutchinson visited the Austin, Texas-based studios of Roberts Space Industries, which was working on a “continuous” MMO-style game, the aptly titled Star Citizen. Squadron 42 It is a game of its own, intended to be played first, preparing both the player and their character to persevere Star Citizen being.

In Hutchinson’s opinion, the developers were careful to let players into the early access versions and resolve their issues while including fan input. Lead designer Rob Irving told Hutchinson that “the openness had its trade-offs… It’s great to be so close to the fans but it’s hard to face them without all the answers.”

Supporters of Star Citizen I continued to search for answers over nearly a decade of continuous development. Roberts would reject the idea that his project had succumbed to “feature creep” by 2015, noting that “Star Citizen It matters because it’s big, because it’s a bold dream” (emphasis mine). After reaching 1 million backers in late 2015, the full game was opened to all backers.

The production schedule was announced in late 2016, one year later Squadron 42 It was originally scheduled for release. At that time, Star Citizen It was scheduled to be released in August 2016. That date passed, and the studio then became embroiled in a lawsuit against their (theoretically time-saving) original engine, Crytek’s CryEngine. because Squadron 42 It was not released, then postponed until 2020. Crytek sought to have the lawsuit dismissed, and Star Citizen The developer settled for a relatively small sum in 2018.

Another roadmap was issued in mid-2020, which is a roadmap for a new roadmap. By early 2022, the developers said they would no longer release target dates for any new features that were more than one calendar quarter away to avoid “distraction” and “constant noise every time we shift deliverables” from “a very vocal group of roadmap monitors.” ” At the time (January 2022), Carl Jones, COO of Cloud Imperium Games, said Squadron 42 necessary “A year or two more“.