Star Citizen FPS module delayed indefinitely
Muhammad Ali Bari
If you're among those who have backed the in-development space sim Star Citizen, chances are that you've been looking forward to getting your hands on its FPS module, Star Marine. Unfortunately, you're going to have to wait a while longer, as the module won't be available to backers for the foreseeable future.
In his latest blogpost on the Robert Space Industries website, Chris Roberts expressed his dissatisfaction with the current state of the first-person module. He said that a combination of "technical blockers and gameplay issues" were responsible for the delay, and that he doesn't know when exactly Star Marine will be ready for public release.
According to Roberts, the biggest hurdle in the development of the FPS module is the networking backend. The development team has now made a conscious decision to axe out some of the legacy technology that was originally being used.
There are several issues that will need additional time in order to deliver the first iteration of the gameplay we want you to experience. The challenges facing the FPS launch are a mix of technical blockers and gameplay issues. The most significant technical hurdle faced today is the networking backend. After attempting to work with the legacy code, we decided that we needed to drop some of the legacy technology.
In order to tackle this issue, Roberts and his crew are working on a framework known as General Instance Manager (GIM), which will manage game servers and instances for Arena Commander, Star Marine, as well as multiplayer hangars. The eventual aim is for GIM to manage the instanced universe game servers that will form the persistent universe.
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 multi-player Hangars as well as the instanced Universe game servers that will form the persistent universe.
Star Citizen was originally scheduled for release some time after PAX East in April. No estimated time of release is currently available for Star Marine, though the studio has ramped up resources and increased cross-studio focus on the FPS module in order to make it available as early as possible.
If you're among the many Star Citizen backers, let us know how you feel about the delay in the comments below.
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