An upcoming and heavily anticipated crowd-funded space simulator, Star Citizen, has been making headlines for its record-breaking funding even before finishing on Kickstarter at $2.1 million USD. Following that success, Chris Roberts (founder of Cloud Imperium Games - the lead studio behind Star Citizen, and mastermind behind the upcoming title) launched Roberts Space Industries to further encourage contribution by fans, offering frequent updates and new contribution milestones in return. Currently, Star Citizen has earned over $34 million USD in crowd-sourced funding.
Late August, fans were given the chance to get their first taste of the game via a hangar module, an early component of the game which allowed contributors to explore the ships they'd gotten either with the base package or through additional contributions. Future modules set to expand the game prior to launch were laid out in sparse intervals.
Originally set for a late December release, fans and contributors looking forward to the launch of the combat dogfighting module have been dealt crushing news; Star Citizen's dogfighting module has been delayed several months.
In his recent blog post, Chris Roberts explains one compelling reason behind such a delay.
"As time has progressed I’ve become more nervous taking the down and dirty route with the initial dogfighting build, especially as our numbers grow. With so many people in the Alpha we need a whole other level of backend support, which would require serious work on CryEngine’s existing multiplayer structure – a lobby system, spinning up servers to handle each session – all things that we are building the new Star Citizen backend to handle. Unfortunately the server backend technology will not be ready for prime time for a couple more months."
Beyond the capacity concerns, Roberts goes on to express his intentions of releasing a more polished dogfighting module, and maximizing his team's efficiency by staying "on course to build something that would lead directly into the finished game." His blog post closes with remedial offerings of "a few treats" including a hangar module update with new functionality and a dogfighting module work-in-progress Livestream at 12PM EST on Friday, December 20th.
Image via Roberts Space Industries
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