And if you didn’t think Star Citizen was a gargantuan project enough already, then here’s something to whet your appetite: footage of the Star Marine module, due out in the next major Alpha update.
To put it simply, it looks like a slower, spongier version of Domination from Call of Duty. Space marines fight over control points, although there’s obviously a lot more physics at play. Players can wander into space and continue fighting, although you’ll notice from the crosshair that your aim is clearly affected.
The footage was shown as part of Star Citizen’s 4th anniversary, and the module is due to be included in Alpha 2.6. CIG uploaded footage of the first round separately though, which you can view below.
According to a developer, all of the soldiers in the match were using Medium armour so the “[time to kill] is much higher than what you all experience” in the current build of the game. “Armour will and does increase your survivability and works no differently between Star Marine and the PU, its just you don’t tend to run into that many people with medium armor currently out in the verse,” a developer posted.
Squishiness aside, the gameplay looks perfectly functional. It’s obviously a work in progress – there’s no music or audio cue when the round is nearing the end, for instance – but everything looks like it holds up. I’d want to see
If you want to watch the final two rounds, as well as the rest of the anniversary livestream, I’ve embedded it below. It kicks off with a Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear-inspired presenter doing an advertisement for a show called Galactic Tour. There’s also a race and an Arena Commander match which kicks off from about an hour in, for those who want to skip the ads and dev speak.
Comments
21 responses to “Star Citizen Does A Great Call Of Duty Impression”
But when will it do an impression of a finished game?
Well, there’s no real road map, so your guess is as good as mine! That’s the shit part about CIG – no publisher supervision means that Roberts gets bogged down in the minutiae and has no overarching schedule. It’ll be done when it’s done (if CIG doesn’t run out of money first).
Does this very recently released Production Schedule Report count as a real roadmap?
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/schedule-report
Kudos to CIG for doing this. I very much prefer more open development.
This is cool I guess, but when I put cash in for the kickstarter I really just wanted a wing commander with privateer/freelancer elements. This is looking really unfocused and sprawling now. I’ll guess we’ll see when it’s done but how many more years is that going to take? I’m not interested in playing alphas and betas. I want a finished product… I’m not getting any younger. When I put the cash in, I loved pc games. I barely play anymore.
Well, optimistically you should see the first part of Squadron 42 around the second half of next year. Pessimistically, you may never see it.
I’m sure we’ll see it. Just don’t know how great it will be. Starlancer was good but it was missing that extra zing that wing commander had. We’ll see. I agree with your other comments though. They’re getting way too bogged down in minutae and spending a lot of time reinventing the wheel. It’s not a good sign. Or its a great sign. Only time will tell.
Squadron 42 will probably be the most focused, tightest part of Star Citizen if only – and we know this from Kotaku UK’s series earlier this year – because the studio was the most well managed and well led.
I’m really looking forward to it. I backed because I wanted a modern Freelancer experience, and I’m still holding out hope that that’s what Squadron 42 has become.
Don’t you mean Starlancer? Freelancer was it’s follow up with major trading elements, but I think I know what you mean.
That’s what I want. A modern experience. The last great space sim I played was Freespace 2, and whilst it still holds up well, it is an old game now. But I try not to get my hopes up these days. There’s been too many disappointments from getting hyped over the years that I try to stay cool now.
It just doesn’t sound good with what we’re all hearing. I had to ditch the weekly emails from CIG years ago. It was too much info with zero payoff. Give me a product. I don’t want hype!
I backed with Freelancer in mind; I never got to touch Starlancer.
The Wing Commander fan game in Freespace 2 (Darkest Dawn, from memory) is pretty good, but slow-going.
Hopefully it will all come together eventually and not be just a collection of mini-games under the Star Citizen brand name.
Correct me if I’m wrong but if you’re in zero g and you shoot a ballistic based weapon shouldn’t the recoil shoot you backwards instead of maintaining a forward momentum like at the start of the video? Or at least have a resemblance of some kind of counter movement if you’re jet packing in a direction.
Yes, but only very slowly.
Equal and opposite reaction and all that – same force but the mass involved is drastically different. The bullet might leave the barrel at ~1000m/s, but it only weighs a few grams. You might move backwards at a few centimetres a second or so thanks to the equal force being applied to your much more massive frame.
More likely you’ll continue moving forward but at a reduced speed.
Sorry, yes – I should have clarified, it depends on if you’re already moving or not, and in what direction.
Yes, absolutely. If you’re already moving forward, you’ll decelerate slightly.
if you want to get really picky, you were right the first time. from the frame of reference of the projectile you would have accelerated and moved away at ~1000m/s
I do wonder what even a glancing hit from an enemy would weapon would do to your stability in null gravity.
The answer is pretty much the same as recoil in zero G. Very very little.
Very small mass going very fast but imparting part of its force onto a relatively gigantic mass (in a glancing hit) would do nothing.
Basically think about it like this.
The same force you apply to a pebble to throw it maybe 30m, apply it to a fully suited human, you’re not even going to budge them.
That’s not even taking into account bullets tendency to penetrate (rather than stop and hand over all its force to the body), energy disspertion from armour and heat and sound rather than being a purely kinetic transfer.
Just as a nitpick – whether it penetrates or not, the same overall force would be applied. And, assuming a vacuum, the fraction of the energy that’s released as sound and heat will only be released in to the impacted body as well.
If the bullet penetrates you totally (i.e, passes through you without stopping) it doesn’t apply the same amount of force to you as if it stops in your body. The bullet retains a lot of it’s energy in this case, or it wouldn’t still be moving.
I believe CIG plans to release Squadron 42 Mission Disk 1 early next year, it seems this information missed allot of peoples ears. Don’t expect the WHOLE S42 at once, there is 60 missions in all and there will be multiple mission discs.
Additionally the discs will come as BETA to start with then after a month or two of bug fixing, be final. Keep in mind Squadron 42 is more or less a Linear introduction to Star Citizen to setup the back story. Its easier to nail down content/features for a linear campaign compared to a massive open world…
I expect squadron 42 won’t be released until Star Citizen 4.0 is out. Without jump points/intersystem travel it doesn’t make much sense to have a Wing Commander style campaign.