Failures with Squadron 42’s Roadmap
Welcome to some more Star Citizen, Star Citizen Alpha 3.9 went to Evocati and we have had a Statement from CIG on Squadron 42’s Development and Future Roadmap Changes.
The Sneak Peek from the newsletter this week is from Wally’s Bar from New Babbage in 3.9.
This will be a major social hub in the game. As I said Alpha 3.9 is with Evocati currently and once it’s in a more stable state it will go to 1st wave testing adding RSI Subscribers and Concierge Backers to the mix. This could happen toward the end of next week IF it’s ready… and it’s impossible for me to tell at this stage xD The plan is still to have a LIVE build for 3.9 for the end of March if possible. Typically the evocati and early PTU waves will only have part of the patches content and have focused testing sprints so bare that in mind, I am unable to discuss specifics of any given evocati patch as I am an Evo member and under NDA… not that I have had time to test this latest patch yet.
Roadmap wise CIG are prepping 3.9 and it’s a major focus for the next couple of weeks at least… BUT another major focus for the studio for many years has been Squadron 42 and CIG have now begun to address problems in the way the Roadmap for the Single Player Campaign is conveyed to us and updates we receive about that game.
“When we first embarked on this Roadmap journey two years ago, our goal was to make communication more transparent, specific, and insightful for all of you who help make Star Citizen and Squadron 42 possible. While this goal remains unchanged, we’ve found that the format in which we’ve attempted to visualize our progress linearly does not match the approach we’re taking in the development of Squadron 42.
We want to be clear: progress on Squadron 42 is happening and we’re broadly happy with that progress. But we know that our roadmap is not reflecting that progress. Over time, we’ve found that the roadmap as presented does not and cannot accurately represent development on a AAA chapter-based, story-driven game like SQ42. So, we’re going back to the proverbial drawing board to explore different approaches for Squadron 42.
We’re currently considering an option where we would utilize our internal sprint-tracking process to visualize our progress. This would be a departure from the current Roadmap, but would be more in line with our internal scheduling. This new representation for progress in SQ42 would also benefit how we show progress on the PU as well. Alongside, we’ll continue to share development progress through a variety of avenues, outlined in the Calling All Devs episode below. With immediate effect, we will incorporate more Squadron 42 content into our regular Sprint Reports on ISC, Calling All Devs, AMAs (Ask Me Anything Q&As), and more. In addition to our scheduled content such as the SQ42 Monthly Report, we’re also looking forward to providing regular video check-ins with Brian Chambers and a variety of members of the Squadron 42 team.”
Further to this there was a Squadron 42 focused Calling All Devs which I will briefly summarize here with what CIG said:
They released a Visual teaser at the end of 2019… They wanted to show off some of the visuals they had made thru 2019 for internal use… They then removed some spoilers with characters and locations then released it to the public.
It’s about 40% of what they wanted for visual quality and they are really working to have the game look amazing when it’s released.
They are now on a curve upwards with progress and quality
Squadron 42 is really coming together now.
They had a 6 hour scene review flying around in an idris and it crashed once
Ships from other races they can’t talk about yet
A lot of stuff being put together for citizencon a “certain show”
They actively look for improvements to make
They showed more of acedio station which is a COMM array
They build ships and large structures like these in empty object containers
Its treated as a ship
Its being decommissioned & is Partly operational
There has been some Restructuring with the studios and staff.
Brian Chambers is largely focused on sq42 now
The roadMap currently doesn’t make sense at least in the way they convey it to backers
If they leave it as is all chapters would be completed at the same time rather than a linear progression of each chapter individually that some people may have been expecting… The chapters are effectively worked on in Parallel
When giving us SQ updates, They want to avoid spoilers.
There are more characters locations and more they are hiding.
They want to update the format of the roadmap for sq… They are progressing everyday.
They are exploring various new options
They will tell us Why things may have changed
Priorities
Showing the Blocking out of their time
Explaining features & generally being more informative.
A lot of sq work makes it into the pu we could see more details on that.
Try they will do some Ana’s and sprint reports for sq42 content
They will expose more of sq development to backers.
They recognise they haven’t been able to communicate that as they had liked up till now.
Design teams have been focused on
Fps, Dogfighting, Social Aspects of the game as teams
They are in the same place with the flight model etc… With SQ and the PU, so there is certainly much improvement that is needed. It’s not where they want to be yet but they are
Heavy narrative scenes drive the story forward and you are part of the scene
Rudeness leaving while talking npcs remember that
The female player mo cap is different in sq and although subtle the interactions and scenes are a little different and High quality.
They are likely going to do more pickups in the coming months
With AI they are building behavior sets
There are 3d pathfinding updates in 3.9
Sdf fields are used to help know where things are
Current work is on Npcs having varying tactics & using cover appropriately.
Ai will react to the room and player status system
The NPC bartender actually represents a lot of work with vendors, npcs, social ai, npc interactions, player npc interaction.
Its massive for social ai aspects.
And that’s it for today’s video! I like long form Calling All Devs… though I feel I didn’t get as much tangible information from it as I wanted. It was good that CIG have made some statements on Squadron 42’s Development and it will be interesting to see how progress is conveyed to us in the future. Also 3.9 WHOOOO! I am looking forward to some Idris Action at the end of March!