Delays & Development – Where are we with Star Citizen 3.9.0?

Welcome to some more Star Citizen with a little update. We are still waiting on 3.9.0 going to wider PTU, there are a few pieces that needed to be ironed out for the wider PTU to get the patch out of Evocati and it wasn’t quite ready for the weekend.

So what are we waiting on? Desync and Stability are the key things that they are currently addressing according to CI before it goes to wider PTU and this is also what is normally the main factor in a LIVE release too. The Wider PTU is an important testing phase before that though as various other issues can be uncovered from more players and vigorous testing.

Also a little more balance tweaking might be done at this stage too.

We look like we are about a month delayed with the 3.9 build at the moment.

I’d also like to apologise for my atrocious estimations of when the 1st Wave PTU will be out!

With patches, PTU phases and “blockers” CI won’t release to the next stage until they are ready. Historically a lot of these blockers were fixed much quicker OR a placeholder solution was put in place or a blocker was kind of overlooked.

With the current development methodology CI are really trying to deal with the desync problems of the 3.8 branch and have 3.9 in a more playable state. It’s important now that Star Citizen Alpha’s are more playable and accessible because of CI development & funding model AND although no one enjoys delays if we do get a significant improvement with 3.9 then it should be worth the wait. 

The Staggered development model is certainly not showing any obvious improvement to speed or quality of patches at least in my opinion. This could well be also due to CI working from home. In CI defense a huge amount of other companies are not operating or are at a massive reduction in man hours & efficiency and although CI certainly has seen delays because of this, BUT as CI have said they are very well set up for remote working / working from home.

Does this mean 4.0 will be delayed as well?

Well not necessarily delayed BUT features have already been pushed back to 4.1 and 4.2.

And 4.0 did see some big features moved out like Crusader / Orison which is a little disappointing.

There is a bit of cognitive dissonance or juxtaposition with Star Citizen’s Playable Alpha Releases. This comes from CI saying that they will push something back if it’s not ready to a later release, parts that they do release are going to evolve, be iterated on and change and are not finished and they will also hold patches back if they are not ready while saying they want to be date driven with their releases.

The truth with that seems to be CI make judgement calls on each given feature and patch and although they want to have date driven releases, it is sometimes in their interests (and ours as players to delay them).

I have seen a good amount of people question the use of the Roadmap, CI are entirely revamping the Squadron 42 Roadmap OR the way they convey information about SQ42 to backers at the moment, how working from home has affected the dev of SQ is probably about the same as the PU maybe about a month of tangible delay and then it’s debatable about efficiency changes.

With the PU’s Roadmap Features often get moved off and added, even very close to a release and past “cut off” features can still move.

The roadmap does show CIs intentions and priorities and although they may change heavily over the course of a year, they still for me at least provide valuable information, as long as they are updated at the earliest possible stage that CI know and give reasons for why a feature moves or slips which to be fair they do now with the Roadmap Round Up.

I think a lot of people would argue from a spectrum of CI should just concentrate on finishing the game and not the playable Alpha to CI need to focus on more Gameplay Loops ASAP for the Alpha to Players being happy with the current development choices.

We do know that the Lion’s Share of development resources are being allocated to Squadron 42 and transferable Features between the games which should be seeing things like UIs, the Render, Engine, Ship Combat and AI get significant improvements this year.

I am anxiously awaiting 3.9.0s wider PTU release, CI really need to have a good release for the 3.9 LIVE branch… well they don’t I suppose as long as they eventually make a good game, its just I want to make content for 3.9 and STAR CITIZEN!!! AND EVERYONE IS LOCKED IN AT HOME WAITING FOR A PATCH TO PLAY!

Sorry this video was a little bit more of a rant than I really intended.

I am teaching my editor how to play star citizen atm… at least in terms of general traversal and using the cameras and recording in game.