Chris Roberts says Star Citizen is finally pushing for the 1.0 'finish line'
Crowdfunded space sim Star Citizen achieved a new milestone recently—the first player to seamlessly jump between two star systems on different servers—and now the guy in charge, Cloud Imperium Games CEO Chris Roberts, is indicating that the 1.0 release might finally be in sight.
It's been over a decade since Roberts first showed me a prototype for Star Citizen. The space game has now raised over $670 million and become two distinct projects: A singleplayer Wing Commander successor called Squadron 42, and the Star Citizen persistent universe MMO.
Squadron 42, which stars famous actors including Gillian Anderson, Mark Hamill, and Gary Oldman, was declared «feature complete» late last year, and now Roberts says those features are making their way into the persistent universe «at an accelerated rate.» Meanwhile, the recent tech milestone, which saw a player named «MrTrash» (of course that's their name) become the first to travel between star systems by wormhole, represents a vital step toward the MMO's 1.0 release, according to the CEO.
«After many hard years of work towards a goal many thought was impossible, we are on the cusp of delivering one of the final pieces of technology that will enable a connected, shared universe that thousands of people can experience together at the same time,» wrote Roberts in his latest dispatch to backers.
The technology, which they call «server meshing,» allows players to seamlessly travel between locations that are hosted on different servers (it's more complicated than that, but that's the gist). The recent test also set a new record for concurrent players on a Star Citizen server shard—350—according to Roberts.
There's more detail on server meshing in a Q&A, but the big takeaway here is that Roberts believes Star Citizen's 1.0 release is close enough to start seriously talking about again. Now that Squadron 42 is feature complete, the dev team has been reorganized and is setting sail «for Star Citizen's own finish line,» he
Read more on pcgamer.com
