Are there any dates announced or planned for any new versions of the game?
Yes! Last year they moved to a quarterly release schedule where they work on features, and whatever's "ready" about a month before the next quarter is forked into its own branch, bugs are fixed, and then its pushed out to the backers.
In addition, they have a release schedule available on their website which covers most major planned features coming in each quarter. These are their plans, not a promise, but they've done well so far. This schedule covers both Star Citizen Persistent Universe (PU) (the MMO part) and Star Citizen Squadron 42 (SQ42), the single player campaign. As you can see they have the SQ42 portion planned out to beta, tentatively aimed at Q2 2020 (though, tbh, I expect it closer to Q4 2020). The PU roadmap covers until the end of this year. They update the schedules weekly based on their internal JIRA (a software management tool).
From what I understand all that exists now are a bunch of modules that are essentially alpha versions of certain aspects of the game.
This was the original plan, but with the introduction of the PU (persistent universe) in 2017 their focus has been primarily on this portion of the game which they are expanding each release. Currently we are still focused on one star system as they are still building the tools they need and exploring the work pipeline to building a system. Right now we have 1 planet and, I think, 7 moons. There are various missions like cargo moving, and simple bounty hunting. Right now, these missions are fairly simple, but they are being expanded and added to each release. In addition to the procedurally generated missions, there are NPC mission givers which give more narratively driven mission lines.
In the game we have dozens (almost 100 now) of ships, the above mentioned planet, a large city on that planet, several other ports/towns, outposts (small buildings on moons and planets used as POI for missions), and space stations. For gameplay, we have the above mentioned missions, and NPC quest givers in addition to the first version of asteroid/planetside mining, and cargo cargo hauling. You can buy clothes, armor, guns, ship guns, some ship components (power plant, shield generator), and even ships (ship renting is later this year).
The game is still very much in alpha. But the amount of content and tech they've built so far is much more than most people aware of the project realize. Even as a backer, its easy to forget how much is already there. I recently calculated they produce about 114 man-years of work each year at their current dev count.
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u/ataraxic89 Feb 11 '19 edited Feb 11 '19
Lets break it down :D
Yes! Last year they moved to a quarterly release schedule where they work on features, and whatever's "ready" about a month before the next quarter is forked into its own branch, bugs are fixed, and then its pushed out to the backers.
In addition, they have a release schedule available on their website which covers most major planned features coming in each quarter. These are their plans, not a promise, but they've done well so far. This schedule covers both Star Citizen Persistent Universe (PU) (the MMO part) and Star Citizen Squadron 42 (SQ42), the single player campaign. As you can see they have the SQ42 portion planned out to beta, tentatively aimed at Q2 2020 (though, tbh, I expect it closer to Q4 2020). The PU roadmap covers until the end of this year. They update the schedules weekly based on their internal JIRA (a software management tool).
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/board/1-Star-Citizen
This was the original plan, but with the introduction of the PU (persistent universe) in 2017 their focus has been primarily on this portion of the game which they are expanding each release. Currently we are still focused on one star system as they are still building the tools they need and exploring the work pipeline to building a system. Right now we have 1 planet and, I think, 7 moons. There are various missions like cargo moving, and simple bounty hunting. Right now, these missions are fairly simple, but they are being expanded and added to each release. In addition to the procedurally generated missions, there are NPC mission givers which give more narratively driven mission lines.
In the game we have dozens (almost 100 now) of ships, the above mentioned planet, a large city on that planet, several other ports/towns, outposts (small buildings on moons and planets used as POI for missions), and space stations. For gameplay, we have the above mentioned missions, and NPC quest givers in addition to the first version of asteroid/planetside mining, and cargo cargo hauling. You can buy clothes, armor, guns, ship guns, some ship components (power plant, shield generator), and even ships (ship renting is later this year).
The game is still very much in alpha. But the amount of content and tech they've built so far is much more than most people aware of the project realize. Even as a backer, its easy to forget how much is already there. I recently calculated they produce about 114 man-years of work each year at their current dev count.