A new Around The Verse has popped up for Cloud Imperium Games and Roberts Space Industries’ Star Citizen. The latest video takes a look behind the scenes of how they managed to get alpha 3.0 working for the public at this past year’s GamesCom in Cologne, Germany, as well as an update on the amount of bugs they still have left before alpha 3.0 will be released to the public.
The 23 minute video was posted up recently over on the Star Citizen YouTube channel, and you can check it out below.
The “Burn Down” segment starts off the Around the Verse segment, where they covered what “blockers” were in place as a roadblock that keep the alpha 3.0 from being released to the public.
One of the bugs they ran into was causing two problems: the first problem was that it caused players to jiggle when they would get near a door. The second problem was that the door’s elevation was too high and players could properly reach the activation panel.
They managed to fix the problem rather easily by creating a ramp for the door that allowed players to reach the doorway. The happy accident with that fix was that it also fixed the jiggle problem, which they were unable to figure out, but the ramp managed to fix it anyway.
Usually character jiggling was typically a problem I used to run into that was associated with a repositioning bug where a specific area was trying to set an actor state that was conflicting with where the actor was supposed to be positioned according to the world state. Sometimes the jiggle was also gravity related. Either way, they managed to fix the issue, so that’s all that really matters.
They also ran into a problem with the store keepers a while back, where they would play animations that would clip through some of the objects on the counter or the player-character. They managed to fix this by creating an extra space between the NPC actor and the counter.
While the team has been able to substantially reduce a lot of the critical errors, major glitches, and obstructing bugs, they actually ended up adding more bugs to the table after the GamesCom presentation. They gathered a bunch of feedback and reports from the gaming public who managed to get hands-on time with Star Citizen during the public demo, and so instead of having 67 must-fix issues to address before the September 8th release, they now have 94 must-fix issues.
It’s probably frustrating for fans because it probably seems like backward steps are being taken, but as they mention in the video, it’s better to address them now and to be made aware of these critical blockers before alpha 3.0 releases.
Don’t be surprised, however, if alpha 3.0 gets delayed into the middle or end of September, depending on how quickly or how many of the must-fix issues they’re able to address between now and next week.
