RSI Dogfights Into PAX East (April 12, 2014)

[Dundradal]

This past Thursday Cloud Imperium Games descended on Boston for PAX East and a very special livestream event. Fifteen hundred fans were able to obtain entry to the event, including yours truly, and we were treated to a night of the latest from Star Citizen. After crushing a few last minute bugs, Chris Roberts went into a recap of the game's development accompanied by a short film showing some of the trials and tribulations the team faced in the days before PAX. After the film, Chris Roberts jumped into the game and showed off entering your ship and space. When preparing for launch the player-character flips their helmet, a sequence that sent the crowd wild. The hangar doors opened to show the world outside. To call it gorgeous is an understatement. The flight mechanics were on full display: newtonian physics, destroyable asteroids, and some combat made appearances.








Following the gameplay demonstration, Chris Roberts unveiled more details about the dog fighting module. Instead of being a simple testing setup, the module is part of the in-game fiction. Described as ?2944?s Hottest Space Combat Sim...? and brought to you by Original Systems, ?Arena Commander? is the in-game simulator that can be run in the hangar. Arena Commander allows players to jump into the sim, connect with other players and battle in five different game modes: Free Flight, Battle Royale, Squadron Battle, Capture the Core, and Vanduul Swarm. Players will be able face off against other players and AI pilots. The sim will feature leaderboards tracking multiple stats as well as daily, weekly, monthly and all-time rankings. These features are just the first wave in the Arena Commander launch.







The second release, Arena Commander II: Revenge of the Vanduul, will add multi-crew ships, variants of the single-seat ships, co-operative AI pilots and in-game communications. The third release, Arena Commander III: Heart of the Empire will add more environments, FPS boarding mechanics, Capture the Idris mode, and double-precision coordinates to handle the massive arenas that players will battle in.







Beyond Arena Commander, the team will focus on fleshing out the rest of Star Citizen and continuing the implementation of new features. Chris Roberts also mentioned Squadron 42 as ?if we did a next-gen Wing Commander, Squadron 42 would be that.? Wing Commander fans should certainly be excited by that prospect. Be sure to check out the entire presentation below!

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Original update published on April 12, 2014

 

[Whistler]

Glad you could make it there before the big move Dund.

Got to watch the recorded twitch broadcast so I didn't miss too much. Epic CR line, "This is bullshit!" Lolz.

 

[Deathsnake]

Here a good Video from the Logitech area at PAX

Works a lot better with Joystick. I was never a friend of Gamepads. I had in the past 20 years maybe 3 Gamepads on my PCs but use it maybe a hour / month. In the last 5 years I never used one. Mouse & Keyboard or Joystick.

 

[Mekt-Hakkikt]

And our lucky LOAF got to play! (with some problems alright). I liked what I saw.

 

[Jardine]

If you want to skip through the recorded stream to the actual presentation, go to about 53 minutes. 42 minutes if you want to look at the crowd and some milling about on stage.

 

[Dundradal]

Heh, one of the funnier moments is probably near the start of the dogfighting presentation when Chris wasn't paying attention and crashed right into an asteroid. I think it was the first launch?

The whole event was a lot of fun. Lots of interesting people who really fired up about the game. It really makes you wish all the tongue-in-cheek WC references were just WC references.

And the guy who you see whipping the LAMP around was hilarious. I was drinking with those guys most of the night and they were a riot.