Greetings Citizens,
The team has been working around the clock for the past two weeks to polish gameplay and eliminate the bugs that would allow us to release Arena Commander V0.8. Today at 4:00 PM PST, I sat down with Star Citizen’s production leads for a ‘go/no-go’ meeting. We went around the virtual table, like a ground control team preparing to launch a rocket, and the decision was that we are not able to release Arena Commander tomorrow as there are too many blocking and critical issues outstanding.
Below you will find a list of the current bugs being tracked by the team. Game developers classify bugs based on their severity: blockers, critical, major, moderate and minor. The most serious of these, blockers, are bugs that completely prevent the game from working and from being in a releasable state. Unfortunately, as of tonight, there are still two blockers and half a dozen critical issues (which we would like to fix before launch.) Our biggest issue today is a newly developed DirectX crash which breaks the single player Vanduul Swarm mode every backer will be given access to.
It would be foolish to release an unstable build, even if pre-alpha for the sake of meeting an internal deadline. This is the power of the crowdfunding that made Star Citizen possible: a publisher would make us ship tomorrow regardless of the current build quality… but as you are all focused on quality rather than a financial return for shareholders we are able to take a few more days to deliver something that is stable.
I know that’s not the news you wanted to hear tonight. No-one would like to see the community get their hands on Arena Commander more than I would.
This is what can happen with an open development process, especially when we are sharing code and content long before one normally would in traditional development. But I don’t think you would want it any other way! The Star Citizen team feeds off of your incredible enthusiasm and your energy for the project… and we want more than anything to see what happens when you get into space.
In order to keep our backers as informed as possible, I’m asking the production team to provide DAILY updates for the community until Arena Commander V0.8 ships. This will be the raw stuff: lists of bugs and other information to tell you the current health of the build. You will see the same information I do, and you will be able to follow as we resolve each “blocker” preventing the build’s release.
I want you to know that we’re very close… just not close enough to launch tomorrow. Stay tuned!
— Chris Roberts
