Cloud Imperium Games shared a recent interview that explains how they are executing on one of the more complicated, ambitious aspects of Star Citizen; the multicrew ships.
Cloud Imperium Games wants to make the kind of multicrew ships that allow multiple players to work on a single ship at the same time, in such a way that they would each be working on unique and tailored tasks, and that they need to coordinate to keep the ship running and to accomplish their goals. Even more than this, they want to make these ships to be completely unique; with different layouts and positions for the ship crew within the ship. Each ship will even have different UIs players will have to relearn if they move ships, even if they’re doing the same tasks. Whereas smaller ships will require smaller crews that require each crew member to handle multiple tasks, bigger ships will open up opportunities for crew members to be more specialized.
A task this daunting does not just require tight coordination between design and programming teams. Cloud Imperium Games needs technology to be capable of making this vision come to life. It was for this reason that they made their own customized build of CryEngine; which can handle the complex calculations needed to render multiple multicrew ships across a galaxy. This is also why they created an entirely new technology, LocalPhysicsGrid.
Star Citizen is in development for PC, on Windows and Linux, with standalone single player module Squadron 42 planned for release this year. You can read more about Cloud Imperium Games’ VR plans for it here and how the developers are working on it every 24 hours here.
