Today Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games resumed its video releases following the usual post-holiday pause, and it's all about the upcoming Alpha 3.23.
Specifically, the video focuses on two major elements coming in the next update, which will be released at some point in the spring.
The first is the new EVA (extravehicular activity) system, basically an entirely new way to traverse the environment in zero gravity. Instead of the current "upright" position, which is quite buggy and awkward, we'll get a fluid "flying" animation that will let us look around and fire guns without changing movement vector. It looks very promising.
The second feature showcased in the video is the new personal interaction system that removes the need to bring up a menu to interact with items in the world. Every time you aim your camera at an item, a button prompt will be displayed to interact with it.
Tapping the button will execute a fully customizable default action set for that type of item, double tapping will execute a secondary action, and only if you hold the button pressed you'll get the pie menu with all the available actions, also allowing you to set your primary and secondary actions however you like.
You can watch the video below, providing a much deeper look at the features that were shown at CitizenCon.
We also learn that there are quite a few events coming in February. Not only will we get Coramor and Red Festival, which are Star Citizen's in-lore versions of Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year, but a Free Fly event is also coming.
While the specific dates have not been announced, this means that anyone who wants to see what Star Citizen is all about will be able to try the full current build without paying a dime for a number of days. We'll keep you posted when the dates are officially announced.
Free Fly events are certainly a good way to see through all the controversy and sensationalism and make up your own mind about this game.
Star Citizen is a crowdfunding game that has currently gathered a rather crazy $662,900,850 in funding at the moment of this writing. It also has 5,057,680 registered accounts, but not all are paying customers. Many register accounts to participate in Free Fly events like the upcoming one. Of course, not everyone ends up pledging.
Speaking of funding, 2023 broke records again, with just north of $117.5 million pledged in a single year, marking the sixth consecutive year of growth.
The game, which is in active development exclusively for PC, will also have a single-player campaign titled Squadron 42, and we recently learned that it is feature-complete. As such, many of the features developed for it like those showcased in today's video will be transitioned to the online persistent universe.
