Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games revealed new gameplay for the ambitious space sim during their stage presentation at CitizenCon, an event held for fans of the game.
The two-hour presentation covers all things Star Citizen, focusing on the development of the game itself. New social tools are shown off, as well as new ships, and there are discussions of what is being worked on now and what will be worked on in the future.
The highlight is the gameplay demo which shows off the game’s procedural planet system, which will be used to generate most of the environments in the online component of the game. After a camera flyover of a planet, a player takes control and lands their ship on the planet. A basic mission is then shown off with the player searching for distress beacons and encountering some enemies, as well as a few other obstacles. The procedural planet system will be introduced to players in the Star Citizen Alpha 3.0, which Cloud Imperium Games is planning on releasing before the end of the year. The gameplay demo begins at 1:25:20 in the video below.
Fans awaiting the release of the game’s single player component, Squadron 42, will have to wait until next year. The campaign will be split into three parts (similar to StarCraft 2), with the first part originally scheduled for the end of 2016. It has now been delayed until sometime in 2017.
The game (which is a crowdfunding phenomenon, having raised over $110 million so far) is available to play in alpha right now. Players are given access to the alpha when they pre-order the game.