When will we see Star Citizen’s FPS module? Chris Roberts doesn’t know yet

Few games are as ambitious as Star Citizen. Created by Wing Commander mastermind Chris Roberts, the game has raised more than $84 million to date, and promises everything you’d ever want in a space sim: dogfights, trading, spaceships big and small, and even a built-in FPS.

So far, we’ve seen very little of Star Citizen. Right now, only the game’s Hanger and Arena Commander modules are available. The FPS module, titled Star Marine, was slated to be the next module released. Gameplay from the module was shown at PAX Australia, and while it didn’t look super-polished, it certainly looked as if it was close to being ready for release.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case for the time being. The FPS module has been delayed for the foreseeable future, according to a post by Chris Roberts on the Roberts Space Industries (RSI) blog. The post goes into plenty of technical detail, but the basic reason is that the “current build doesn’t feel like it lives up to the standards” that RSI wants to achieve.

Roberts describes a “mix of technical blockers and gameplay issues” currently plaguing the module, one of which is the networking component. After some attempts to use the code currently in place, RSI decided to rewrite both the game’s Launcher and Matchmaker components. “Those efforts are all going well,” Roberts writes, “but they’ve all taken additional time for our engineers.”

So when will we see Star Marine? “Tonight, I don’t have an absolute answer for you,” Roberts writes. “What I will tell you is that we know exactly what we have to do, and we’re already well on our way to doing it.”

Roberts says that only 15 percent of the team is working on Star Marine, so the entirety of Star Citizen hasn’t stalled due to the FPS module’s snags. Still, it will have some impact, as “integrating the FPS properly will help move every part of Star Citizen forward, as the tech will help form the blood and sinews of the whole game,” Roberts writes.

For more on the technical aspects of the delay, see the (long) post on the Roberts Space Industries blog.