Prototyping gameplay elements is pretty important work, but it’s also very often work that’s not seen by anyone outside of the studio. However, the return of Star Citizen’s weekly video digest series for the third quarter is granting followers this distinct look behind the curtain, as CIG shows off a prototype build of full ship salvage, aka “munching.”
As one might expect, the gameplay demonstrated is in its very early phases, with several UI, VFX, and art elements missing, but it also demonstrates the basic way that ship salvage will work: The salvage ship effectively blows up a derelict into smaller pieces, then breaks those pieces into smaller chunks and hoovers up into the cargo hold.
Along the way, the devs discuss how this prototype raised several problems with salvage from a technical and gameplay perspective. The devs found that getting larger pieces in the grasp of a salvage ship doesn’t quite work as intended, and they also found how breaking a ship down into harvestable pieces takes literal minutes to spawn when the game’s persistent entity streaming tech is under load. All that is to say that munching is probably going to take some time to come to the alpha, but the work is being done.
In other SC news, the studio is calling attention to its various missions over the next few months, starting off with the Arlington Bounty mission that tests players’ flight combat skills against stolen spacecraft. The spotlight also gives CIG a reason to sell internet spaceships and hold a screenshot contest for free in-game spacecraft.
