The latest update newsletter from Squadron 42 is very much about its alien lifeforms. A number of team segments are working on the Vanduul, whether it’s the AI team working out the race’s melee and ranged combat tactics, the animation team working on melee attack animations and locomotion, or the art teams working on Vanduul’s armor and lance weapon. Vanduul, Vanduul, Vanduul.
That’s not to say other things didn’t get attention too, of course: The art team is in the final stages of rigging the Xi’an body, while there’s also work being done on automatic lighting systems for cinematics, a whole lot of work on physics, API calls, and atmospheric visuals, and bringing new hires up to speed for level design as well as building out FPS areas and points of interest for space and dogfight areas.
The update has been met with a great deal of aggression from Redditors, all of which have been likely exacerbated by a number of update delays for the single-player story mode. Readers will recall that fans called for more substantive progress updates, which CIG explained were delayed due to video production standards not being met. To this point, the devs have previewed a roadmap update for SQ42, but there’s still no new roadmap version change. And no video, for that matter.
