Some new gameplay footage has arrived for the upcoming patch for Star Citizen, which is due for release in October. Ahead of the patch, the footage showcases the improved first-person shooting gameplay, as well as how the environment reacts to live firing weapons.
YouTuber Nokzen managed to post up four and a half minutes worth of gameplay footage featuring a couple of different weapons on display in Star Citizen. We also get to see some of the physics effects, along with a little bit of the environmental destruction. You can check it out below.
Things start off showing off the pistol in action as the player walks around and shoots at things, and then later we see the automatic rifle in play. One thing worth noting is that the world-view model and the player-view model are the same. Yes, they’re the same. Usually both models are completely separate – what players see in their screen is not the same as what happens in third-person. In games like Call of Duty or Half-Life or Battlefield the world-view models are completely different from the player-view models. But in Star Citizen it’s all shared, very similar to Bohemia Interactive’s Arma series.
The reason I bring up the shared-view is because when you see them aiming down the sights or using a scope, that equipment is actually rendered in real-time as both a first and third-person model. So all of the intricate, high levels of detail you see in first-person also applies to the models in third-person. Very impressive, lots of mad respect for the artists and engineers being able to pull off that feat because stabilizing gameplay from a shared model view is not easy.
After fiddling around outside in the halls the player eventually moves into a gun shop where they kill the store clerk and practice on a wall target. We also get to see a variety of different weapons that will be in the game, and later we get to see the different armor types within a shop showcasing the various suits that can be purchased.
There’s a bit of an Anarchy Online vibe I’m getting from the way the shops and stores are setup with the NPCs. That’s definitely a good thing because we could definitely use a newer and more updated version of a game like that.
Now there’s an obvious disclaimer that should be mentioned: Star Citizen is still heavily under construction. You can see that the reloading timing for the animations isn’t entirely synched up with the audio just yet; the hammer on the back of the pistol got stuck at times after firing; and the magazine didn’t seem to show up when reloading after running out of ammo.
Even still, there’s a lot of great progress being made on the game and the gunplay definitely looks interesting. The physics solid. I especially like the way the enemies die. The properly distributed weight when they fall over is refreshing to see as opposed to the stiff ragdoll effects used in most games, which is usually utilized to limit the amount of CPU usage.
We’re likely to see more footage as the next big patch readies for release. For more info on Star Citizen feel free to visit the official website.
