The latest episode of Star Citizen’s Around The Verse was put together for the Holidays, with a Christmas-themed episode that covers some of the community features, along with a recap of some of the advancements made throughout the 2018 development sprint.

The episode doesn’t actually cover any of the current advancements being made right now, but it does recap how much they managed to implement into the game over the course of 2018. This included all of the new ships that they added to the game, all of the weapons that they added to the game, the implementation of the object container streaming, the new Squadron 42 roadmap, and all of the new missions, NPCs, and locations filling out the persistent universe.

The video is actually quite comprehensive in showcasing how much was accomplished within the span of a year. Development on Star Citizen for those on the outside looking in probably think it slow and tedious, but just going back as far as 2014 where the game was barely getting off the ground, you can see some massive developments.

In fact, there’s more content in Star Citizen right now than most $60 AAA games currently on the market.

The developers also rolled out alpha 3.4 as a last minute treat for 2018, offering more places to visit, more biomes to explore, and more quests to complete.

The next big roll out during the first quarter of 2019 will feature the female character creator, the introduction of the DNA character creation toolset, the ArcCorp planet and its moon, along with the salvage system, the new reputation system, all new weapons and ships, and the overhauled projectile physics system.

Of course, a lot of the new content is starting to roll out in smooth order after the team managed to get over the largest developmental hurdle of the year: object container streaming. It was a slow and plodding process to overcome but it also laid the groundwork for much better FPS scaling and optimization for all future updates both for Star Citizen and Squadron 42.

Both games are still heavy in development, and we won’t be seeing a playable version of Squadron 42 until 2020, with an alpha set during the first half of the year and a beta scheduled for the end of 2020. You can keep track of the current developmental progress by checking out the official website where a developmental roadmap is made available for public viewing.