Chris Roberts has officially become the Marcel Proust of game designers:
Star Citizen has been in development for well over a decade now, during which time it has raised more than $450 million in crowdfunding, and if you’re wondering why it’s still in an alpha state after all that time and money, the latest update from developer Cloud Imperium Games might hold a clue.
It all comes down to something called “bedsheet deformation,” which is exactly what it sounds like: Ensuring that blankets on beds are mussed up accurately, just like they would be in real life. This is important because the “sleep and bed relaxation” element of Squadron 42, the singleplayer portion of Star Citizen, was recently updated so NPCs are now able to find and enter their beds, and then sleep until they’re scheduled to get up.
“We knew early on that, to hit the fidelity we expect for Sq42, we would need to do some R&D on bedsheet deformation,” the AI Content team explained, apparently straight-faced. “This work is currently underway and, if successful, will allow the AI to deform their sheets when entering, exiting, or sleeping inside them. This is a challenging assignment and expands the complexity of the feature. For example, what happens to the sheets if the AI needs to exit the bed in an emergency?”
“what the actual fuck lmao this game was supposed to be out years ago and they’re implementing fucking BEDSHEET DEFORMATION?? I’m done lol” – torvi97
“R&D on bedsheet deformation….for a game that is 10 years overdue. That’s the ‘fidelity’ that players are waiting for? I’m not sure about the rest of you, but this is a feature I can safely say we could wait for the patch in 2083.” – InconspicuousBastard
“Is this a joke? No wonder they can’t finish this thing. Pointless feature creep at its most extreme.” – Valerian_II
“How about just GETTING THE GODDAMN GAME OUT THE DOOR before worrying about how a fricking BEDSHEET will deform.” – BotdogX
Well, I know that I, for one, would not want to see improperly deformed bedseets in my game.
My gamedev mentor, a VP at Sega and Konami, among other companies, and I used to joke about what would be the worst possible 3D action game. We settled on REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST 3D: The Search for the Cooler Side of the Pillow.
It never occurred to us that anyone, let alone the legendary Chris Roberts, would actually attempt to build the game.