The much-anticipated ‘Alpha 3.0 Build’ for the ambitious space-simulator:Star Citizen,is out now, but only at the hands of a special group of backers, for testing purposes.
Star Citizen- 3.0 Where? How?
That selected group backers consists of community members known as the “Evocati Test Flight”. A volunteer-testing program that began back in April of 2016.
For those who don’t know, “Evocati” is a Latin term that is used to refer to veteran soldiers of the Roman Empire who were honorably discharged from military services along with special privileges. Essentially retired, but voluntarily reenlists at the invitation of a much higher ranked individual.
The program’s volunteers are responsible for “playtesting builds to make sure they are stable before the build goes out to a wider audience.” according to CIG. The members are also under an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), disallowing them from openly speaking about their testing contents.
This all began with a post on thisReddit thread(with its contents apparently reposted from the Evocati Foums) announcing the release of the Alpha 3.0 Build on PTU [Public Test Universe] forStar Citizen, which also included the screenshots below confirming its existence.
For the foreseeable future and depending on the type of bugs the Evocati Test Flight volunteers encounter, it will be weeks or perhaps even months before the Alpha 3.0 Build will be coming out of the restricted PTU testing.
With the release of the latest build, despite the temporary exclusivity,Star Citizencan now be considered to have entered the ‘Early Access’ phase. It has also been reported that the space-sim’s price may increase a little when the official launch of the Alpha 3.0 Build happens.
“The price will probably go up a little bit and it will have much more of the features and content going on.” said Star Citizen’s Director, Chris Roberts in an interview with Eurogamer duringGamescom 2017.
Even so, all of this should rekindle some hope amongStar Citizen’s backers even withthe delays, that the much-teased Alpha 3.0 Build will be a step closer to landing on their machines.
For those interested, you can check out thefull patch notesforStar Citizen’s ‘Alpha 3.0 Build’, that also details the previously revealed “Actor Status System” aka Stamina System as well as the “Drake Dragonfly”, one of the upcoming vehicles in the update.
If you’d like to know more, you can check outour preview onStar Citizen.
