I just can’t wait to see a native C++ build. The game runs rather poorly on my high end PC. Added performance will be a balm to my soul 
Super psyched to see some of the gameplay elements start to make it in too. I like building games, but Boundless’ RPG elements are what enticed me to drop $250 for a pioneer pack for me and my wife, not the building aspects.
Cant wait for it
Can’t wait to sink into the Soundtrack - … Damn, now you have me again … screw you! ^^
Happiness overflowing
I have absolutely no idea what you mean by that. The current, most-extant version of C++ is C++11. That doesn’t make it “fairly modern”–that makes it modern. C++ 17 is (very much) yet to be–although Microsoft is taking a stab at it, and C++ 14 is mostly not implemented. (I’m still waiting for automatic function type deduction and generic lambdas. drool)
I have no idea what GNU is doing, I have to admit. (Okay, I just looked it up. The features are apparently still experimental, and there aren’t a lot of them. It’s a complex language, and these things take time. They do have some support for automatic function return type deduction, though.)
So I stand by my earlier statement. (Like this is worth arguing over. Can we just order pizza instead? With 
? )
I was pointing out that being the newest part of a series does not necesarily mean being modern. (As space empires is a rather old discontinued series) as C++11 was released soem time ago it can easily be defined a fairly modern specification.
From what you said it seems to be inarguably the most functional version though.
And I stand with mine, can I get a standard margarita instead?
@james: For the sake of completeness … could you publish the status update as news on the webside ? it looks much better if people can see you are working on something 
Actually I was hoping to update the website to automatically pull the items from the devlog + announcements categories. This would stop us needing to post them twice, and also get all user comments into a single location.
Either way I agree that we need to keep the news updated.
PS4 beta confirmed after steam c++ beta???
Looks like i will have to buy a PC Beta version too to try out the game pretty soon 
Are you moving all game logic off of JS, or just engine bits? Seems hard to avoid some level of (interpreted or compiled) scripting in a game (monster AI, ???)
Yes. As the AI runs on the servers and we want to full the worlds with players + entities (creatures) there is a significant win in implementing the logic in C++. Say 100 players are online per world, and we simulate 100 entities in a 100m radius around the player, then the server needs to simulate 100 x 100 = 10000 entities. This scale makes it a win. If the game was only simulating 100 entities in the client it wouldn’t be so important.
I added “fairly” to “modern” because I didn’t want some smart-alec telling me that C++11 wasn’t modern! But it’s good to see that we have so many tech savvy community members.
– tl;dr –
Whilst we have flexibility with compilers on Linux and Mac OS X, we’re much more restricted with the PS4 toolchain. Thankfully it’s still fairly modern.
But as you point out, expecting a fully C++14 or C++17 compliant compiler across all the toolchains would be a pointless risk - given the features we’d take advantage of.
How do you script the AI ? Years ago i made great expirences with LUA (used it for the simulations of a swarm intelligence) which is a native C/C++ scripting language with good performence and easy use 
They use LUA for creating mods for WoW as well.
yeah … the performance is really good and it’s easy to handle and lightweight. if @devs (would) use it this for scripting parts it would accelerate development for sure.
That’s all super exciting, but I’m most excited about a native C++ application. It’s pretty amazing what Minecraft can do with Java, but it won’t hold a candle to native C++ for speed.
So, will the native beta be Microsoft-Windows-only still, or are you willing to get cross-platform feedback early this time so it’s not an afterthought or an Arkham Knight redux?
The Steam version currently supports Windows and OS X; I think it’s safe to assume that the native C++ build will also target both of those. Also, it sounds like we’re unlikely to get a PS4 beta purely because Sony doesn’t have a great channel for doing that.
(Also, the devs do much of their actual work on Linux, which I suspect helps them build the game in a pretty platform-agnostic way)
Ambition is to deliver C++ beta and release in parallel on Windows and OSX. (It’s my personal ambition to get the Linux version out as well.)
As @nevir says, there isn’t the infrastructure for EA on PS4 at the moment. But we talk with Sony regularly about opportunities in this direction.