Celestial Empire News

Dear community!

At the beginning of this Chinese New Year, we wish you all the fortune and luck. May this New Year bring many opportunities your way, so you can grow and prosper in the upcoming year and beyond.
While we can’t give you a more traditional red packet, we hope that the upcoming free and time-limited demo will be enough of a gift this season.
May the tiger bring you good luck and fortune.

Happy Chinese New Year!
The Devs

Dear community!

Usually, the complexity of a strategy game has to be expressed through a multitude of icons and windows. This can create chaos on the screen and scare players away. Because of this, for the last month or two, we have been focusing on the player experience and how to bring out the most exciting aspects of the game without making it overwhelming. All stats and buffs affecting your city have to be clearly stated in the UI. We looked into many different designs and solutions, searching for the most suitable ones.

The main menu:
Before you can do anything in the game, you will be greeted by the main menu. The intimate sight of your gubernatorial office should get you in the right mood and have you reflect on the upcoming decisions you will have to make.



The menus have been designed with functionality in mind. We want all windows to be clear and intuitive, so you, as a player, know exactly where to look for specific settings and features.



The Clock:
Different mechanics are shown through changes in the UI. The most important one would be the time system. The clock will show you changing seasons. Each season will have its own quirks, summer will bring bountiful harvests, while winter will stall your production. A crucial aspect shown in this part of the UI is the twelve animal patrons and the way some of them will affect your city. While all these aspects are still in early development, we already prepared space especially for them.



Iterations:
All elements have gone through a countless number of styles. Some of them are shown below:



The entire team was deeply engaged in choosing the most suitable colors, themes and decorations for the UI. In the end, the decision to make the panels red and gold came from the cultural and historical importance of these colors. They will remind you of the Emperor who is taking patronage of your gubernatorial rule. His presence is supposed to be seeping from many elements of the game, as it is your honor and duty to be the extension of his power.

The decorative elements of the UI brought a lot of discussion to the team. Our graphic designer prepared a multitude of choices and, for the longest time, we could not decide on only one:



In the end, we managed to settle on this design:



Tell us what you think about the UI! We can’t wait to share some BIG news soon and feedback on everything we’ve been doing so far would be vastly appreciated. You can send us messages on social media, Steam and Discord.

See you next time!
The Devs

Dear Community!
The work on our game continues. The devs are making bigger and smaller adjustments to the game. We’re preparing it for the upcoming playtests and even more exciting things next year.

All the elements mentioned in previous devblogs are becoming more advanced and new things are coming along nicely. We can’t wait to show them off.

Speaking of showing off. If you have been following our Steam Page, you may have noticed the new button available to you:



This means that the playtest registration is now open! We invite you to request access and join our playtesters group!

Unfortunately, there are at least a couple of things to know before requesting access:

The date of the playtests is still in the air and we are not sure how long from now they are. We want to avoid disappointing you all, so we will wait as long as needed.

We will not let everyone in at once. The playtesters will be let in waves to make sure we have fresh minds looking for imperfections in our game.

The order of playtesters who are let in is RANDOMISED by Steam. As developers, we have no possibility of sending the playtests to specific players. We can only tell Steam how many we need at a time.

The game WILL BE BUGGY. We can’t eliminate all bugs. We are already sorry for that, but that’s what the playtests are for. They will help us eliminate as many bugs as possible.

We will definitely mention all this again when the playtests open.

That’s all for this month. There isn’t too much to update you about, the devs are working but the changes are not spectacular enough to share yet. We will see you with more exciting information about the game and its development in January. If you want to ask us about anything, join our Discord and follow us on social media!


See you next year (hehe)
KarKarola

P.S.
We couldn't help ourselves. Here's a tiny sneak peek of what we're up to.

Dear Community!

We’re coming to you with another portion of the news!

THE SAWMILL
We would like to introduce you to the workflow behind one of the buildings which you can find in our game. This is the sawmill. It will turn raw logs into processed wood, which can be used as a building material or fuel to heat your citizens’ homes in the winter.

1. The choice
We can skip this step as we have already chosen the sawmill.

2. The research
We looked into the reality of sawmill workers’ lives at the time. Among other useful and interesting facts, we learned they used exclusively bronze tools.

3. The initial concept art



4. The blockout



5. The detailed concept art



6. The raw model



7. Texturing



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

8. Iterations and adjustments



9. Import into the game’s engine



10. Adding NPCs and animations
Now comes the time when we can finally animate our buildings. As you have read in devblog number 3, we have finished a portion of the NPCs who will inhabit your future cities. We placed them in the buildings and prepared their animations. You can see the final result below.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

HOW ARE WE DOING?
We have recently expanded our team, so even more talented people are working on this special title. We started creating environmental elements and the rivers already started flowing on the first map, which will be available in the game. The Steam Page got a major update, and we reorganised the workflow, so we have become more effective than ever. As soon as possible, we are hoping to share with you snippets of the soundtrack.

So many amazing things are in the works right now.

See you all next month,
Krzysztof

Hello everyone!
As the progress is being made, we are updating our Steam Page along with it!

The old, slightly outdated descriptions of features were replaced with new and exciting details about the game. Many elements introduced in previous devblogs are now proudly displayed on the front page.



The screenshots previously visible on the page are now outdated and represent the prototype of the game rather than its current state. The old trailer was also deleted and we will begin work on the new one shortly.



You can see beautiful images of landscapes with a huge variety of buildings. This can definitely give you an idea of what your city can become. Individual buildings have their quirks and details to give them a bit more personality.



While the streets of the city look empty at the moment, you may be able to catch some NPCs hiding around their houses. They are in the early stages of development, so they are quite shy about leaving the comfort of their own front yards. There is still a lot to be done about this predicament, but we are working on populating your city with characters who will go about their day, living their lives to the fullest. Their daily routines will make your city more colourful and animated.



The development team is working on the final version of what the game will eventually become and this means that more and more materials are coming your way!

All the upcoming images and details will be available on our Discord, where you can also talk with developers and other players!

See you there!
KarKarola