Celestial Empire News

Dear Community,

In creating a more familiar and inspired world, we put a lot of effort into understanding how the ancient Chinese lived their lives. This includes more than just reading historical records and looking at traditional architecture. We discovered interesting similarities between our culture and the ancient Chinese while trying to understand the technology and sciences used during the Tang dynasty. The significance of alcohol and its influence on history became clear. Baijiu's role in religious, political, and everyday people's affairs was too important to ignore. This meant we couldn't skip a distillery on the list of buildings necessary to help your cities grow prosperous.



Baijiu of the past
While today's production is mechanised and monitored through sophisticated equipment to ensure the correct notes come through in the taste, the ancient Chinese had to rely more on their instincts and ingenuity. This means that hundreds of years ago, the process was theoretically ‌simpler, but it still took years to master. Sorgo was steamed and prepared for the fermentation process in special holes in the ground. This is where the flavour profile is determined. Depending on bacteria and other microorganisms in the soil, the taste of baijiu changes. The next step of production is the distillation of the alcohol. This is where the baijiu masters would pay special attention to the bubbles forming on the top of the liquid. They are an indicator of the quality and how much flavour baijiu has. They would monitor how long the bubbles linger and remove bits if the liquid that didn’t meet their expectations. After they have the perfect alcohol, distilled batches of baijiu are left in cool cellars to age, which further enriches the flavour. We tried to emulate these steps in our game.



Our distilleries
The distillery unlocks once your city welcomes in the third tier of citizens. It consists of scholars. At this time you should have access to sorgo fields. They will have to be connected to the nearest river to ensure the highest quality harvests. Additionally, you should be able to create fine pottery. The science and artistry needed to create high-quality baijiu will be possible with the help of scholars. As they introduce the beverage into your city, they will require it as a part of their lives. Baijiu will be a part of their need for recreation. Alcohol will be distributed to your citizens through a system of warehouses scattered around your city.





We are trying to find these small details that will allow you to immerse yourselves in managing an ancient Chinese city—basing the needs of your citizens on real-life necessities to enhance the experience of being a true governor attending to the demands of the people. We constantly seek new ideas to help us improve the game. What elements are you looking forward to? Do you have things you’d like us to include? Let us know in our Discord and social media!

See you next time,
The Devs

Dear Community!
Your cities are under attack! Nature brings its mightiest soldiers to destroy your city’s economy and buildings! Not every day in your life as the governor will be smooth sailing. Disasters will plague your cities from time to time and threaten your citizens’ safety, but you can be prepared. The majority of them can be mitigated through specialised buildings and characters. So continue reading to learn how to survive some of the disasters that are lurking to end your city.

Fires
Since the majority of your citizens use an open fire to warm themselves and cook fires will be an often occurrence in your city. Every building can catch fire, so remember to watch out for them. They spread fast and travel from building to building and before you know it you may not be able to stop them. So be prepared! To prevent fires from scorching your lands, remember to build plenty of wells. Citizens working at them will continuously save important infrastructure.



Locust
These small insects are a threat to your food supply chains. Swarms of locusts will appear in farming attachments. They will ramage through your fields making it difficult/impossible to produce food. To stop these bugs from getting all your supplies make sure you have your duck farms and locust hunter’s hut somewhere in your city. When your crops are jeopardized this brave individual will summon local ducks to defeat the horrifying swarms of insects.


These are only two of the disasters and weather conditions influencing your city which we planned for the final version of the game. As we move along with the production there will be more information on these dangerous events. Remember to make sure you can protect your cities from these disasters and pay attention to what’s happening to the buildings. There will be warnings, but the longer you decide to ignore them, the more devastating consequences you will have to face.
If there are any other disasters you see fit for your game, let us know! We are waiting for your ideas in our Discord and on our social media!
See you there!
The Devs

Dear community!
The environment is full of life! A variety of animals are hiding around your settlement. Most of them are domesticated and play many key roles in the economy. They can be sources of food, produce valuable resources or help your citizens in laborious tasks.

Ox and horse
These hard-working animals of extraordinary power will help with food and recources production. They work the fields alongside your citizens, allowing them to survive without a problem.

Duck
They are adorable, they waddle around and they for sure are delicious. The survival of your citizens depends on your duck farms, so please take good care of these adorable birds.

Silk moths
With their help, your citizens can create some of the most expensive materials in the world. This resource will be a part of the evolution of your cities.

Panda
One of the most recognisable animals in Chinese culture. They roll around in the bamboo forest munching on shoots and leaves. Their chill attitudes bring peace to the land around your settlements.

Fox
They bring life to the nearby forests. If you see an orange blur speeding through the greenery, you know it’s the sly fox running around, hunting, or playing.

Dog
They are just good boys, true protectors of the household, and friends to your citizens. You can find them barking around in gardens and outside houses.

Not all animals can be useful or pretty, locust will plague your citizens. You can fight with them using specialised buildings and characters, who protect your cities and maintain the production of resources.
If you can think of any other animals we could add, please let us know!

See in our Discord!

Dear community,
When creating maps a lot of emphases is placed on the wildlife surrounding your future city. Terrain and rivers can guide you to places where your settlement will begin, but it is nature that will provide some of the most necessary resources. Plants and trees are crucial sources of building materials as well as a source of heat for your citizens during the cold winter months.

We introduced a huge variety of shapes and colours to create a diverse environment. This allows you as a player to seek locations that not only will have a vast amount of resources but also will look aesthetically pleasing.

Here is a set of foliage you can find on the map.

Bushes and grass.
These cover the vast majority of the map. We are working on the possibility of finding small patches of gorgeous flowers hidden in the tall grass.

Deciduous trees.
There are two tree types in this category: birch and oak. They change their appearance drastically with shifting seasons. This creates a more colourful look to the game and may even remind players to prepare for the upcoming winter.

Conifers.
Dense spruce and pine forests spread over mountainous areas. They are a fantastic source of wood for the citizens. These are evergreen and will always stand out in the winter months.

Colourful trees.
Peach trees and magnolia yulan bring life and colour to the environment. They are some of the most beautiful plants you can find in the wild on the map.

Domesticated plants.
We introduced plants to diversify buildings. We want to show the sophisticated details and gardening available to the upper classes of the citizens.

Bamboo forests.
There used to be a little exploit, which gave your city almost infinite amounts of wood. Even though this has been fixed since bamboo forests are still a viable wood source.

The plant variety presented in this devblog encompasses only a selected group available on one of the maps. We’re constantly working on new elements of the environment and creating new variants of the already existing plants. If you have any suggestions of what regional variants of trees or bushes we should add, don’t forget you can message us on our discord server or comment here.

Until next time,
The Devs

Dear Community!
One of our main objectives while creating the game is to allow players to create complex cities that spread over large areas. We want their settlements to look busy and full of life, with a multitude of different buildings and NPCs running around. This may be difficult when our player base has a large variety of different computers, some of them better, others worse. We need to make sure that they all will be able to play the game with no major problems and at least a satisfactory framerate. To achieve that, we decided to use a mixture of techniques.



Every building that players can place on the map is divided into the main mesh and smaller props, which get hidden when the camera moves away. The main mesh has multiple LODs, which lower the number of triangles on the scene by simplifying the shape of the building. Some of them are generated by the engine, while others are crafted by hand to make sure they still have a satisfying amount of detail. Additionally, when objects are placed on the scene they are caught by a special system that aggregates identical meshes to minimize the Draw Calls. This frees the CPU's resources, which are then used to calculate for example the economy among other things.



We use a similar solution when it comes to NPCs assigned to buildings. When the camera moves away, characters stop moving and then slowly disappear once the distance between them and the camera is large enough.

Drawing roads also turned out to be an optimisation challenge. To achieve a good visual effect each tile of the road has to differ from the ones next to it, which forced us to use Decals. On their own, they are not viable on large maps. We solved this by using Runtime Virtual Texture technology. Thanks to it, we are able to design a sheet on which we placed every single terrain texture. Then when roads are placed, only one source needs to be active, even though there’s a visual distinction between tiles.

Citizens of the city turned out to be a challenge as well. To be able to create crowded streets we had to use AI based on HISM (Hierarchical Instanced Static Mesh). It allows us to connect many static meshes into one, which is later on drawn in many different places. This reduces the number of Draw Calls, as information about the texture has to be sent out only once. We use the vertex animation method to move our citizens, so instead of moving their bones, we use information coded into textures to move triangles on of the static meshes. All NPCs have a shared AI, which chooses the starting and ending points of their journey and then sends them on their way.



These are just a few techniques we use to optimize the game and make it run on as many different computers as possible. These technical aspects of the process may often not look spectacular, but without them, the game would never run on even the highest-end computers. Our programmers spend countless hours on these tasks and they deserve their own time in the spotlight. If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to ask, we’ll try to answer.

See you next time
The Devs