Celestial Empire News

Hello Constructors!

Building ancient Chinese cities sure is cool, but wouldn’t you mind having a little more fun while doing it? We come to the rescue! To diversify your experience, we want to introduce you to recent changes in the choice which a player has to make when he reaches The Age Of Craftsmen. Now, players can choose between two new mechanics, the Festival mechanic and Fertility. Of course… like before, you also have the option to make no selection, but we guarantee that you'll be missing out! In this devblog, we'll delve into the mechanics of Festivals and how they can bring your city to life.


[h2]FESTIVALS[/h2]
To access Festivals, after picking it while advancing to The Age Of Craftsmen, you first need to unlock the Market in the Technology Tree. Once you've built a Market in your city, you can initiate festivals through it. Clicking on the Market opens a window displaying the available festivals. Each festival offers different effects and lasts for a specific period. During a festival, you not only reap its bonuses but also experience visual enhancements throughout your city. NPCs celebrating in key locations, fireworks, kites, and banners are just some of the festive elements you will notice.


[h2]FESTIVAL LIMITATIONS[/h2]
When one festival ends, you must wait for an appropriate cooldown period before launching another. Each festival also has a food cost, which varies depending on the festival you choose. This food comes from different tiers, mostly depending on the social class involved, and in varying quantities. Furthermore, each subsequent festival will be proportionally more expensive to host. We've also added new decorations that can be placed on city roads. These decorations now increase the tax revenue from the social group within their influence range.


We hope you enjoy this new addition and the vibrancy it brings to your cities. As always, we appreciate your feedback and support. Happy building, and may your empire flourish with the spirit of celebration! Stay tuned for more updates, and don’t forget to share your thoughts with us. Let us know what kind of festival you would like to see the most.

Till later!
The Devs

Hello Constructors!

The governor's job is no easy one, as it is the person responsible for all the strategic decisions regarding the city’s growth. Maintaining a positive relationship with the gods is a must. One does not want to fall into disgrace, and it’s way better to have some divine help. To progress your city into the next stage, first you need to ask for the gods’ support. And that is… the monument. You could have already seen the Weeping Fountain or the Jade Emperor, but we finished another monument – Palace On The Water.


[h2]BUILDING'S MODEL[/h2]

To create that building, first we worked on the concept, which later served as a basis for the detailed construction planning. We gather references to real ancient Chinese constructions and that’s when it gets tricky. The ancient architecture of China can surprise with the complexity of its elements, each of which serves as a building structure and is also a decoration. All things are ready, so it’s time to move on to modeling using Blender.


[h2]TEXTURES[/h2]

After the model is exported, it’s time to put it together with some textures. For such a big monument we prepared 3 materials: the stone base of the building, roof tiles and facade elements. And once everything looked good, another step was to import the model to the engine, where we created a blueprint and added some decorative elements to the building, such as water, plants, lights, effects, NPCs and so on.


[h2]MONUMENT IN COMPARISON[/h2]

The last step was to see how the monument was doing in the game’s environment, in comparison to all the other buildings. Palace On The Water is a very big and detailed building. But if you don’t trust us, you can always look at the image below.



Monuments play a very big part in our game. They sum up the city’s progression. More monuments = more advanced city. And what do you think about Palace On The Water? It sure is huge, but did it capture your heart? With 3 monuments ready and presented, we are currently working on the last monument. Do you have any guesses about what that could be? Let us know in the comments!

See ya!
The Devs

To all the Constructors!

Today is a very special day in China and without a rich Chinese culture, Celestial Empire wouldn't be the same as it is today. Let's give a warm welcome to the Lunar New Year! We would love to show our appreciation by engaging in those important celebrations together with you. May all your wishes come true in 2024. Wishing you lots of energy, good spirit and the best luck to your loved ones. As the Year of the Dragon arrives, may you spread your wings and soar high, with great fortune lying ahead. Stay safe on your life's journey. We're really thankful for having such a great community like you!



Best wishes
from the whole President Studio!

Welcome Constructors!

As time goes by, we’re slowly approaching the day of the Celestial Empire’s release. Hard to believe how much time has passed and how many things have changed since we started, isn’t it? But we’re finally getting there, so it’s about time to talk about it more.

[h2]EARLY ACCESS[/h2]

The game will come out first in early access. But what is it and why is that – you might ask. EA is a solution thanks to which you will be getting a fully playable version with the promised content of the game, while helping us on our game-making journey. We are really looking forward to including our community in the process of improving the game to its fullest potential. With all the basics covered, our focus will be on adding new exciting content, balancing mechanics and polishing already existing features with you guiding us on the right path. Expect lots of updates coming! More details about early access will be available soon on the FAQ on our Steam store page.

[h2]RECENT CHANGES[/h2]

It’s been a busy time for our developers, who are working hard like bees. Lots of different things have changed since last time, so let us show you what we have been up to.

Now an altar is not a thing that is already placed in the world, once you start the game. An altar is a special place where you can make offerings to the godly powers, but you have to unlock and build it first. That also means that you are the one to decide its placement, which gives you more creative freedom in constructing your city. Once the player builds an altar, he gets to choose his godly patron. Each one of them (Ao Guang, Wukong, Nüwa) provides different changes and bonuses to the game’s mechanics and will lead a player further on his journey. After choosing a patron, there's no way to change it, so choose carefully.



The new and the first monument to construct is called Weeping Fountain, representing the moon goddess Chang’e. Once the player meets requirements, he can unlock the monument and build a base for it in a place of his choice and start delivering offerings to the altar. This process can be paused at any moment. The monument no longer emerges in one moment, but it slowly appears piece by piece, according to the offerings' progression. At the end, the monument’s construction must be finalized to advance your city.



[h2]HELPFUL FEATURES [/h2]

To make your game even more enjoyable, we decided to add a helpful feature - highlights. When a player hovers over an icon of a building on the lower bar, all the buildings of its type light up, which makes it easier to keep track of them. There’s also a road’s highlight. It shows you the operation range of some of the buildings, once you click on them. And, while placing a building that requires a warehouse to function, highlights will let you know about all the warehouses in range of a chosen place. Decoratives, just like religious buildings, work only for the social class assigned to them.



[h2]AND MORE COMING…[/h2]

Is that all? Ha, of course not. We are currently working on new maps, new tutorials, improvements and many many different things are being developed at the time we speak. All to meet not only our expectations, but yours. Here's a little new map's teaser!


Do you like new changes? Or more importantly... are you as excited for Celestial Empire as we are? Hop on discord and feel free to share your thoughts with us!

See ya
The Devs

Hello Constructors!

There are times when any game can give you a headache, especially when some of its elements are unintuitive and hard to locate. Navigating through the system should proceed smoothly, without any obstacles, so you can enjoy your game in peace to the fullest. From what we’ve heard from you, some UI elements weren’t so intuitive as we believed them to be. We listen to your feedback and suggestions – that’s why we took this matter into our own hands! Let us present you some of the examples of UI improvements we’ve been working on recently.

[h2]CODEX, QUEST LOG[/h2]
As you can see, codex is a whole new section you haven’t been able to see before in the demo release. You are the one who suggested we make one! It’ll pose as your guide through Celestial Empire – explaining the controls, mechanics, resources, buildings and so on. So, anytime you feel lost, or you just want to make sure how anything works, checking the codex is definitely a way to go! To get to the codex, first you have to open quest log by clicking on a question mark visible on an upper bar of a quest (check out the screenshot at the"lower bar" section). There you are able to switch tabs and switch to the codex straight from the quest log.



[h2]STATISTICS[/h2]
You’ve been mentioning that it is hard to keep track of your income, resources or traded goods. That’s why we implemented yet another tab, that will let you check it all in one place instead of going through multiple tabs. You can check a resource's quantity change or its quantity history.



[h2]LOWER BAR[/h2]
Even the lower bar had its redesign, as it is the UI element you will probably be using the most. There were a few problems to address: its unintuitiveness, chaotic sorting of categories and tools. Now every icon represents one of some building categories, so everything was sorted anew to make things easier to find – now there are more categories, which narrows down the number of buildings included in one. There are also some plus icons, posing as shortcuts of your choice, for you to design. For example, you can put some of your most used production chains or buildings there! There are 5 slots like this, with 3 of them already assigned at the beginning, but you can freely change it later in the game. Tools are now located in one place on the right side of the lower bar – delete tool, move tool, copy tool, upgrade tool and a whole new blueprint tool, which will allow you to plan your buildings before actually placing them. Also, delete tool and upgrade tool got enhanced in the UI, as the new design of the lower bar is now lighter.

At the top of the screen we've made it possible for you to customize shown resources. There you can attach your choosen raw materials and curriences, up to 5 of them on each side in total.



[h2]UI SCALING[/h2]
If you think that’s the end, you couldn’t be more wrong. We saw your constant rambling about the uncustomizable size of UI elements. For some of you they were too small, thus quests were hard to read and, but for the other half of you, it took up too much space on your screen. We chose to follow your suggestions and meet you halfway by including UI scaling as an option in the settings. Although this feature is not ready yet, we are working on it, and it will be available in the full game’s release, so… just have some faith in us that it'll work without any problems.



Do you think that these changes will improve your city-building experience? No one likes crappy UI and having to go through a mess to find anything… so if you’ve got any other suggestions, share them with us! And if you want to show us some interesting examples of some hideous UIs, why not join our community discord server and let’s have a convo!

See ya!
The Devs