We've just launched our most substantial update to date!
After several years of development and delays, we’re thrilled to present the culmination of all these efforts. As we mentioned in a previous post, this update didn't turn out as polished as we had planned and contains numerous flaws. However, we're hopeful that you'll still find it enjoyable, and rest assured, we're committed to addressing and resolving all these issues promptly.
This update introduces an array of significant changes and improvements, and it may feel like an entirely new game. Here's a glimpse of what's in store:
List of key features:
Scalable large ship parts for building massive capital ships
3D ship construction
Isolated editor screen for convenient ship design in survival mode
Engineering drones
New battle game mode for testing ships in epic fleet battles
For more detailed information, you can read our three recent posts that delve into details of some aspects of the new update. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/330460/view/3730728845595903065 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/330460/view/3730728845599490767 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/330460/view/3730728845602664497
The update is soon. Pre-release news, part 3/3
Greetings! In this post we will talk again about upcoming changes and features.
User Interface
Earlier, we believed that the more UI elements on the screen, the cooler it would be. However, that's not the case. We conducted a thorough analysis of our previous UI and discovered that most of the elements are merely visual clutter and often unnecessary.
A good interface should not be cluttered. On the contrary, it should be as simple as possible, displaying only the information you currently need. Therefore, we have completely redesigned the UI, making it much simpler than before.
Previous
New
The difference is so significant that it may appear as if the game has become more casual. However, this is not the case. Information that is needed less frequently is now tucked away in various menus and windows, keeping the main screen uncluttered.
System points \ Armor layer \ Single inventory
These are some important changes and systems we've already discussed in one of our previous posts, so we'll just leave a link to it here. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/330460/view/3108047857126282194
Battle mode
We've added a game mode where you can quickly and conveniently place the ships you've created and test them in epic fleet battles.
Tech tree
Tech tree was firstly introduced quite a time ago, but there was a mess. We redesigned everything and now it should be more interesting and enjoyable to research.
Tutorial
Celestial Command is a game of an unusual genre, so making a proper tutorial particularly important in this case. While we had a tutorial in place previously, it was structured as a series of separate missions. We have now completely redesigned it, integrating it directly into the main game. It greets the player right from the start and explains all the key aspects of the game within the standard gameplay. Afterward, you can seamlessly continue your game.
Music
Some of the music has been replaced with numerous new, distinctive compositions created by our generous new composer, who offered to compose music for the game, Necatuss.
New modules and weapons
We've added some new modules and there is some of them.
Long range cruise missiles with top flight profile.
Rapid fire cannon for defense against missiles
Shield amplifiers which extends durability of energy shield
Nuclear rocket launchers
New engines and visual effects
Charge cannon
New door animation for solar panels
This was the final part of the post about the upcoming changes and we plan to release the update within the next few days.
The update is soon. Pre-release news, part 2/3
Hello. The second part of this post about the upcoming update will be focused not on what will be introduced, but rather on what will be temporarily removed.
Why remove something in the first place? Celestial Command is our first project, and like many other inexperienced developers, we fell into a common trap known as 'feature creep' – the desire to implement numerous cool features without proper consideration of whether they are truly necessary or feasible. This becomes even more problematic when previously added features are not properly completed yet.
As a result, over the years of development, the game has accumulated some mistakes, and in certain aspects, it appears as a collection of incomplete features, which could be frustrating. To resolve this, we've decided to take a step back, carefully reevaluate every aspect of the game, and focus on its core elements that make it enjoyable.
Of course, no one likes when features are removed, but once the base game is stable and polished, we will gradually reintroduce features one by one, subjecting each to thorough testing to ensure that new features are both enjoyable and really enhance the gameplay experience.
So, what aspects are affected?
Multiplayer
Any game is better with co-op multiplayer, and we are determined to include this feature in our game. However, despite listing multiplayer functionality on the store page for an extended period, it has never functioned as intended. We were committed to fixing it and making it playable for this update, but due to time constraints, we decided to release the initial version without multiplayer to prevent further delays.
The multiplayer tag has been temporarily removed from the store page to prevent any potential confusion. However, once we are confident that the single-player game is stable and functioning correctly, we will make every effort to reintroduce multiplayer as swiftly as possible.
Crew
The crew system underwent significant changes. We made the decision to remove the regular crew and food as they didn't add much interest to the game and were, in fact, more of an annoyance. However, keeping the concept of a ship captain with unique skills that affect ship performance seems like an interesting idea.
Nevertheless, although we've already started working on the skills system, we found that the current implementation lacked the depth and balance we desire. Therefore, the skill system has been temporarily removed and will be returned once the skills become more engaging and balanced.
Also, the skill system will work even better in co-op multiplayer, allowing each player to level up skills for their preferred play-style.
A workshop with ships
With the addition of 3D construction, the Steam Workshop now makes even more sense than before, as ships can be more complex. However, we want to ensure that the new construction system is reliable and that your ship files will not break in the future. As a result, the workshop feature is temporarily removed and will be returned later when the game is properly tested.
Trading
This point will probably seem the most unpleasant to you, because unlike others, the trading system is removed not temporarily, but is completely replaced by another system of delivery tasks. This may not sound good, but we have an explanation for this decision.
Of course, the idea that you can start with modest trade routes between stations, buy where it's cheap, sell where it's expensive, then buy more ships and send them out to trade, build your own trade stations and end up influence the living economy of an entire galaxy - all this certainly sounds very interesting. We used to think so too and wanted to implement it.
The problem is that all of this is essentially a completely different game of a completely different genre. It's a galaxy / empire builder built into the current ship construction game. Essentially two games in one.
This is a very difficult task even for developers who make a game exclusively about that and focus as much as possible on the economic simulation of the entire galaxy, with strong optimization of ship systems, where ships are a single, non-modular object in order to achieve better performance of large fleets, and even such games have many problems from an economic simulation, AI, performance and many other things.
For our game about ship construction, implementing such a system is a practically impossible task. Such a system will only burden the game and it will be impossible to bring it all into good condition.
This is still a great idea, and we likely will try to implement it in another game in the future which will be built from the ground up specially for this purpose. But here in Celestial Command, it is not a good decision.
However! We still want to have freighters in the game because cargo spaceships are cool, so we have decided to implement a cargo mission system. That is, it will be something like a simulator of a space trucker and not a simulator of a galactic trading tycoon.
And by the way, such a system may work even better than a theoretical economic simulator, because cargo routes can be chosen in a more interesting way, with more clear rewards and events along the way, instead of hauling ore many times between the same stations. This system is almost ready, however it is still raw and unbalanced, so we have decided to finish it first before releasing it in the game to be sure that it provides a great experience for our players.
Landing on planets
The same situation applies to planets. They look cool, but a full implementation into the gameplay loop would require too many changes in the game's core and balance, especially when considering that ships are still flying on a 2D plane. Therefore, we have decided to completely remove planet surface locations. Perhaps later, they may be reintroduced as a background for the combat mode, but we're not certain about that just yet.
That's all for now. In the next post we will talk about some more features that will be introduced in the upcoming update.
The update is soon. Pre-release news, part 1/3
Greetings! After such a colossal delay in development, we are glad to announce that the upcoming update is nearing completion and is scheduled for release at the end of the month!
Our initial goal was to provide you with a perfectly polished version of the game, where everything would run smoothly. But unfortunately, at this moment, we haven't been able to achieve the desired level of quality, and there is still much work to be done. However, the game is no longer in a semi-disassembled and broken state, and the core systems are functioning overall.
We've decided that further delays are unacceptable, so we want to release the update in its current state and enhance it through regular, often, and small updates, as we've done in the past before that three-year delay.
Furthermore, it's obvious that no update can fully justify such a long delay. Therefore, we've decided to release what we've managed to achieve and continue development with regular updates. We still encounter some real-life difficulties related to situation in our countries, as mentioned in previous posts. But we more or less have managed to learn to work in such situation, that allowing us to continue with development.
So, what can you expect in the next update?
Basically, every aspect of the game has been impacted, and the change log is so extensive, filled with countless small details that it no longer makes much sense. So, we will focus on discussing the most significant aspects of the upcoming update. Many things have already been described in previous posts, but that was a long time ago, and some of them have changed, so we'll tell you about the most important features again.
3D construction and capital ships
These two are the most significant and noticeable features of the upcoming update. Now you will be able to construct ships in 3 dimensions, so the ships no longer will look like a flat pancake, while the control of ships remains in a 2D plane, keeping its nice simplicity of control.
Moreover, every module is available in 3 or 4 sizes, which allows you to build capital ships with enclosed hangars to keep smaller ships inside.
You can place any module on any side with any angle for decoration purpose. As a result, you now have completely new possibilities for creativity, allowing you to easily construct absolutely impressive and unique ships.
(ships above were designed by the community member GNUSMAS)
We wanted to give you a lot of options for creative ship design, and we're glad to introduce these new features which seem to work well to make it possible.
Drones
The long-awaited engineering drones now act as the main tool for constructing ships and salvaging debris. They are much more comfortable to use than the previous short-range robotic arms, especially for construction of large ships.
We talked about it earlier in this post, but here is some images again https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/330460/view/3609103752592777973
And also, later we plan to add combat drones too, so it will be possible to build carrier ship.
Editor mode
Since ship building can now be more complex, we've developed a special isolated editor mode where, even while in survival mode, you can instantly place modules, experimenting as if you were in sandbox mode, and then press a button to order the designed ship to be built on top of your standard ship.
Mobile base
Having a huge ship which will act as a mobile base - it's a cool concept and it was our idea from the start of the development of Celestial Command. Now it is finally implemented in the game.
Now you will need to build your own large ship which will not be armed at first, but will be a base for warehouses, production modules and the warp drive, while on a small ship you will complete missions, returning to the base from time to time to replenish supplies.
World
There were significant changes in the game world. We realized that having multiple ships in various systems simultaneously was impractical, and let's be honest, this system never functioned properly, it had numerous bugs, caused several restrictions, and a significant load on the PC.
After the complete system redesign, locations became larger, planets appeared larger and realistic. In orbital mode, orbital mechanics gained more significance, and in aero mode, we added a large asteroids field to the environment to reduce the emptiness of space and make navigation more interesting.
The global map was also extensively overhauled to improve its appearance and usability.
That's all for now. in the following posts we will tell you more about upcoming changes and other new features.
News about development
Hello! Yeah, you haven't heard from us for a long time and we are very ashamed of this. Basically, we found ourselves in a kind of moral trap. The update, or even a blog post was so inexcusable long time ago that it seemed that just posting a post would not be enough to justify the delay, and the longer there was no post, the more it seemed so.
Because of that, our plan was to not post anything about this update, and just release a good and high-quality update before the New Year. Probably it was a mistake and we are going to solve it.
But anyway, the problem is, that we can’t manage to complete it before the New Year, and it will be delayed again.
The reason for this is the war in Ukraine, namely, problems with the availability of electricity for Artaani who lives in Ukraine. Approximately half of the time electricity is not available in his house and since Artaani is responsible for many core systems of the game, availability of electricity in his house affects development speed directly. Not to mention how difficult it is to maintain normal morale in a country waging a defensive war. Romenics and Riya also has a lot of additional issues because they were forced to leave their home in Russia.
But anyway, we are currently in relatively secure places and despite such extreme conditions we will try to continue the development.
Currently, the main danger is mostly the threat of lack of money for basic needs. Therefore, we are glad that the game still has some sales, maybe small, but still, and we are very grateful to everyone who supports us on Patreon, despite the lack of updates and information from us.
We decided that from now on, we will try to publish info about development much more often.
Drones, capital ships and beginning of the game
Initially when we started developing of capital ships, we planned to spawn some “basic” capital ship and small ship right at the beginning of the game, because turned out that construction of your base from scratch is too complex and confusing task.
So, when you press “Start” button, you will see this
And this have a couple of problems:
It creates a lot of questions, everything is extremely confusing, a lot of individual modules, which for what? What is decoration and what is functional? All of these contraptions are way too complex for a new player who just launched the game. Also, it eliminates “feel of progression” because it seems like you already have everything on the start.
The game genre starts to feel more like RTS game when you have some “main building” and a worker which should gather resources, but that is not our goal. We want to keep game more like craft survival game when you start with bare minimum and gradually develop into something big.
So instead of giving capital ship right from the start, we focused on the task to make beginning of the game and construction of own capital ship more user friendly.
In result, all that you will have after start of the game is this
Yeah, that’s all. Storage, engines, and most importantly, engineering drones!
Of course, engineering robotic arms looks cool and we probably will use it somehow in the mid game, but its low range makes any kind of construction is extremely uncomfortable and tedious.
Drones, that is another matter, they can easily salvage debris from large radius around the ship and build anything in range, either own small ship or new capital ship.
Construction done, now back to salvaging
Landing pad
Yes, in earlier versions of the game, we already had similar drones, but now they are better than before. Earlier they were physically bound to the ship and was more like an animation effect, but now they acts like individual objects which may fly long away from its carrier ship, or could be destroyed, which is a good foundation for future combat drones.
Also, considering new 3D construction features, you can do something like this
Overall, we are happy with combinations of these 3D feature and drones on small starting ships, now it is easy and fun to extend starting ships into some interesting design just in a few clicks
New power generator, by the way
What about capital ship, earlier we had some problems with design some kind modules specially for large ships, with increased details and special visual design, but came out to the conclusion, that actually, it is not necessary, just a set of scaled up basic modules could work very well, and result could looks cool, especially considering 3D possibilities.
Possibility to place modules on different altitude or unusual rotation can be great tool to achieve interesting design, but player is not forced to do that, and even modules placed only on zero plane should looks well because such method of construction is very comfortable, especially for a new player.
Here is a preparation of all modules for capital size ships. Implementation of Tier 4 size still have some questions considering number of mounting points and game performance, but we will resolve it somehow.
Game design
Also, we are working on a lot of other aspects of the game, mostly it is countless usability improvements, but another main task it is overall game design, answer on questions “what to do in the game?” which is always was a problem but should be solved to make it a proper game, not just construction sandbox.
Tutorial
We also completely redesigned tutorial, now it is not a separated buttons in the main menu, but a quest-based system which starts at the beginning and guide you through the start of the game.
Such type of tutorials is the best tutorials, because they don’t force you to learn everything, quit, start the new game, and implement what you managed to remember. Instead, you can just start a normal game, slowly learn the game step by step and continue when tutorial will be completed.
Also during implementation of tutorial, we, as developers more clearly see where the game has usability and game design issues which should be solved with high priority.
We will try to post info about development more often and keep your informed. Thanks.
No War
Hello, everyone.
To tell the truth, I’ve never thought that I will post this on Steam. As you know, Russia has invaded Ukraine. Our team is located in both of these countries, and the events happening now are absolutely terrible. When this war started, we froze our work, and now our Ukrainian colleague must evacuate, leaving everything behind.
We really want to continue the work on our game, and we really hope that we will make our dream project, but for now, work is fully frozen for an unexpected time. We know that it is disappointing, in fact, we worked on this update for such a long time, but we can't do anything. We are scared, we are against this war. All money from steam sales and patrons will go to our Ukrainian friend for survival and new equipment. We absolutely understand if you unsubscribe from our Patreon. Thanks for your support. NO WAR!
War in Ukraine
Hello, everyone.
To tell the truth, I’ve never thought that I will post this on Steam. As you know, Russia has invaded Ukraine. Our team is located in both of these countries, and the events happening now are absolutely terrible. When this war started, we froze our work, and now our Ukrainian colleague must evacuate, leaving everything behind.
We really want to continue the work on our game, and we really hope that we will make our dream project, but for now, work is fully frozen for an unexpected time. We know that it is disappointing, in fact, we worked on this update for such a long time, but we can't do anything. We are scared, we are against this war. All money from steam sales and patrons will go to our Ukrainian friend for survival and new equipment. We absolutely understand if you unsubscribe from our Patreon. Thanks for your support. NO WAR!
Update delayed, new command modules, background asteroids
We told that update going to be released in January, but unfortunately, there is still a lot of work to do so we need more time and the update will be delayed, sorry for that.
Another question, when it will be done?
Of course, we may say "delayed for 1 month" again, but honestly, we don't know, and we don't want to announce a date only to delay it again for another month in the future.
Generally speaking, we think it is almost impossible to specify the release date of any game unless the developer made a lot of similar games before, or the game is almost ready and only minor aspects should be tweaked before release. Both conditions are not true for this case, so the update was delayed for an unknown time.
However, we will try to avoid long periods without posts and will inform you about progress until release, so you will be able to keep track of it.
Also some news about development.
New command modules
Since construction will be possible in 3D, we have more freedom in the placement of command modules. So command modules are redesigned and now they have the standardized size and mounting points, which allow creating more various combinations of decorative modules around.
Background asteroids
Now there are decorative asteroids located below zero planes. We thought about more dense and visually interesting asteroids fields a long time ago, but considering the top-down view of the game, it had an unexpected problem - it was unclear, "is asteroids is a real obstacle, or is it located much below the trajectory of the ship"?
But we solved it by simply making decorative asteroids darker. It looks a bit weird but seems fine, and overall looks much better than without it. Also, it performs another important task, it indicated the velocity of the ship due to its shifting on the background during movement.
Changes in ship systems
Here is a list of some of the changes that will be done for the next update.
Structural integrity
Issue
Imagine how battles of flagships look in various sci-fi movies. Until a certain point, projectiles do not cause any significant damage. When a ship takes enough damage, there are explosions in different places, causing it to fall apart.
In CC, it does not look nearly as epic. Currently, projectiles are literally digging their way through the ship, immediately destroying its modules. As a result, even if the ship survives the battle, it looks like a gnawed apple, devoid of its original shape.
Of course, shields can solve this problem. However, we would be forced to make them account for 90% of the ship's durability, which would reduce the visual variety of battleships. We would like the hull to also seem like strong armor, as it’s often portrayed in sci-fi movies.
In addition, different modules may have very different HP values. For example, if you want to place a lot of small decor on the surface of some large module, then all of it will be blown away by the explosion of the first rocket.
Solution
Now ships will have a single HP pool, calculated from their size. Any hit will reduce this pool. When the value reaches zero, the modules themselves will start receiving damage directly, just as it is currently implemented. However, modules will have much less HP of their own, so they can be destroyed very quickly. You can think of this new system as structural integrity of sorts.
Thus, the problem described above is solved. At the same time, we have maintained the effect of ships physically losing their modules during combat.
Additionally, repairing a ship after each battle will no longer be an annoyance. That is because the HP pool can be replenished at the shipyard. Also, keeping track of the current status of any ship will now be more straightforward.
A single inventory for the entire ship
Issue
At first, it seemed that individual storage in each container was a good idea. Over time, it turned out to be annoying, especially for a ship with many containers.
Of course, it would be an interesting concept for some kind of first-person survival game where you would walk between different chests and sort everything. But in a game like CC, it just does not work.
Solution
Now, each ship will have only one inventory window, the maximum size of which is determined by the number of containers on the craft.
Simple and convenient.
Limited amount of armament per ship
Issue
Currently, you can build something like this:
Such ships are very effective in combat, but they are cheesy, and so are the battles between them.
Remember the various ships from sci-fi movies. Usually, their weapons occupy only 10-20% of the hull. In real battleships, it is similar. Below each turret, there is a large and complex system for servicing and controlling the weapon.
Solution
There are no simulations of internal logistics in CC, so we will achieve that more easily. Now, each weapon will require a specific amount of "weapon points.” The larger the ship, the more will be available.
Such a system will encourage building sophisticated ships instead of "a cube with cannons on each side."
3D construction in 2D space
We will start series of posts about core changes which will be introduced in the next update.
One of those things is 3D physics, which actually will be more like 2.5D
Earlier we told, that we are going to turn the game physics from 2D into fully 3D and already released preview version of that new system. 3D is great and gives some great new possibilities, however it also brings some disadvantages too.
Advantages
Possibility to rotate and place any module in 3D provides huge advantages related to ship constructor. In 3D, even with a small variations of modules it is possible to create large amount of various ship design. Also the ships no longer looks flat and large cannons places on top of the ships looks really nice.
Disadvantages
Navigation is way more harder. In space there is not too much landmarks to understand position of your ship relative to something. Especially if we are talking about altitude. It turned out very hard to understand, this object is above or below your ship? Will it be obstacle or not? It theoretically can be solved with good navigation tools plus all asteroids can be put at the 0 plane, but that leads to another problem.
Physics became less fun because collisions are rare. If all asteroids located at zero plane, you can just fly above an asteroids and don't worry about it anymore. In result, the space in fact, will became completely empty and boring.
Technical issue but still. Implementation of navigation of AI in 3D will became extremely complex.
Manual control of weapons will became useless because most likely enemy ship will be on different altitude than your ship, so all projectiles and lasers will miss the target. Of course there is a auto targeting mode, but manual control still can be fun.
Placement of engines will became much harder. A lot of additional engines will be required on top and bottom of the ship, only just to stabilize its rotation. That does not gives more fun and just annoying.
As you can see, there is only one advantage and a lot of disadvantages. And theoretically all disadvantages can be solved, as we thought earlier, but turned out, after implementation of all solutions it will turn Celestial Command in completely different game, something like "flight sim" game with first of third person view and such game will have very few common with the original concept of Celestial Command. So such solution is undesirable.
But that benefit from 3D is cool, so we found a way to keep it and avoid disadvantages.
How it will be done
The game will have fully 3D construction system. Modules can be placed on top, bottom, rotated in 3D and turrets can be rotated not only left and right, but also up and down. However all objects will located on 2D plane and there is no way to more ship up or down.
Such system will have some weird issues, but it will be easily solved with the next things:
If part of the ship will be shoot off, it will be slowly pulled towards zero altitude.
If the ship is quite tall and its center of mass a bit shifted up or down, the ship will slowly shift its position vertically to keep its center of mass at zero altitude.
Angle of a ship can be a bit changed due external forces, but it will be automatically stabilized.
During docking, If docking ports located on different altitude, ships will be a bit pulled up or down to align it for docking.
That systems may sound a bit weird, but during tests it looks great, both in orbital and aero game modes. Nice looking 3D ships with pleasant simplicity of 2D navigation and control.
