Hello Pioneers,
After much consideration, I've decided to put Celestial Frontier on hiatus. The game server will be temporarily shut down to cut costs during this transition period due to limited time available while starting a new family.
We started off working full time on this for over a year, but then life happened - I got married, we had two kids, and I needed to get a job. It's been a wild ride, and while the dream of Celestial Frontier hasn't gone away, the reality of two little kids at home means I simply don't have the time to give this project what it deserves right now.
What does this mean?
- The game server at game.celestialfrontier.com will be offline
- This website will remain available with all blog posts and information
- The next game server would start fresh with a new universe
- The Discord community remains open
Why now?
There is no activity and it is unlikely that activity will stir in the current state of the game. Running a game server costs money, and without players actively enjoying it, those costs are hard to justify.
Additionally, the game server has undergone massive code changes that were set up for a new server. This means we cannot make any updates at this time without a full refresh, which is not ready.
What does a comeback look like?
The rise of AI tools has been a game changer for solo developers. I've been using Claude Code and other new AI tooling to do development at work, and the productivity increases have been significant. What used to take weeks can now be done in days. I have significant interest in refining this development workflow and improving it. Celestial Frontier is superb candidate for such an endeavor!
Even with increased development productivity, I still simply do not have enough time in the day to invest at this point in time. But if Celestial Frontier does come back, it will likely be because AI has helped bridge the gap between my limited free time and the massive scope of this project. The vision hasn't changed - a procedurally generated universe where players cooperatively expand into the unknown - but the path to get there will be a lot differentthan it used to be.
In the past, working for hours writing code was the only way to make progress. Now I can generate a prompt that will lead to a decent sized feature being implemented. That prompt takes some initial effort, then some time to process, and then some time to review and iterate on. I'd like to strive to get to a point where I can maximize the amount of output for each prompt. This type of development would lead to situations where a few minutes a day are spent making very high level prompts and then the AI agent runs loops throughout the entire day processing that high level request and implementing it. If I can achieve that goal, I can see CF getting a comeback.
What's next?
I don't have a timeline for when (or if) the game will return. If you want to be notified when something changes, join the Discord - that's where any announcements will be made first.
Thank you to everyone who played, tested, and provided feedback. The journey of building Celestial Frontier has been incredibly rewarding, and I hope to continue it someday.
Until next time, rain9441