Hive Time

2020-01-28 Dev stream

Cheese talks about plans and scripts up some in-game behaviours for the second Hive Time trailer on Twitch.tv.

v1.0-19 changelog

Buzz buzz!

A small bundle of fixes today, mostly focusing around updates and tweaks to events and tutorials.

A final tutorial has been added to clarify that after the tutoral requirements have been completed, training wheels are off and players are free to do whatever they'd like to do. The research tree and tutorial system were initially added as a way to gradually onboard new players across their first Queen's lifespan, and its presence combined with the continue-playing condition of spawning new Queens seems to have steered a some people away from the kind of open, endless play that the game is intended for.

Having a final tutorial invite players to consider their first new Queen as the start of the game rather than the end doesn't prevent anybody from stopping once they've spawned a second Queen if they've gotten their fill, but I'm hoping that it'll lead to assumptions that better match what the game is trying to be.

There are also a number of balancing tweaks that affect the duration of various event effects to make their impact a little more meaningful. For example, the 60 second window on Slime Blessings didn't seem to be providing a big enough window for players to take advantage of it without having a pre-existing planned response.

There are also a few miscellaneous fixes, including one where spamming Escape would prevent the menu system from functioning correctly, and a couple of minor production related issues.

Enjoy!

Full changelog:

  • Added new final tutorial explaining that once a new Queen is spawned players are free to pursue their own goals
  • Updated 'The foundation of a successful hive' tutorial to not focus on Jally rather than new Queens
  • Updated 'First, build an Exit tutorial to mention dots
  • Updated 'Fill that storage' tutorial to better encourage players to be patient
  • Updated 'Now, build a Nursery' tutorial image to show spawn progress ring
  • Updated 'Time to build a Workshop' tutorial image to show research progress ring
  • Updated 'seasonal' event effects to have longer duration
  • Updated 'slime blessings' 'nectar rave fallout' and 'carpenter assistance' effects to have longer duration
  • Updated 'Pilgrims return' event text
  • Updated 'Comes with a figurative guarantee' event to require minimum free jelly storage
  • Updated all events to have bee role names bolded
  • Updated all events to use capitalised resource names
  • Updated several positive events to use The Bees Knees music track
  • Updated input handlers to explicitly drop gamepad input (fixes Switch joycon spamming ui_cancel event due to upstream #21918)
  • Refactored queen effect handling in preparation for future changes
  • Restored mouse wheel scrolling sensitivity from prior to Binder integration
  • Removed some extraneous logging
  • Fixed spamming Escape when selecting a main menu option causing the main menu to flip back in and clearing the destination tile
  • Fixed (fingers crossed) assembler/refinery production animations sometimes playing when no bees are present
  • Fixed fixed cases where unfreed object warnings would be thrown on exit
  • Fixed case where pending state could override storage full state in production screen
  • Fixed bees working at upgraded production facilities not automatically depositing resources into adjacent upgraded storage cells

v1.0-18 changelog

Buzz buzz!

Today's update includes a number of small quality-of-life improvements, particularly in the foraging screen, which now gives greater visual emphasis to unexplored zones.

Today also marks the one-month-versary of Hive Time's release. To celebrate, we've made prototype builds based on the 10th day snapshot of Hive Time's source, taken at the end of the game that we initially started development for. Our hope is to show Hive Time's origins and give a point of comparison for what was accomplished across the 7 months' worth of development between then and release.

If that sounds fun, you can find it over here!

Enjoy!

Full changelog:

  • Added version.json to .gitignore
  • Added version.json version number substitution to build script
  • Added question mark icon to unexplored cells
  • Added opt-in check for whether there are newer versions available
  • Added version check option to system settings menu
  • Added new version notice to main menu
  • Added regular verification of pending resources to ensure no lingering pending resources will stall production
  • Updated 'Your first hive' tutorial to distinguish empty cells from grid tiles
  • Updated construction submenus to have 'cells' on the end
  • Updated tutorials to use new submenu names
  • Updated bolding of 'Workshop' in Workshop tutorial
  • Updated tooltip delay to make tooltips appear sooner
  • Fixed mis-clicks closing bee customisation popup
  • Updated default population screen text to highlight that ratios are for each individual bee rather than the whole population
  • Updated exit info screen to mention three-bees-per-cell rule
  • Updated resources tutorial to indicate that players should wait for stores to fill
  • Updated event skip limit to ensure events trigger more frequently
  • Fixed inspect toggle button clicks not showing/clearing inspect mode prompts
  • Fixed LEAVE_AND_DIE activity not clearing bee payloads from pending resources list