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(+1)

bee-utiful game!! loved the learning curve, and once i figured everything out super enjoyed just messing around building the silliest hives. would super suggest this to anyone who wants a chill management game. thank you so much!

Yay! I really wanted to make a game that gave rooms for the kind of "explore the simulation by building stuff for fun" experiences I had with the original SimCity back in the 80s. It's always very nice to hear when players have approached it that way. Thanks for your kind words ^_^

(+1)(-2)

umm, am using a Chromebook, can we get an apk build pls, it doesn't have to have aany extra control inputs just gimmi gibbus apk

😭🤒

(+1)

Sorry, I didn't see this comment when it was first made. Unfortunately, I am not intending to target Android with this game. Very early in development, I did an APK export, and it didn't run - there would be more work involved than just hitting the export button, and that's not something I can justify spending time on.

All that said, I have read about Google making it easier to run a proper Linux environment on Chromebooks. I have no first hand experience, but you may (or may not) have success with that approach.

(+2)

Ah yess finally, lol. I'm happy you replied. Oh, I didn't realize it will be troublesome to export properly to Android.


Yah I installed the Linux environment thing and was able to install a clock application for Linux .... But the thing is I completely ran out of space. My chromebook's model is quite old so the manufacturers only gave it only 10gb of internal space. I scratched the idea of using it to install more software or games, I uninstall the Linux setup environment too.

Nothing you can do about that tho, not your problem,.. just letting ya know.


Thanks.

(+1)

Amazing game 5/5 but the part of the tutorial where you get enough jelly to get a new queen is wayy too stressful

(+2)

Thanks for your kind words. The amount of stress can vary a little depending on which random events you get, but broadly, I wanted it to feel like a challenge for inexperienced players and trivial for players who have gotten the hang of the game.

I'll be interested to hear if your next attempt feels more comfortable!

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Got it here from gamingonlinux, and I like the game. It is not perfect (some stylistic choices interfere a little bit with game play), but nothing game breaking or too annoying. Reminds me a supply chain games. A good semi-break from Factorio for me to have more relaxed play.

Playing on Linux nicely (would be nice if it was properly packaged and unpacked to new subdirectory, not current directory - common mistake for people not using Linux). Also, I do not know if Godot supports this, but a Linux build for arm64 would be also cool (i.e. to play on Raspberry Pi and similar).


Also, maybe it is not a good idea to include a Bear in the tutorial? :D Or maybe actually it is. Not sure. I bumped production of barracks immediately, but still lost, and it was sad to loss few minutes of progress.

Hi! Thanks for your kind words.


Aside from the soundtrack, Hive Time was made entirely on Linux. As noted on the article you came from, I've written for GOL from time to time.

Itch's incremental uploader tool butler handles compression. I can't remember whether it makes tarbombs by default or I left a trailing slash in when writing my build scripts, but either way, most archive utilities stick tarbomb contents in a folder automatically AFIK, so it's never been high on my priority list to investigate - you're the first person that I can recall mentioning it in the past two years.

I'll make note and if it's something I can resolve at this end, I'll look at doing it next time I have a patch big enough to remove the advantage of deltas (such as an engine update).


One of the game's testers plays the game on a raspberry pi from time to time (I assume they're running the game's data file with an arm version of the engine). I've never been able to get the game running well enough to justify officially targeting low powered devices, though.


The tutorial doesn't include any events, and it lasts the full duration of your first Queen's reign, so you're always going to end up with typical hive stuff happening along the way.

All of the event lists are shuffled when starting a new game, so whether Bear Attack ends up occurring at all during a given Queen's lifespan is down to chance. Old Bitey also won't appear until after your hive has reached a certain size, and the maximum amount of damage he does is about 20% percentage of the hive's size (usually less), so it scales to be appropriate for a given hive.

Unlike SimCity, which was Hive Time's biggest influence, all of Hive Time's disasters can be averted or avoided with a little planning and/or responsiveness. Encountering setbacks and learning how to recover from/avoid them is a big part of the experience in my mind, but there's a "skip disasters" option when starting a new game if it's not your kind of thing.


Were there any stylistic choices in particular you felt interfered with gameplay?

(+2)

I appreciate you making this game. 🙂

(+2)

Thank you for saying. I hope you find many happy hours in Hive Time :)

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Damn. I've had this exact idea running around my head for about 10 years, and even started building it in Unity. But I'm a programmer not a game designer so I couldn't flesh out the mechanics to make it fun, or find someone with those skills to work with me. I haven't played this yet but it looks like you've achieved that, congratulations! It's cool to see pretty much exactly what I envisioned in my head come to life (he says through gritted teeth...)

I admire your 'pay-what-you-want' model, I do that for all my C64 releases. At the same time I don't think anyone would begrudge this being on Steam and reaching a much bigger audience. After all, if you haven't got $10, you probably haven't got the PC capable of playing it....



(+2)

Goodness, there's a bit to unpack here. First up, thanks for your kind words! I hope that you find Hive Time interesting.


Your project sounds interesting, but from the screenshot alone, it looks like a different kind of sim with its depths along axes that Hive Time glosses over (eg: Hive Time's bees do not have health or per-role skills, and temperature is not a mechanic). In my mind, Hive Time is an allegorical game about concerns relevant to human communities rather than a game about the specifics of bees, and it looks like your concept is more focused on that - which is neat!

IMO, the most intrinsic aspect of a creative work is who it was made by. We can't make things without expressing who we are and the contexts we exist in through them, and no two people can ever really manifest the same idea in exactly the same way. The nuance that would separate them is what makes them interesting. There's no need to feel like Hive Time exiting diminishes your own ideas or your enthusiasm for them - the more bee games, the better, I say!


I released Hive Time as a pay-what-you-want game specifically so that I could have a case study of an exclusively PWYW game that I could study and write about. I could ship the game on Steam (and goodness knows I could use any additional revenue right now), but since Steam doesn't offer PWYW options and Steam's publishing agreement explicitly restricts me from talking about other platforms, I wouldn't even be able to make its primary identity as a PWYW game known to prospective players on Steam. That's not something I'm willing to embrace, since it would undermine what I set out to achieve with the game.

At this time, Hive Time's had over 60,000 downloads. No matter which way I slice it, that's a bigger audience than I had expected or wanted.

Given the number of people who have contacted me to tell me that they found Hive Time during a time when they were not able to afford to buy games, I can say with certainty that there are people out there who don't have $10 but do have access to a computer that can run the game. For whatever it's worth, I have one player who has the game running on their Raspberry Pi 3.

(+1)

Really valuable comment and reply.
"We can't make things without expressing who we are and the contexts we exist in through them, and no two people can ever really manifest the same idea in exactly the same way."
I can only agree to this.

This looks like an interesting project and the only thing I would think about are the bee's heads but it could be a style decision. If the programming is solid and the gameplay is fun, following e.g. "Velma" could be a lot of fun. Hive Time focused on handling everything at once. While it is entirely valid to follow a similiar approach you could also let the player accompany a single bee and her daily struggle (maybe even switch bees early/later). What happens outside the hive? How does the bee regulate her body temperature or how is the food aquired?

10 years is a long time. You could probably find someone by creating a short yt vid about it or get help on discord (there are several focused on unity). 

Having the game running on a Raspberry is cool. I think there is something special when you begin to understand that certain software can basically be run on any device today. Like the moments when you download Godot or Terraria and you look at the MB.

I started playing and it seems like its got a robust and well thought out system, but I wish there was a way to make the text bigger. The menus, the HUD, even the tutorial pop ups are all super small, and playing is straining my eyes. Going into full screen mode doesn't make a difference, either. Is there a menu option somewhere I'm missing to alter text size? I'll be excited to return to the game if there's a solution to this issue.

(+1)

Hi! Sorry to hear that you're having trouble with the game's text.

If you're playing the game on a "high DPI" display, you can try launching the game with the following command line argument, which should render the entire game at a lower resolution, but stretched out to be the same size.

--low-dpi


You can replace the game's fonts with fonts that have larger native sizes, but unfortunately, the game's UI isn't set up to scale. There are a bunch of cases where text extends beyond where it should or ends up with undesirable scrollbars, so it's not something that I want to advertise as a supported feature.

(+1)

I got this in the racial justice bundle (and im finally going through and checking all that out xD) anyway, i havent had time to do sit down and long play of this but its very fun and well made and im excited to play more! I love building and resource management games ^^

Thanks for your kind words! I hope you continue to find enjoyment in it :)

(+1)

So to my knowledge, I've never really played a resource management game, but now I'm really I to the genre!


This is a great casual game that I ended up playing quite a bit before bed to decompress after work.

I like the idea of turning a hive into a buzzing little factory, and every bee has its purpose. Skimping on any of them can lead to great consequences down the road, like a lack of needed resources, extensions not being built, or even just no bees at all (tip, keep your baby sitter numbers high) 

My only thing is I wish that moving things I had built were possible. Like at the start you just build around you because that's what you've got, but eventually I broke up my hive into areas so all of my map rooms and exits are in one space, also next to the pollen storage for easy drop offs, and the factories are on the other side. But to do that it meant demolishing and rebuilding things, which isn't bad, but I wish it were easier. I think I loose resources by doing it as I'm now loosing a storage unit full of pollen so I can move it across the hive. 

It's very relaxing, but I probably won't change hives in the future as I now know what all I need and want to build a little bee society 😁🐝

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Thanks for your kind words and for sharing! It's really nice to hear that Hive Time has whet your appetite for management sims :)


You will lose some of the resources spent on constructing the cells you're destroying (by default, destruction gives back half of the current construction cost). If you have enough redundant storage cells to hold your entire current stock of a resource, you won't lose any of that stored resource when destroying its storage cells.

My intention is that this promotes hive expansion, leading players to build bigger on their early hives rather than reconfiguring a limited space while they're still learning. Ideally, this pushes the challenge of chasing highly optimised spaces for players' subsequent hives, where the fiddliness of destruction and potential loss of resources help provide some constraints that make that kind of gameplay a tiny bit more technical.


If you do decide you want to start a new hive, the game will automatically make a save of your previous hive just before you left so that you can go back and load it up if you change your mind. There are a couple of things that won't happen on your first hive, but playing a single hive forever is a valid way to play ^_^

(+1)

This Game is amazing, a inspiration for make games on Godot.

(+1)

Thanks for your kind words!

(+1)

Maaaan the game's good.

I don't have a penny, but I'm gonna make the most advertisement I can around it!

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Thank you so much! I'm really glad that the game is accessible to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it, especially in these difficult times.

Hello, will the game be released on Steam?

Hi! I currently have no plans to ship Hive Time on Steam.

As mentioned in the FAQ, I am committed to only releasing Hive Time on platforms that allow pay-what-you-want pricing with a $0 minimum, do not require an account to purchase or play, and do not require a download/launcher client in order to play (the Itch app is cool, though!). If/when Steam gets those features, I'll be happy to consider it.

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just recently found this game and I am a huge fan already! As a lover of Base Building and Base Management games this one is super fun and super cute! I’ll definitely be doing a deep dive in Hive Time eventually and I can easily say it’s worth the $10. Nice one devs thank you!

Edit: I also love bees so this game was just a win win for me

A little bit about myself! I’m Yung MuShu! I’m a content creator on YouTube and Twitch! On YouTube I have a primary focus on anything Indie and Itch.io and on Twitch I’m a variety streamer with a great community! If you like what you see please drop a like or sub or even check out the Twitch! Thank you! 

Thanks for playing and for sharing! I love seeing people take those first steps with their first hive :)

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(+2)

Hi! Thanks for your kind words.

For Hive Time, I am specifically committed to (among other things) only distributing the game via storefronts that offer a pay-what-you-want model.

For my free/Free projects, I think I'd rather work with downstream package maintainers within the distro communities that my players are a part of so that experiences can be tailored to those suit those users' distros. Flathub is not for me.

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I think it's important to recognise here that the Itch app is a package management platform itself, and nesting package managers within package managers seems both disruptive and counterproductive (see the hurdles and conflicts that can come from language-specific package managers).

Note that historically, Itch have historically been open to distributing their app through other game distribution platforms, so maybe that's something that might happen.

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I don't do mobile stuff either, sorry.

(+1)

Good job I can tell you put a lot of thought into the way everything works, I'm looking forward to playing it more tonight.

Cheers, I hope you continue to find it interesting!

(+1)

fantastic game. Reminds me of how much I loved clash of clans. Very polished, fun and addictive. I'm absolutely recommending this to people.

Thanks for your kind words! I'm glad to hear it's resonated with you :)

(+1)

So this game is super fun so far. My only complaint is as far as i can tell there is no fast forward button and that kinda sucks. but it is cute and relaxing and all the fun facts is so cool!

Thanks for your kind words! :)

If it's helpful, here are some thoughts on why Hive Time doesn't have time controls.

I experimented with time controls very early in development and found that it made it more difficult for players to observe the hive's details, which in turn affected how much room there was for being thoughtful about the impact of management decisions as well as how responsive players could be to unfolding situations (all of which are key to the game's intended experience in my eyes).

In most situations, there are ways that the game's management systems expose ways of speeding things up (eg: rebalancing population diversity to help research finish sooner or using pollination to increase pollen/nectar throughput). Time controls also seemed like they would take away any time that players could use to experiment and discover these  sorts of things. In the end, leaving room for players to engage with gameplay to optimise their experience felt like the right thing to do.

Time controls are common in management sims, so I definitely understand that many players will expect them and be disappointed when they're not available. Hive Time intentionally bucks or subverts a number of genre conventions, and it's my hope that I've found ways to make it approachable and enjoyable for players regardless.

Hope that sheds some light!

(+1)

I have the opposite @BloodAngelBa. I feel the game can be a bit too fast sometime and for me it lessens the feeling of serenity when playing. But it's still a wonderful game. Thank you!

/Bo

Thanks for your kind words also!

If it's helpful to know, the default Queen lifespan gives a lot of room for going slow, and the game won't punish you if you don't meet the 600 Jelly goal in time (unless you ticked the "Unforgiving game over" FYOF option when starting a new game). There are also FYOF options for disabling events and disasters, which can reduce the number of things competing for your attention.

(+1)

Sorry I think my comment was a bit unclear. It is during the mid game segment I feel it can be a bit too fast. It's not that the goal of 600 jelly that is "the problem" (calling it a problem is a huge understatement), It's keeping track of everything for example balancing population and managing production. But it's probably just me getting overwhelmed a bit too easily and it's only for a short time. All this is extreme nitpicking. Your suggestion to disable events/disasters is great but it's also a great tools to learn the mechanics of the game and really satisfying to overcome.

Two other things:

1. I know you consider the game as finished, but are you considering more additions to the gameplay. For example goals/win conditions or more modifiers (like limiting upgrades).

2. I've run in to some problems that might be bugs (at least one of them). When reaching a population limit of about 1500 I can't seem to reach it regardless if I turn bee-sitters to 100%. It hovers around 800 bees. The problem might be that my computer is too slow.

I also found that when accessing Bee-pedia from the upgraded wax assembler you get the message "Something went wrong. It turns out that the 'wax_assembler' topic doesn't exist or isn't unlocked".


Regardless of all this the game is great and I've played it at least a hundred times. When I get a job again I will give a generous donation as a thanks for all your great work.

Thanks for the clarification and apologies or the assumption - I didn't realise you were talking about the mid-game!

Do you feel like resource needs/shortages drive a log of the instability/need for population and production management? I wanted the resource reserve system to give players some non-disruptive controls for managing/mitigating the impact of resource shortfalls, but I also wanted to structure the game so that players would likely experience friction first so that they would appreciate and understand how to use the reserve sliders when they got them.


Regarding point 1, I always wanted Hive Time to be a space where once a player had demonstrated that they understood the game's broad strokes, they could explore the extents of the simulation by setting their own goals. I've since discovered that many players aren't primed for that kind of experience, and I popped some suggestions in the "What now?" topic of the Beepedia's Help/Tips category. That said, "scenarios" were something that I had on my roadmap for what would have been the game's last major content update if things had've turned out differently.


To give some clarity to point 2, the under-the-hood mechanic for processing Beesitter labour allows up to three bees' worth of "birth debt" to be accumulated if the population is at its limit. This allows up to three bees to be spawned immediately at once as the population fluctuates so that there's no waiting period before the next bee appears. Because of this, your population will never be able to go above three bees per "tick" (a unit of game time that is not directly frame rate dependent, but will get longer if the game is running slowly) from Beesitter labour alone.

Whenever a new bee spawns at an upgraded nursery, there's a random chance for twins, which happens regardless of Beesitters or birth debt, so not having regular nurseries can push you a tiny bit higher, but there's still a theoretical limit that's affected by performance. It's also worth noting that Upgraded Beesitters' labour is worth more, so they'll reach that limit with fewer bees, making the maximum number of bees smaller (but the size of the non-Beesitter population would still be as large).

The most I've heard of someone having in the wild is 1800 bees, but I've tweaked how Beesitter labour is processed since then and haven't done a lot of thorough testing of where the fuzzy boundaries lie since. I might poke around with that next time I stream.


The Beepedia error is definitely a bug. I launched a new game today and need to give that most of my attention for a little while, but I'll get a patch with a fix for that out soon. Thanks!


Thanks again for your kind words. It's always nice to hear when Hive Time has resonated with someone. I'm very glad that Hive Time's pay-what-you-want model has prevented Hive Time from being a burden during a difficult time, and I hope your situation improves soon.

(+1)

v1.2 for mac is quote

“Hive Time” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash.

which is why I played v1.1

v1.1's bees kept glitching when my resources are at max so now im waiting for v1.3

It's a good game from what I can tell from v1.1

Hi! Sorry to hear that you're experiencing troubles.

v1.2-77 works on my Macs. As part of ongoing initiatives under the guise of "security," Apple have been making it progressively harder for developers to distribute games without engaging in Apple's distribution mechanisms, which is part of why I do not officially support anything newer than 10.14.

My best guess is that MacOS has "quarantined" Hive Time, and is displaying the "Hive Time is damaged" error when it would historically have shown a warning about the application being from an "unidentified developer." I'm uncertain why this is affecting the v1.2 build for you and not the v1.1 build, but you may be able to use the xattr command line tool with the -cr options to remove the quarantine flag from Hive Time.app.

Alternatively, you can install and run Hive Time through the Itch App, which will bypass that nonsense.


I would be interested to hear more about the glitching you were experiencing. If you have a save or a log file you're willing to share, please send that along with a description of the behaviour you were seeing to the support address listed in the "Technical help" section here on the store page.


Hope that helps!

That helped a lot. Thanks

although the it's still glitchy it's playable and fun

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I would like to hear more about the glitches you are experiencing. I haven't had any reports or seen anything during testing/development that matches that description.

If you have a save or a log file you're willing to share, please send that along with a description of the behaviour you 're seeing and some screenshots (if it's visible in screenshots) to the support address listed in the "Technical help" section here on the store page.

the glitch makes the game "shake" varying in severity, it's usually the bees flashing out of existence and then coming back  but some times the map would also "shake" and "flash" 

Hmm, definitely haven't heard of anything like that before. You're saying it only happens when storage is full, and stops once you use some resources or construct more storage? If the game is running slowly, does this still happen if you disable shadows and particles, and turn antialiasing off in the Video Settings menu?

I'd definitely be keen to see a log file and some system specs (in particular CPU, RAM, graphics chipset, and VRAM, but a model number should be enough for me to look that up if you're on Apple hardware). If you're able to get a short video, that would be helpful too. Best to send those through via email, since the log contains your home folder path when outputting where it saves games to.

Hi! I haven't seen any of the files/information I requested come through. If you've send them and they didn't make it to me, let me know!

I have the same problem with 1.2 on Catalina. The "unidentified developer" message is something different. I get that too with other apps and know how to fix it. It's not that.

Without more information, there's not much I can do. If you could answer the questions and provide the information requested in this post, that will help me look into the problem.

Hi! I haven't seen any of the files/information I requested come through. If you've send them and they didn't make it to me, let me know!

There is no video I can send you. The app doesn't start. I get an error message, which is in German and says exactly what UnoTheCard already posted. It includes a button with a question mark. If I click that button, I get to the explanation telling me "The app has been modified and its code differs from the original signed code." My machine is a mid-2012 MacBook Pro Retina running Catalina. Hope that helps.

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Oh, I see! Since I'd given UniTheCard a solution, I had misread and assumed that you were talking about the visual glitching they also reported.

Launching the game through the Itch app should get you up and running. Alternatively, using the xattr command line tool with -cr flags on Hive Time.app should make it behave, but if you're not familiar with working in a terminal, that's likely to be fiddly.

Sorry for the mixup!

try this:

1) download the game, extract the zip and move the game into your Applications folder.

2) in a terminal type "xattr -cr /Applications/Hive\ Time.app"

3) open/ run the game as normal

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If you enable Debug Mode, there's are shortcuts available to increase resource caps and give resources. You can find more information under the "Cheats and debug controls" section in the FAQ here on the store page.

Hope that helps!

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Enjoy!

doesnt save progress

Hi! The game autosaves every 10 minutes (unless you turn that off), and you can do manual saves either by going to the main menu and selecting save, or by pressing the quick save button. What exactly is the problem that you're experiencing?

(-1)

Hi, thanks for replying. & Oh, ok. I didn't know it automatically saved. I also didn't know about the quick save button, which mainly solves the problem. The main menu save still is broken I'm pretty sure because it closes the game and when it reopens, it didn't save.

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Going to the save menu shouldn't be closing the game.

Can you send me a copy of the game log from a play session where you've tried to save from the main menu to the address listed under the "Technical help" section here on the store page (instructions on where to find logs are in the "Log, save, and config file locations" section)?

Yes, I just sent an email to that address with the log attached.

Thanks! I sent through a test build with extra logging. If you haven't received that, let me know.

(+2)

Nice 5 Stars.

(+1)

Thanks for your kind words ^_^

Super excited about playing this game! :).  I'm getting the sound garbled/stuttering issue upon opening the game.  I hear it through the main games audio and when mousing over UI elements.   I tried lowering the Bee Sound Count but nothing happened (probably cuse I'm only on the menu).  Any ideas on how to solve this?  Running a gaming computer, I'm 95% sure the problem isn't on my end.

It seems its only happening with my headphones(bluetooth) and not my speakers.  But my headphones work fine for everything else. (Arctic 7 headphones)

Hi! Sorry to hear you're experiencing problems.

Without knowing more about your system, I can't offer much insight. Since it's working happily with one soundcard and not another, I'd be looking at differences in sample rate, etc. between their configurations.

hello, I can't launch hive time, as soon as I run it there is the menu that appears but no icon appears and as soon as I click on the game window it launches the window asking me if i want to "close the game" or "wait for the game to respond" what can i do to fix this problem ?

Hi! Sorry to hear you're experiencing problems. If you could please email details of your system specs along with a copy of the game log if one exists to the address listed under Technical Help here on the store page, I'll take a look.

Hi again! I haven't spotted an email come through. Are you still experiencing problems?

So,i got this weird thing on the right middle of my screen,it has a timer and a white bar shortening istelf,theres text that says 0% Give honey and 0% Kill builders,what is this?

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This is a periodic gift vote that's enabled by default when chat integration is enabled. You can turn it of in the Community Settings menu. You can also press the Show Instructions button in there to get more information on each of the chat integration features.

ok thanks!

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Hello! Apologies for the off-topic comment, but I noticed that your recent review of Hive Time mentioned that you'd struggled with the Wax Audit event. In the v1.2-41 patch, the Wax requirement for that event has been reduced, and the effect notification (bottom right) more clearly states what the requirement is as the deadline ticks down.

The gift voting UI now also has "Gift vote" written on it to reduce possible confusion there ^_^

Hope that helps!

thank you or else my hive would be wax only lol

Ha ha, it only would have been 30% Wax storage at most (you needed 3 Wax per cell, and each non-upgraded Wax storage cell holds 10).

Hi! I'm curious, what is your way to store and access hexs in your map grid? Abd why did you choose this approach? 


I know that there are a few different approaches to storing hexs. And I want to research this theme a little deeper.

Hi! I used what this site calls "offset coordinates." I didn't have any references, and started by trying to work out the problem myself. Squishing a cartesian coordinate grid with every second row making up the next offset column, felt like the most workable solution, and after my initial implementation, I went hunting for alternatives to see if there were ways that might be a better fit for me/Hive Time. In the end, I was happy with what I had and stuck with it.

(+2)

I had a delightful time with this! It reminds me of playing Sim Ant but in an even more fun, adorable way. <3

(+2)

Thank you for your kind words. I'm glad to hear you've enjoyed the game :)

I hadn't played SimAnt until after Hive Time was released, but the original 1989 SimCity provided a lot of inspiration. I wrote a little about that here if you're interested.

(+2)

That was really cool to read... I can definitely see how the inspirations shaped this game into the unique shape it took at the end! And I'm glad they did, because things like the playful little events happening in the hive and outside events like caterpillars needing jelly for ballet shoes and yellowjackets doing building demos really helped give it such a cute, fun personality beyond the simulation, and kept me playing long past my first hive becoming a thousand-bee-strong lag machine. :D

(+2)

Yay! :D

So many management sims put effort into abstracting the people within the simulation in a way that often ends up dehumanising them. Hive Time's events, vignettes and the ability to inspect/follow any bee were ways that I tried to make the game say that even in a generational community, each individual matters ^_^

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(1 edit) (+1)

Sorry to hear you're experiencing troubles. I don't think I've had this sort of problem reported before. Would you mind emailing me a copy of your game log from a play session where this has happened to the address listed under the "Technical help" section here on the store page?


Edit: Just to follow up in case anybody else is experiencing graphical glitches with Intel graphics chipsets on Windows, driver 26.20.100.7262 was causing issues that were resolved by 27.20.100.9168.

(+2)

It's hip to hug bees.

Very much so <3

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Hey, I've made a video about the game and wanted to share some feedback with you :D

-The main idea of the game and all the mechanics work very well together and make the game feel pretty solid.

-The visual style fits totally the game and makes the gameplay feel very organic.

-The game is pretty well polished and I haven't noticed any strange bug during the time I was playing.

In conclusion, the game is great and I hope you keep working on it or making new games. Hopefully this is useful for you :D, also if you could subscribe that would help me a lot :)

Regards

Thanks for your kind words ^_^

You are welcome :D

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Had an amazing time streaming this game (Miss_Ikari here!) , thinks Cheese for dropping by and having fun with the chat integration features :)

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Yay! Glad that you had a good time. It was a pleasure to bee there :)

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I've not heard of this before. That file is definitely not in the files I've uploaded, and I don't see it in the downloadable versions either.

Without knowing more information, I'd guess that the file is being created by some anti-malware software, possible triggered by the  new version check if that has been enabled (there's a prompt on first run that asks whether or not the game should notify when a new version is available, and the setting can also be changed in the System Settings menu).

It would probably be best to follow up with your anti-malware vendor about the specifics of this.

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Wow, this is a very nice looking game, I particularly like the colors and gameplay dynamics. It`s pretty unique so will give it a try this week!

Thanks for your kind words. I hope you find it interesting!

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I`m sure I will.  Looks like a very good work!

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Really cute and positive-minded game!

Here is a bunch of random feedback. Just brainstorming...

- After completing a couple of hive, what is my incentive to keep playing? I would like some challenges, or some bosses to beat!

  (Challenges could be optional. There could be a list or tree of challenges, any of which could be achieved on purpose or by accident.)

- Perhaps some kind of a story or journey, where I can place each new hive on a different part of the forest, and each part of the forest has a specific challenge to meet / threat to overcome.

- How do I know what could be improved about my hive? Perhaps show me efficiencies of current cells, so I can see which ones are performing better or worse. Then I can try to work out why!

  (For example, this could be achieved with a heat map, so I can see which cells are efficiently hot, and which are inefficiently cold. It might help to flip through the different heatmaps for each different type of cell.)

- Similarly, let me compare the performance of different hives, so I can see if there is something about the current hive that could perform better (has performed better elsewhere).

- The spots on the exits are very small, so it's hard to see how many are taken and how many are free. Maybe extend the dots into bars, so they are larger and easier to see? (Or some other way of showing when they are over capacity. Maybe they could turn red when they are full.)

- Since the queen is the boss, perhaps she could give occasional instructions (challenges) which could yield a reward if they are achieved within the time period.

- Consider tweaking the menu: After a click it opens in a circle. How about after sub-click, the next circle appears centered around the clicked item, rather than centered around the original point.

- A recreation cell, which is a place where idle bees go to. This might be useful to 1. see how many idle bees there are, 2. position idle bees so they are near to where they might need to be in future, 3. give the hard-working bees a little break.

- If you wanted to simplify the game, you could skip the construction of empty cells and let specific cells be created directly. (Although empty cells might still be needed to extend the hive into new areas.)

- Building lots of the same type of cell becomes tedious. How about right-click on a cell to build the same thing as the previous?

  Ah I see now that it's Shift-click. This was introduced right at the start of the tutorial, but that was a bit too early, before I needed it. I did eventually see it in the Settings (and the second time I started a new game.) Perhaps the optimum time to teach this to the user would be when they have just built 4 identical cells.

- Offer keys '?' or 'F1' to pop up a list of the keyboard/mouse shortcuts.

- Fighting the bear was not very exciting. I couldn't see anything happening. Some possibilities: 1. add some scary music, and 2. show a progress bar for the bear's attack, and a progress bar for our defence. Whichever one fills first will decide the outcome.

- I feel I have too much freedom in how to arrange my hive. How about bonuses for putting certain cells in certain places (like Scrabble or Infinitode have)? Then I would have to think a bit harder about where I want to put stuff, to make the hive optimal.

  Advanced levels could have lots of obstructions, so it's more challenging to lay out the necessary shapes.

- Ideally the mouse wheel would zoom into the place where the cursor is pointing, rather than into the center of the screen.

- When spawning a new queen in a new hive, my system reports a lot of memory is consumed. Perhaps it might help to ensure the old hive is freed from memory and garbage collected, before spawning the new one. I'm on Linux. "ObjectDB instances leaked at exit (run with --verbose for details)"

- You told me that all cells are equidistant (bees travel equally fast no matter the distance). Would you consider changing that, to make positioning more important? ^_^

  For example (and just for sharing) the following game Islanders is a curious redux. It increases the player's score for creating layouts with good proximity. And it doesn't even use any actors! 

- Rendering: The bees are cute but their colours are sometimes similar to the cell behind them, so I cannot see them clearly. How about a thin border around each bee? Like cell shading, which seems popular in games these days. (Maybe a transparent grey outline, which would contrast with the white jelly and also with the black beeskin.)

- Rendering: Light diffusion would really help to make the bees and the cells look more real. Not easy to implement though.

- Rendering: I think the Depth of Field option looks odd because the projection is isomorphic. If you could switch to perspective projection when zooming in, the DOF might look better.

- Rendering: When completely zoomed out, you could switch to a top-down view, with no projection. (I am not desperate for this. It's just a thought.)

  For example, the video game Carcassonne offers a perspective view mode and a top-down view mode. Players can choose whichever they prefer.



Thanks for the fun game! Interested to see where it goes in future.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Glad to hear that you're enjoying the game! I'll try to answer the direct questions and cover anything that is already in the game.


The core incentive to continue playing is whether or not you find that fun for its own sake. I've made and positioned Hive Time as a play-as-long-as-you're-having-fun type game in the vein of 1989's SimCity. I am wary of making the game more attractive to people who aren't finding the experience of playing intrinsically rewarding, since this will invariably lead toward experiences that are more negative than just not finding the mid to late game interesting. I have done some early design work on a goal tracking interface and loadable scenarios as part of a possible future update, but they'd be framed around inviting players to explore and discover creating their own goals/ways of playing rather than shifting the mid to late game's focus on to gameplay-extrinsic rewards (Beepedia entry unlocking is probably the closest the game gets to that).


Regarding bee efficiency and bees taking breaks (referred to as "bumbling" in-game), that already happens, though there is intentionally no specific cell type dedicated to or required for that. The Activity screen accessible from the upgraded Throne Room shows the ratio of idle bees to working bees over time for each role, and can be used to track that once playing at a scale where this can no longer be observed for a reasonable portion of the hive when zoomed in.

The Upgraded Workshop has a cell list that can be useful for seeing the number of given cell types (such as exits) and when viewed with the "three bees per cell" rule in mind, can give an idea of infrastructure load/redundancy.


I'm wary of doing anything that specifically guides players toward highly optimised play - one of the concepts that Hive Time is built around is that too much optimisation creates opportunities for risk and instability. There are efficiency cues and a little feedback there for players who want to pursue that sort of thing (and it can be fun), but I'm not sure that explicit framing would be a good fit for Hive Time's identity (this is why the Activity screen has the name it has, while it's is called "EfficiencyMenu" internally).


I'm not intending to make relative cell position more important - making layout primarily cosmetic was an intentional design choice aimed at simplifying the simulation and giving players freedom to make hives that look and feel interesting to them without having to work against the game. As a self-embraced constraint, designing layouts where storage needs to be near exits and production facilities is wonderful, but I don't want to impose these things beyond the adjacency requirements/bonuses that some cell types have. "Triple letter score" tiles have been on my todo list since the original jam prototype, but have been lower priority than all other development.


When we spoke last night, I think you mentioned that you were running an older version and needed to upgrade. I fixed some memory leaks recently - could you send me a copy of your game log when run with --verbose if you still continue to see the object leaks warning with a current build of the game?

Thanks for the responses.

I am not very familiar with sandbox games, although I am in favour of games that let the player express their own creativity (Minecraft and Captain Forever spring to mind).

I'm also fascinated how simple rules can produce unforeseen consequences, emergent phenomena. (Game creators do not always know the optimal strategies. It may take years for the players to discover them.)

I can certainly set some of my own placement goals. Thanks for the suggestion! I would like to balance optimal positioning along with redundancy, so the hive is not too fragile to attack. (So far I have managed to withstand all bear and wasp attacks, so I don't actually know what an attack looks like. So I think absorbing and surviving an attack should be one of my goals! Yay!)

I certainly wouldn't want to eat away at the sandbox style of the game. I was wondering if there might be a best-of-both worlds, so a player could choose whether to set their own goals, or achieve those suggested by the game. But perhaps the existence of one option negates the other.

On Freenode IRC you gave me some nice suggestions:

"What's the fastest you can get 600 jelly from scratch? What's the smallest population hive you can get 600 jelly with? Can you get 600 jelly without researching a jelly refinery? Can you get 600 jelly without upgrading anything but the Workshop?"

These are interesting ideas which I hadn't considered. Perhaps some suggestions like this could appear in the game, even if they aren't explicitly coded as challenges, as a starting point for people like me who never imagined setting their own goals.

I'll go back to the game with this new point of view (and --verbose) and see how I get on. Cheers!

Sorry for the slow response! I'd written a reply out last week, but it appears that I forgot to post it. Here's the vague gist!


Expectation management is tricky, and I try to be conscious about what I potentially lead players away from by having the game explicitly frame things as important.

I was hoping that the final tutorial, which shows a bunch of aesthetically different hive layouts would lead players toward considering aesthetic constraints, and organically discover the idea of exploring the simulation's boundaries from there. I'm open to supplementing that with a Beepedia topic in the Help/Tips section that suggests some of the kind of things I'd mentioned on IRC, though.


There are a couple of events within the game that require the player to do something within a time limit in order to avoid negative outcomes, though their presentation would benefit strongly from that goal tracking UI. If it happened, that update would bring in a number of new events with conditional outcomes along different axes, and it would also include loadable scenarios as another way of exposing alternative ways of playing (you can read a little about that here, but that's a large scale change, and outside of smaller patches, Hive Time's future is currently uncertain).

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I posted a video on my channel. very nice game. I would be glad if you check my channel. I wish you success cheese.

Thanks again for playing and for sharing! :)

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I found out about this game from Delta's Youtube channel. Hive Time is a nice time! It's one of the big boys in Delta's channel. I plan on playing this soon!

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Thank you for sharing! I enjoyed Delta's previous coverage of the game so much that I hid a little reference to their channel in the game :)

hmmmmm i wonder where..

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Thanks!

You have you build that storage and have 600 Jelly at once to spend on a new Queen. The game is pretty forgiving and will let you keep playing if you don't make it (unless you ticked the "Unforgiving game over" FYOF option when starting a new game). It feels big at first, but it's designed in a way that makes it trivial for experienced players to reach and (hopefully) guides new players toward the skills they need in order to find positive experiences when building subsequent hives.

Hope that helps!

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😊👍

Thanks again for playing and for sharing!

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Played the game for about 2 hours which was enough time for me to complete the main cycle of it. Really fun and absolutely love the hex and art design as well as the upgrades you can do with joined tiles. 

The population system took me a bit to get used to but in the end I was able to find the perfect balance and complete all upgrades.

Thanks for the game! It was a very pleasurable experience!

Thanks for your kind words. Glad to hear you've had fun with the game so far!

And now that I've got the game running without accidentally disappearing my own progress (debug with caution, folks), I can say that this management game definitely scratches my itch. It's cute, it's satisfying, and it keeps you on your toes without driving you nuts. It is, as they say, the bee's knees.

One change I'd like to implement, if it is possible: earmarking resources for an expenditure. On a few occasions, I had almost enough stuff to buy something, like a research project or a refinery upgrade, and when I got enough to get it, I went to click the button to make my purchase, but then the resources got used (usually pollen) and I didn't have enough. I would like some system to earmark resources so that they can't be used, or so that they get used immediately and automatically once they're available. Is this possible?

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There are two options included in the game for managing these sorts of situations. The first is that you can pause production - this is fiddly, but allows for some control early on and provides some opportunity to understand the value of the second option before it becomes available.

The second is to use the reserve sliders that are enabled by upgraded storage cells, which set aside an amount that can't be used by production. At some point, I'd like to add a shortcut for setting reserves based on a build action or research item's cost, but that's low on the priority list for now.

Hope that helps!

A curious bug: the research that I did is disappearing. I put in the time and resources to research how to build just about everything, but now it's saying that I haven't done the research, and now I can't build cells I used to be able to build. Is anyone else having this issue?

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Just in case anybody else experiences something similar, after reviewing logs, it turned out that a debug shortcut that resets research (among other things) was pressed while debug mode was enabled.

Yep, that was me. Thank you for spotting that!

No worries. Glad that we were able to sort it out!

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