Cheeseness  

Putting together builds this afternoon that have menu music! @KestrelPi
has knocked it out of the park with his one \o/ soundcloud.com/peter-silk-kest

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Cheeseness  

Been putting in a building summary screen

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Cheeseness  

It's pretty rough, but I finally got around to adding save thumbnails/playtime metadata to . Looking forward to tweaking the layout a bunch when I have time

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Cheeseness  

I also pulled in a snazzy new music track from @KestrelPi today ("vocals" are temporary for now), inspired by the "Ticket to ride" event (art is also temporary) soundcloud.com/peter-silk-kest

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Cheeseness  

Finally got around to painting a background for Wax Assembler info screens and vignettes. As always, I'm documenting the nitty gritty of my changelogs over here: hivetime.twolofbees.com/index.

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Cheeseness  

Painted backgrounds for Honey and Jelly refineries last night. Only storage left to do (still plenty of other art waiting in line though) \o/

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Cheeseness  

Added some bee silhouettes that fly around the main menu the other day.

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Cheeseness  

Haven't done much that's visual/exciting to share over the past week, but here's a recap of development over the first half of September \o/ patreon.com/posts/30148727

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Cheeseness  

Popped some new music from @KestrelPi
into builds last night. We also put in a second tier of background music that's got a sort of improvisational feel and slots in nicely with the environmental ambience. Really happy with how it's all coming together :) soundcloud.com/peter-silk-kest

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Cheeseness  

Popped in some event images from Mim for the vinehopper science chain last night

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Cheeseness  

Spent this evening looking at some optimisation strategies. I've read that Godot groups/orders objects by material to reduce draw calls. Couldn't work that out, so I merged all meshes sharing materials into one in Blender, and that's helped a bunch

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Cheeseness  

I also added a 3D indicator for the currently selected cell

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Cheeseness  

Working on exposing some hive efficiency stuff to help players identify problems/find room for optimisation.

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Cheeseness  

Added context menus for bees that expose some more details on what individual bees have been up to and gives an option for the camera to follow a bee around

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Cheeseness  

A foraging screen has been on my todo list from the start, but what it should be and how it should work was always vague until a couple of days ago. Looking forward to polishing it up and sticking it in builds - it's the last major mechanic left \o/

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Cheeseness  

Phew

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Cheeseness  

Just kidding. Here's a real screenshot. Finally got Map Room upgrades in and functional today \o/

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Cheeseness  

Just rolled out a big update to testers that includes a first pass on the last missing major gameplay mechanic and a cool new music track from @KestrelPi. Not out of the woods yet, but I feel like I can see the sunlight now :) cheeseness.itch.io/hive-time/d

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Cheeseness  

Tutorials now respond appropriately (and immediately complete) if you've already fulfilled their requirements.

I've also added a tutorial "activity" that gives a summary of what you're meant to be doing and shows the tutorial again if you click on it.

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Cheeseness  

Been working on a screen that exposes some details on how production is going

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Cheeseness  

Poking in some detail textures today (Blender viewport render, not in-game screenshot)

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Cheeseness  

Whoops

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Cheeseness  

Drawing stuff that looks like it's been drawn by baby bees is hard

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Cheeseness  

Pushed in upgraded nurseries, upgraded barracks, and a stack of bee upgrades over the past two days. Closing in on having all release construction/research options in place :D

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Cheeseness  

At long last, it's possible to defend against Old Bitey. Had this planned back during the jam in May, but had to wait until I wrote the defence system/made some major changes to the event handling system. Now players get a bit of time to prepare, and the chance to prevent damage

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Cheeseness  

Added an option for building multiple empty cells at once. Should make mid/late game hive expansion a bit less click intensive :)

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Cheeseness  

Added upgraded production facilities, which can automatically store resources in adjacent storage cells instead of having bees store them

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Cheeseness  

More Queen upgrades! Struggled to find a good name for "reduces cooldown on spawning new queens" that didn't boil down to "babies makin babies." Eventually settled on "Royal Apprenticeships." It's important to be thoughtful about what you're saying.

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Cheeseness  

Not that I'm perfect of course. I haven't yet found nice ways to address that Defender bees' presentation could be interpreted as positive framing of militarised police or that Forager bees' presentation could be interpreted as positive framing of colonialism \o/

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Cheeseness  

Adding in what I'm calling "hero bees" (special bees with a low chance to spawn that will live a bit longer and look a bit cooler). I think they're spawning in just a little too frequently here.

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Cheeseness  

Spent today adding in some customisation options for "hero bees."

Hoping that manual role changes will make them feel practical, while cosmetic options will help let players feel a greater sense of ownership over these special bees

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Cheeseness  

The last (unless something else pops up) gameplay feature left on my todo list is having cells deteriorate over time and eventually be destroyed when not connected to the rest of the hive. Just finished a first pass on it this evening :)

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Cheeseness
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Spent a bit of time today making extra hats for customisable Worker bees (top row) and Defender bees (bottom row)

· Web · 1 · 3 · 2
Cheeseness  

Put some new event art in today, courtesy of @MimLofBees. Super happy to pull the placeholder image off this one :)

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Cheeseness  

Makin some more "hats"

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Cheeseness  

The idea of an insect wearing a hat that keeps insects away resonates strongly with the kind of game I'm making

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Cheeseness  

Updating a bunch of menu stuff, moving per-game configuration out of the settings menu. A little cluttered, but good enough for now :)

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Cheeseness  

Hmm yes. That's exactly what I was going for

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Cheeseness  

Been using my witches hat hats as visual indicators for non-visual entities. I've solved what I needed to solve with them and now they have to go away. Going to miss my little pointy friends

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Cheeseness  

Last night, I pushed in a radial progress indicator to make current research progress visible outside the research screen. Presentation is subtle for now, but I like the way it helps frame the Hive itself as the game's interface

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Cheeseness  

Spent some of today working on some little portraits of past queens so that you can look back and remember them after they're gone

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Cheeseness  

Spent today doing boring presskit and social media stuff. On the upside, now has a Twitter account \o/

I'm not sure whether it makes sense to make a Mastodon account for the game - this place feels so community/human focused that a brand account feels not-so-cool.

Happy to make one to track development/news if people want to see one though!

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Cheeseness  

Also found some time today to implement some camera tilt when zoomed right in, which gives a nice view of individual bees and highlights that I've been lazy with the positioning of some hats.

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Cheeseness  

Did a whole bunch of misc updates/bugfixes today. Too many to mention (there's a full changelog here cheeseness.itch.io/hive-time/d ), but I think my favourite change is adding themed widgets to the main menu :)

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Cheeseness  

Skipping pushing a build today (breaking a streak of over two weeks, but sleep is more important). Got most of the work done on a custom keybinding interface though \o/

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Cheeseness  

Doing that thing again where I make some text that makes me wish I was doing 3D text in the trailer
mastodon.social/@Cheeseness/10

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Cheeseness  

Got a bunch of final music today from @KestrelPi. Don't have any screenshots of that, but it's pretty exciting!

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Cheeseness  

While working on the release date trailer last night, I recorded myself playing to first Queen with a modest sized hive, no HUD, and no role cell upgrades. Here's 52 minutes of gameplay compressed down to 52 seconds :)

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Cheeseness  

Oh, and no events (didn't want Old Bitey coming to ruin my hive in this trailer :D )

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Cheeseness  

I painted this little friend yesterday and now I want to make a game all about him (for future reference, I know this is a herc - it's not meant to be the elephant beetle)

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Cheeseness  

I know these numbers are going to shift a fair bit after release, but for now, they highlight where testers who're most likely to check out new builds are

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Cheeseness  

I am (of course) enormously thankful for *all* of the people who've given up their time to poke around with my game - especially those on platforms that I can't do as much testing on myself. Their efforts have been critical for helping the game take shape and maintain some semblance of stability <3

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Cheeseness  

Thanks to Mim, we at last have final art for the "Beetles" event \o/

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Jaco G  

@Cheeseness Not a fan of Blender 2.8?

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Cheeseness  

@warpgate9 Haven't used it, so I can't say one way or another.

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Jaco G  

@Cheeseness Ah. It's nice. They added joy. :)

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Cheeseness  

@warpgate9 You never enjoyed using Blender before 2.8? I find that hard to believe :D

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Jaco G  

@Cheeseness I have loved Blender since first release. :) But now I don't think I can live without the eevee viewport and all the tiny quality of life stuff they added. I have made more stuff with it since 2.8 than ever before.

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Ertain  

@Cheeseness I hope they have many colorful hats.

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unfa  

@Cheeseness The camera is drunk!

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Mr. Meow 😺  

@Cheeseness
I'll take a look this week on Linux. Honestly, I'm surprised so many Linux users have checked it out. I'm happy that its the majority of your audience for the time being🐧

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Cheeseness  

@Clifford Linux users only make up about a third of people I've sent pre-release keys to, so this is definitely more of an indication of enthusiasm density rather than pre-release audience distribution.

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