Hive - Development Updates

Hive has begun alpha testing with a select group of participants! This process has helped to uncover which bugs should be prioritized and what other gameplay mechanics may need to be altered to offer a better player experience. During alpha testing, builds are distributed to participants iteratively – meaning that patches may contain as little as a single bug fix. This pattern is not common for beta testing and early access, and will not be present outside of the alpha testing period.

Notable Bug Fixes

The following fixes are planned to be implemented within the next two alpha builds:

• ✅ Build preview bug – previews no longer have collision, and cannot be used to teleport across the map at light speed.
• ✅ Build overlap – it is not beneficial to overlap objects, and may also cause issues with the worker bee AI. Placing objects that collide with existing objects is now prohibited, and will prevent the player from placing an overlapping object.
• ✅ Worker bee spawn points – worker bees will now spawn in a randomly selected location relative to the hive, attempting to adjust that spawn location if a collision occurs. Regardless of collision, bees will always spawn.
• ✅ Hive timer infinite loop – the hive timer will no longer continue to run if the hive is full. Previously, this timer would continue to run even though the hive was no longer generating workers.
• ✅ Hive timer – the hive timer is now set to it's intended value of 5 minutes. Previously, the debugging value of 10 seconds was in use, causing workers to spawn rapidly.
• Inventory removal – building objects will now remove the correct number of items from the player's inventory.
• Spelling and Grammar Mistakes – prototyping a game is about speed, not proper english. Irregardless (pun intended), copy has been updated to be correct in spelling and grammar.

Notable Improvements

The following improvements are planned to be implemented within the next three alpha builds:

• Terrain blocks – a dirt block has been introduced and is a required material to build a garden. Additionally, destructible terrain blocks will now return the correct block type when adding to inventory.
• Destructible Gardens – accidentally placed a garden? Need to move a garden? Just hit it until it breaks! Gardens will drop the same amount and types of materials that are required to create them.
• Realtime Menu Data – the inventory panel is about halfway automated, with most actions appearing in realtime. There are a few actions – such as building an object – that fail to update the inventory panel without requiring the player to close and reopen the menu. There is an effort being made to make this data fully realtime, so that the panel correctly reflects the actions taken by a player.