itch.io

Ah! All good then (I was worried I'd missed something). Again, very solid work!

Thanks!!!

The hope was that the brake would be identified as useless once you're going above a certain speed - its only practical value is in stopping to get a look at the stage and the level layout before uncontrollably rushing in (in my mind, this mirrors how it feels to be emotionally overhwelmed by sadness - at first when it's small, you can manage it, but once it crosses a threshold, it snowballs and becomes impossible to effectively hold in).

Thanks! It was an interesting challenge to come up with gameplay that resonated with each of the different types of tears we wanted to represent within the game.

All good. That's how jams go sometimes!

This could be a fun concept - is the game meant to give feedback when hitting the check button at 50%?

This was fun - love the crash animation

I struggled to work out what I needed to do here, so I'm not certain that I appreciated the game as intended. Most of the time when I left clicked, the colour division would spin wildly, but sometimes I was able to control it by clicking and dragging. I eventually was able to wake the guy from Chicken Run, but beyond that, I couldn't find any interactions.

The concept sounds neat, though!

This is really solid! Well done!

This was fun. Managed to get a bit hectic there for a minute, but I was able to keep everything half full in the end.

This was fun! Didn't enjoy pulling wings (or spraying flies, I guess), but I'm totally here for a surrelist fly's-eye-view of a kitchen.

I really enjoyed the presentation of this one. Well done!

There's some fun level design here! Great work!

Unfortunately, I got stuck after defeating the glass boss - the room stayed locked, and so far as I can tell, the switch in the middle of the room didn't do anything after it turned off the light.

Joie, this is fantastic!

Plantfriend

It took me a little while to realise that I was controlling relative buoyancy rather than vertical movement with W and S (my bad for not reading the instructions more closely), but once I worked that out, I thought this was neat! Similarly, I thought the crayweed was cosmetic decoration until I re-read the instructions after playing a few rounds.

Sorry to hear that you got sick - I hope you didn't push yourself too hard and that you're feeling better soon!

This is a very strong submission. Well done!

Although I haven't had the opportunity to play with a second player and so can't really appreciate it as intended, I did really enjoy seeing this come together across the jam. It looks like it could be a bunch of fun!

I think there's the beginning of something here, but it seems like both the downloadable build (boats wrong scale) and the web build (no mouse capture) have problems that make it hard to appreciate the intended experience.

Thanks!

I wasn't able to play the native Linux build (needs a newer glibc than I've got), but I grit my teeth and played the web build through to a winter level where the only campfires were either overlapping or close enough to snowbanks that I couldn't find a way to use the fire without my water being immediately replaced by snow again.

I really dig the expanding sense of possibility space provided by snow being a multi-step process, but I feel like the game takes a long time to get there. I would have loved to have seen more of that sort of thing (if there was something different about summer or autumn, I missed it).

Congrats on making a game, and thanks for doing a Linux build :)

I started early, and will keep working (submitting this to another, longer game jam too), but will keep 7th day snapshot builds around ^_^

Today's patch updates things to make small ship movements much easier. Would love to hear if that helps with the satellite placement troubles you had!

I think the biggest friction point in that regard is that you jump to full speed immediately, so small movements/adjustments become very difficult. An acceleration curve was on my todo list, but it was lower priority than everything else I was able to squeeze in before the jam deadline. I was just thinking now that I could also maybe implement a button that gives slow/precise movement, but the game already does have a lot more controls than I had originally intended! Either would be on the roadmap for any post-jam development.

I'm not sure whether you've unlocked it, but if you haven't, there's an upgrade that shrinks the placement radius, and you might actually find a little extra space between satellites to be beneficial.

Thanks for your kind words. I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the game!

Hi again.

1) As I said, the many of the game's strings are defined outside of json files, within the game's source code, and some of those are manipulated or assembled programmatically at runtime (some words are generated by code) based on English-specific rules. I would need to do a non-trivial amount of work to prepare the game for proper localisation efforts. Most notably, if I were to localise the game, I would prefer to not have duplicates of json files - those represent game logic/content, and having multiple copies floating around would make it harder to maintain the game/represent a large surface area for unwanted bugs to creep in, both of which would make it harder to do the kind of quick small patches I've been doing for the past several years.

I do not know of a tool for extracting contents from .pck files.

2) Hive Time is not under active development. I usually do a small patch to celebrate the game's release anniversary and World Bee Day (though I skipped this year). Broadly, Hive Time is the game we intended to make, but you can read about some of the original post-release update plans here if you're interested.

3) Being pay-what-you-want is part of Hive Time's identity. Even if I was comfortable selling it at a fixed price as a way of introducing broader audiences to that, the Steam Distribution Agreement forbids developers from mentioning other storefronts (some developers get away with ignoring this, but I've personally had Valve reject a demo for mentioning that the full game was available on Steam and Itch, and besides, why would I want my work to be on a platform if I have to break their rules to be there?).

If Itch required an account to buy and play Hive Time, I could understand some players being averse to it, but I've never found anybody who was interested in the game and would have preferred to play it on Steam who didn't end up downloading it from Itch. From my experiences with the games I've worked on that are on Steam, I think it's important to note that just being there doesn't guarantee you an audience or an income - that may have been the case 15 years ago, but it hasn't been that way in a long, long time.

Hi! Thanks for your kind words.

Unfortunately, I don't have the resources to consider localisation at this time. Hive Time grew out of a jam game, and some of our hasty decisions were made without keeping localisation in mind, so there'd be a non-trivial amount of work needed before any proper localisation efforts could begin. There are also many strings that aren't included in the json files or are assembled programmatically (eg: I have a couple of functions that modify strings to handle English rules for pluralisation), etc. that complicate things further.

The json files bundled with the game are templates for the game's (mostly undocumented) mod support. You can copy the entire json folder into ~/.local/share/hivetime (or the equivalent path if you're not on Linux - you can find those in the FAQ here on the Itch page) and the game will load those versions over the ones included in the .pck file. If you just want to modify one file, you can just make a json folder in that location and drop the file you want to modify in there.

Hope that helps!

I have no plans/resources for localisation at this time, sorry.

Hi! Thanks for the report. I had meant to bundle all the SFML deps, but it seems I missed some! We'll look at getting that sorted.

Oh no! New builds just went up! :D

Ha ha, I hope you find it interesting when you do get around to trying it!

Thanks for your kind words!

When I released hive Time, I wanted its pay-what-you-want model to be a core part of its identity. Unfortunately, not only does Steam not offer this payment model, but the distribution agreement would forbid me from mentioning its availability on other storefronts, so I wouldn't be able to tell Steam users about that aspect of its identity.

Itch is a good fit for me and my work.

I really hope you dig it!

If you're keen, I've got a very bare bones (ha ha) prototype here, and monthly devlogs on the full game over here.

Edit: Whoops, forgot to include a link in the post itself >_<

Aww, thanks for checking in. I hope find it interesting! Good luck with your hive 🐝

Ah, E! I was trying modifier keys like Shift and Ctrl, but didn't think to try E. Awesome, thanks :D

Hmm, what window mode are you playing in (windowed, fullscreen, borderless), and what exactly happens? Does the OS capture a empty image, or does it look like the game is intercepting the screenshot shortcut before the OS receives it?

I'm inclined to say that that's an OS problem rather than a game problem, since screenshots seem to be behaving fine here on Linux, but if we can get a little more information, we might be able to come up with a workaround and/or implement an in-game screenshot funcion.

Thanks for your kind words :D

I've had this tab open since last year, and today's the first time where I've felt like I've had free time enough to play a game for fun. It is so nice to have another Pontifex game. I'm neck deep in cranes right now and loving every second.

I do wish that I had a shortcut to keep the focused node to speed things along a little (eg: when placing cables for a suspension bridge that all share a common anchor). Enjoying the copy/paste/mirror shortcuts!

Ah! Thank you for your kind words! I'm very happy to hear that your hive is progressing well and that you're having fun :)

Here's to a long line of happy, healthy queens who make good decisions for the hive \o/