The full release of Hive and the Pillbug expansion will be tomorrow, March 20th!
We just pushed out a build tonight, which will likely be the last build before the release (unless something goes sideways).
We think you'll like this one ;)
Added "Classic" and "Carbon" display modes. If you prefer to play with tiles that look just like the board game occasionally, now you can! Hit F2 to swap between them at any point... even on the main menu (the option is also on the Settings menu, so you don't need to memorize F2).
Hit F1 during the game to pull up Rules more quickly
Added an explanation of "Tournament Rules" to the Rules menu.
Fixed a bug that the person being invited by "Invite a Friend" could crash if they were invited to multiple games during the same session.
Fixed a bug that we found with the Pillbug, that you never even saw! Shhhhhh. ;)
Perhaps last build before full release!
You're hearing it here first... we just got approved to do the full launch on March 20th!
Tonight we've pushed another build with these changes:
Added Stats screen. You can see your personal stats and some fun global stats.
Added better integration for unlocking Pillbug DLC & seeing the rules before you unlock it (to make it easier to know if it's something you want). You still can't buy the Pillbug at this moment, but good news: we'll also be able to launch the Pillbug this week! It should be unlockable right around the same time as the game. As mentioned elsewhere, it will be available at a discount for a short time after it's launched.
We now detect when a player starts the game in Big Picture mode and if they do, it will start fullscreen by defualt.
Fixed some text-size issues from the prior build (the text had become too small in the credits and a few other spots).
Added "F11 Fullscreen" text hints to the Settings screen. Fullscreen mode has been available since the very first release, but many people didn't notice it because it's apparently convention to mention it in Settings & not everyone knows about the "F11" convention in Windows.
Potential fix to a divide-by-zero error that player "blacksun" was having.
That's all for now, my swarm.
Super-secrets: if you have some friends considering getting the game, you might want to tell them to get it now because it's cheaper on Early Access than it will be upon release in three days.
Another release: more networking UI tweaks, more AI work :)
A pattern is starting to emerge!
Added a sound when someone joins your online lobby (so that you realize someone joined!).
Added a count of "lurkers" in the Online main menu so that you can tell if other people are around, and just haven't created a lobby yet.
Several performance improvements to the AI. It evaluates approximately 34% more nodes-per-second than it did a week ago.
Set the AI's "display name" in-game to be the level of the AI (before they all just said "Computer" which made screenshots less interesting/informative).
Thanks to everyone for the continued feedback, especially regarding the AI! We've been making long lists of issues to look into, but it's definitely starting to shape up. A few really great Hive players have taken the time to pound on the AI also, and since it's occasionally getting a Draw against Hive Masters, I think we're starting to get fairly close to where we want to be.
Must... keep.. iterating! :)
Small release today: Rematches & Better AI
Today, the "Rematch" button will finally work. We think it should be a pretty smooth experience & a way to very quickly play a lot of Hive! :D
Also, we spend the weekend making a Visualizer so we could debug the AI in even more depth (screenshot if you're into that sorta thing: https://twitter.com/BlueLineGames/status/434800236783890432 ) and we were able to get the AI to behave pretty well on all of our example test-cases without making it run any slower (actually, it's a smidge faster, but not enough to be noticeable).
AI IMPROVING TIME! We think the AI is good enough on Queen that it should be able to make you work for it. If you see it do anything that's really foolish, please screen-shot it and let us know. Any and all AI feedback is welcome now, so please let us know what you think, on our Forum thread:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/251210/discussions/0/666828127167256405/
As always, please let us know if you see anything strange crop up in the release. Have fun!
New Release: AI fixes
We did a bit of tuning to the AI. It does know a couple new tricks, but by far the most important part is that we found 2 bugs in it. This fixes some of the very illogical moves that it was making (like placing down a long line of pieces for no reason & generally just acting strangely after it ran out of pieces to place).
The "Queen" and "Hive Mind" AIs are still not where we want them, but they do a pretty decent job of not making embarrassingly-bad moves now. If you see anything that's off-the-wall, please take a screenshot and let us know!! Thank you :)
More to come in the coming days/weeks!
Another release! (Geoff went silly on the task-list)
It's only been 2 days, but we have another build that we just released. Geoff did all of these changes on his own while Sean was messing with AI.
Multi-kill:
Bugfix: couldn't expand stacked pieces during opponent's turn in Networked games.
Bugfix: can now control camera while the AI is thinking
Bugfix: networked games were showing up in the list of "in progress" games even after they had finished.
New feature: made the camera angle "stick" between games so that if you prefer a certain angle (eg: top-down for fans of 2D) you don't have to reset that each game.
Performance improvements to free up CPU usage (for good measure, and also to give the AI more to play with).
Added a way for us to hide our games while we're testing so that you don't see BlueLine creating and leaving a bunch of games all day long. ;)
Bugfix: fixed a "tearing" rendering error (caused part of the window to render blue instead of drawing the actual game). Thanks to user ddyer for bug-report!
Bugfix: We think we fixed a crash that sometimes crops up at end-games for users who stream the game via Twitch.tv.
Bugfix: when multiple games were played in a row, if the player used "enter" to place pieces, then the game got confused and placed multiple pieces. Thanks to user iavor.diatchki for the bug-report!
Previously, the order that the users appeared in the Online lobby was fairly random, but now the host is always on the left. This makes it possible to more decisively chose who goes first when you're setting up the Game Settings when creating an online game.
As always, please let us know in the forums if you run into any bugs in the new release. Cheers!
New build just released
We just pushed another build w/a few fixes from the last few days.
Added red highlight to the last moved piece. This was requested a lot because many users tab away to other windows when playing against the higher (longer thinking) AI levels, or when playing Online games.
Fixed a bug in the Ant's movement rules (found & reported by 'bernthethird').
Fixed some of the issues with auto-refresh on the list of online lobbies. Removed flickering and fixed the fact that it would unselect your highlighted row when it did a refresh.
Our highlighting is now on just the tile instead of the tile and the piece. It seems to look more clear this way.
Fixed it so users can also control the camera angle when the Game Over overlay is showing.
Fixed a networking crash if you were to host a game, then the opponent quits, then you start a local game.
Thanks again to everyone who played in the Hive swarm, and thanks for all of the feedback you all have given us through the forums, the Steam chat, and email.. it's really helping us iterate and make the game better quickly!!
Another quick release ;)
Just in time for the event later today (12pm EST to 4pm EST we're all going to play online!) we just made another release.
This release fixes a few things:
BUGFIX: There were several instances where popping open the Steam overlay (eg: when you click "Chat") then do certain other interactions (like clicking the window icon in the top left) could cause your window to freeze & to unfreeze it you had to swap focus to another window and back. It was very annoying.
BUGFIX: We realized that the winstreak_online stat wasn't resetting correctly. Gorey details: the number wouldn't change by more than 1 due to a setting. So you basically only had to win 2 games in a row for it to start ignoring your losses, then a total of 3 more games to get the Achievement for winning eg: 5 games in a row.
BUGFIX: If a networked gamer closed their window mid-game (instead of Quitting the game) the game didn't notice the disconnection before, so you'd sit around waiting.
UI TWEAK: In networked games, it was possible for your opponent's tiles to look hovered some times, but that makes no sense since it's not what they're actually mousing over and there's no need for you to ever see those tiles hovered (it might just confuse you as to whose tiles they are, etc.).
I hope to play some games against all of you in a few hours at the Hive swarm!! :D
New release: chat integration, mouse camera-control, etc...
We just pushed a new build with a bunch of improvements focused on Online play experience & various other feedback we received.
It's been a busy week! Here is the rundown of what's new:
It's easier to Chat with players in-game or in lobbies by just hitting a "chat" button.
You can now control the camera-angle using the mouse by clicking the middle mouse button (formerly, you could only change the angle using the arrow keys).
Added the opponent's username to the HUD (and highlighted the one whose turn it is).
Bugfix: if you switched played an AI game, then local multiplayer, sometimes the progress-bar would still be in the HUD.
More graceful handling of international characters.
Better error messages if you try to connect to a lobby that is no longer available (eg: already filled up).
Made it so you can let go of the piece you're placing by right-clicking
If you're around on Saturday (February 1st) at 12pm EST to 4pm EST, come online to play some Hive! It'll be our first event, so it'll be fun to see some of you there!
Online multiplayer (and more) now available!!
We've been hunkered down, working on getting closer to a final release. Tonight, another big update is finished: there is now support for Online Multiplayer!
I had a chance to play a couple of games against a fan and it was great! We can't wait to play more of you as time goes on (we'll pop in when we're free).
As with other things in Early Access, there are bound to be some rough edges, so please let us know if you see any problems.
In addition to the Online features, this release also includes:
Added the highly-requested Settings screen to allow you adjust Sound Effect volume and Music volume in-game. These settings are "sticky" so you don't have to reset them every time you play the game.
Made the options "sticky" so you don't have to keep setting them to your favorite way to play
Bugfix: sometimes the "[whoever] Wins" overlay is off to the side
Updated Credits to be less xboxy
We have a number of tweaks to make the Online play smoother (like making Rematches simple) and should be doing a couple of smaller releases while we polish the Online play.
