Hello For The Hive fans!
Thanks for hopping on to read the fourth instalment of updates in our continuing series. We’ve got some exciting news to share, with new characters and cool advancements on the FTH procedural world. We’re pleased to share our continued progress, and we hope you are enjoying the journey, as we creep closer and closer to having a completed game for you to love and cherish.
So, without further ado, let's move on to our latest progress updates.
Let’s Make A Big Open World!
Today we’re going to talk about some really cool mechanics and features related to surviving in For The Hive. The goal, of course, is not only to survive but also to make the most of your time navigating the FTH world, hopefully coming out on top as king or queen of the hive.
If you've been following along on our YouTube devlog, you may have noticed that the gameplay footage up to this point took place in an island that we created by hand to test player controls and other gameplay mechanics. However, our goal has always been to take things to the next level and expand our horizons, literally and figuratively.
We're excited to announce that we’ve succeed in creating that big procedural world that will make the gameplay experience so unique, exciting and unexpected.
The vastness of the world, contrasted with the small size of your character, will deliver the perfect insect survival experience that we hope will keep you on your toes for hours.
In order to achieve that goal, we opted for procedural generation. Instead of making a small world ourselves, we will task the computer with making the world for us. This will help us generate more content for the game, and create a more diverse, varied and expansive world that’s unique every time you start a new game.
The first step was to generate a terrain with interesting features, including hills, rivers, mountains, valleys, and caves. Our goal is to create a massive landscape, giving you a multitude of places to explore as you navigate the world.
A ground to stand on is a good enough first step, next we experimented with spawning patches of grass here and there. From there, we added in more intricate and bigger details like rock formations and plants. We also made sure to have underground lairs and tunnels that keep you guessing at what challenges or rewards you'll meet around every corner.
As we continue to build out the FTH world, we’ll continue to work out our procedural generator to create the most compelling, vast, and realistic world for the most fun insect survival gameplay you’ll ever experience.
Behold! The Apex Predator Of The Insect Realm!
We're super excited about creating a new character for you to play as: the mighty ant!
The ant is the apex predator in the small world of insects, so it's only fitting that we add it as a character into the game. As with all of our insects, we're mindful of all the different subspecies that exist, so in this release, we've created the black garden ant, which is the most common ant species in the world, aptly known as the common black ant.
Locking in a visual identity for the game is a complex subject that we’re always experimenting with. In creating this new species, we've explored a new visual style for the characters, which leans more towards realism. We hope that you enjoy this new direction that we’re taking for the visuals, and we’d love to hear your feedback.
Now that we have a worthy opponent for the termite, we’ll be diving deeper into hive management mechanics. Our goal is to give you a realistic experience of how all these species interact with each other, and the various interdependent relationships they make use of in their daily lives.
Stay on Top of the Buzz
We hope you're as excited about this latest batch of updates as we are. We've already made significant development headway in 2022, with many more incredible developments on the horizon.
We’re committed to keeping you in the loop as we continue to build the FTH world, so be sure you sign up for notifications so you never miss a beat.
If you haven’t already, subscribe to our YouTube channel and turn on your notifications to never miss an FTH update. Be sure to also check out our site at https://www.forthehivegame.com/.
For those of you who have wishlisted For the Hive on Steam and are following us on social media or our vlog or blog, you’re the best. Thank you!
