Greetings, fellow bee friends!

Today is a special day. Not only is it World Bee Day, but Hive Time has just received an exciting update! Phil, Tracy, and the team will tell you all about this breaking news in Hive Time's newest trailer!

New Beepedia

The Informational Update adds an in-game "Beepedia," allowing tutorials to be reviewed, game concepts to be explored, and some hints/tips to be discovered. The Beepedia also features a number of true facts about bees that hopefully make up for the game's less-than-realistic depictions of bee life.

Find more fun

The number of "find your own fun" options has been expanded. If research isn't your thing, or you'd rather not wait for bees to construct cells, the Informational Update has got you covered.

(Scary!) visual effects

Some fancy new effects have been added to help give weight to some of the game's bigger events and mark some important milestones. Though they're not all particle effects, they can be disabled by turning off the Particles setting in the Video Settings menu.

New Queen portraits

Aubrey has contributed a whole bunch of new Queen portraits for your Queens, which become visible in the Throne Room as your colony progresses through generations. As always, a close-up can be seen by clicking on the portrait when in Inspect Mode.

And much more

The Informational Update brings a lot of other minor improvements and fixes aimed at making the game more approachable and easier to understand! Below is a highlight of changes since the last public release.

• Added Beepedia
• Added Beepedia and main menu buttons to bottom HUD
• Added resource and role icons to all tutorials, events, and vignettes
• Added consistent bolding and capitalisation for cell names in all tutorials, events, and vignettes
• Added new fireworks effect for new queen event
• Added new fireworks effect for queen midlife crisis event
• Added new cell destruction effect
• Added new visual indicator for cell construction progress
• Added new transition effect when starting a new hive
• Added seven new Queen portraits
• Added shifts per role to bee lifetime info
• Added bumble count to bee lifetime info
• Added a repeat build cursor
• Added a pan camera cursor
• Added directional indicator for throne when offscreen
• Added cake hat for customisable Queens
• Added cheese hat for customisable Queens
• Added a tick icon to unlocked research items
• Added optional Beepedia links to bbcode text substitution
• Added Beepedia button to event screen when displaying an event that has a relevant Beepedia page
• Added optional "none" trail for special bees
• Added new backwards compatibility handling for saved data
• Added double right arrow to Start New Hive button
• Added HUD dimming when management screens are open
• Added payment reminder screen on quit
• Added payment thanks screen
• Added duration for foraging zone exploration
• Added radial hex indicator when exploration progress
• Added duration for foraging zone pollination
• Added radial hex indicator for pollination progress
• Added Honeycomb CRUNCH easter egg to upgraded Map Rooms
• Added close button to population menu
• Added close button to construction menu
• Added close button to foraging menu
• Added close button to defence menu
• Added close button to production menu
• Added close button to storage/reserves menu
• Added close button to bee activity menu
• Added bear arm visual effect to "Bear attack" event
• Added bbcode text substitution to population menu
• Added bbcode text substitution to bee activity menu
• Added bbcode text substitution to research menu
• Added pollinate and pollinate_close event effects
• Added pollinate close effect to "Yam party" event
• Added pollinate close effect to "A graceful return" event
• Added pollinate close effect to "A final gift" event
• Added a new bee name
• Added skip_construction "find your own fun" option
• Added skip_research "find your own fun" option
• Added skip_beepedia_locks "find your own fun" option
• Added construction indicators to video settings
• Added throne indicator to interface settings
• Added shortcut (Escape) for closing Beepedia
• Added some new credits names/roles
• Updated locked research items to be more opaque
• Updated wall thickness for existing empty cell construction scaffolding to be thinner
• Updated Beesitter population decline warning to be less sensitive
• Updated bee lifetime info to include distance travelled outside the hive
• Updated tutorial_00 name to "controls" from "welcome"
• Updated tutorial_08 title to "Three bees per Cell" from "Work, work, work"
• Updated role icons in activity screen to be more opaque
• Updated mouse pan behaviour to restore cursor position after pan is finished (excluding Windows due to an upstream bug)
• Updated internal role icon names for consistency
• Updated clickable region for radial menu items to be larger
• Updated hive last save and big screenshot to happen in new hive transition rather than in new_game event effect
• Updated open_foraging_menu() to force refresh of foraging screen before displaying
• Updated bloom activity notifications to re-trigger existing notification if there is one
• Updated foraging zone bloom handling to allow predetermined bloom types
• Updated "Bloom season" event/effect to be called "Warm season"
• Refactored pre-instantiating to (hopefully) address loading pauses once and for all
• Refactored new queen handling
• Refactored queen portrait handling
• Refactored bbcode text substitution handling to be less event-specific
• Refactored application quit handling
• Refactored URL handling in main menu screen
• Refactored activity icon detail population
• Refactored foraging zone pollination handling
• Refactored main menu camera handling
• Refactored build preview material application
• Refactored construction progress and barracks shader creation
• Removed some extraneous prints
• Removed some extraneous logging
• Removed some vestigial code
• Removed old Queen portrait
• Removed pollination cooldown
• Removed some OSX specific calls that were no longer needed
• Fixed "A new Queen arises" event not using a positive music track
• Fixed possible crashes when temporary entities could receive input events during pre-instantiation
• Fixed pre-instancing happening when starting a new hive
• Fixed possible memory leak when transitioning from main menu to gameplay
• Fixed possible memory leak from new version indicator
• Fixed bees not continuing their current activity if they're already at their destination when loading a save
• Fixed menu responding to input events while closing
• Fixed possible cases where multiple radial menus could exist at once
• Fixed radial menu option for follow cam not showing for bumbling Queens
• Fixed chunky edges on main menu hex transition gradient
• Fixed typo in throne info screens
• Fixed HUD menu button retaining mouse over status after transitioning to menu
• Fixed portrait anchors being set up prematurely in old hive before when chosing to move to a new hive
• Fixed setup_menu() not hiding events, management screens, and background tint
• Fixed parseVersionString() return value only containing strings
• Fixed activity and effect details pop ups showing over main menu and new hive transitions
• Fixed over capacity role lifespan shortening applying to all bees of the relevant role rather only enough to pull the population below cap
• Fixed activity screen playing select sound multiple times when opening for the first time
• Fixed bear attack activity icon displaying default image
• Fixed Old Bitey sometimes triggering before hives are above the minimum size threshold
• Fixed nursery progress ring sometimes flashing full
• Optimised input processing to prioritise camera handler, HUD, and main scene
• Optimised get_node() calls in camera handler
• Optimised cell processing to reduce overheads related to determining whether construction effects should play
• Optimised cell rendering by hiding construction progress indicators for under construction cells that haven't yet had any build progress
• Optimised common cell input processing slightly
• Optimised foraging screen refresh to only occur when foraging screen is visible
• Optimised input processing for main scene a little

Last, but not least

A very big thank-you to everybody who helped test and gave feedback on the Informational Update before its release. Without your help, the game wouldn't be half as good as it is! ♥

And an even bigger extra big very huge thank-you to Mim, Aubrey, and Peter, whose work (on trailer/beepedia art, portraits, and trailer music respectively) made my life a lot easier!

Buzz buzz

- Cheese