Happy Beethday, Hive Time! It's hard to believe it's been three years already.

To celebrate, I've put together a nice, big patch that rolls up some new content, new foraging gameplay, new chat integration features, and a bunch of misc tweaks, fixes, and QOL improvements.

Chat integration

There are a couple of new chat bee commands that stream viewers can invoke to get details of their bees' ages and current activity. I've also added commands for getting a little more information on the soundtrack and the game itself in the hopes of making it easier to surface that information on streams, etc. when I'm not around to share trivia.

Sleeping chat bees now mumble their messages, and there's a message length setting that will truncate long chat bee messages. There's a new undo button on chat user blacklist notifications, and a shortcut for skipping straight to the Community Settings menu when clicking on the chat status icon during gameplay.

Content updates

Today's patch brings a new "hat" for every bee role, including a pair of butterfly shaped glasses for Queens that act as an oblique reference to two of Australia's first women to work as professional scientific artists. There are four new chat/special bee effect trails, and the existing effect trails have also been tweaked a little too.

I've written several new vignettes, and two new bee facts for the Beepedia. My favourite new bee fact is Hiruni Samadi, Galpayage Dona et al.'s recent research that further investigates non-productive behaviours observed in unrelated studies of bumblebees, identifying these behaviours as meeting the criteria for "play."

UI improvements

Radial menus have had an update that allows for two new types of interactions. Firstly, it's now possible to mouse over resources in the cost panel to see tooltips.

Secondly, and likely more exciting for many players, it is now possible to mouse over the valid placement indicator on the cost panel to choose a different cell to use as the centre for a construction option. If you're prone to mixing up the direction of Honey and Jelly refineries, you'll be able to get the right position without clicking on a different cell.

I've also made some changes to how keyboard pan and zoom controls work, making both a little more analogue. This has been a low-priority item on my todo list since before the game's initial release, and it's nice to finally make keyboard camera movement feel a little more responsive.

Foraging changes

One of the larger changes to the game is a reworking of Foraging management, aimed at making Foraging a slightly more interesting experience for players who utilise it. Foraging zones can now only be selected, explored, or pollinated when they are adjacent to a selected foraging zone (or the hive itself). This makes exploring feel more like expanding a frontier, and makes zone allocations a lot more meaningful during the early-to-mid game.

Going after a distant foraging zone now requires more decision making than just clicking on a tile. I like the idea that a player might decide to deselect some other zones in order to free up enough allocations to take a longer path around a dangerous zone.

Because this all demands a little more interaction (engaging with Foraging is still optional, of course), I've reduced exploration and pollination costs a little. I've also given distant blooms some bonus resources to make them still feel rewarding to pursue.

These changes draw upon some of the Foraging improvements I had planned for the Goal Update. It doesn't dramatically effect the game as a whole, but I'm happy with the impact it has on the suite of management systems Hive Time offers.

As always, a very big thank-you to everybody who's given feedback on test builds, shared Hive Time with a friend, left a positive review, picked up the soundtrack, and/or supported the game. Three years on, it's still very nice to hear that the game is still able to give positive experiences to experienced and new players.

Enjoy!

- Cheese

Full changelog:

• Upgraded to Godot 3.4.5
• Added tooltips to radial menu item cost panels
• Added new age and info chat user commands
• Added new soundtrack and hivetime chat user commands
• Added IRCHandler::setupInfoInstanceList()
• Added bee_message_length setting
• Added hidden font_multiplier setting
• Added tooltip to zone allocation text in foraging screen mentioning map room requirement
• Added tooltip to deployed defenders text in foraging screen mentioning defence
• Added distance bonus to foraging tiles
• Added isTileAdjacentToSelected() and isConnectedToHive() to ForagingMenu
• Added ForagignScreen::getCoordinatePosition()
• Added shaped glasses 'hats' for each role
• Added initial queen name override for butterfly glasses hat
• Added 80s triangles, black wibbles, swirly bees, and snow bee effect trails
• Added bee facts 44 and 45
• Added 'Nightmare scenario' and 'Don't wait till its too late' generic vignettes
• Added 'Part of a whole' barracks vignette
• Added substitutions for resource term
• Added logging for loaded save version before clearing data
• Added some logging to help track down a rare crash when switching main menu tiles
• Added Game::menuTarget
• Added MainMenu skipMainMenu flag
• Added undo button to blacklisted notice speech bubble
• Added vertical pop on hover for popup buttons
• Added Fontinator::update_font_sizes()
• Added DebugStuff::shaped_glasses()
• Updated bubble effect trail sprite to look more bubble-like
• Updated bubbles effect trail to be a little more distinct from dots
• Updted sparkles effect trail to be more distinct from dots
• Updated Bee:say() to return ChatSpeech instance
• Updated chat help command to use new show_info() func
• Updated show_info() to extend existing ChatSpeech instance if present instead of creating a new one
• Updated IRCHandler::say_bee_message() to replace random words with ...zzz... if the chat bee is asleep
• Updated chat settings effect to open community settings menu on click
• Updated Player::show_bee_details() to use Bee::getAgeString()
• Updated Player::make_bee() to force first Queen shift
• Updated Player::clear_queen_effect_and_add_portrait() to track bumble count, distance travelled, and shifts for expiring queens
• Updated Player::apply_effect() to set ghost queen bumble, distance, and shifts
• Updated bee::return_to_pool() to reset any applied scale
• Updated Bee::get_random_target() to not increase bumblecount for ghost queen
• Updated Bee::get_queen_target() to not increase bumblecount for ghost queen
• Updated Bee::update_distance_travelled() to not increase distanceTravelled for ghost queen
• Updated Bee::import() to force Queen shift if not present in save data
• Updated tester and supporter credits
• Updated radial menu items to allow mouse to enter cost panel
• Updated radial menu cost panel to allow selection of target cell for multi cell constructions
• Updated activity icons for vignettes and new reserch to activate without zooming when management shortcut (Ctrl) is held
• Updated exploration and pollination costs to be lower
• Updated ForagingMenu to only allow exploration and pollination of zones adjacent to a selected zone
• Updated ForagingMenu to only allow zones that are adjacent to an already selected zone to be selected
• Updated ForagingMenu::show_tile_details to explain adjacency requirements when mousing over a zone that's not adjacent to a selected zone
• Updated explored zone icon in ForagingMenu legend
• Updated ForagingMenu::draw_map() to not show question marks on visible zones that aren't adjacent to selected
• Updated ForagingMenu::draw_map() to not outlines on explored zones that aren't adjacent to selected
• Updated ForagingScreen::take_tile_resources() to add distance bonus to bloom resources
• Updated foraging beepedia entry to mention map rooms giving foraging zone allocations
• Updated unselected zone legend tooltip in foraging screen
• Updated photo for bee fact 7
• Updated photo for bee fact 28
• Updated startup logos
• Updated MainMenu settings sectionList to be a class property
• Updated MainMenu::_process() to clear any in-progress camera translation tweens before setting up new camera translation tweens
• Updated MainMenu::setup_menu_camera() to take a target tile
• Updated MainMenu::_ready() to replace checks against Game::shouldQuit with skipMainMenu
• Updated MainMenu::_ready() to look for Game::menuTarget and skip to relevant settings menu if set
• Updated Game::setup_menu() to set skipMainMenu in menu node
• Updated MainMenu to use Fontinator::sizeMultiplier for duplicated fonts
• Refactored Fontinator to track initial font sizes
• Refactored non-scrollwheel CameraHandler zoom and pan handling to happen in _process()
• Refactored CameraHandler zoom and pan handling to be analogue with an acceleration curve and nudge step
• Refactored ChatSpeech duration assignment into extend_duration()
• Refactored bee age string calculation into Bee::getAgeString()
• Refactored bee_sleep() and bee_work() into bee_activity() in IRCHandler
• Removed default Godot gamepad bindings
• Fixed RadialMenuItem::try_action() not checking for building empty cells on non-grid tiles
• Fixed Game::updatePreviewMaterial() not checking for building empty cells on non-grid tiles
• Fixed bee effect trails not being saved correctly
• Fixed typo in 'Sniff sniff' vignette
• Fixed typo in Butterfly fact 5
• Fixed typo in beepedia 'Understanding The HUD' topic
• Fixed ghost queen age being set from old queen reign rather than lifespan
• Fixed ghost queen not being hidden after loading a save during a play session where ghost queen is visible
• Fixed foraging middle tile location not being set before starting to set up tiles
• Fixed foraging zone allocations not being updated on load
• Fixed initial foraging zone allocations being cleared immediately when starting a new hive
• Fixed beepedia fact debug mode not displaying correctly in release builds
• Fixed chat status details popup receiving mouse focus
• Fixed chat status details popup not being cleared when pausing
• Fixed IRCHander::resize_bee() checking against X axis instead of Y axis
• Fixed IRCHander::narrow_bee() not clamping to value scaled relative to Y axis
• Fixed un_blacklist_user() not converting names to lower case
• Fixed bad name in bat egg hat check
• Fixed events responding to input when Beepedia is visible
• Fixed InputMap errors for non-existent actions if the game loses focus before Binder has loaded
• Fixed very old saves not having a hive tile for foraging after loading
• Fixed possible crash when updating a resource list that contains a cooldown that isn't present in Player::cooldown_mappings (affected very old saves)
• Fixed possible crash when mousing over effect indicators that don't yet exist