Hello, hive friends!

It's been a little while since the last update. I've been working away at some larger features that have taken a bit longer to come together. Coupled with having a birthday and some other activities that have been eating up a big chunk of time recently, that's made it harder to push out updates with my regular cadence.

First up, Peter's been at work on some more music, and we've popped in a test version of a short-ish positive cue that will play when positive events occur (current implementation has that music happening for all events). As usual, here are some words from Peter:

"I wanted to make some more positive music for moments in the game where things are going well due to events in the player's favour. Many of the features of the last couple of pieces reappear here but this piece has a little bit of extra confidence and swagger to it and introduces a couple of new sounds to the mix, notably the horns."

Next, we have a new resource focused screen, which can be accessed from any storage cell's radial menu. This shows historic resource levels over the past 10 minutes or so. By default, the resource for the cell clicked on is shown, but every resource can be toggled on and off, which makes comparing the ebb and flow of two resources nice and easy.

Alongside that, I've added upgrade options for every storage cell, which consume 7 adjacent cells and grant 40 additional storage. They also unlock "reserve" sliders in the resources screen that can be used to configure thresholds that resource levels must be above for production to happen. This will help with those situations where you're waiting for resources to come in from outside the hive and have to click fast before they're eaten by wax, honey or jelly production. Eventually I'll add a shortcut so that you can automatically set reserves to match a construction or research cost.

In this update, there also are some new event and vignette images, a bunch of bug fixes, and a slew of adjustments to research durations.

Enjoy!

Full changelog:

• Added resource menu
• Added resource history tracking
• Added resource reserve mechanic (requires upgraded storage)
• Added initial event music implementation
• Added first pass on workingwell event music track
• Added research options for upgraded resource storage cells
• Added upgraded resource storage cells
• Added info events for upgraded resource storage cells
• Added another facility substitution
• Added vertical slider to hex gui theme
• Added snail monk pilgrimage and return event images/icons
• Added mask for effect and activity icons
• Added bee variants for exit vignette images
• Removed background tint from population and research menus since they don't pause the game
• Removed effect icon masking
• Removed some extraneous log output
• Fixed momentary full volume before music fade in begins when returning to the game from the main menu
• Fixed building info events triggering event music
• Fixed possible crash when loading a game while activity details popup in old game is shown
• Fixed visual storage cell levels not updating sometimes
• Fixed false debug output about particle counts being less than 1
• Fixed rare crash in population menu when mousing over sliders
• Fixed build preview not working for multicell upgrades
• Fixed build preview sometimes showing the wrong colour
• Fixed typo in nectar rave event
• Fixed effect radial progress indicator
• Updated application icon
• Increased research time for barracks, maproom, honey rifinery, jelly refinery, wax storage, and workshop upgrade