2019-10-07 (preview-120)

Buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz!

Another slow week for published updates, but a pretty productive week for me.

The biggest addition in this build is the new Bee Activity screen, which allows the idle and active state of bee populations to be reviewed. This helps identify possible areas for efficiency increases and potential problems. Very early on, I'd hoped that this would be inferrable by observing the hive, and for a dozen or two bees, it nearly is. As the hive grows and it becomes pretty much impossible to track individual bees, and the ebb and flow of role populations is just as hard to see.

I'm on the fence at the moment about how much direct advice/information this screen should give players, since I want players to feel like they can pursue their own strategies and discover what works/what doesn't rather than have me tell them a single way to do things. I'm sure I'll do a lot of iteration, but for now, I think it's a good start.

The Bee Activity screen is exposed from the new Throne Room upgrade, and currently unlocks jelly related research options (providing upgraded workshops are present). The current research and building costs require a hive that's got storage cells and upgraded workshops, and I'm hoping that this will break up the sense of the upgraded workshop just unlocking everything.

Peter's popped in a new music track that plays during the "Midlife Crisis" event that triggers when the current Queen reaches half her lifespan, and has this to say about it:

"For halfway through the queen's life we wanted something a little bit more celebratory. I created a more upbeat, folksy tune which uses the queen's motif (which also appears in Beeginnings, Peace, the main menu music among others) in the bass line (and later on piano). The tune takes on a momentarily more uncertain tone in its second half. I didn't want it to be all smiles, after all, being halfway through life has implications."

Last, but not least, on top of a bunch of other misc fixes and tweaks, I've added a small UX update that I've been meaning to do for a while: having vignettes be cleared when right clicking on their activity indicators (previously, that would just remove the activity indicator, leaving no way to get rid of the vignette itself without clicking on it or waiting for it to go away). I know that currently, the small pool of vignettes makes them a little annoying for some players. I hope that this won't stop people from checking them out from time to time, but I do appreciate that having them forced isn't so much fun.

Enjoy!

Full changelog:

• Added throne upgrade
• Added bee activity screen to upgraded throne room
• Added activity and idle descriptons for activity screen to role_descriptions.json
• Added min_population_space and max_population_space conditions
• Added panel behind resource screen graph
• Added WIP Half a Bee music track to 'midlife crisis' event
• Added bumble count and role tracking to bees
• Added type to activity indicators
• Added new radial menu icons for upgrade build options
• Added radial menu icon for activity screen
• Removed log error regarding bee role 'all'
• Removed unused wall material
• Updated research requirements to add dependencies on upgraded throne room
• Updated research descriptions to reflect new changes
• Updated music player to set volume to -80db when a music track ends in hopes of fixing music fade in pop
• Updated music player to play a random background track when loading a game
• Updated lost_brethren effect to give a maximum of 20 bees
• Updated 'friends we didn't know we had' event to use the min_population_space condition
• Updated vignette activity indicators to clear cell vignette when dismissed
• Updated workshop upgrade info text to mention cell screen
• Added throne upgrade info text
• Fixed worker bees never descending below production priorities when construction is in progress
• Fixed worker and forager bees sometimes dying while travelling to/from the hive
• Fixed possible crash when debug event handler processes an event with no conditions
• Fixed stock_swap effect consuming as many source resources as possible regardless of how many target resources are generated
• Fixed events with no conditions always failing condition checks
• Fixed queen midlife and queen twighlight flags being reset when loading a game
• Fixed resource reserve slider icons staying transparent when slider is enabled
• Fixed costs not being applied when upgrading cells
• Fixed crash when construction of a throne completes (never happened in a released build, as initial throne construction is forced)
• Fixed janky shadow edges
• Refactored radial menu handling code to reduce duplication for upgraded cells
• Reduced the amount of time that builder and worker bees will hang around at a construction site after construction is complete
• Tweaked layout in the population menu
• Tweaked base throne model to be visually distinct from upgraded throne
• Moved cell list to upgraded workshop