After long and arduous work, and considerable help with an early preview before the Albuquerque Game Developer Group (AGDG), Way of the Bee is almost ready for early access!
Recent changes include control refurbishing and slimming down of some over-designs, and the addition of a basic pause menu. “Bee Vision” now goes from a 120° fish-eye when still to a 40° field of view when moving, to make navigation easier. Flowers now simply need contact with the bee to finish a path from the hive; and a bee can return to the hive by simply approaching it. The bee will automatically re-enter the nest.
Day/night cycles now include compositor changes to better reflect the environment. The gradual pull of gravity has been entirely removed; though the latent code is still in there in case I need to automatically adjust flight altitude for a quality-of-life improvement.
Birds no longer steal the camera on attack, but their screech is in 3D sound and they can be located by it. “Bee time” engages on an attack, though I feel it might be more useful if it engages later on in the attack; this provides a moment to sweep left or right and dodge the bird.
I will hopefully be debuting it again in front of AGDG today, in the late evening. The last demo gave me a lot of wonderful and useful feedback and exceeded my expectations, and if all goes well, I will have a very short list of adjustments and expansions before an alpha/early-access can be released to the general public!
Michael Macha 