The Hive 1.100 - Winds of Change

Hello everyone! Today we are proud to release update 1.100 Winds of Change for The Hive. We wanted to especially focus on adding features requested by the community. Our plan was to update The Hive from Unity Engine 5.6.7 to 2019.1 version. 1.100 update remarks the biggest patch we have done for the game so far. One of the most significant improvements was to rework the whole game interface and the addition of full 4k support. Other major visual upgrade was converting the whole project to use linear color space, and the addition of new visual post processing effects. Also, notable updates are the addition of two new Insectoid buildings, two new units for Chalatoi faction and all new visuals for Infected faction. We also made all new spell and particle effects utilizing the now available tools. You can now hide the game interface using (L) key, to take shiny screenshots.

We would love to hear your feedback on the new changes!

Gameplay Updates

• New Insectoid buildings, the spring and the burrow (burrow has 4 model variations)
• New enemy units, chalatoi bowman and spearman
• The vast majority of all particle effects in the game have been redone
• Buildings can now be properly selected when they are being built
• Several cutscenes improved
• Pathfinding system improved
• Player objectives now work correctly when loading a save

Graphics Improvements

• All new post processing effects
• Color space changed from Gamma to Linear
• Lighting data rebaked for all scenes
• Additional detail added to all maps
• Infected faction has all new textures
• Several world object textures improved
• Animations added to several world objects
• All buildings now have debris effect when they are destroyed
• Buildings now have hover circle for selection
• Scene lighing changes on color and position
• Several units and plants now glow in the dark, illuminating nearby objects
• All levels now have reflections for metallic objects like coins, gold and weapons

Unit rebalance

The new population system, introduced along with the burrow building, now has a much higher maximum population of 200 (up from 40). You start with 25 maximum population with a hive, but building a burrow will increase the cap by 35.

• Legionnaire attack reduced to 4 (down from 5)
• Legionnaire population cost increased to 5 (up from 1)
• Hunter armour piercing passive has been fixed
• Medic population cost increased to 3 (up from 1)
• Medic's revive ability has been moved to the Avatar, to give it more value and limit the amount of available revives
• Queen population cost increased to 6 (up from 1)
• Wasp population cost increased to 3 (up from 1)
• Wasp poison damage increased to 2 per second (up from 1 per second)
• Wasp maximum health increased to 200 (up from 160)
• Avatar population cost increased to 6 (up from 1)
• Avatar food cost increased to 150 (up from 100)
• Rhino population cost increased to 3 (up from 1)
• Unit upgrades now cost 100/200/300 DNA (down from 250/500/750)

UI Rework

This is a complete re-write of the UI system to use the new Unity canvases. It was required to get 4K support. We added a way to hide your UI with a keybind (default is L) that can be rebound in the new settings interface. You can also press the highres screenshot button (default Alt+P) to take a 4K screenshot.

• 4K resolution support
• A large amount of UI images were redone at a higher resolution
• Completely redesigned settings controls section
• Unlimited inventory space
• Item stats now have highlight colours for positive/negative effects
• New health bar effects
• Bosses and buildings now have larger health bars
• Dialog subtitles now show who is talking, with matching colours
• Objectives are now prettier
• Units that have to be unlocked are now shown in grey, and tell where they can be unlocked from
• New building queue shows how many units you have in queue past 4
• Selecting chests, fishing spots, or mineral veins now shows a hint about how to harvest them
• Chests, fishing spots, and mineral veins now have portraits
• The final boss' [spoiler]protective bubble button now has a cool new glow around it[/spoiler]
• Game engine is updated from 32 bit to support 64 bit operating systems

Audio Changes

New Audio

• Legionnaire
• Hunter
• Worker mining, fishing, gathering food
• Interactions (light torch, open chest...)
• Improved audio for several cutscenes
• Attack and ability sounds for several bosses and enemies
• UI sounds
• Logo screen sound effect

Improved Audio

• Possibility to dynamically adjust sound and music volume from options
• General volume adjustments
• Voice line fixes
• 3D sound range adjustments
• Improved SFX limit system
• Fixed doppler!

New Music

• Map 03
• Map 04
• Map 06
• Map 07
• Map 09
• Map 10
• Main menu

Please leave feedback on the new changes!

We would love to hear your feedback on the forums on how to improve the game further. Best of wishes ~Sauli