Hey friends! This month I took the plunge into going full-time in gamedev - up until this point I've been doing freelance work for about 50% of each month. This meant I could sit down and properly get stuck into the 3.0 update, and I really did this month as (spoilers) I finished it! This post will contain spoilers of 3.0 content. [hr][/hr]

Engine Tune-Up

So one of the things I ended up finally doing was upgrading the version of GameMaker APICO uses. I haven't updated for a while as the version I used (2022.6) was the last version an older type of Xbox port accepts, any newer versions I'd need to upgrade the multiplayer code to use Playfab (which I didn't fancy doing).
rip XDK it was nice while it lasted However there were a few things starting to cause issues:

• GameMaker support wouldn't fix any issues I had, as the version I was using was too old
• The Steamworks integration for 2022.6 sometimes just crashes on certain Windows machines, and doesn't support older MacOS versions
• Some issues with tiles that were getting annoying to work around, plus the sprite editor having a bug with copy/paste from aseprite (making importing assets a pain)

Also at the time the new long-term support (LTS) version didn't even exist (yes this engine has been around 24 years and only now bothered to add a LTS version don't get me started), so wasn't any point upgrading when everything changed every month with each update. Luckily moving to LTS wasn't that painful, had to make a few tweaks but overall everything worked the same just with better performance! Always a risk having to update mid-development though :') [hr][/hr]

Restore The Reefs

With the engine upgraded I could get back to the actual core 3.0 stuff, namely coral reefs and the underwater areas. Last month I'd added the coral "tiles" and the related machines, but they weren't actually in the world yet!
the red coral reef area in the tile editor To spawn in the coral reefs, I actually "drew" the areas out in the room editor with tiles - this would make it easier to dump the new regions into the game and I could edit the reefs to make sure all the "dying" coral was in range of the natural beehives. Each tile is then read and turned into what it needs to be, tiles, objects, scenery - multiple per tile if needed. This is the same method used to spawn in the town + various NPC areas.
first pass on the ref reef in-game! As I mentioned last month to restore the coral we had a couple of things added:

• A coral tool to allow the player to gather fragments from existing living coral
• Coral tanks that take a fragment and let you adjust salinity + pH to match, when met the fragment then grows into multiple "restored" coral tiles
• Scaffold that can be placed on dying (dark blue) coral, which you then place the "restored" coral in. Nearby beehive action then restores the tile completely

restoring some of the yellow coral reef ft. bumblemore Once you restore a coral reef, Director Bumblemore sells you a special item, 1 restored you get the Diving Helmet (which unlocks underwater areas), 2 you get the Degrumpifier (which allows you to turn grumpy bees normal), and 3 you get the Rubber Ring (which lets you "walk" across deep water when in your inventory). As well as each restoration giving you a nice item, the coral "flowers" and flora will start growing, which means you can then access the solitary bees and butterflies for the reefs if thats something you like doing!
some new lil weirdos I felt like this was a good reward for restoring it, and something a little different gameplay-wise (using your bees to restore the areas), but as it is a little different I definitely worry what people will make of it! Won't be long before I find out I guess haha... [hr][/hr]

What Lies Beeneath

Finally, months later after starting the concept drawings for 3.0, it was time to see what lies beeneath, and add in the actual main event! At first I was trying to spawn the new areas in by using the same method that I generate islands with, however the main issue was I just couldn't get the sort of interesting shapes that I wanted for the caves, as I wanted 3 distinct ones and a bit more winding corridor areas.
underwater caves using the world generation "blobs" What I ended up doing was the same as I'd done for coral + NPC areas and just made up a special room to draw out the 3 underwater caves.
one of the underwater caves This let me have much more interesting designs for the areas. I've long since stepped away from having proc. gen for the worlds, as although the island generation is randomised per world (which might be news to you!), everything else is roughly the same place, and the different island shapes bring very little to the game as a whole. I'd much rather a more hand-crafted experience, especially when it comes to these new areas underwater where I wanted a very specific look and feel!
another underwater area in the room editor With these done I could make sure that we had 3 underwater areas spawned into the space below the map, and got to work adding all the new objects and tiles (the "sludge") that I needed. Then I played around with a few ideas on lighting and shaders to try and give the background a bit more of an underwater feel without getting in the way with the player + menu object interactions.
To do this I actually reused the same wobbly effect that the devland uses, but only applied it to the background + tile layers - leaving the player, flowers, bees etc all unaffected. Alongside the new underwater sounds it's definitely made it feel very different from the normal biomes!
along with some special scenery items! I then needed to add the new machines that would allow the player to start cleaning up the sludge, with the process as follows:

• Using "Filter Hives", the player can use underwater bees and special "Filter" frames like they would a normal hive but near sludge
• When filling these frames, the bees also clear out some of the sludge, which can then be removed from the filter in a Seperator (which acts like your Extractor but produces sludge not honey)
• The sludge can be further refined at a Percolator, a special machine Bumblemore has that let's you dredge the sludge for any special items you might have missed
• Clearing the sludge from one of the 3 underwater caves uncovers a divepoint to an even deeper cave...

sludge cleaning in action I thought this would be a nice mechanic to introduce to act as a parallel to the coral reefs, using bees to restore coral and then using bees to clean up the sludge (what CANT they do). The deeper dive spots uncovered each lead to a special geode cave - I won't spoil them too much but each one has it's own special thing to discover!
emissary bees you say... [hr][/hr]

Salted Butter

While I was adding in plenty of new butterflies this update (including some strange underwater butts), I also got around to added a couple new machines! The first of which was a butterfly "box", allowing you to store as many butterflies as you like in one place! When I added butterflies in 2.0 I didn't realise just how much people like to hoard them, so now you can really go crazy!
Another thing that came out of 2.0 feedback was a way to mass release butterflies, so I added a small machine that acts like a rehabilitator - only difference is it won't affect restoration as thats still only when you create new butterflies in a nursery. It's just there to make it easier to release all those speckleds you kept picking up! While I was there I also tweaked some of the butterfly spawning, fixed some of the butterfly effects not working, and made sure butterflies could mutate flowers even when there was no room (a common gripe!) [hr][/hr]

Quality Of Life

By now the end was in sight, however I still had a few last things I wanted to add in this update that were just general quality of life stuff and not specific to the new ocean updates. First up was adding a Hive Tool, a craftable tool that lets you bonk beehives or hives to collect any honeycomb or frames without having to open the menu!
honestly why have we not always had this im so dumb Next was probably the most asked feature, a quick store button. Pressing this (or hotkey Q) will move any items from your main inventory (not hotbar) into nearby crates if that crate has the same item.
thanks terraria! While I was added inventory upgrades you can see I also added two new slots to the inventory, a trash slot for quick deletions, as well as a backpack slot to free up a slot. On gamepad the backpack slot also lets you open the backpack without having to "equip" it, which was always a bit cumbersome. Finally I increased the stack size of items from 99 to 999 (cos why not), and added some multiplyers to NPC shops so you could bulk buy.
only 34655 rubbees, what a steal! It might not always seem like it as I'm not exactly the most active dev online but I do read every single one of peoples comments and posts and reviews, and keep a big ol' sheet with all the complaints and suggestions and issues - these were all things very commonly asked for that I had on the list to get round to! Outside of the community feedback I also upgraded the accessibility menu so that it had actual descriptions for each one, and just generally made it all a bit clearer! This also includes 2 new options that let you modify the overall productivity and lifespan values for all bees, so if you've always felt the game is too slow or too fast for your tastes, you can change it to go at your own pace <3
also cute little icons for each one [hr][/hr] So errr, yeah, guess when I have no job and can work on the game full-time I get a lot done huh? At the time of writing this localisation is nearly done, QA is well underway with the final build, and we have settled on a release date! By the time this devlog releases to the public we'll be very close to announcing the date, so you won't have to wait very long now to get your hands on all the new stuff! Time for me to sleep now I think... ~ Ell [This post was released early for KoFi Supporters]