BeeOverlay

A Lethal Company diagnostic overlay mod that visualizes RedLocustBees spatial checks for practicing the Bee AI Break glitch.

Compatibility

• Lethal Company v81 (2026-04-17 UTC, Manifest ID: 6423525044216269478)
  • Test environment
    • BepInExPack v5.4.2305 (2026-03-17 UTC)
    • LethalCompany InputUtils v0.7.13 (2026-03-31 UTC)

Screenshots

These screenshots were captured with a development build of v0.2.0.

Overview: Bee, hive, player, and known-hive spatial checks

Use case: Blocked bee-to-hive and bee-to-known-hive Sight checks

Bee AI Break glitch

Bee AI Break is the community name for a glitch in which players move a hive away from Circuit Bees without the bees recognizing that it is missing, which can make hive collection safer.

When the glitch is active, the bees stay calm. They do not become defensive merely because a player is nearby; they must also see that player inside the hive's defense radius.

While a Circuit Bee is near its hive, it leaves its calm behavior when either condition is met:

• Hive defense.
  • The bee sees a player within 16 units of the bee.
  • The player is within 10 units of the hive.
• Missing hive.
  • The bee-to-known-hive probe reaches the known-hive position:
    • The bee is less than 4 units away.
    • The bee is less than 8 units away with a clear probe line.

For Bee AI Break to work, both conditions must remain false while the hive is carried away. NavMesh boundaries or terrain features can sometimes make these conditions possible.

While carrying the hive away:

• Keep the player carrying the hive outside the bee's 16-unit sight range or block the bee-to-player sight line.
• Do not hold the hive while the bee is less than 4 units from its known-hive position.
• When the bee is 4 to less than 8 units from its known-hive position, block the probe line with solid cover.
• When the bee is 8 units or more from its known-hive position, it does not notice that a held hive is missing, but the 16-unit sight condition must still remain false.

BeeOverlay shows the relevant ranges, marker, and probe line without changing game behavior. See Bee AI Break for technical details.

Installation

1. Install BepInExPack and LethalCompany InputUtils for Lethal Company.
2. Build the release assembly or obtain com.aoirint.BeeOverlay.dll.
3. Copy the DLL into the game's BepInEx/plugins/ directory.
4. Launch Lethal Company. The overlay is created automatically when the game HUD is available.

Lobby hosts must install BeeOverlay. This prevents non-host players from using BeeOverlay's diagnostic features in a lobby without the host's knowledge.

Non-host players only need to install BeeOverlay when they want to use its diagnostic overlay. Their overlay remains disabled unless the lobby host has also installed BeeOverlay.

Usage

BeeOverlay starts with no bee selected, so it shows nothing.

Press Select Next Bee (B by default) to select bee:1, then bee:2, and so on. Pressing it after the last bee returns to no selection.

The binding can be changed through InputUtils in the in-game keybind menu.

Configuration

BepInEx creates BepInEx/config/com.aoirint.BeeOverlay.cfg after the first launch.

Setting	Default	Behavior
General.Enabled	true	Set to false to disable all BeeOverlay functionality.
General.AllowGuestEnabled	true	When hosting, allows non-host players to use BeeOverlay.
Overlay.Enabled	true	Shows BeeOverlay elements.
Overlay.HudEnabled	true	Shows the HUD status text.
Overlay.BeeMarkerEnabled	true	Shows bee markers.
Overlay.HiveMarkerEnabled	true	Shows hive markers.
Overlay.KnownHiveMarkerEnabled	true	Shows known-hive markers.
Overlay.PlayerMarkerEnabled	true	Shows local-player markers.
Overlay.PlayerSightLineEnabled	true	Shows bee-to-player sight lines.
Overlay.BeeSightRangeSphereEnabled	true	Shows bee 16-unit sight-range spheres.
Overlay.HiveDefenseSphereEnabled	true	Shows hive defense-range spheres.
Overlay.KnownHiveNearSphereEnabled	true	Shows known-hive 4-unit spheres.
Overlay.KnownHiveLineOfSightSphereEnabled	true	Shows known-hive 8-unit line-of-sight spheres.
Overlay.KnownHiveProbeLineEnabled	true	Shows bee-to-known-hive probe lines.
Overlay.HivePickupSightLineEnabled	true	Shows bee-to-hive pickup-proxy sight lines.

Changes made through a BepInEx configuration UI apply on the next HUD update. BeeOverlay does not watch direct edits to the generated configuration file.

Development

Install .NET SDK 10.0 or later.

Install PowerShell 7.

Install Visual Studio 2022.

Install Docker if you plan to use the documented local Markdown lint command.

Install ShellCheck, actionlint, and pinact if you plan to run GitHub Actions quality checks locally.

Agent Skills

Install APM to restore the repository-local Codex Skills pinned in apm.lock.yaml.

apm install --frozen
apm audit --ci

See AGENTS.md for the Skill update procedure.

Restore NuGet packages.

dotnet restore --locked-mode

Open BeeOverlay.sln in Visual Studio.

Quality checks

Run the relevant checks before opening a pull request.

C# format

• Language version: C# 13.0
• Target framework: .NET Standard 2.1

dotnet format --no-restore --verify-no-changes

dotnet format is an aggregate formatter that checks whitespace, built-in code style, and fixable analyzer diagnostics. Roslyn analyzers also run during build, including diagnostics that cannot be automatically fixed.

Markdown lint

Markdown is checked with markdownlint-cli2. The pinned Docker image below is the documented local command so contributors do not need a local Node.js project, but Docker is not required. Other installation methods are acceptable when they run the same markdownlint-cli2 version with this repository's configuration. The image's default working directory is /workdir, so mount the repository there. Run the Docker command without network access and as a non-root user.

On Windows with PowerShell, use UID/GID 1000:1000:

docker run --rm --network none --user 1000:1000 -v ".:/workdir" davidanson/markdownlint-cli2:v0.22.1@sha256:0ed9a5f4c77ef447da2a2ac6e67caf74b214a7f80288819565e8b7d2ac148fe5

On Linux, use sudo docker and pass the host user's UID and GID:

sudo docker run --rm --network none --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" -v ".:/workdir" davidanson/markdownlint-cli2:v0.22.1@sha256:0ed9a5f4c77ef447da2a2ac6e67caf74b214a7f80288819565e8b7d2ac148fe5

When updating Markdown lint tooling, update the documented local command and the CI action together after the repository cooldown period has elapsed.

GitHub Actions lint

GitHub Actions workflows are checked with actionlint.

actionlint checks workflow syntax, expressions, runner labels, and action metadata. The pyflakes integration remains disabled because this repository does not currently contain Python files. Revisit that setting if Python scripts are added.

actionlint -pyflakes=

When updating CI, use cooldown-compliant pinned releases. The workflow downloads Linux release archives directly and verifies their SHA256 values before running them. It caches only the archives, not the extracted executables, so cached downloads are still verified before use.

GitHub Actions pinning

GitHub Actions and reusable workflows are checked with pinact so external actions stay pinned to full commit SHAs with synchronized version comments.

pinact run --check --min-age 7

For local fixes or maintenance updates, use the same cooldown setting:

# Pin or refresh version comments.
pinact run --min-age 7

# Update pinned actions after the repository cooldown period.
pinact run --update --min-age 7

Set GITHUB_TOKEN when possible so pinact can query GitHub's API with normal authenticated rate limits. Install pinact from its upstream releases, package-manager integrations, or another trusted distribution.

CI downloads the Linux amd64 release archive directly and verifies its SHA256 before running pinact. It caches only the archive, not the extracted executable, so cached downloads are still verified before use.

Package management

Dependency updates

To update the lock file after modifying package references, run:

dotnet restore --use-lock-file

.NET and C# tooling updates

This project separates the SDK used to build and format the mod from the target framework that controls runtime compatibility.

• Keep TargetFramework on netstandard2.1 unless Lethal Company, BepInEx, Unity, or compile-only dependencies require a compatibility change.
• Prefer supported LTS SDKs for routine maintenance. Use an STS or newer SDK major only when it solves a specific compiler, formatter, analyzer, CI, or Visual Studio problem.
• Keep LangVersion explicit. Before increasing it, confirm SDK, Visual Studio 2022, and dependency compatibility, then update the C# format summary above.
• For analyzer updates, update BeeOverlay/packages.lock.json, review new diagnostics, and separate mechanical formatting from intentional rule or code changes when practical.
• Preserve existing restore, format, build, and Markdown lint behavior by default. Record compatibility checks and verification commands in the pull request, and defer the update when the impact is unclear.

Maintenance references:

• .NET releases and support
• .NET SDK, MSBuild, and Visual Studio versioning
• Configure C# language version
• dotnet format

GitHub Actions

The repository uses GitHub Actions for CI.

Action pinning

Action versions are pinned with pinact. Actions and other executable CI tooling should be updated after the repository cooldown period has elapsed. Keep SHA pins and version comments synchronized when updating pinned actions.

# Pin
pinact run --min-age 7

# Update
pinact run --update --min-age 7

GitHub Actions configuration

GitHub Variables

This repository currently does not use GitHub Actions variables.

Name	Used by	Description
None	Not applicable	No repository variables are currently used.

GitHub Secrets

Name	Used by	Description
THUNDERSTORE_TOKEN	.github/workflows/main.yml	Thunderstore service-account token used only when publishing a stable release.

Build

# Debug build
DOTNET_CLI_UI_LANGUAGE=en dotnet build

# Release build
DOTNET_CLI_UI_LANGUAGE=en dotnet build --configuration Release

Release

The build workflow creates an artifact for every push to main. It treats 0.0.0 and already-tagged versions as edge builds, so neither creates a GitHub Release or publishes to Thunderstore.

For a stable release:

1. Update the canonical CHANGELOG.md.
2. Derive the user-facing stable release notes in assets/CHANGELOG.md.
3. Replace 0.0.0 in BeeOverlay/BeeOverlay.csproj with the release version.
4. Push the commit to main.

The workflow packages the following files at the ZIP root, creates an immutable GitHub Release, and publishes stable releases to Thunderstore:

• com.aoirint.BeeOverlay.dll
• assets/manifest.json as manifest.json
• assets/icon.png
• assets/README.md as README.md
• assets/CHANGELOG.md as CHANGELOG.md
• LICENSE

Documentation

• Developer documentation
• RedLocustBees implementation analysis
• BeeOverlay architecture

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

AI Disclosure

Some parts of this project were developed with AI tools based on large language models (LLMs), including agent-based tools. The project maintainer reviews the code. This disclosure is made in compliance with Thunderstore and community policies.