Update 0.30215 (January 13th, 2022)
Headline Feature - New Year’s Feast
- Help the fire ant queen gather ingredients for her New Year’s hotpot
- There’s an explosive accompaniment to go along with the broth
- Rescue friendly ants to add their species to your colony
- New artwork & music set the tone of this festive level
Other Fixes & Changes
- Players can now choose between Royal Guard & Royal Decree
- Supermajor abilities no longer cool down when game is paused
- Royal Guard ants are now leafcutter-shaped if used in a leafcutter colony
- Updated some text to say ‘nimble’ rather than ‘evasive’
- Inaccessible leaf made accessible
- Fixed level selection menu disappearing after winning a formicarium challenge
- Fixed a foliage rendering issue
- Creature swarming optimisations
- Tweaked animation distance optimisations
- Rotting Log aesthetic added to tutorial level
- Rotting Log aesthetic added to Hold Out & The Nest demo levels
- Correct loading screens attached to demo levels
- Corrected spelling mistakes here and there
- Fixed some text formatting issues in various localisations
- Fixed BHA workers showing as wood ants in the UI
- UI buttons should now only appear on appropriate levels (creature climbing, etc)
- Voice credits updated
- Freesound credits updated
Update 0.302036 (November 8th, 2022)
Additions
- The Hungry Spider level now uses the new rotting log tile set
- Enjoy the Hungry Spider event for longer - now until Nov 10th!
- A few extra pillars for cover and lighting near spawn on Hungry Spider
- Queens now have a gentle spotlight on them
Fixes
- Fixed invisible cricket issues in Adventure
- Fixed a visual error in 1.2
- Tweaked rotting log materials
- Removed any possibility for unfinished landmarks to spawn in freeplay
- Notification given in the tutorial will always appear regardless of settings
Hotfix 0.30111 (September 7th, 2022)
- Fixed fire ants not being able to place pheromone markers on the surface in some freeplay maps
Update 0.3011 (September 5th, 2022)
4.1 Cold Blood
- Bullfrog will now always eat creatures intended to feed it instead of being beaten up by them if they get too close
- Titan health bar will no longer appear during feeding events if the bullfrog is dead or has hopped away
4.2 A Bridge Too Far
- Player’s ants still in the Monomorium colony after it floods will now die
- Monomorium nest entrance now looks correct after end-of-level flood cinematic
- Reduced ‘Top of the Hill’ level end requirements on all difficulties
- Underground aesthetic updated
Formicarium Challenge 4
- A few decals added to cupboard interior after FC4 for extra detail
- Fixed an issue where continuing play too quickly after FC4 could cause the end to not properly happen
Freeplay
- Little black ants & big-headed ants will no longer be called Atta cephalotes in defeat screen
- Fixed a convoluted issue in freeplay causing random leafcutters to spawn in the place of dead queens
- Fixed an issue in freeplay where if dead enemy colonies were in the game, creatures would be less likely to attack the player
- Fixed an issue where the freeplay setup info would always appear as if 4 players were in the game (1v1v1v1)
- Fixed an underground tile that was crashing games in Basin
- Fixed an issue that could cause fire ant queens in freeplay to be off the ground
General Fixes
- Extra level Extremis will not crash the game any more
- Fixed carried aphids sometimes being removed if the ant is distracted whilst picking it up
- Fixed refund being prevented for 2nd refuse tile / leaf drop-off chamber
- Moving queens in 2.2 can no longer be killed by environmental creatures
- Fixed army ants despawning in Beetles Rise Up! which sometimes made the level unwinnable
- Fixed autoclicker food duplication issue
- Various UI elements made more stretchy to account for languages with longer sentences
- Distance increased between Battle Arena lanes to prevent knockback abilities hurling critters into the other lane
- Fire ant & little black ant queen mesh repositioned so they should float less
- Fixed population totals not being updated when a tile is cancelled before being built
- Removed access to a decorative plant that looked appetising to leafcutters in 3.2
- Buried creatures (! & ? icons underground) will now only ever be visible by their rendered outline; no more accidentally seeing the model poking out somewhere
- Fixed an issue where Formicarium Challenge 2 would never end if all creatures were dead at some point after spider spawn
- Can no longer click through augmentations menu to select a tile
- Reduced size of fire ant worker eggs so they are not poking out the top of the queen
- Cancelling a tile before it is built will now correctly update population totals
- Corrected some spelling issues in the Freesound credits
General Changes
- Replaced queen worker chamber crown icon with a flag
- Team stripes added to abdomens of fire ants, little black ants & big-headed ants
- Reduced size of all little black ant eggs to make them properly little
- 'Play More' button removed from 2.2
- Couple more first-time playthrough hints added to the first formicarium
- Numerous texture optimisations; they should pop in faster
- Font update in minor improvements panel
- Various animation optimisations added
- Some lab decorations moved closer to the formicarium so they can be seen in play
- Objectives will now update faster when something has changed
- Star power scale is now taken into account for minimap & physical size of buried creatures
- When an indestructible tile is made destructible (by, for example, a toad burrowing through it in 4.1) the tile break effect will play
- Chinese localisations updated
- Credits updated
Known Issues
- Under some circumstances, fire ants seem unable to place pheromone markers on the surface in freeplay
- On rare occasion, fire ants can get stuck when they're part of a bridge and the bridge is disassembled
- Green lynx spiders can rarely get stuck at the base of a pitcher plant
Update 0.22112 (24 December 2020)
Thanks for the people who have helped us identify a crash with the recent short optional beta. This has now been fixed and we're ready to move this patch to the main branch just in time for Christmas. It is now possible to save your freeplay games that include AI colonies! This should make them more viable for long-term games instead of short skirmishes.
Freeplay AI should still be considered to be in its early days and there are a multitude of extra things we'd like to do for it (making it cleverer being the main one) but it's likely this is the last feature update for freeplay until after the 4th tier campaign levels (fire ants) are released.
Headline Features
- Saving is now available with AI colonies in freeplay
- Please keep an eye out for strange behaviours of the enemy or allied colonies after a save and load in freeplay; it is possible some of their behaviour has not been correctly restored. Please report these on our forums or Discord!
Fixes
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Fixed some underground visual tile bugs
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Fixed a minor issue with the slave maker button in battle arena
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Swarm slave makers now have team colours working properly
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Fixed a surface tile painting issue on The Dunes
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Removed some specks of dirt that were floating on the open nest entrances in The Dunes
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Fixed an issue where AIs that were cheating could only get a free hatch once per game
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Fixed issues with the AI colony’s visibility of spawned landmarks (should lead to some more sensible landmark harvesting decisions)
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Fixed an issue where surface tunnels could switch when a freeplay game was loaded
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Fixed an issue where randomised caverns were not loading and saving
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Fixed an issue where some creatures could freeze if interrupted during picking up another creature
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Creatures eaten by other creatures will no longer drop invisible food
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Festive Spider level funnel web kills now count towards your experience
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Adjusted web size in Christmas spider level the better represent the area funnel webs can detect enemies
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Webs in the Festive Spider level will no longer expand upwards covering the map
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Webs stop increasing in size beyond level 9 in the Festive Spider level
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Fixed an animation issue to do with wood ants rapid firing
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In freeplay uber mole crickets now count towards the hunter victory condition
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Can no longer tag and untag another colony’s tunnel exit for excavation
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Stopped aphids moving when being eaten by a ladybird; should fix floating honeydew
Optimisations
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Optimisation added to creature spawning when looking up its class (should speed things up when lots of ants are hatching at once such as the beginning of a freeplay game)
Update 0.22103 (19 November 2020)
Fixes
- Fixed an issue where food buried underground but not part of a cavern would not be labelled as buried and not seen as an outline
- Randomised caverns for leafcutters now produce smaller leaves as so not poke through the surface and are randomly rotated
- Placing a marker on an enemy nest exit whilst your ants are in a different enemy nest will now cause your ants to leave the nest they are in
- Fixed a bug that allowed you to get a refund for a tile upgrade if cancelled the same frame it was completed (was easier on low FPS computers)
- Fixed a couple of painting issues on the surface to do with tunnel exits when they are not tunnelled out
- Fixed a crash that could occur in formicarium challenge 3 when the hand moved
- Player not selecting a unit option in freeplay will no longer refer to wood ants
- Fixed a crash that could occur on low end hardware
- Tunnel door now correctly stops ants walking through on The Other Foot
- Freeplay maps without a map option now grey out the option in the basic setup
- Fixed an issue for Russian language in the main menu text
- Fixed an issue that could cause creatures to freeze in an animation until the player looks at them
- Fixed a couple of spellings on the freeplay scoreboard
- Fixed an issue where creatures could get stuck in the tunnel exit at a low frame rate
- Fixed an issue that could rarely cause a creature to get stuck in the air when picked up by a praying mantis
- Fixed an issue where the praying mantis could on rare occasions freeze doing nothing
- Fixed some visual underground tile bugs
- Fixed some UI issues with freeplay setup
- Fixed an issue with pathing at the northern end of Basin
- Fixed an issue where status effects were not being dealt with correctly in priority order (for example a creature could flee when stunned)
- Fixed an issue where turning gathering off whilst an ant was gathering caused it to walk back and forth to the food it was going to gather
- Destructible barriers can no longer be knocked back or affected by other effects
- Fixed some UI interaction issues with the freeplay setup menu especially when opening a saved setup
- Fixed a typo in the Discord tooltip
Changes
- Barrier between nests in Basin is no longer destructible if you are not allied with the colony on the other side
- Barriers that are destructible in Basin now appear as pieces of wood rather than stone
- Simplified some interaction in the freeplay menus that were causing issues to do with creature checkboxes and the creatures type dropdown
- Hunter and Domination game modes in freeplay no longer disable colony attacks
- The Hungry Spider level’s uber beach wolf spider can now take more than 6 damage per hit (should be easier to kill with a bite build now)
- Added in notifications explaining how to combat phorid flies in 3.1 and 3.2
- The player is now given a warning that they could lose their rewards if they try and restart a level when rewards are waiting for them in the formicarium
- Quitting or restarting Extremis now gives the player the reward points they had earned up to that point
- Some creatures now cannot be knocked back or forced to flee
- Some more improvement to funnel web performance in freeplay
- Smoothed some of the landscape at the edge of 2.2 and prevented some tiles poking through the sea bed
- Forum link changed to discord and patch notes link updated
- Mole cricket (and uber mole cricket) added to the Battle Arena
- Couple of icon updates for ant species in Battle Arena
- Slave maker ants added to Battle Arena
- Uber mole cricket can now be unlocked for freeplay by completing Excavators (should be retroactive)
- Dropped creatures will now try and drop where they are held rather than the centre of the holding creature
Known Issues
- Currently uber mole crickets do not count towards the Hunter victory condition. A fix for this will be out in the next patch
- Some recent changes intended for future updates may cause some unintended weirdness. Although unlikely, please let us know about any unusual behaviours you see
Update 0.2131 (26 May 2020)
This update has been bubbling in the cauldron for quite some time, and we think it's finally tender enough for everyone to sink their teeth into. Thank you so much to everyone who has been helping us test this patch for the past couple of months - we've been able to resolve issues much faster than we would have done just by ourselves!
We had hope to have full saving for AI colonies ready at this point but that hasn't been possible; that feature is still in the works and will hopefully appear soon. Other than that, we're good to go.
Headline Features
Freeplay Overhaul
AI Colonies are available in freeplay (NOTE: activating these will currently disable freeplay saving)
They have Easy and Normal difficulty and can cheat (if you set them to) to create a greater challenge
Up to 3 AI colonies can be added, and can be enemies or allies
The new freeplay setup screen, showing the AI options
New freeplay map: Basin
Designed for 2v2 but can be played in any configuration
Map option adds in destructible barriers to open up new access routes on the map
- New option: randomised caverns allow for a different underground setup every game!
- Freeplay game type selection allows quick and easy setups
- Victory conditions, creatures and other options are automatically setup when selecting the game type
- All other options can still be found in the tabs
New Extra Levels
- Excavators is now available to all in the extra levels section… wait.. did that exclamation mark just move??
- Tug Of War will be available at the end of November, an auto-battler against an AI
Other new features
- Finishing The Other Foot extra level will unlock the Counterpart Colony for use in freeplay
- More ramps have been added to Towhead to make it easier at the early stages
- Rework of pheromone trails. Ants will now leave the nest immediately and some will turn around on their way to form the trail
Full Patch Notes
Fixes
- Fixed an issue where a loaded harvestman’s leg could cause the game to crash
- Can no longer place markers for nest group underground via minimap
- Blocked side routes for the huge whip spider on Aggrandise (preventing your ants pathing through its chamber unintended)
- Fixed an issue where switching from evasive worker upgrade would leave the camouflage on
- Fixed an issue that could cause first wave to have no creatures in Extremis
- Fixed an issue where creatures spawned on lab formicarium 2 after returning from a mission could be stuck slightly in the ground. The friendly spiders will now immediately attack; F in comments for spiderbro :(
- Fixed a bug where reloading a freeplay game that has no manual save would cause the map to load in its default setup without workers or queen tiles
- Fixed an issue where leafcutters were climbing empty plant leaves
- Fixed an issue where the whip spider (and other large enemies) could potentially skip the line-of-sight check if switching targets while an enemy is actually visible (stops whip spider attacking ants above it on the ridge)
- Minor improvement to target acquisition efficiency for abilities
- Fixed an issue where only 20 refuse was removed when cancelling a build or upgrade job rather than the full amount that was created
- Check added to prevent save files read-only crash and appropriate error message given to player
- Fixed an issue where resource numbers could appear to float upwards when food drops close to and behind the camera
- Fixed an issue on 3.2 where army ant scouts would not move (this may fix other issues as well)
- When an ally uses a queen ability it now correctly says an ally used the queen ability instead of enemy
- Fixed an issue where the wrong music would play when playing more after 2.1
- Fixed a crash that would occur on The Other Foot when creatures got close to bridge edges (after the formicariums are connected)
Balance Changes
Reduced point value of army ant media
- Leafcutter ant media buffed
- Attack damage increased to 4.5 / 6 / 7 (up from 3 / 4.5 / 6)
- Health increased to 100 / 115 / 130 (up from 90 / 105 / 120)
- Speed increased to 310 / 320 / 330 (up from 300 / 300 / 300)
- Piercing increased to 0.2 / 0.3 / 0.4 (up from 0.2 / 0.2 / 0.2)
Wood ant melee buffed
- Threat generation increased to 0.2 / 0.25 / 0.3 (up from 0.1 / 0.1 / 0.15)
- Damage increased to 0.6 / 1.2 / 1.8 (up from 0.5 / 1 / 1.5)
- Armour increased 0.2 / 0.4 / 0.6 (up from 0 / 0 / 0)
- Distance values altered so they will get slightly closer to enemies before attacking (should allow other melee units the ability to get closer to the fight)
Health regeneration on many melee units buffed
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Leafcutter major, army ant major and slave maker ants health regen increased to 0.1 / 0.15 / 0.2 (up from 0.1 / 0.1 / 0.1)
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Black ant, wood ant melee and leafcutter media health regeneration increased to 0.1 / 0.2 / 0.3 (up from 0.1 / 0.1 / 0.1)
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Rapid fire wood ants will now get in and out of attack mode much more quickly
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Reduced mortar arc height
Changes and Improvements
- Underground enemy "!" icons are now scaled based on how many points they provide. - This should make it easier to gauge threats before attacking
- Ramp collision improvements
- Marker calculations have been improved (should be more responsive)
- Royal Guard are now immune to stun, confuse, pickup and execute
- Royal Guard health increased to 200 (up from 120)
- Infestation landmark is now defaulted to off
- Dropdown boxes in freeplay setup now display tooltips for each individual option when hovered over
- Freeplay now has an option to disable colonies entering one another (this turns on by default if playing Domination or Hunter game modes)
- Can now select which ubers you wish to spawn in freeplay
Performance
- Optimisations for creature movement
- Changes to how certain checks are done on the behaviour tree to improve performance
- Minor performance improvements on funnel web landmark (still needs more work)
- Improved honeydew resource performance
- When an egg hatches, the open egg and particle effect will only occur if the player is viewing that tile grid at the time (as will the hatch sound)
Update 0.2131 (26 May 2020)
A new extra level is available now for Empires of the Undergrowth - Extremis. The aim is to survive all the waves - but you won't do it first time. After you die, you are given a number of points (based on how far you got) to unlock new units for your army the next time you play! You might need to reinforce your colony with some wood ant ranged units, or save up for the mighty tanks of the leafcutters!
Update 0.23 (02 May 2020)
Freeplay Fixes and Changes
- Solved a bug preventing the 4 new ubers showing up in freeplay (they would be announced but not show)
- Landmark spawn rate with leafcutters reduced down to 200% (from 250%) as it was filling all available landmark spots causing landmark droughts on some maps
- Leaves now regenerate every 4m down from 5m
- Increased the number of landmark locations on Towhead by about 8 (and shuffled some around)
- Added a couple of central crossing paths into Towhead to allow better access to the new landmark locations from all spawn points
- Funnel web landmarks no longer spawn pebbles (eliminates a bug making ramps inaccessible if the web spawns near one)
- Fixed an issue where creatures could end up stuck on top of your nest in freeplay
- Uber spawn chance increased when playing Hunter victory condition
- Creative mode now automatically spends resources allowing you to harvest resources if you wish
- Wave number will no longer increase if defeated before the timer for the next wave starts in freeplay
- Added option in freeplay to disable difficulty increase when approaching victory
- Renamed a couple of difficulty options in freeplay
- Uber spawns now cause a minimap ping
- Funnel web landmark despawn timer will tick down 4x as fast if all its inhabitants are dead
- Funnel web spiders will not be given targets until they reach their nest
- Besieged victory now occurs on final wave defeat rather than just before spawn
- You can no longer save the game during an attack wave
Other Fixes and Changes
- Achievement fail and success messages are now off by default and can be turned on from an option in the menu or from the scoreboard (achievement tracking)
- Fixed a bug that could break formicarium challenge 2 if you kill the tube spawning ants too quickly after they spawn
- Fixed a bug that could cause a green riser to appear if you cancel a dig job the moment a cavern is tunnelled out
- Fixed more issues with creatures or food getting stuck under ramps
- Funnel web now has immunities to several crowd control effects
- Hungry Spider projectile is now visible again
- Hungry Spider mouse movement should feel a lot smoother however it no longer paths around walls so you need to manually manoeuvrer it
- Fixed an issue where Hungry Spider bite and venom strike were doing less damage than intended further from the centre of the attack
- Creatures with low visual range can now see enemies that attack them from further away
- Fixed some text issues
- Fixed an issue that could cause aphids to float (sometimes very high in the sky) when ladybirds attempt to pick them up
- Ladybirds will no longer try and escape once they have started picking up an aphid (they will escape after anyway)
- Fixed an issue with brood tile hotkeys not functioning correctly
- Massively reduced issues with chamber rep panel thinking the mouse is hovering over a chamber when it is not (worse at lower FPS)
Update 0.21 (24 March 2020)
Freeplay Overhaul
- Freeplay has seen many changes and should feel very different now than it used to.
- Leaf cutters make their way to freeplay, along with climbable plants!
- New rainforest map Embankment
- Difficulty has been tuned and and extra difficulty option added that affects how quickly and how far the games difficulty will change
- Optional victory conditions have been added allowing you to set goals (these also affect the difficulty as you approach victory)
- Freeplay setups can be saved, and can also be shared via a string
- Ubers have been rebalanced bringing them to a fairer difficulty level. They have also been altered to be strong / weak against various enemy combinations
- As difficulty increases, creatures will now get stronger (rather than just more numerous) and will have much less food reduction
Extra Levels
- We will be bringing regular extra missions to the game apart from the main campaign. Here we have allowed ourselves more freedom to do things in a more game-like fashion rather than true to nature, like we strive to be in the story.The first 3 maps will be released a month apart!
- Aggrandise launches today! Command a Formica ereptor colony featuring the fierce trap jaw ants and carefully choose your targets as your colony grows large enough to take on a large foe!
- More are on the way - follow our social media for details!
Third Tier Challenge Mode
- Phorid flies are tiny, inconspicuous-looking insects that could easily be mistaken for fruit flies but are far deadlier. They lay their eggs between the armoured carapaces of insects, in particular your ants, leading to a time where they will be less effective followed by inevitable death as the larva eats away at the innards.
- All ants have a chance of fighting off the flies when they are attacked, but level 3 mediae and majors have a 100% chance to fight them off.
First Tier Achievements
- We have also added a bunch of achievements for the first tier levels of the game. This includes New Home, Subjugation and the first formicarium challenge. Multiple achievements have been added for various difficulties and challenge modes. There are the generic achievements, such as finishing a level on a specific difficulty, but also tasks that have specific conditions to achieve. Check your achievements from the in-game menu.
Optimisation and Balance
- On top of all these additions there has been a raft of optimisation changes made that should also improve performance. Some areas have also seen balance changes including area-of-effect (AOE) attacks, insane difficulty on 3.2 Front Line and many others. Many of these changes are listed below.
Optimisations
- Projectiles have been significantly optimised (very noticeable with rapid fire wood ants)
- Substantially reduced the cost of rendering the Isolepis Cernua (spiky plant)
- And many more! See previous patch notes from beta testing for extensive details
Balance
- Black ants now take 20% less damage from AOE attacks
- 3.2 Front Line on harder difficulties will spawn less environmental creatures and more higher level army ants
- Formicarium challenge 3 has been made much easier on harder difficulties:
- Reduced the number of resource refills the enemy colony receives across various difficulties (now 0/1/2/4 down from 0/1/5/10)
- Reduced reload quantity to 1800 (down from 2000)
- Resource reloads will now appear gradually (10 per second) rather than instantly
- Reduced size of cricket drops on harder difficulties
- Damage falloff implemented on wood ant mortar, uber basic attacks and some whip spider attacks. This deals less damage the further away from the epicentre of the attack the creature is (reaching zero at the very edge)
Selected Improvements
- Multiple frame rate limits added
- Added an option slider for a darkened square behind resource counters for visibility
- Markers should feel more responsive with faster movement between different markers, more ants at the end of the marker and far fewer ants waiting at home to head to the marker
- Camera zoom now interpolates very rapidly
- Visuals added for leafcutter major auras
- Difficulty levels have been added for Formicarium challenges 1 and 2
- Trail calculations have been updated. Should lead to more ants at the end of trails, more consistent flows and less ants waiting underground
- And many more! See previous patch notes from beta testing for extensive details
Selected Fixes
- Significantly less ants getting caught on corners
- Corrected an error that could cause creatures to get stuck at the entrance to ramps
- A previously dormant patrol route behind the player’s nest has been reactivated in 3.2
- Fixed an issue where workers could survive their tiles being deleted if they have the “evasive” skill
- After purchasing a queen ability, all queen cool-downs need to recharge (prevents switching queen abilities during formicarium challenge exploit)
- Ladybirds now immune to many crowd control effects to prevent them being affected whilst eating an aphid
- “Attack when favourable” creatures (such as mantis and jumping spider) now take nearby allies into account when deciding to attack or not
- Improvements to ant crowd movement - particularly in combat
- Mole crickets now take room size into account when selecting a room to spawn in
- Improvements to collision detection with difficult shapes
- Battle arena now only removes creatures that are not in combat
- Ubers will no longer ignore the nest invasion setting in freeplay setup
- Moved all pebbles off walkable area in the original Hungry Spider level
- Fixed a visual error with the wood ant projectile splash
- And many more! See previous patch notes from beta testing for extensive details
Update 0.2023 (23 May 2019)
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This is mostly a bug fix patch (should be the last before the freeplay update barring game breaking bugs) but also includes the final support for simplified Chinese and a couple of minor features.
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As always do let us know if you find any bugs and we will continue to squash them as they come in!
Localisation
- Added the final simplified Chinese interface translations
- Removed the default English setting, allowing those with localised languages to default to their language (German or simplified Chinese)
- Purchase confirm dialogue now fits better with localised languages
- Repositioned some victory / defeat widgets to prevent overlap with subtitles
- Added a couple of missing German translations strings
Fixes
- Level setup dialogue no longer disappears off the bottom of the screen in certain languages with certain options
- Fixed an impenetrable tile visual
- Modified main menu textures so they do not stream (will appear full resolution when they appear)
- Graphical overlay now correctly shows the positive upgrade points coming from speed tiles
- Minor improvement of the positioning of numbers from tile upgrade overlay
- Food will no longer fall through the formicarium on load, and food lost due to falling should be moved to the surface on load
- Fixed an issue where the queen could get stuck doing the flinch animation
- Fixed a crash that could happen when drawing the resource overlay
- Fixed an issue where ants could get stuck inside formicarium plants and objects if fighting near them
- Possible fix for floating de-buff issue (please let us know if this is still occurring)
- Fixed an issue where rainforest creatures could only spawn in freeplay of woodlouse was set to spawn
- AI effects (such as stun or confuse) now force creatures to drop any other creature they are carrying (fixed praying mantises walking around with creatures in front of them)
- If carrying a creature but not using an ability, the creature is now dropped
- Removed food gathering from ants spawned into the formicarium through the post gate level spawner
- Possible fix for an issue where a tile was unbuild-able on after digging it out
- Upon finishing challenge 3 the players queen is restored to full health. If somehow a queen has died and the game has saved that queen will be respawned on load in the formicarium
- All sizes of whip spider capsule sizes reduced a lot (this prevents them spawning on top of objects when dropped into the formicarium but also meant more of them can get into a fight)
- Fixed a bug with pressing a tab after an overlay button
Improvements / changes
- Removed crystals from black ant tiles for minor performance boost
- Added biohazard symbol to tiles affected by refuse tiles in the upgrade overlay along with minus numbers
- Added in UI icons for tile upgrade, creatures and resources overlays to make it clearer they are available
- Army ant major frenzy effect now looks like a red glow rather than a cloud
- Added in an unlocked photo mode accessed through shift + photo mode key (F9 by default) - WARNING: Use of this will allow you to see off the edge of the map, under the floor, ect. We do not plan on changing these areas as they were never meant to be seen so bare this in mind.
- Tile upgrades overlay has seen a significant performance boost (75% reduction in frame rate drop)
- Creature info overlay has seen a moderate performance boost
- Held resources are now loaded held
- Fez hat now has physics
- Removed markers from the minimap on the hungry spider level
- Resources overlay will now not appear in the fog of war in freeplay, additionally some resources cannot be seen through the fog
Update 0.202 (25 April 2019)
- We're very pleased to announce that our first major update for Empires of the Undergrowth, the Leafcutter Update, is now available for Windows, Mac & Linux! Featuring an all-new rain forest environment with new critters of all sizes, two new levels which will see you face off against fully-fledged colonies, and a new Formicarium Challenge where the dastardly scientists have something special planned for you.
The jungle floor stirs. Ants of all sizes creep out of their holes to harvest the nearby foliage, travelling far and wide to find the choicest leaves. The odds are stacked against these fledgling colonies - you may be tempted to discount creatures that forage for leaves but with huge crushing mandibles on their side, they are not to be underestimated.
https://youtu.be/HoRqZa7BH9Q
Headline Features
New Formicarium Tier Added
- New playable species - The Leafcutters
- Featuring 4 sizes of ant (minims, minors, media and major) which can walk under / over one another
- Major leafcutters are tank units with very high health and come in two forms:
- Stun majors stun targets for 4s and at level 3 will slow them to a crawl for a further 4s
- Taunt majors force targets to attack them for 4s and at level 3 at 50% health will reduce all incoming damage by 80% for 4s
- Unique resource management
- Leafcutters need leaves to cultivate a special fungus which is their only source of food!
- Leaves can be gathered on the surface from various climbable plants
- Once gathered leaves are taken to a leaf drop-off chamber
- Each nursery built spawns a free minim ant (tiny leafcutter)
- The minims take the leaves from the leaf drop-off to nurseries where it is cultivated into fungus that can be spent
- Once fungus is spent, its remains will need to be taken to a refuse chamber where it can safely decompose
- The distance between nurseries, leaf drop off chambers and refuse chambers affects the efficient processing of leaves leading to some careful colony design decisions.
- Two new levels in the rainforests of Ecuador
- Two very different levels with unique challenges and threats with carefully designed difficulty settings to suit you level of play!
- The new environments offer a host of new fauna and flora and have a very different feel to them from previous levels
- A new formicarium challenge - What has the evil scientist got planned this time?
- Do you think you could hate the evil scientist any more? We think you might after you see what he has in store!
- Add the mighty leafcutter major to your formicarium!
- 4 unique upgrade options
- Sharp - This aura causes attackers of the major and any nearby friendly creatures to reflect an amount of damage back to themselves
- Resilient - This aura causes the major and any nearby friendly creatures to take less damage each hit
- Durable - All incoming damage to the major is reduced by a set amount
- Shockproof - Limits damage to the major in any single hit
- 4 improvement upgrades to spend that extra jelly on!
- More than double the enemy creatures!
- Variety is the spice of life and the rainforest is the king of variety! Each of the new creatures comes with its own stats and abilities and will require their own approach to take down
Other changes and improvements
- Creatures sizes mean you can get more to the front line
- Minimap now displays food that can be collected
- Quantity held by all food types is now displayed when showing tile info
- New enemy creatures have made there way into the battle arena and freeplay
- Freeplay setup dialogue changed to use more screen space for options
- Pheromone marker assignment panel now displays the living ants from chambers
Balance changes
- Queens have been given 50% resistance to slow their deaths
- Queen Second Wind invulnerability duration increased to 30s (up from 20)
Update 0.1353 (23 January 2019)
Bug fixes
- Fixed an issue crashing Queen of the Hill on certain hardware setups under certain circumstances. This issue was caused by ramps being made pass through-able when the tide rose on 2.1 and 2.2. This would occasionally cause ants that were pathing on them to fall and potentially re-path in a near infinite loop. This bug has been hard to replicate and hence hard to fix but special thanks to our community for helping us locate this one. Due to this we have made changes to how this works.
- Fixed issues with creatures picking up other creatures (Interpolation should work vertically, creatures should correctly stick to the mouth and animation should play correctly during pickup)
- Fixed an issue in Freeplay telling the player waves would spawn consecutively after 8 minutes when it should have been 12
- Fixed a message telling the player waves would come every 5 minutes when in reality it is 6 (if you include the timer countdown)
- Clicking the door in the lab no longer closes the game
- Fixed an issue in Freeplay where the warning timer was not using the same calculation as the wave timer
- All values in ant improvements are now rounded to 2 decimal places
- Freeplay wave timer info now accurately represents the time between wave spawns and not the time from one wave spawning to the start of the next timer starting (13m setup 6m between)
- Fixed some issues with the size of woodworm food items
- Key presses that are meant to switch from above to below ground have been disabled in photo mode to prevent strange lighting changes
- Fixed an issue where food could get stuck on the surface in your ant tunnel
- Notification about the Gate mission 1 will no longer appear after you have completed it
- Fixed an issue shrinking the areas ant could appear on the surface from the nest area
- In-game UI elements are no longer shown in photo mode (Markers, chamber info ect)
- Force player out of photo mode and prevent them entering it when victory of defeat is happening
Changes / Improvements
- Creatures will no longer pass though ramps as the tide rises falling into the water. Instead any ants assigned to markers touched by the water will be immediately sent home when the marker is dismissed.
- Beach tiger beetle larvae have been given high slow resist
- On Queen of the Hill Challenge Mode in Easy, Normal and Hard beach tiger beetle larvae will spawn more often and increase the rate of spawns each day
- Dead creature harvest locations and pickup locations have been more centralised, meaning ants should no longer carry woodworms within their bodies (at least less often) and harvesting should be from a more logical point of the dead creature
Update 0.13.1 (25 October 2018)
Challenge modes added to Rising Tide and Queen of the Hill
- The new challenge mode introduces a new creature – the beach tiger beetle larva. This critter lies buried waiting for unsuspecting victims to walk near its trap, then snatches them away in the blink of an eye!
- They will only attack if your ants are alone, and can only be damaged for a short time after attacking. Will your colony accept the losses to get the food they need, or will they rip these ambush hunters from their burrows?
New Freeplay map – Towhead
- Set on a small island near the mouth of a river, Towhead offers a much more intimate experience on the surface, with higher densities of creatures
- A map option allows a periodic flooding of the lower level. This will raise your score but at the cost of possibly losing ants and resources when the waters rise
Minor Improvements System for Formicarium colonies
- Got spare Royal Jelly laying around the nest? Fear not, we have you covered! Minor improvements can be accessed by selecting any already purchased species from the tech tree and selecting the icon
- The improvements start cheap and get more expensive the more you buy for a species. Each ant species has their own different improvements which complement various play styles
Update 0.122 (03 July 2018)
Freeplay Mode Added
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Customisable - play your way!
Freeplay is a highly customisable game mode giving the player full control over what creatures and landmarks can spawn, how hard they want the game, how the difficulty of the game will change as time goes on and much more.
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The Dunes Freeplay map – a monster of a map!
The Dunes is the largest map in the game to date, made possible through optimisation of the surface tiles allowing us to get more for the processing power. It boasts:
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4 possible start locations for the player’s colony
120 by 120 surface tile grid (the previous biggest being 96 by 126)
80 locations for landmarks to spawn and 25 locations for creatures to spawn
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Save-able
Freeplay colonies can be saved and returned to later, allowing you to take your time and even try that horrible attack wave again. For now saving is manual and there is no backup; we are planning on introducing backups in a future update.
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Landmarks – let’s make this interesting!
Landmarks are various interesting points on the surface. They are randomised in look, functionality and location, will appear and disappear as your game progresses and scale with the difficulty setting.
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Aphid Farm
Has between 2 and 4 patches of 10 aphids
Has randomly generated plant decoration
Ladybird attacks increase with difficulty
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Poppy Plant
Will intermittently drop poppy seeds; the dropped seeds have a limited lifetime
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Funnel Web Nest
Generates dead creature chunks
Contains funnel web spiders that will kill nearby enemy creatures (from the player’s colony… or anything else it is big enough to take on!)
Number of spiders increases with difficulty
Has randomly generated stones nearby
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Dead Fish
A large source of food
Will attract enemy ants
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Infestation
Attracts large group of enemies of a specific type
This large group stays around the central point
The size of the group increases with difficulty
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Creatures fight each other
In Freeplay mode creatures on the surface will duke it out with one another. However, they will not just attack anyone! Some of them will not attack larger creatures, or will ignore the smaller ones. In Freeplay every creature has a list of other creatures they do not want to fight.
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Random start location
The player will start in a random pre-prepared start location. These undergrounds are similar in the resources that are available but the locations of resources are different, including where they start on the surface.
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Day / night cycle and spawning
If turned on, the game will slowly tick from day to night and back again. When day turns to night nocturnal creatures will come out, and diurnal creatures will hide. Some creatures are about in both time periods. A full 24 hour cycle lasts 30 minutes in game-time.
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Food spoiling
Creatures killed in Freeplay mode have a limited time to be harvested before they “spoil” and disappear (3m). Additionally, food generated by funnel web and poppy plant landmarks do the same so as to not cause too great a buildup of food.
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Uber creatures – oh boy, it’s a big one!
Ubers are souped-up versions of some of the larger creatures. They can be identified by a red glow, increased size and will be announced in a message when they spawn. There are 4 types that are as difficult as each other and all provide 1000 food when killed. They take much longer to spoil than other creatures because of this (10m). The 4 types are uber hermit crab, uber beach tiger beetle, uber devil’s coach horse adult and uber beach wolf spider. Enabling Uber Creatures increases your score.
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Attack waves
Up for a real challenge? With this enabled waves of enemies will spawn every 5 minutes after an initial setup period of 12 minutes. These wave will get stronger over time and do not drop food. How many can you survive? Enabling attack waves increases your score significantly.
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Difficulty settings
Difficulty is handled differently in Freeplay mode. The difficulty changes as the game goes on and affects things such as the spawn rate of enemy creatures, how aggressive they are, how much food dead creatures drop and the difficulty of landmarks. You can set the start point of the game difficulty and how you would like it to change as the game progresses. There are several options.
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Constant – the difficulty remains at the value initially set and gets no harder.
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Ramp – the difficulty gradually increases at a steady rate.
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Spikes – the difficulty remains constant however it will spike up in difficulty every now and then. It spikes for a random amount and for a random length.
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Ramp with spikes – the difficulty steadily increases as the game progresses but will every now and then spike up in difficulty. It spikes for a random amount and for a random length.
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Scale With Colony – as your colony size increases so does the difficulty, meaning you should always feel a bit pressured no matter how well you are doing.
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Random – every so often the difficulty is randomised and stays there for a random amount of time. Note you may end up starting at some very hard difficulty.
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Nest entrance can be dug out, and are hidden until done so (visible on minimap)
In Freeplay, your route to the nest entrance is not dug out to begin with, giving you the freedom to plan your nest your way. You will know where the entrance is from the minimap, however you will need to tunnel to it to reach the surface.
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Select your species
Choose from one of the species from the campaign (currently black ants or wood ants) or chose one of your Formicarium colonies to play Freeplay with! If you choose one of your formicarium colonies all the upgrades you have chosen for that colony will be available for your Freeplay colony (note the ants themselves do not transfer, just the upgrades).
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Fog of war
Enemies and food will be hidden from you unless you are nearby, what will be lurking for you in the shadows? Fog of war greatly increases your score!
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Soft population cap (Upkeep)
After a certain number of tiles have been built, further tiles will begin to increase in cost. This makes the end game more challenging whilst also keeping performance high. Workers have a seperate population. This can be disabled in setup.
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So, what’s the point?
You are free to build up a colony and try and survive as long as you can! You can also try to score as high as possible as you will be given a score on defeat. This score is affected by several options:
-- Nest invasions increases score by 50%
-- Uber creatures increases score by 10%
-- Attack waves increases score by 10%
-- Fog of war increases score by 150%
-- Disabling population upkeep reduces your score by 60%
Battle Arena
- The battle arena offers a fast way to pit two armies against each other. It is useful in devising strategies to take on certain enemy types or just to watch two sides fight duke it out!
- Battle Arena is accessible from the Other Modes menu just below Freeplay.
Other Features
- Placing a marker will draw the path the ants are likely to take to reach it
- Hovering over a chamber will now give information about the room (ants, eggs, tile levels, storage)
- Realistic mode added in general options (hides tile surfer outlines, food outlines, path arrows on markers and marker icon overlays)
- Monitor select is now available and can be applied when running in fullscreen mode
Changes / Improvements
- Surface minimap will now fade in when tunnelling to the surface
- Surface minimap now flashes once surface tunnel is excavated
- Beach wolf spider will now wander only if its target location is far from its current location
- Main menu music will play over loading screen and will fade out as the level begins
- Stunned swirl updated
- Tunnel exit tagged for excavation restores when loaded
- Reduced ant reaction time (wood ants should no longer reach targets before starting to fire)
- All ants have an icon on them which roughly describes their role (worker, melee, ranged, tank)
- The nest group can now be selected and can have aggression and gathering turned on and off
- Request to dig to surface can now be cancelled
- Minimap darkens as the day darkens
- Game will now pause when notifications are open (can be toggled on and off via notification button or option)
- Some tech tree icons have been updated
- Some furniture added to main menu screen
Bug Fixes
- Navigation fixes and improvements, navigation calls are now more consistent and fail less often
- Fixed some texture issues on wood ant queen
- Various assets have received minor updates
- Fixed a crash that could happen when harvesting a dead creature
- Fixed an issue where woodlice would sometimes not stop when they use their bunker ability
- Fixed a memory leak
- Fixed tile graphical glitches on Linux platforms
- Fixed issues and improved enemy pack movement
- Fixed a memory leak with the job manager
- Fixed an issue with animation timing
- Fixed a spelling mistake on the splash image
- Fixed an issue where attack and gather buttons were resetting or setting erroneously
- Fixed an issue meaning creatures that spawned at map edges could get stuck (mostly an issue with ladybirds)
- Slow resistance is considered when slowing creatures on a funnel web; larger creatures should slow down less
- Fixed an issue where rapid-fire wood ant purchases were activating the wrong abilities
- Fixed an issue where green glow effect (and others) could be applied after death
- When looking for food or enemies, line of sight is now only blocked by tiles. This should solve issues of food being stuck on ramps.
- Nest group will no longer count food and speed tiles
- Fixed an issue where ants did not always die on tile deletion
- Fixed an issue where creatures that did not contain food could spawn a corpse
- Fixed an issue where after queen abilities activate the queen would stop animating
- Fixed an issue where hats were causing collision and nav mesh changes
- Potentially fixed issue with some hardware causing large black shadows to appear in 1_1 and 1_2
- Fixed a crash that could happen in levels with no surface
- Fixed some text capitalisation inconsistencies
- Changed title of Other Modes
- Fixed an issue where moving the marker between the surface and underground could cause ants to walk to the edge of the map
- Fixed an issue where ants could get stuck facing walls underground, especially when there were a lot of ants about
- Fixed an issue where ants when loaded from a save would immediately go home from a trail end
- Fixed an issue where ants would spin on the spot when walking or picking up food at the bottom of ramps
- Fixed an issue where wood ant projectiles could hit a lip on the tunnel exit
- Fixed an issue where ants were moved towards the queen on load if they were nearby (still exists but not as bad)
- Word cost removed from build tooltips
- Fixed right clicking on harvestable resource placing marker correctly
- Prevented photo mode when in a cutscene
- Fixed an issue where ants would be very slow to register to a marker with no ants assigned
Performance Improvements
- Changed the way in which we decorate levels. As a side effect this increases performance on all levels.
- Added in an optimisation for surface tile grid renders
- Slight optimisation added to minimap rendering
- Refined collisions for substantial performance improvements
- Performance improvements with certain animations
- Performance improvements with skeletal mesh updates
- Blueprint Nativisation in use for substantial performance gains
- Major optimisations in nurseries
- Creature decision making moved into C++ for major performance boost
- Job management speed improved
- Minor array access improvements
- Minor creature AI speed improvements
- Performance improvement added for rendering the upgrade overlay
- Several minor performance improvements
