To start with, a small distraction from the main event - Steam have recently held a summer promotion whereby leaving reviews gains you points. The recent reviews have been pushed into "overwhelmingly positive" territory - and we recognise that's directly down to you guys. Thank you so much! Now, on to the actual content of the newsletter!


Leafcutters doing their thing in this widescreen shot from Steam user Himmuguegeli

We've recently had a meeting to discuss the direction for the rest of the game. We were almost entirely sure of what the next playable ants would be, and the meeting has cemented that decision. Many other things were also decided, and they will have an impact on both the long-term and short-term development of the game.


The focal species for the 4th tier of the formicarium will be fire ants. The blanket term of 'fire ant' comprises many species, but they mostly share the same notorious traits - aggression and invasiveness, and a particularly unpleasant sting. We haven't entirely decided on the exact species that will feature but it will be of the Solenopsis genus.


Solenopsis invicta ants. Source: Wiki commons

Fire ants have diverse and interesting behaviours - particularly relevant to us is the habit of using their own bodies to create structures. Holding onto each other to create a bridge is observed in some species, and this is directly relevant to us - it was one of the Kickstarter stretch goals back in 2016. We'll be talking about the details of how this will work as development continues.


Concept art for fire ant structures from the Kickstarter campaign


This is a very important issue for the longevity of the project - and one that will affect the timing of the next big update.

At the moment, the creature movement and collision detection code is dependent on default Unreal Engine 4 actor functions. These are not at all optimised for use in an RTS game that has potentially hundreds of moving, reacting creatures at any one time. This is the primary reason that the game often starts to suffer when a lot of creatures are in play. Whilst it allows us to create beautiful graphics and we love working with it, UE4 was written with FPS-style games in mind - and many of its features are geared towards that. Those on lower-end systems particularly will feel the pinch when army sizes get large.


Too many ants! From Steam user Cas

We've decided that now is the time to address this issue. We are rewriting lots of the code relevant to this to meet the specific needs of Empires of the Undergrowth. It will take some time but the benefits are multitude, including:

• Significant increase in performance
  
• Algorithm responsible for stuck creatures removed
  
• Reduced overheads for future enemy colonies
  
• Much more viable to have larger armies

The downside is that this is such a fundamental change to the way the game works that it is likely to break more or less everything, so it'll take time to work through the resultant issues. We know you're a patient bunch and are great with waiting for good things, and this is a good thing that will make the game better for everyone, forever.

When we're getting close to having the optimisations done, we're very likely run a public beta on Steam for all owners to allow lots of feedback on them.


As detailed in the previous newsletter, the next large update for the game will come in the form of an update to freeplay. John has spent a lot of time recently working on the new menu system for this updated mode, which with the planned changes is a major consideration. The end result will be a much more friendly-looking menu with presets. The advanced options will be there for people who want to make a custom setup - and you'll have the ability to share them.

Whilst he's making significant progress on this, its timing will be affected by the aforementioned optimisations. The update to freeplay will arrive at the same time as them.

John has been streaming his work on this. See a recent one below - at around the 2 hours 12 minutes mark of this one he also shows a little preview of a creature that was cut from the leafcutter update for time purposes, the velvet worm! We intend to finish and add the velvet worm in a future update.

https://youtu.be/uZJiTu3CHS4


One of the Kickstarter rewards was an option to have a Myrmecia ereptor colony instead of Formica ereptor. Our artist Matt has been working on the necessary changes. Below are some screenshots of the Myrmecia ereptor workers. The addition will be purely cosmetic, and will likely be activated in the form of a Steam key sent out to backers of the appropriate tiers.



It'll be our first foray into working with DLC systems so it'll be a learning experience for us as well as everyone else! Please note that for now this is an exclusive cosmetic for Kickstarter backers.




For the past couple of months Snootz has been covering Empires of the Undergrowth at the highest difficulty settings with his trademark calm, soothing manner. We've thoroughly enjoyed his playthroughs. His more recent attempts at insane difficulties for the third tier levels may well precipitate some balancing on our behalf.

https://youtu.be/6pG3TwMs_Hw


If you'd like to contribute to this section then simply upload your screenshots to Steam (F12 by default) or mail them to mike@slugdisco.com. You can enter the cinematic photo mode by pressing F8 - and if you do that whilst holding shift you'll have free movement of the camera, allowing you to get some really interesting angles.


Night falls from Steam user Raymond2500


Whip spider circle of death in freeplay from Steam user Lord Distruct


Ladybird beetle in flight from Steam user Fazan008

It's been just over a month since we unleashed our first major update for Empires of the Undergrowth - the Leafcutter Update - upon the world. We've worked through most of the glitches and balance issues now, and it's been a joy to see you guys have fun with the new additions to the game. Feedback has been almost entirely positive and we're so happy that you guys seem to be enjoying it!


Leafcutter trail from Steam user Jynn

This newsletter will cover some of the issues that have come back in the immediate fallout, go through what we've added since the update in a bit more detail, and discuss what's going to happen in the immediate future.


As I'm sure the vast majority of you are aware, we released the Leafcutter Update on 25th April. We're pleased with how it went, and we appreciate the feedback you guys have given us that helped us correct some major issues that we didn't catch during our testing period. Chief of these was a crash that occurred when selling certain tiles - that's now been resolved. There have also been some balance changes to certain creatures and spawning amounts. There may still be some ways to go on this and of course we'll continue to monitor feedback.


Leafcutters collecting leaves from Steam user a white wyrm


Colony-vs-colony combat has been something a lot of you have been asking for for quite a while, and it's something we've been itching to do for quite some time. The leafcutter levels finally allow this in a near-true fashion. The enemy colonies in 3.1 The Harvest and the 3rd formicarium challenge are much nearer to a true AI-controlled ant colony than have existed in the previous levels - they have their own underground, pheromone groups, and behaviour trees.


Army ant major from Steam user Fazan008

These are stepping stones to truly autonomous colonies which will be useful in a future freeplay update, which will properly dig out their own nests from scratch and all the bells and whistles. Liam is enjoying working on this AI (he's calling it HiveBot), but it won't be ready for quite some time - having an AI be able to come close to a human-controlled player without cheating is really tough!


There has been concern from a small number of players about the direction the game is headed with colony-vs-colony combat and resource wars. The new levels are very different to the ones that have come before, but it is worth reassuring these players at this stage that not all future levels will involve these mechanics. There's still plenty of things to explore in the world of the Undergrowth that don't just involve dominating another colony, but it was something a lot of players (and us) wanted to see.



The largest new addition we've made since the release of the leafcutter update is a new demo level called The Crucible. It features leafcutters (minus the majors) and is the only demo level in which you can access the surface. Owners of the game can access it from the alpha demo levels section of "Other Modes" from the main menu.

https://youtu.be/SIoc-zSngU8
DGA plays The Crucible

I imagine just about everyone reading this owns the game, but those who don't will notice that you have the option of downloading the updated demo from the Steam page. We've also put it up on IndieDB. Note that the level is limited and features only rove beetles and spiny devils as enemies.


We've added some new UI additions to augment the current selection of keyboard shortcuts - you'll notice these in the bottom right tab. These are easily-accessible toggle buttons for resource, tile and creature info.


Press shift whilst entering photo mode for a free camera! By Fazan008


We've also started in earnest our effort for language localisation with the support of two new languages - German and Simplified Chinese, which were the most logical ones for us personally to start with. Steam users from these regions should have these enabled by default but a language selection dropdown box can be found in the game options.

Since we now have a very robust system for localisation, we will be adding new languages over time. We've already started the process of getting some other translations done for the game - we'll let everyone know as they're added.


Since the pressures of completing the main content for the Leafcutter Update are now behind us we've been able to make some optimisation changes for some performance enhancements. A long-standing issue has been the upgrade overlay causing a significant drop in framerate, even on relatively high-end systems. Thanks to Matt's profiling pass there's been an up to 75% improvement on this now. Various other small things have been done as well (such as removal of near-invisible crystals from soldier tiles that had quite a heavy materials load).



The next large update that will come to the game is a significant re-working and update of features to freeplay mode. Freeplay is in need of some good TLC - we are aware that in its current for it is rather unbalanced and is particularly unforgiving to startup colonies. John has begun work on his reworked freeplay mode - see the video below for his first livestream post-leafcutter update.

https://youtu.be/IApQRvjZsJY

There are many new features he intends to add - first and foremost, he will be adding leafcutters themselves as a species option to the mode. This didn't make it into the main leafcutter update for several reasons - they operate so differently in their food gathering and caste system to the other ants that adding them is far from a trivial task.

It was relatively easy for John to add the new creatures to freeplay in time for release but the leafcutter colony itself needs a lot of work. The climbing system that the leafcutters use needs a way to be saved mid-climb (a first for freeplay - creature actions are not currently saved), and of course there needs to be special landmark and balance considerations for them since they harvest leaves as their only source of food, and want to avoid conflict with other creatures as much as they can since they get no resources from them.

There will also be a re-work of the creature spawning system. Currently, increased difficulty level leads to the spawning of more creatures. Towards the end of a freeplay game this can mean the entire map is simply swamped with enemies, which affects performance as well as experience. John's plan is to add tiered enemies instead, which means tougher individual enemies rather than more of them.

https://youtu.be/nKMESsSGZAk
DGA play freeplay in its current state

Also, something we've wanted to add to freeplay for some time is optional victory conditions. When we did our last recording session with our narrator we recorded some victory narration for freeplay, and this is the opportunity to implement that properly. Optional conditions might be collect X number of food, kill X uber creatures, or survive for a set period of time. There's lots of room for experimentation with this!

Finally, John is planning on a brand new freeplay level set in the new rainforest environment. He's likely to livestream quite a lot of this, talking to the chat and taking suggestions. We'll post on our social media when we do this and on occasion will post an announcement on the Steam page for particularly important streams.


Obviously, you all want to know what we're doing with the formicarium campaign next, and we're 90% sure we know the next species that will be focused on and the theme of levels 4.1 and 4.2. Until we've had our big design meeting in early June, though, we're not quite prepared to tell everyone what that is. As soon as we commit to it, we'll let you all know in the forums and we'll also have a section in the next newsletter.


Frazzz has covered Empires of the Undergrowth for a long time. With the leafcutter update he's taken up his coverage again with renewed vigour - and it's been a joy watching him discover the new mechanics. It was a little exasperating watching him wondering why his ants were getting sick and dying because he didn't read the tip about refuse chambers causing this - but he got there in the end!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1tIzAOPU_4


We've obviously been having a blast looking at the screenshots from the new content, and we've been spoiled for choice. Here's three of our favourites from the past month. If you'd like to submit some screenshots the easiest way is to use Steam (F12 by default to take a snap, and F9 by default to enter photo mode). A popup will allow you to upload once you exit the game. You can also email them directly to mike@slugdisco.com. Also, here's a little tip- we've recently added an unlocked photo mode which has no camera restrictions. You might see some funky stuff but it's a way to get some really interesting angles - to enter it hold down shift while you press the photo mode.


A menacing but beautiful view of army ants from Jynn


Mantids and spiders and crickets, oh my! From Steam user Raptorofwar


A Formica ereptor colony including leafcutter majors in Freeplay from Steam user Hilfspage

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.

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

Since we launched the update two weeks ago we have received plenty of bug reports and fixed most of them. Additionally we have made a couple of balance changes. We also now have full interface localisation for German, and almost full for Simplified Chinese.

Localisation changes

• Added in interface localisation for both German and Simplified Chinese (Chinese missing some small areas) languages
  
• Most user interface widgets in the game altered to allow more space for text, or made to stretch to text size
  
• Corrected a sentence in German translation

Features

• Added the new demo level "The Crucible" into alpha demo levels (see - "Other Modes")

Changes / Improvements

• Accept button is now visible but grey when on the reward selection dialogue
  
• Tooltip added to the above button whilst disabled
  
• The army ant progress bar is greyed out when they can no longer advance to another lane later in the day
  
• Thorns have been disabled for projectile users
  
• Hotkey for displaying resources has been separated from tile info hotkey (UI elements for these are coming soon) and it now directly affects the option in the options menu rather than being a per-level toggle
  
• Scoreboard now mentions the difficulty played after the level name
  
• Large praying mantis snatch ability cool-down increased to 8s (up from 6s)
  
• Large praying mantis snatch ability healing reduced to 360 (down from 400)
  
• Reduced creature spawn difficulty on 3.2 insane by 10%
  
• Slightly raised the decal transparency to make them more visible
  
• Leafcutter parent node in the tech tree now correctly greys out until the prerequisite is reached
  
• Formicarium level select will now scroll to where you are once opened
  
• Fixed an issue with the options dialogue and fullscreen / windowed / windowed fullscreen modes
  
• Fixed an issue where surface transitions were less visible at night
  
• Increased damage of level 3 rapid fire wood ants to 3.5 per hit (up from 3)
  
• Increased damage returned by leafcutter "Sharp" upgrade thorns effect to 65% (up from 50%)
  
• Added a warning about refuse de-buff to the tiles tooltip

Fixes

• Fixed an issue that would cause an infinite loop when deleting major tiles in the formicarium
  
• All leafcutter chambers (including speed tiles in leafcutter) now refund leaves when deleted rather than seeds
  
• Creatures now drop what they are holding when picked up (fixes the floating leaf praying mantis issue)
  
• Fixed an issue that affects the time at the start of missions
  
• Army ants no longer gather food if they are heading to attack your queen in 3.2 (fixes the permanent harvesting issue)
  
• Fixed an issue where refunding tiles before they are built in leafcutter levels could sometimes award no resources back (and still leave you with waste)
  
• Fixed an issue where constantly reloading formicarium 2 would give you free woodworms
  
• More of the vine in 3.1 should be harvestable
  
• Vines not sitting above a tile grid will now show up as harvestable
  
• Fixed an issue where demo levels would always show victory on defeat
  
• Fixed a freeplay creature setup issue which could untick all rainforest creatures if all of another type of creature were unticked
  
• Upgraded leafcutter tiles will now correctly increase in storage to 20 / 30 / 40 (up from 20 / 20 / 20)
  
• Tile upgrades will now always happen once the tile has been marked for upgrade and will no longer not happen if the upgrade points drop during the upgrade
  
• Moved an item of foliage in the formicarium so it is no longer overlapping another
  
• Removed an invisible food item on 2.1 and replaced it with a dead beach tiger beetle
  
• Switch underground keys will no longer work in freeplay
  
• Food being processed should no longer show on the minimap or UI overlay
  
• Speed tile effects will no longer apply before the tile is built

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


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)

https://youtu.be/5j4xo7WiwC4

Only a few days to go now ... get ahead a little by looking at this brief explanation of the leafcutter food mechanics.

https://youtu.be/5j4xo7WiwC4

Please enjoy our updated trailer, featuring the leafcutter ants and rainforest environment!

We're very pleased to announce that our first major update for Empires of the Undergrowth, the Leafcutter Update, will be coming to the game on April 25th! Featuring an all-new rainforest 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.

https://youtu.be/HoRqZa7BH9Q

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.

Although we have a policy of not announcing dates until we’re 100% sure, it is safe to say we are now very, very close to getting the leafcutter beta out to Kickstarter closed beta tier backers. Those of you who are on this tier, please keep an eye on your emails over the next week or so. The coming build for you guys will be feature-complete from a gameplay perspective, but will be missing some things like sound effects (the new creatures currently all sound like the Devil’s Coach Horse adult). Those will be added in throughout the beta as we continue development.


Leafcutters gather leaves in level 3.2 Front Line

As a quick explanation for everyone else – the closed beta group consists of people who supported us at a certain tier during our Kickstarter campaign in 2016. The beta typically lasts a few weeks, where we take feedback on things like balance and glitches. It really helps us polish things to be great for everyone and gives a bigger sample size than just the four of us on the team, and it means when we get the update out to everyone it’ll feel really good to play right from the off. Of course, things like balance and glitch fixes don’t end when the beta does (the size of the beta group doesn’t come close to all users!) so we will still be very grateful for your feedback as things continue.

A short time into the beta, we should have a fairly good idea of how long it’ll take us to deal with the resultant feedback and it’s at that point that we’ll decide on a release date. Exciting times!


Leafcutter-shaped Formica ereptor ants in the new formicarium

Since we’re so close to having things ready, there hasn’t been much in the way of “new” stuff to show over the past month (not because there’s nothing left, but we’ve reached a limit on things we want to share without spoiling the upcoming content too much).


One of the more fearsome beasties you’ll encounter in your life as a leafcutter colony is the leaf mimic praying mantis. There are several sizes of mantis, but in its final instar it’s an outright terrifying opponent that even well-prepared players will find difficult. Here’s a preview of her in the Battle Arena, against a fairly typical mix of leafcutters. She has some unique stealth abilities due to her natural camouflage – note that she doesn’t appear on the minimap until she decides she’s going to attack, and the ants have to be very close in order to spot her. This makes more sense in the context of a rain forest floor covered with leaves.

https://youtu.be/7BFaTYxfmGk

You’ll also notice that she has the ability to pick up an ant and consume it, instantly killing it and restoring health. This gives her remarkable durability, so she must be overwhelmed quickly and with large numbers. Majors are a little big for her to eat in this fashion, but minors and mediae go straight down the hatch!


Here’s a sped-up look at the enemy leafcutter colony you will encounter in level 3.1, The Harvest. It’s controlled by the AI (but it has a pre-built nest layout, which makes sense for the campaign levels). Fully autonomous AI colonies will eventually feature in Freeplay.

https://youtu.be/j1WgzrUmMMA

Some of the ants have a green cloud surrounding them. This is a status indicator showing the ant has recently been in a refuse chamber – which causes sickness to ants that aren’t minims. You’ll want to build your refuse chambers away from thoroughfares and brood chambers.


Here’s a couple of screenshots showing some of the cosmetic variations we’ve added to the appearance of some of the creatures – in this case the leafhoppers and the harvestmen. Although not strictly necessary from a gameplay perspective, we’ve taken the time to do things like this in order to try and reflect some of the huge natural diversity that exists in rain forests. Of course we can’t come close to how diverse they actually are, being the richest terrestrial environments on the planet – but we can try to replicate it in a small way.





Here’s something a little different – an in-editor look at 3.1 The Harvest. We use Unreal Engine 4 to build Empires of the Undergrowth. It’s an incredibly comprehensive and featured development environment, and this video shows a little behind-the-scenes look at the workings of a level.

https://youtu.be/9xnQ9D-iIKM

The white lines on the plants are mathematical objects called splines. These act as a guide to the pathfinding AI and indicate that these are plants that can be climbed and harvested by leafcutters for their fungus farms.

The bright green and red on the floor is called the navmesh – it indicates the areas of the map that are navigable by creatures. It’s a static object on the surface, but often has to be re-computed underground because the player changes it with their digging!

The screen with the large, complex-looking flowchart is called a blueprint. These are a powerful feature of UE4 which we find particularly useful for AI behaviour. In this one, you can see that every few seconds it “thinks” – indicated by the orange line as it follows the algorithm and reaches a decision. This is the AI for the enemy ant colony in level 3.1 – it reacts actively to the player, making its own decisions instead of following a timed script, like the colonies in 2.2 do.


Since we’re so close to having things ready, it’s time to start thinking about trailers. We love a good trailer – they’re a great way to build up some awareness and, dare we say it, hype for a release. We have a background in short film-making, in fact it’s the shared hobby that brought all of us together many years ago!

https://youtu.be/TUsKMPSYPOs

The above is a look at an in-progress shot designed by Liam. We make custom builds with trigger-able camera moves to capture our trailer footage using OBS. Ignore the sound for now – as mentioned above a lot of the new sounds aren’t in yet; that will all be sorted later!


Every so often, John has been posting recent changes to the source control of the game on our official forums. These can offer a little insight into what’s currently being worked on. As before when we’ve done this segment, here’s his full post but here’s a few selected highlights with some extra commentary to give more context.

• Minimap displays gather-able resources – all food items that can be gathered, whether they be leaves for the leafcutters or dead creatures for other ants, will now show up as a dot on the minimap. This should help players direct their forces to resource-rich areas with more certainty.
  
• New Freeplay setup screen added – John has expanded and re-designed the Freeplay setup screen to be a bit clearer. This is the first step in his overhaul of Freeplay which will begin in earnest once the leafcutter update is out.
  
• Prepared documents for localisation – we’ll be adding the first two translations to the game soon (German and Chinese) and there’s been a lot of prep work involved in this process.
  
• Lots of work on the trailer for leafcutters – Liam has been designing shots for the upcoming trailers, as detailed above. He’s been making custom builds of the game that showcase designed camera moves.
  
• Gather and aggression buttons updated for colour-blind – it was pointed out to us that our colour scheme for the gather / attack toggle buttons is difficult to differentiate for people with colour blindness. They now have a visible line across them when switched off.
  
• Added in chunks for every creature in the game (no longer will harvesting a fish produce a Devil’s Coach Horse leg) – up until now, harvested creature chunks all shared the same models and textures. Matt has put in some work to make sure this is no longer the case.
  
• Added canopy shadows to the new levels – as is fitting for the rain forest, the third tier levels will have a dappled lighting effect on the surface to represent bright sunlight filtering through the treetops.

We’ve been spoiled for choice on the beautiful screenshots this past month – you lot have really been upping your game! It’s been difficult to choose three really good ones from many very pretty examples, but here they are. As always, take your screenshots on Steam (F12 is the default key) then upload them when you exit the game from the window that pops up. You can get some great angles by using Photo Mode (F9 by default).

Alternatively, you can manually email screenshots to mike@slugdisco.com.


Uber beetle bearing down from returning contributor AK_tion_47


Ladybird massacre from Hilfspage


Beautifully captured tiger beetle larva from returnee MorPacke

We're now much closer to our first major update, featuring leafcutters. As well as continuing development of the update to completion, we've been dealing with quite a lot of meta-requirement systems in the meantime, such as subtitles (which will be a long-overdue feature beginning with this update). Once we're at a point where we can get meaningful feedback from our closed testing group, we will release it to them and that will soon give us a good idea of how long it will take to correct any detected issues. As always, our policy is to not give vague guesses on release timing, only solid dates once we're certain of them - but we're feeling good about the current pace of things and the rate at which the remaining task list is being ticked off.


A cloud of venom surrounds this Formica rufa queen from alexraptor554

There's been plenty of good visual things finalised and ready to show off over the past month - some of which show off some leafcutter mechanics. So let's have a look at some of the fun things that await when you introduce Atta cephalotes to your Formica ereptor colony!


Rainforests are hugely diverse - they're the most diverse land habitats on Earth; rich in speciation and sheer variety of solutions to evolutionary problems.



We've worked hard to make sure that's reflected in the fauna, but just as importantly the flora of our Ecuadorian setting. Here's a closer look showing some of the plant life in a recent art pass of level 3.1 - the first leafcutter level.






Leafcutters gain their nutrition from the fungus they grow in their gardens, sprouted from decomposing leaf cuttings harvested from the surface. The minors, mediae and majors collect cuttings and drop them off in designated chambers.

The minims (the smallest leafcutters) then take the leaves to the brood chambers where the fungus grows (this includes the queen tiles). The fungus will grow as leaves are added, then diminish as it is used up by new hatchings and tile placement – it then produces waste which must be managed. The short video below demonstrates this process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Vzu-5qVVc


Placing a pheromone trail marker near a plant will draw leafcutters assigned to it – they’ll see the plant as a harvestable food source, just like seeds or dead creatures in previous levels. The major, mediae and minor workers climb the stem, taking time to cut a chunk of leaf before taking it to a drop-off point in the nest. As detailed above, the minims will then take it to the fungus gardens.

The leaves will diminish visually as they are harvested by the leafcutters, giving a physical indication of when the resources are used up and new grazing pastures must be found.

Below is a rather pleasing close-up of this process happening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfg9T-q_VKk


This pair of pictures shows the near-completed interface modifications needed to bring leafcutters to the game. You’ll notice a new resource bar at the top of the screen. Green on the left represents fungus available to spend, grey is space available on the nursery tiles to grow fungus, and red on the right is used fungus that needs to be disposed of.



Over time, the fungus produces waste which must be removed and taken to special chambers (right of the first picture). The refuse chambers will have a detrimental effect on nearby brood chambers, so it’s wise to build them a good distance away from where your ants pupate and travel – non-minim ants walking through them will take a speed and attack de-buff as well as suffer damage for a time. This represents the disease that the real-life counterparts of our leafcutters aim to avoid by having dedicated refuse areas. Waste decays and disappears over time – faster for upgraded refuse tiles.




"Yes, yes, I know how to use a trowel!"
- Scientist #2

The colony’s current home is not suitable for the next set of tests. In order to continue the experiment, the scientists will need to relocate the queen to a new Formicarium. She and a few of her workers will be relocated into this new setting, which has a few… extra features.



When this process happens, the colony will need to leave its food, construction and territory behind. However, it will be rewarded an amount of royal jelly for each territory point and item of food (spent or unspent). This can be spent on the new leafcutter majors or any upgrades and improvement the colony needs – this will help it get quickly back up to speed. All upgrade paths and minor improvements will also carry over.



The change will happen just before you move on to tier 3 – in the level selection dialogue there will be a button which will unlock the 3rd tier levels.




Last month, John posted some select notes from the source control (update log) of Empires of the Undergrowth, to give a little insight into what each of our developers has been doing. He’s made another post along these lines in the meantime, and as before we think it’d be fun to go through some of these notes and give a little extra commentary to them. We encourage you to read John’s original thread, and indeed sign up for our official forums whilst you’re at it!

• Changed the way ramps work when the tide rises (ants no longer fall through) – this was the cause of a hardware-specific crash that had plagued us for quite some time. As it turned out, some ants when caught on ramps were falling through them to infinity – and in certain situations this caused a game crash on some systems. A tricky one to fix, but perseverance got us there! This has already been implemented in the current playable build of the game.
  
• Tweaked uber resistances – in certain situations and with certain colony setups, some uber creatures had become practically invulnerable. This was an oversight and not intentional – although uber creatures are still extremely tough and deliberately so, there should be fewer situations where they are unbeatable. There’s plenty more tweaking work to be done on freeplay, and indeed once the leafcutter update is done John will be focussing on another freeplay pass.
  
• Set tabbed minimaps to always have home nest on the left – the coming updates will enable multiple true colonies in a limited sense. To access their minimaps, there has been a new system made to keep them accessible as tabs behind the player’s own.
  
• Ants that enter an enemy colony are now tracked– similar to above, you’ll be invading some other nests if you dare.
  
• Subtitles for all levels added – a long-overdue feature and one important for accessibility (and localisation) but one which needs a lot of grunt work. We’re at a point now where we want this functionality to be there going forward – it’s important to the future of the game and our community as a whole.
  
• Tweaked the dissolve in various ways – this refers to the visual effect when a foreground object needs to be partially obscured by dithering so you can see through it. It’s particularly important for the Ecuador levels, which have a lot of low-growing foliage.
  
• Preparing in-game text for translation – localisation is important for the success of a game. We’re getting there.

Looking through the things you guys do with the simple tool of Photo Mode (F9 by default) or otherwise is always an excellent palate cleanser after writing one of these newsletters. It refreshes the soul. By default, F12 will take a screenshot in Steam. You can get it to us by simply uploading to Steam Community (a dialogue box allowing you to do this will pop up when you exit the game) or by manually emailing the screenshot to mike@slugdisco.com.


MorPacke back again with this fantastic wood ant colony shot


Sinister spider from Daethalion


A valiant effort to ward off an uber beetle in this colourful shot from MasterAntlion

Our first newsletter of 2019! A bright, shiny, spanking new year – and it’ll be a big one for ants. After the holiday break the guys are back to working on the 3rd tier Formicairum levels. We’ve also released a couple of glitch-fixing patches in the meantime to deal with some widespread issues. Firstly, let’s get to what’s ready to show from 3.1 and 3.2.


A Formica ereptor queen from MorPacke


Salticidae is a widespread family of spiders that can be found all over the world. They travel widely in search of food and do not spin webs to catch prey – instead they actively hunt, using powerful back legs to pounce on unsuspecting prey before it had the chance to react. For this reason, they are known as the jumping spiders.

The species that will appear in Empires of the Undergrowth is Psecas viridipurpureus, a South American resident. It’s brightly-coloured, and even a little cute if you can see past its arachnid form! It sits patiently, turning its body from left to right to allow its highly specialised eyes to scan the environment. When it spots a likely prey item, it perfectly calculates the distance it needs to travel, then pounces.





https://youtu.be/KJk41xfb0B4


The harvestmen are a diverse group of arachnids (order Opiliones). They may colloquially be called daddy longlegs. Although superficially spider-like in appearance, they differ greatly from true spiders in several ways. They have no distinct separation in thorax and abdomen, and only a single pair of eyes. They are further distinguished from spiders by often being generalist, opportunistic feeders rather than predators – a rare trait in arachnids. They might hunt, scavenge or graze. The South American species in our game is sometimes called the “Jason’s mask harvestman” because of the distinctive hockey mask-like pattern on its back.

In-game, the harvestman keeps its body at a safe distance from attackers with its long legs – although the legs themselves can be quite brittle. It may have a cursory nibble at a trail of leafcutter ants, but it will make a quick retreat if it suffers an injury such as the loss of a leg.







https://youtu.be/PBKmqWsBKkA
Bam! Hunting behaviour


Leafhoppers are small insects that subsist by consuming sap from plants. They’re related to cicadas and spittlebugs. True to their name, when startled or in need of new feeding grounds, they leap many times their height into the air and find another leaf to feed upon. As members of the order Hemiptera, leafhoppers are “true bugs” – insects with specialised mouthparts that feed by sucking.

Sometimes when you design a game, you want to include things purely to set the tone and enrich the world. That’s the case for leafhoppers in Empires of the Undergrowth – they’ll appear in the leafcutter levels to bring a sense of biodiversity to our recreation of the incredibly varied rainforests of Ecuador. The leafcutters obviously do not eat other insects, but their leaf-cutting activities will disturb the leafhoppers!






One of our developers John took a few minutes to make this post on our official forums during the last week. He details some commits (changes) made to the game source control by himself, Liam and Matt over the course of the Christmas break. Please follow that link and have a look through it yourself, but I thought I’d just highlight a couple of points he included for the sake of intrigue:

• Balance changes to the refuse chambers – in this commit John is referring to a mechanic that will be introduced with the leafcutter levels, the refuse chambers. Leafcutters grow fungus from their foliage cuttings, and the spent fungus produces waste. It will be the job of minim workers to remove waste from the fungus gardens to the refuse chambers. Failure to have sufficient refuse chambers far enough away from the gardens will have a detrimental effect on the workforce.
  
  
• Focus on large creature patrols – we’ve shown you some fairly big new beasts for the leafcutter levels, but we’ve not shown you everything! There are some things we don’t want to spoil just yet, if at all.

The Spiny Devil - one of the creatures getting several size variations

• Medium-sized Spiny Devil – like the beach tiger beetles, hermit crabs and wolf spiders in the 2nd tier, several of the rainforest critters will come in several sizes. This includes the spiny devil, praying mantis and harvestman. See the previous newsletter for details on some of those beasties.
  
  
• Leafcutter resource system – resource complexity has a step up with the leafcutters, as a natural increase in complexity makes sense from a gameplay perspective. These things need careful implementation and balancing – and that’s an ongoing process.
  
  
• Leafhoppers and a system to manage them – as well as doing the artwork for our decorative leafhoppers (detailed above) Matt has created a system to handle their behaviour. The other denizens of the rainforest won’t interact directly with the leafhoppers (they jump away much too quick) but they’ll still realistically ping themselves away when approached.

Leafhoppers doing leafhopper stuff

John hopes to continue these sort of posts on an informal basis every so often – just to give a little insight into the day-to-day work that goes into the making of Empires of the Undergrowth. He’ll only be posting them on our own forums, so this is a good time to get yourselves signed up to them and introduce yourselves to our small but friendly community.


We’re getting lots of people (quite rightly) asking how far away the leafcutter update is. We’d like to think that we can recognise things we’re not very good at, and it’s fair to say that estimating our release dates is one of those things. In our experience a missed deadline, even a vague and non-specific one like “winter”, is likely to cause disappointment in our fans and that’s the last thing we want.

The leafcutter levels (3.1, 3.2 and Formicarium Challenge 3) are each an order of magnitude more complex than anything and everything we did in the 1st and 2nd tiers, and it shows in our current testing. Rest assured, although we are taking our time, we are taking our time to do it right and the results will be worth the extra patience you lovely bunch have shown yourselves to have in abundance.

It’s been policy for a while, but to make things explicit – going forward we won’t be giving vague guesstimates – only solid dates when we’re sure of our ability to meet them.


As ever, we love trawling through the screenshots on Steam to find the best of the uploads. Take your screenshots on Steam (F12 by default) and upload them once you quit the game. Photo Mode (F9) will help you get some pleasing angles on your snaps! If you’d prefer not to deal with Steam, you can also email your pictures to mike@slugdisco.com.


A festive snap from Smoky


Battle lines from WiseOldWeaboo


An easy-on-the-eye Formica fusca colony from MorPacke