The Hungry Spider level is now back for the spooky season! This devlishly difficult level sees you play as the aforementioned arachnid as he eats his way through a web-shaped map. Okay, enough alliteration.

Unlike other levels, you control him directly with the mouse or buttons you'd usually use for moving the camera. There's a special apparition on the main menu to let you access the level - see the YouTube video for help in finding it.


Be warned: this level is legendarily difficult and very, very few have succeeded! Those enemy spiders are a real killer. If you don't beat the level this time round, it'll also show up on full moons.

Autumn (or fall if you're that way inclined) has well and truly began to take a hold in our part of the world. The nights are drawing in, the temperature is dropping and there is some fun stuff being worked on for Empires of the Undergrowth. Or boring technical stuff, depending on your point of view. Either way, we shall detail it here for your perusal!


Nighttime crab hunting from Steam user Bald Hippo z

With there not being much in the way of visual newness at the moment (a large majority of the recent work has been on systems and algorithms rather than artwork) I asked each of our three developers to give me some background information about what they've been working on. John has been expanding current systems to handle the upcoming fire ants, Liam has been finishing off his overhaul of the movement code, and Matt has been working on a long-anticipated feature, the titan climbing system!


In real life, ants do not live on a flat plane with incremental steps, battling their enemies from the ground. They swarm and conquer, clambering all over their foes to get at weak spots they otherwise couldn't reach. Although we are definitely making a game rather than a simulation, and many of our game systems are reliant on the incrementally-layered flat plane, we want to introduce some more three dimensional elements when it is both fun and appropriate to do so.

Having ants swarm and climb over their foes has been in our plans for a very long time. We liked the idea of describing the larger creatures as the Titans of the Undergrowth, and they had the climbable functionality to distinguish them from smaller creatures. There are some videos from very early development, back when we were using our own custom-built engine, of this system being tested. When we made the move to Unreal Engine 4 this system fell to the wayside somewhat when the planned levels for the start of early access did not require it. Now is the time to bring it back. Matt has recently been working on doing just that.

As a test case until he has models for new creatures, he has been using the whip spider from the leafcutter levels. It's a suitably massive creature, and although he doesn't promise that it will be climbable in the game it seems quite likely.


Whip spider with skeletal "cart rails" to help ants climb it.

The system he's creating works in a similar way to how leafcutters climb plants in the current game. In the above GIF, the green lines represent "rails" along which "carts" travel. In this example, an ant will get close to the titan, choose a climbing point, and board one of these imaginary "carts". The cart travels along the length of the green path and deposits the ant at the end (the end representing a weak point on the body that ants would attack) which along with its walk cycle animation will give a very convincing representation of the ant scurrying over the titan. At the end of its allotted time, or when the titan is defeated, it will board another imaginary cart back to the ground and end up back on the normal ground plane.

The exact mechanics gameplay-wise of how this will affect the damage to the titan are yet to be entirely worked out, but the visual side of things is coming along nicely. The system is a very flexible one - although in this example Matt is using six paths, any number can be added to creatures for variety. It'll see heavy use in the fire ant levels, as the furiously aggressive fire ants overwhelm their enemies.


Although Liam's new movement and pathing code is up and running, there are lots of little outlier issues that were solved in the past and need to be thought about again. This is what happens when you remove a core piece of the game engine that has been built upon since 2016!

Below you can see the new overground tunnel exit. You should notice that the whole thing is now made from hexagons, so it fits snugly on the tile grid (in the real levels you won't be able to see the join). Whilst we were doing this, we took the opportunity to change the exit hole layout (they used to all face the same way). You can also see some colourful spheres and lines, if you really want to know what they are about, read on.



Movement on the over ground tile grid is very predictable: the creatures are always walking horizontally at a multiple of tile block height and for any given point on the plane X,Y, there is only one tile. Each tile contains a "node" that links to 12 surrounding nodes - these relationships are used for the fast jump pathfinding algorithm (so ants know how to get from A to B). The highlighted overground tunnel exit piece works a little differently; nodes can have heights between two tile levels (on the ramps) and there are areas that have two viable locations for a given X,Y position (down the tunnels and above the tunnels). Not only does this complicate the pathfinding system, so that X,Y locations on the overground tunnel link to arrays of pathing nodes rather than single nodes, we also need a way to “sew in” to the surrounding tiles.

The turquoise arrows show the pathing information on the exit itself – this is like a directional net (the ants can travel anywhere the arrows point to). The black hexagons indicate the edges of the exit that need to attach to surrounding tiles. The red lines represent these attachments, any tiles they connect to are aware of links to both the exit (red) and links to normal tiles (blue). The pink spheres are just to brighten Liam's day as he works.



Recently John has been working on the fire ants and trying to bring something new to the table with this fascinating species that works with them narratively. Several of their new abilities attempt something that is new to the game. One variant of them has the eggs hatch for free if the egg has been on the tile for longer than a minute leading to an attack-retreat style play to get the most value out of the colony.

A recent issue has been making multiple ants hatch from the same tile. One ant per tile has been a rule since the first demo and is ingrained in many core systems of the game. For instance, tiles are often used to work out how many ants should join a trail quickly, whether an enemy colony should attack and even saving and loading the colony. All of these are expecting to work with a single ant. Similarly the UI needed to be updated to work with the array of ants rather than a single object.

Fire ant tiles will allow 2 ants at level 3 and we are very much looking forward to how this will change your strategies when playing with this species.


John's upcoming survival map Extremis (previously known by its working title of Holdout Extreme) now has a unique unlock system - upon defeat, you will be given points to spend on unlocking ants and abilities for your next attempt.



Extremis will be just one of what we hope will be many extra missions that are apart from the main campaign, beginning with the next large update to the game (which will focus on freeplay, as detailed in a previous newsletter).


The most fun part of writing these newsletters for me is looking through the recent uploads on our Steam community page to find the best screenshots. We're consistently blown away by just how amazing you guys are at making our game look gorgeous! If you'd like to submit something to Screenshot Central, simply upload it to Steam (F12 by default takes a screenshot, and you'll be given the option of uploading upon exiting the game) or manually sent it to me mike@slugdisco.com. F9 will take you into photo mode to get some great angles, and holding shift whilst you do that will break the camera free of any restrictions.


Jumping spiders are such cuties in this shot from Steam user germinal.ronse


The stuff of nightmares - a mess of whip spiders in the battle arena from Steam user DeltaX06


Where did all the trees go? Atta cephalotes colony from Steam user CaptainCarrot

With the summer coming to a close we thought we'd publish another newsletter for you guys. This time we'll be talking about a few extra systems we've been working on (such as achievements) as well as talking about us as a company taking the intrepid steps into working with some other indie developers. So, we'll be introducing Tom and his game Ecosystem a bit further down!


A dramatic shot of leafcutters battling wood ants in freeplay from Steam user hugo27rex

Over the last few weeks progress continues to be made on the updated movement / collision system and a large round of profiling. Methods have been tightened to reduce computational overheads, new algorithms have been refined and the old has made way for the new. We're now nearing the end of our self-allotted time for this large task, and when that happens we’ll need your help testing it.


The ants calculating ways to avoid each other (me irl)

The below video shows something we weren't able to do with the old system, which is to use a vector calculation when a creature hits an obstacle and feed it back into its direction. This means with a bit of tweaking we can give the appearance of quite natural avoidance of walls and other tricky bits of terrain such as ramp edges.


Bonus marvellous spider

As briefly mentioned above, once we have a release candidate for our movement code changes and freeplay update we will run a beta for all Steam owners of the game. This means that those who want to will be able to participate in a pre-release by entering a beta code into their Steam client. We will detail this when we announce a date, and as always, we won’t do that until we’re certain we can honour it.

Whilst Liam and Matt have been working on the aforementioned changes, it hasn’t been practical to test new content such as maps and game modes. John has therefore been using this time to get up to speed on several systems that we haven't had the time for until now such as achievements. He is now deep into the groundwork for this system and through his livestreams and our official forum has reached out to the community for achievement ideas.


Achievements of the Undergrowth!

We think we'll release the achievements incrementally through Steam (and eventually other platforms). There's still plenty of time to get your suggestions in for fun achievement ideas / names before we lock them in, so please do join us on our official forums and post in the thread made for this purpose!

Extra missions are going to become a hopefully regular feature (read the previous newsletter for extensive detailing) beginning shortly after the release of the freeplay and movement code overhaul. Here's a fun one that John's been working on on-stream, with a working title of Holdout Extreme! It takes the idea of waves of enemies in an underground space as in the existing demo level Holdout and runs with it. Takes it to the extreme, if you like.


It's like Holdout, but Extreme!

Once defeated you will be given an amount of unlock points based on how well you have done. Next time you play you can spend these to unlock new species of ant giving you a better chance to get further next time. The level also features randomised underground caverns adding to replayability.

This is a topic only indirectly related to Empires of the Undergrowth, which is of course our own self-published game. We've been working on EotU in some form since we had the idea back in 2014, and we've been through a lot with it. We'd like to think that the experience we've gained along the way, the pitfalls we've traversed and the mistakes we've learned from go towards some wisdom that might help other indie developers working on their own titles. If we were going to do this, we thought, it would make sense to stay within the sphere of nature-based projects for now. After all, that subject obviously fascinates us, and we know people who have been working on some wonderful projects.

With that in mind, let's go into detail about the first of these:



It's time for us to talk about a partnership we've forged with our friend Tom Johnson. Tom has been working on a unique evolution-based sandbox game called Ecosystem for some time now - and it's a game that really deserves to see the light of day. We've been advising Tom in the context of the wisdom we've gained from EotU, and will be acting as Ecosystem's publisher to bring it to the world!


An infinite variety of creatures can evolve in Ecosystem

In Ecosystem, you have control over an ocean environment where a huge variety of marine animals can evolve and thrive, or falter and perish. The pressures of natural selection, guided by your hand, will determine which lifeforms are fit for purpose and which will be confined to evolutionary history.


Reefs and plant beds, placed by the player, support the evolving Ecosystem

Your creatures can take on an infinite variety of physical and behavioural forms, all driven by genetic and neural algorithms. It's a game with incredible depth and, we hope, a bright future.

We invite you all to add Ecosystem to your wishlists and follow its social media accounts, where there will be regular updates, and the demo is available NOW! Go and give it a spin.

Ecosystem on Steam (download the demo here!)
Ecosystem Official Site
Ecosystem on Facebook & Twitter
Ecosystem Forums

We'll talk about Ecosystem a lot more on the Slug Disco social media, and our official website. Normal service shall now resume!

TheGamingBeaver will be quite familiar to some of you but we just thought it was worth giving him a special mention this time around. He’s covered our game for a long time now (we first linked to him in a newsletter way back in April 2017!) and has recently come back to it to put his formicarium colony to the test against a whole lot of everything, which made for a fun episode. Thanks to TheGamingBeaver for playing EotU and bringing the game to his fans!


TheGamingBeaver goes full mad scientist mode

Whilst we’re on the subject, if you know of any smaller YouTubers covering our game who deserve a special mention by us please let us know about them. Send an email to mike@slugdisco.com with a description of them and a link to some of their videos.

Photo mode is activated by pressing F9 by default. It will allow you to get all sorts of fun angles to make for interesting screenshots! If you hold down shift whilst pressing F9, you’ll have a free camera, allowing you to take some potentially amazing shots (but you might see level stuff that’s usually hidden, so prepare to have the illusion spoiled if you do this!). Upload them to Steam or mail them to mike@slugdisco.com and we’ll include some of our favourites with our newsletters.


A pleasing trail of leafcutters from Steam user germinal.ronse


Battle formation against an Uber creature from Steam user AK_tion_47


RIP Hungry Spider from Steam user doge gamer

All Steam users of Empires of the Undergrowth now have access to cloud saving! From now on, your games are backed up automatically to the cloud when you exit the game. This means that for people who log in on another system or those who come back to the game after changing their setup, the saved games they've made should always be ready for after launching the game from Steam.

Cloud saving is enabled by default. The only issue we foresee is people who have different saved games on multiple systems - if Steam detects a discrepancy between the local files and the cloud ones it will ask you if you wish to push your local saves to the cloud or download from the cloud, overwriting the local. In these cases you can choose which to save, or disable cloud saving for EotU on machines you do not wish to be overwritten.

We are now deep into our open-engine surgery of the game which will streamline and reduce computational overheads allowing for bigger armies, faster frame rates and smarter enemies. We detailed this a fair bit last time. Whilst this is happening we've also been working on a new, hopefully regular feature that will be debuting along with the next large update - extra missions!


An ereptor colony takes on a wolf spider from appropriately-named Steam user wolf


Whilst we have a fairly clear path towards the completion of the formicarium campaign mode (2 more major updates, the next of which will feature fire ants as its protagonist species, as discussed in the previous newsletter) we do want to add plenty of extra content to the game to give a more rounded experience. The current plan is to release these fairly regularly starting from the freeplay overhaul update.


A WIP shot of an as-yet unnamed extra level

A very fair criticism of our way of doing things is that updates are slow. We want to release polished chunks of the finished product rather than things that are very glitchy and need a lot of refinement. This, combined with our small dev team, means that our user base has to be famously patient. We hope that with regular extra missions that are lesser in scope but very different from the main campaign branch we can go some way to addressing this.

The turnaround on these extra missions can be significantly quicker than for the main campaign. This is because the things that take us the majority of the time to do (artwork assets, animation, writing, music, voice recording) won't be needed. We'll be re-using existing assets for these missions - this makes them a very efficient thing to enrich the game with.

https://youtu.be/VkOMXg5sT-w
John begins work on one of the extra missions

Unlike the main campaign branch which tries to be somewhat realistic in its approach to ant behaviour and likely scenarios, there is infinite room for experimentation with these extra missions. Variety is the spice of life, and we have plenty of fun ideas to keep us going for a long time. For example, in the below video, John is working on a side mission where you have to look after an allied colony which isn’t very clever, so you’ll have to babysit it to make sure it isn’t overwhelmed!

https://youtu.be/9TyS9ei6wWI
Babysitting mission!

We’re getting a bit of a head start on these missions at the moment because with lots of resources currently tied up in the overhaul to movement and collisions, there’s a bit of breathing space where we can set up levels and victory conditions before we can properly test them (when the deep-level work is done).


Right now there's not much we want to share about our work on the 4th tier formicarium levels featuring fire ants. The planning process is well underway by now, and work on them shall really accelerate when we're confident that our deep changes are stable. Those changes will be tested thoroughly when the freeplay rework update is released - hopefully by you guys as well as us!


A more technical thing to report on here, but as part of the efficiency and CPU overheads-saving round of changes that are currently deep in the works, here’s one that might interest a few people. Liam has been working on a new path finding method called jump point search, and as you can see from the demonstration video below it’s a faster way to calculate paths than the more conventional A* algorithm in most circumstances. The video shows how the two systems go about finding a path between two points on a hexagonal grid (like EotU uses in-game). This will have a small impact on the time it takes to calculate creature movement routes but we’re including it here mainly as it’s an interesting curiosity, if you happen to like such behind-the-scenes gubbins. Also, name that theme tune!

https://youtu.be/NckJFg3WRoQ
I'll have a P please, Liam!


When one of the devs makes a change to the game they make a note in the source control (the system that tracks changes). Looking through these recent changes can give a little insight into how things are currently progressing with the build. Here’s a selective look with a short description for each entry, and given the recent work it’s no surprise they’re almost all to do with optimisations:

• Profiling additions on tick
  
  • This is Matt, our engine specialist, adding things into the code that help him find out exactly where excess calculations are being performed. In Unreal Engine 4 terms, a "tick" is a complete cycle of the program loop so things that tick perform calculations every frame the game runs. By eliminating as many of these as possible CPU processes are reduced, frame rates increase, and the world becomes a happier place. Ultimately, these rounds of profiling make the game better for everyone.
• Optimisations to the chamber representation widget
  
  • "Widgets" are a feature of UE4 we use for user interface and HUD elements. The process of profiling and optimising happens throughout the project, and this is another case of processes being refined and streamlined for faster performance.
• Re-working of creature overlap detection
  
  • A recent change has meant that creatures aren't constantly checking to see if they're overlapping other things (which is quite expensive for the CPU if it's happening every tick). Instead, John has recently gone through the code to see exactly where overlap calls are important, and by running the overlap detection functions only at these times a considerable number of calculations can be cut down.
• Minimap optimisations
  
  • More work by Matt. The minimap is a remarkably complex thing to do correctly and there are lots of avenues to making it more efficient, so these changes will contribute to the overall efficiency savings.

If you’d like to see your screenshots in this section of the newsletter simply upload them to Steam in the normal way, or you can email them to mike@slugdisco.com if you’d rather be a little more direct. Whenever we write a newsletter we trawl through recent additions and find our favourites.


A Formica fusca ant faces down a pack of beetle larvae from Steam user 1269053484


This ant is about to go on a very unpleasant journey from Steam user redmoth27


A neat overview of the jungle from Steam user Medin

Just a little interim news post in lieu of the full newsletter to let you guys know we're still working hard! We're currently in the midst of lots of deep, boring changes to the code that don't produce much in the way of visual excitement. Expect the newsletter in a few days!


A work-in-progress shot of a side mission

John has been streaming what will become a feature starting from the next big update - regular side missions! The idea here is to give you guys more regular content that doesn't have the huge scope of the main missions, whilst also giving you a way of building up formicarium resources without too much replaying. More info to come with the full newsletter, but check out the streams on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/VkOMXg5sT-w

Liam has been working on new path finding algorithms (remember what I said about deep boring stuff!) to speed things up a bit, and Matt has been combing through the code to find all the nooks and crannies where unneeded calculations are being done. This is all in service of allowing things like larger army sizes (those fire ant colonies have a lot of ants!) and smoother framemrates for everyone. It's an important step before we go charging headlong into the 4th tier, and as always we appreciate the infinitely patient bunch of lovely people that is our community.

https://youtu.be/NckJFg3WRoQ

To finish, just a reminder that if you'd like more regular updates then follow out social media! We'll be posting screenshots on Saturday, letting you know when we go live for some development streaming, and getting up to all sorts of ant-related things.

http://www.twitter.com/SlugDisco
http://www.facebook.com/SlugDisco
http://www.twitch.tv/SlugDisco

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