Empires of the Undergrowth 0.2325

There's also some fixes and changes - here are the full patch notes for this update:

Added Hibernation - guide a wood ant colony to survive the Alpine winter
Fixed an issue where during rehousing the colony the UI would not always fade back in
Whip spider can now be harvested by 8 ants at a time
Slight buff to whip spider and is more likely to use its AOE bleed attack
Whip spider food value dropped to be in line with forthcoming titans
Fixed an issue with D key becoming unmapped
Beetles Rise Up! made easier on Insane and Hard (more beetles!)
The cookie on the Festive Spider level will now pause respawning if fighting a boss that stops the flow of the enemy waves (preventing the boss being held and getting infinite resources to build)
Hungry Spider abilities now cast instantly without a wind-up (wind-up has been moved to the wind-down)

Update Out Now - Freeplay AI Saving, Fixes & Optimisation
Thanks for the people who have helped us identify a crash with the recent short optional beta. This has now been fixed and we're ready to move this patch to the main branch just in time for Christmas. It is now possible to save your freeplay games that include AI colonies! This should make them more viable for long-term games instead of short skirmishes.

Freeplay AI should still be considered to be in its early days and there are a multitude of extra things we'd like to do for it (making it cleverer being the main one) but it's likely this is the last feature update for freeplay until after the 4th tier campaign levels (fire ants) are released.

Headline Features
Saving is now available with AI colonies in freeplay
Please keep an eye out for strange behaviours of the enemy or allied colonies after a save and load in freeplay; it is possible some of their behaviour has not been correctly restored. Please report these on our forums or Discord!


Fixes
Fixed some underground visual tile bugs
Fixed a minor issue with the slave maker button in battle arena
Swarm slave makers now have team colours working properly
Fixed a surface tile painting issue on The Dunes
Removed some specks of dirt that were floating on the open nest entrances in The Dunes
Fixed an issue where AIs that were cheating could only get a free hatch once per game
Fixed issues with the AI colony’s visibility of spawned landmarks (should lead to some more sensible landmark harvesting decisions)
Fixed an issue where surface tunnels could switch when a freeplay game was loaded
Fixed an issue where randomised caverns were not loading and saving
Fixed an issue where some creatures could freeze if interrupted during picking up another creature
Creatures eaten by other creatures will no longer drop invisible food
Festive Spider level funnel web kills now count towards your experience
Adjusted web size in Christmas spider level the better represent the area funnel webs can detect enemies
Webs in the Festive Spider level will no longer expand upwards covering the map
Webs stop increasing in size beyond level 9 in the Festive Spider level
Fixed an animation issue to do with wood ants rapid firing
In freeplay uber mole crickets now count towards the hunter victory condition
Can no longer tag and untag another colony’s tunnel exit for excavation
Stopped aphids moving when being eaten by a ladybird; should fix floating honeydew


Optimisations
Optimisation added to creature spawning when looking up its class (should speed things up when lots of ants are hatching at once such as the beginning of a freeplay game)

Release - Fixes, Changes & Improvements

Thanks for everyone who's tested our short optional beta over the weekend. We're confident that it's good for everyone now, so version 0.22103 is available for everyone from this point. There is one known issue detailed below the patch notes that didn't quite make it into this build on time - expect a fix for that next time round.

We are still looking for more information about a known bug where a leafcutter gets stuck on a plant with an exclamation mark appearing above its head. If this happens to you we would appreciate anything you can tell us or show us (screenshots or videos) about how it happened and if the leafcutter was affected by a status effect at the time (for example confuse caused by a devil’s coach horse).

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where food buried underground but not part of a cavern would not be labelled as buried and not seen as an outline
• Randomised caverns for leafcutters now produce smaller leaves as so not poke through the surface and are randomly rotated
• Placing a marker on an enemy nest exit whilst your ants are in a different enemy nest will now cause your ants to leave the nest they are in
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to get a refund for a tile upgrade if cancelled the same frame it was completed (was easier on low FPS computers)
• Fixed a couple of painting issues on the surface to do with tunnel exits when they are not tunnelled out
• Fixed a crash that could occur in formicarium challenge 3 when the hand moved
• Player not selecting a unit option in freeplay will no longer refer to wood ants
• Fixed a crash that could occur on low end hardware
• Tunnel door now correctly stops ants walking through on The Other Foot
• Freeplay maps without a map option now grey out the option in the basic setup
• Fixed an issue for Russian language in the main menu text
• Fixed an issue that could cause creatures to freeze in an animation until the player looks at them
• Fixed a couple of spellings on the freeplay scoreboard
• Fixed an issue where creatures could get stuck in the tunnel exit at a low frame rate
• Fixed an issue that could rarely cause a creature to get stuck in the air when picked up by a praying mantis
• Fixed an issue where the praying mantis could on rare occasions freeze doing nothing
• Fixed some visual underground tile bugs
• Fixed some UI issues with freeplay setup
• Fixed an issue with pathing at the northern end of Basin
• Fixed an issue where status effects were not being dealt with correctly in priority order (for example a creature could flee when stunned)
• Fixed an issue where turning gathering off whilst an ant was gathering caused it to walk back and forth to the food it was going to gather
• Destructible barriers can no longer be knocked back or affected by other effects
• Fixed some UI interaction issues with the freeplay setup menu especially when opening a saved setup
• Fixed a typo in the Discord tooltip

Changes

• Barrier between nests in Basin is no longer destructible if you are not allied with the colony on the other side
• Barriers that are destructible in Basin now appear as pieces of wood rather than stone
• Simplified some interaction in the freeplay menus that were causing issues to do with creature checkboxes and the creatures type dropdown
• Hunter and Domination game modes in freeplay no longer disable colony attacks
• The Hungry Spider level’s uber beach wolf spider can now take more than 6 damage per hit (should be easier to kill with a bite build now)
• Added in notifications explaining how to combat phorid flies in 3.1 and 3.2
• The player is now given a warning that they could lose their rewards if they try and restart a level when rewards are waiting for them in the formicarium
• Quitting or restarting Extremis now gives the player the reward points they had earned up to that point
• Some creatures now cannot be knocked back or forced to flee
• Some more improvement to funnel web performance in freeplay
• Smoothed some of the landscape at the edge of 2.2 and prevented some tiles poking through the sea bed
• Forum link changed to discord and patch notes link updated
• Mole cricket (and uber mole cricket) added to the Battle Arena
• Couple of icon updates for ant species in Battle Arena
• Slave maker ants added to Battle Arena
• Uber mole cricket can now be unlocked for freeplay by completing Excavators (should be retroactive)
• Dropped creatures will now try and drop where they are held rather than the centre of the holding creature

Known Issues

• Currently uber mole crickets do not count towards the Hunter victory condition. A fix for this will be out in the next patch
• Some recent changes intended for future updates may cause some unintended weirdness. Although unlikely, please let us know about any unusual behaviours you see

Updated Movement Code

After replacing most of the movement code in the game and running extensive beta tests, this is now ready to go. This will lead to a noticeable performance boost for all which ultimately means more creatures and bigger maps!

This will also help fix bugs that have been persistent in movement for a long time. Bugs to do with ants freezing or getting stuck on ramps should, for the most part, be eliminated.

Freeplay Overhaul
Freeplay has seen many changes and should feel very different now than it used to.

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• Leaf cutters make their way to freeplay, along with climbable plants!
• New rainforest map Embankment
• Difficulty has been tuned and and extra difficulty option added that affects how quickly and how far the games difficulty will change
• Optional victory conditions have been added allowing you to set goals (these also affect the difficulty as you approach victory)
• Freeplay setups can be saved, and can also be shared via a string
• Ubers have been rebalanced bringing them to a fairer difficulty level. They have also been altered to be strong / weak against various enemy combinations
• As difficulty increases, creatures will now get stronger (rather than just more numerous) and will have much less food reduction

Extra Levels
We will be bringing regular extra missions to the game apart from the main campaign. Here we have allowed ourselves more freedom to do things in a more game-like fashion rather than true to nature, like we strive to be in the story.The first 3 maps will be released a month apart!

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• Aggrandise launches today! Command a Formica ereptor colony featuring the fierce trap jaw ants and carefully choose your targets as your colony grows large enough to take on a large foe!
• More are on the way - follow our social media for details!

Third Tier Challenge Mode

Phorid flies are tiny, inconspicuous-looking insects that could easily be mistaken for fruit flies but are far deadlier. They lay their eggs between the armoured carapaces of insects, in particular your ants, leading to a time where they will be less effective followed by inevitable death as the larva eats away at the innards.

All ants have a chance of fighting off the flies when they are attacked, but level 3 mediae and majors have a 100% chance to fight them off.

First Tier Achievements

We have also added a bunch of achievements for the first tier levels of the game. This includes New Home, Subjugation and the first formicarium challenge. Multiple achievements have been added for various difficulties and challenge modes. There are the generic achievements, such as finishing a level on a specific difficulty, but also tasks that have specific conditions to achieve. Check your achievements from the in-game menu.

Optimisation and Balance

On top of all these additions there has been a raft of optimisation changes made that should also improve performance. Some areas have also seen balance changes including area-of-effect (AOE) attacks, insane difficulty on 3.2 Front Line and many others. Many of these changes are listed below.

Optimisations

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• Projectiles have been significantly optimised (very noticeable with rapid fire wood ants)
• Substantially reduced the cost of rendering the Isolepis Cernua (spiky plant)
• And many more! See previous patch notes from beta testing for extensive details

Balance

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• Black ants now take 20% less damage from AOE attacks
• 3.2 Front Line on harder difficulties will spawn less environmental creatures and more higher level army ants
• Formicarium challenge 3 has been made much easier on harder difficulties:
• Reduced the number of resource refills the enemy colony receives across various difficulties (now 0/1/2/4 down from 0/1/5/10)
• Reduced reload quantity to 1800 (down from 2000)
• Resource reloads will now appear gradually (10 per second) rather than instantly
• Reduced size of cricket drops on harder difficulties
• Damage falloff implemented on wood ant mortar, uber basic attacks and some whip spider attacks. This deals less damage the further away from the epicentre of the attack the creature is (reaching zero at the very edge)

Selected Improvements

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• Multiple frame rate limits added
• Added an option slider for a darkened square behind resource counters for visibility
• Markers should feel more responsive with faster movement between different markers, more ants at the end of the marker and far fewer ants waiting at home to head to the marker
• Camera zoom now interpolates very rapidly
• Visuals added for leafcutter major auras
• Difficulty levels have been added for Formicarium challenges 1 and 2
• Trail calculations have been updated. Should lead to more ants at the end of trails, more consistent flows and less ants waiting underground
• And many more! See previous patch notes from beta testing for extensive details

Selected Fixes

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• Significantly less ants getting caught on corners
• Corrected an error that could cause creatures to get stuck at the entrance to ramps
• A previously dormant patrol route behind the player’s nest has been reactivated in 3.2
• Fixed an issue where workers could survive their tiles being deleted if they have the “evasive” skill
• After purchasing a queen ability, all queen cool-downs need to recharge (prevents switching queen abilities during formicarium challenge exploit)
• Ladybirds now immune to many crowd control effects to prevent them being affected whilst eating an aphid
• “Attack when favourable” creatures (such as mantis and jumping spider) now take nearby allies into account when deciding to attack or not
• Improvements to ant crowd movement - particularly in combat
• Mole crickets now take room size into account when selecting a room to spawn in
• Improvements to collision detection with difficult shapes
• Battle arena now only removes creatures that are not in combat
• Ubers will no longer ignore the nest invasion setting in freeplay setup
• Moved all pebbles off walkable area in the original Hungry Spider level
• Fixed a visual error with the wood ant projectile splash
• And many more! See previous patch notes from beta testing for extensive details

Headline Features
Challenge modes added to Rising Tide and Queen of the Hill

• The new challenge mode introduces a new creature – the beach tiger beetle larva. This critter lies buried waiting for unsuspecting victims to walk near its trap, then snatches them away in the blink of an eye!
• They will only attack if your ants are alone, and can only be damaged for a short time after attacking. Will your colony accept the losses to get the food they need, or will they rip these ambush hunters from their burrows?

New Freeplay map – Towhead

• Set on a small island near the mouth of a river, Towhead offers a much more intimate experience on the surface, with higher densities of creatures
• A map option allows a periodic flooding of the lower level. This will raise your score but at the cost of possibly losing ants and resources when the waters rise

Minor Improvements System for Formicarium colonies

• Got spare Royal Jelly laying around the nest? Fear not, we have you covered! Minor improvements can be accessed by selecting any already purchased species from the tech tree and selecting the icon
• The improvements start cheap and get more expensive the more you buy for a species. Each ant species has their own different improvements which complement various play styles

What is that pesky spider’s web at the back of the lab? Could someone have a look at that for us, please?
Other Features
Main menu is now a list to make it clearer to new users what content is available
Creatures now have various sizes and some sizes can pass through others (this has been done on a visually logical level for example beach tiger beetles can walk over most none massive things, where as a hermit crab cannot)
Tunneling to the surface now takes multiple ants and take 5 times as much digging
Threat system added. Some creature’s attacks cause them to be a more desirable target for other nearby creatures (mostly in preparation for leafcutter update)
Battle Arena creatures have been put into tabs based on which tier of the game they first appear
Improvements / Changes
Creature movement has been reworked - should now have less issues, creatures should walk more centrally in corridors and should be more efficient
Ants now reserve space on tiles they are taking food to. If all tiles are reserved they instead take the food towards the queen (until all tiles fill- they then drop food as they do now)
Increased main menu loading speed
Multiple minor optimisations made throughout
Optimisation added to creatures searching for other creatures
Multiple game assets have been optimised
Beach texture improvements (normal and roughness masks)
Improvements to pathfinding underground (many distance checks are now tile based rather than path based)
All audio passed through new filters and re-recorded, female scientist audio re-recorded
New audio lines added in some Formicarium challenges
New audio lines added to Freeplay (start and uber spawning)
Ubers are no longer affected by food scaling and will drop full food no matter the Freeplay difficulty
Food size now changes slower at higher food quantities
Queen chamber workers now have a crown icon
Ants hatch first from queen tiles
Food spend is now taken from random rooms rather than the order they were built
Ants no longer drop food when attacked if combat is turned off for the group
Bug Fixes
Tiles can no longer be tagged for dig when the game is paused
Fixed a bug with food pickup that could cause food to be stored not on top of a tile
Fixed an issue that would sometime cause wood ants to misfire on surface tunnels
Stun, confuse and other status debuffs are now hidden in fog of war
Fixed an issue where AOE attacks could be blocked if something obscured vision
Fixed an issue where loaded part-built tiles would appear full built but with a job to build them
Various minor bug fixes

Bug Fixes
Fixed a major bug that caused loading to sometimes create duplicate ants. These ants did not die when their tiles were deleted.
Fixed a crash caused by the above duplicated ants attempting to assign themselves to deleted tiles (this is what has been causing the formicarium load crash)
Fixed a crash on game startup caused by loading time taking longer than 30s. We have now allowed 60s for the game to start up before it crashes. Please let us know if you are still having issues with this after the patch
Fixed an issue where Prevent Gather tooltip would display the hot key for Remove Marker