Forum > Games Discussion
Empires of the Undergrowth
Asid:
May 2021 Newsletter
Mon, 10 May 2021
Covering news and progress from April to May 2021
Good lord, it’s May already. This newsletter will spotlight some more enemies coming for the fire ant update, with a particular focus on nature’s favoured form – the beetle. We also have some talk about new AI systems that we’ve been working on over the past few weeks, which will be used in the last of the campaign levels and eventually in freeplay too!
A classically red Formica ereptor queen from GlitchyGamer
We’ve still got quite a few critters to show off as we complete work on them, as well as a few we don’t want to spoil until we get very close to release time.
4th Tier Creatures – Beetles
Ah, beetles. They are the most diverse group of insects, and arguably of all animals. They appear throughout human culture and history, in art and science – they exist just about everywhere that we do. Naturally, we need more beetles in Empires of the Undergrowth (but perhaps not so many as to cause an uprising…) so we have a few more joining our various tiger beetles and rove beetles in the upcoming fourth tier.
Bombardier Beetle
Bombardiers are a kind of well-armoured ground beetle. There are several species – this one is called Brachinus alternans
. They get their name from the distinctive popping sound they make when threatened, and a closer look at the cause of this sound reveals a defensive system that can be deadly if you happen to be small and in its way.
A bombardier beetle faces off against fire ants
By mixing various chemicals and enzymes together in a special internal chamber, the beetle produces a violently exothermic reaction. The resultant mixture reaches close to the boiling point of water and is expelled by the rapid rise in pressure through an opening pointed at the beetle’s enemy.
Near-boiling liquid is explosively fired at the beetle’s enemies
If you’re a large vertebrate predator, this irritant is likely to be enough to put you off having a bombardier beetle for dinner. If you’re the size of an insect, however, the momentary boiling temperature of this liquid can easily be fatal. With the large area of effect this defensive spray has, it’d be wise to consider carefully whether the bombardier beetle is worth the inevitable casualties.
False Bombardier Beetle
Mimicry is seen everywhere in the animal kingdom – creatures evolve to look like more dangerous ones, which gives them a deceptive advantage. The false bombardier beetle (Galerita bicolor
) has evolved to look almost identical to its namesake, with some minor differences in colouration and morphology.
An impostor among us – a false bombardier beetle looking sus
This helps it avoid predation, but the false bombardier beetle is not without defences – it’s significantly larger than the true bombardier, has the same chitinous armour, and uses muscle action to spray a solution that is mainly made of a familiar substance – formic acid.
Size comparison to the false bombardier (left) and the true bombardier
Whilst not as deadly as the boiling liquid that is explosively fired by the true bombardier, formic acid will still do considerable damage to small creatures. It’s the same acid used by the ranged wood ants of the 2nd tier, and it’ll have a similar in-game consequences – an area of effect venom-type attack.
Checkered Beetle
Cleridae – the checkered beetles – are distributed worldwide. This particular species is called Enoclerus rosmarus
, and it’s a common sight in North America. They’re active hunters, and their preferred habitats are moist and sunny – qualities which will bring them into conflict with your fire ants.
A checkered beetle minding its own business
Checkered Beetle Larva
Checkered beetle larvae are also hunters, which in Empires of the Undergrowth will give them a similar role to rove beetle larvae in previous levels. They’re more vulnerable in this state, before they develop the chitinous armour they have as adults – but they’re still a force to be reckoned with.
Checkered beetle larva fights fire ants
AI Scanning
At the moment, the various AI colonies we have in the game are either heavily scripted (as in 2.2) or reliant on preset “points of interest” which they use to decide where to send their forces (3.1, freeplay). This makes them relatively robust but doesn’t allow them to make very complex decisions on a changing battlefield. Liam has been working on a scanning solution that will let colonies periodically scan the surface for interesting things, giving them the ability to make much more relevant choices.
Green squares represent areas of interest the AI scan has found
These will be used on all of the remaining campaign levels, all of which will feature AI colonies in some form. Eventually, we hope to transplant this feature to freeplay too – after fire ants, we are likely to do another big round of freeplay changes to bring that game mode closer to its release form.
Two colonies scan for points of interest on one another – light orange is the real scan, the maroon is a skipped scan where it decided to use saved data from a scan not so long ago in the same place
Community Wiki
I’m sure many of you are familiar with the fan wikis that crop up; fandom.com is one of the more prominent ones. We’ve been slightly bemused by these and not entirely sure what to make of them – up until very recently, they were simply placeholders with very little in the way of articles. However, thanks to some dedicated community members, the Empires of the Undergrowth fandom.com wiki has had some big content additions over the past couple of months.
Particular thanks to thanhmk28
on our forums for putting a lot of time into the fandom wiki, and writing / formatting a majority of the articles so far. On it you’ll see creature stats and abilities (taken from a version of the spreadsheets that the game uses that we host on our website) that might well be useful for people looking for a more solid idea of what various creature’s strengths and weaknesses are until we implement a way to see these in the game.
The EotU Fandom Wiki
There’s even a dedicated spoiler page for the upcoming 4th tier update, which details all of the new stuff we’ve revealed in Screenshot Saturdays and these newsletters. This wiki is open to further contributors, so if you’d like to help thanhmk28 out with writing some new articles then by all means do! Our community continuously proves itself to be one of the best there is, and we couldn’t be more thankful for that.
For final release, there will be plenty of information accessible in-game with our own encyclopedia system. Even after that’s implemented, there will always be a place for community-driven wikis like these – they’re definitely an appropriate place to post guides, creative strategies and suchlike that won’t be in the game itself.
Ecosystem Updates
A couple of months ago, Tom Johnson released his evolution simulation game Ecosystem into early access on Steam. Slug Disco are the publishers for it, and it’s been a joy to see how it’s been received and how community feedback is already shaping the direction Tom has decided to push things.
About once fortnightly, Tom has been sharing his progress and direction with us and we’ve been posting these as articles on the game’s Steam page. He’s now at a point where he can share the path he’s chosen for Ecosystem’s first major update, which will focus on graphs and analytical tools so the player can see plant, predator and prey relationships in much greater detail than before.
The graphs and analytical tools coming soon to Ecosystem
Ecosystem continues to progress rapidly as a project and if you have an interest in speculative evolutionary biology, serene aquatic environments, or even just producing abominations such as human-like fish then we heartily recommend giving Ecosystem a spin. It has a demo which shows a lot of the basic features, but the full thing is gearing up to be something altogether more special.
Screenshot Central
Seriously, I feel like this section is just for me – every time I write a newsletter, I look forward to the bit where I have a browse through some recent screenshots posted to our Discord or uploaded to the community, and select three of my favourites. If you’d like to participate, by far the easiest way to get your screenshot to us these days is Discord. You can also email them directly to mike@slugdisco.com.
A pleasing formicarium from BrickyGraph631
Trapjaws under attack from a hidden jumping spider from Rarity
A close call in extra level Excavators from Crazlex9
Asid:
Cramped - New Extra Level - Out Now!
Mon, 17 May 2021
Can you guide your leafcutter ants to domination with limited resources and VERY limited nest space?
Cramped is a new extra level for Empires of the Undergrowth, and it's out right now! This leafcutter level is very tight on space - with a tiny underground nest and many enemies that must be slain, only a superior knowledge of the game systems will allow for victory. Find the level now in the "Extra Levels" section of the menu.
Your game client will not need to be updated to play; the level will already be in the list. Thanks to everyone who helped test and balance this level when it was in beta.
Notice about the campaign we must post with each new extra level:
For those concerned about extra levels taking up dev time, please know that compared to the campaign content, these missions take practically no time at all to develop - just a few short hours apiece (you can watch John do most of the development for these on stream). Because they all use existing assets, systems and artwork, one of our devs can create an extra level very fast indeed.
We're still charging full steam ahead with the fire ant update - we just thought there's plenty of you who would appreciate something new to play in the meantime.
Asid:
A Deep Dive into the AI of Empires of the Undergrowth | Devs of the Undergrowth
Jun 22, 2021
In the first episode of Devs of the Undergrowth, we chat with Liam who talks us through all things AI in the game, including how it was historically, and what we will be changing going forward to the Fire Ant update.
Asid:
Gamescom 2021 Fire Ant Demo Level Available Now! - 0.2313 Release
Mon, 23 August 2021
We're at the Indie Arena Booth this week, and to celebrate there's a limited-time demo level, featuring fire ants!
We love events, but for obvious reasons we've so rarely been able to attend them recently. Enter the Gamescom 2021 Indie Arena Booth, an online event that is running from 25th-29th August! We have a booth in the virtual world, which you can visit with your 2D avatar. There's an NPC representation of the scientist there to answer some questions, and of course we'll be there ourselves too!
To celebrate this, from the moment of this post there is a limited-time demo level available. For the first time we're letting fire ants loose for a preview before their appearance in the upcoming 4th tier levels! In
The Promised Land, you'll need to use the fire ant's bridge building skills to acquire resources from neighbouring islands, before building as long a bridge as you can to reach the aforementioned land that was promised on the right side of the map.
Simply place a pheromone marker on an island you wish to reach, and your fire ants will use their bodies to make a floating bridge for their sisters to use. Beware of falling water levels stranding them - ants that get cut off from the colony will panic and quickly die. Also, keep an eye on the bombardier beetle population - they'll attack your colony together with their near-boiling liquid spray.
The Promised Land will be available until August 29th, when Gamescom ends.
Full patch notes below:
Features
• Fire ant demo level The Promised Land available between 23rd and 29th of August (accessible through a pop-up in main menu) whilst Gamescom is running
• Vulkan can now be used in Windows (add -vulkan to launch options)
Improvements / Changes
• Improved walk cycles across game (creatures should now longer look like they are sliding when slowed)
• Enemy underground tabs will now stretch to the full available size above the minimap rather than just taking a set size (this allows up to 6 colonies on a map, needed for future levels)
• Creature’s slow resist will now also resist attack slows
Fixes
• Really slow creatures wiggle left and right less
• Fixed an issue with creatures killed during pickup getting stuck in the creature’s jaws
• Disabled colony section of the colony setup tab in freeplay setup (due to a bug that could cause it to be inconsistent with the basic setup tab)
• Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause ants to spin on the spot for a short amount of time
• Reward tooltips will no longer display if the mouse is hovered over the invisible reward area on levels without rewards
The Promised Land
Your Solenopsis invicta fire ants are trying to reach a bountiful area of the jungle. Build floating bridges to nearby islands by placing a pheromone marker on it, when water allows. New objectives will appear as you complete the existing ones. Beware the bombardier beetles!
Asid:
The Hungry Spider Returns
Mon, 25 October 2021
He's back for his annual spooky session.... and he's so very hungry.
It's that time of year again. The nights are drawing in, the air is getting colder.... and the Hungry Spider awakens, and finds that he is ravenous.
The Hungry Spider level will be around for the remainder of the spooky season - to access it, click on the cobweb that has mysteriously appeared in the lab. In this level you directly control an endlessly starving wolf spider (although I am of the belief that he has some sort of terrible metabolic issue) as he eats his way around a web-shaped map.
To those who haven't played this one before, it is a brutally
difficult level and few have achieved victory in it. The uber creatures are the real killer, and you'll have to take them all out to win. Upgrade your abilities as you level up, improving your chances against the monsters.
But in the end, of course, the real monster is you.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page