Empires of the Undergrowth

[Asid]

New Year's Feast & Fixes
Thu, 4 January 2024



Some fixes for a few issues that cropped up over the winter break

Welcome to 2024! This patch fixes some issues with achievements and extra levels that have cropped up over the Christmas break - and I thought I’d throw in a reminder about the New Year’s Feast level as well, which is now active and playable through until the end of February. It’s a little early for Chinese New Year, but we figured we should be early with something for once.




"The fire ant queen is making her famous New Year's Eve hotpot, but her daughters have forgotten to bring her the ingredients for the broth. Help them find the correct spices in time for the New Year celebrations, whilst making liberal use of festive firecrackers to clear enemies and shorten your path. Rescue lost invitees to diversify your colony!
"

This patch is somewhat urgent because of the achievement issues, and we hope this resolves the last of them. For that reason, it is being rolled out in stages as we can compile them - starting with Win64, then moving onto Win32 and Mac as soon as they’re ready. This might take a day or two.


Version 0.320032 Patch Notes

Achievements

    Cramped extra level will no longer trigger 3.2’s achievements
    'Multitasking' can now be completed if the pinecone on the island has been deleted
    Fixed an issues where 'Clever Little Ants' always failed even when nothing got hit
    New Year’s Feast achievements should now register
    'Full House' counting issue fixed


Other

    Fix for velvet worm attacking itself
    Closed the New Year’s Feast nest entrance
    Christmas hats removed from invisible queens on a few levels (Festive Spider, etc)
    Beetles Rise Up no longer stuck on impossible difficulty
    Creature stats resynchronised between campaign & custom games:
        We have some time scheduled coming up to spend a few days just playing custom games & may make some custom game-specific creature changes in a future update

[Asid]

March 2024 Newsletter - Matabele Ants & Friends
Tue, 19 March 2024



Just in case the change in the winds isn't perceptible to all yet, I’ll spell it out - we're approaching a point where we'll soon be ready to announce our release date for version 1.0 of Empires of the Undergrowth. Official reveals for the setting and species you'll be encountering have begun, and so this newsletter will focus firmly on that.


What wonders await in the savannah?

The reveals began at the start of the month and since then we've been doing regular posts on our social media (X/Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Discord), usually on a Saturday. A few other content creators are also getting involved in the fun this time around! Let's go through everything that has been revealed so far and give it some in-depth discussion.


The Matabele Ants

The final ants that the player will control in the campaign is the Matabele ant, a large and fierce termite-eating species Megaponera analis. They live in sub-Saharan Africa. We did a 'Creature Feature'-style short video about it, which also begins to show off some of the environment they live in - the grassland savannah.




Read on:  Here

[Asid]

RELEASE DATE REVEAL!! Empires of the Undergrowth Version 1.0
Tue, 7 May 2024



We've got a special gameplay trailer for you - and we're revealing the release date of 1.0!

It's been a long time coming. Version 1.0 is coming very soon, so please enjoy this special new gameplay trailer for the whole of the game that reveals the release date at the end of it.

Spoilers for the release date from this point on, so watch the video first!




Empires of the Undergrowth will hit version 1.0 exactly one month from this post, on June 7th 2024! The final story tier of the game will feature the fearsome Matabele ants and their surrounding species. Here's a breakdown of the major features:

-    The Matabele ants, termite-eating specialists, feature in 3 brand new fully voice-acted campaign levels in their own environment of the sub-Saharan African savannah!
        - Harvest food from the towering spires of the cathedral-like termite mounds, carefully managing this precious resource
        - Matabeles have a special medic class, allowing them to revive injured colony members!
        - The scorching savannah is rich in biodiversity, and rife with danger
        - Encounter marching lines of driver ants & solo-hunting African stink ants
        - New huge titans, deadly scorpions, spiders, earwigs, beetles and more!

-    New Game Plus mode will activate upon completing the campaign, unlocking new units and new options for further playthroughs
-    Once you're done in the savannah, return to the lab and add the Matabeles to your home colony for one final climactic formicarium challenge - the REAL final experiment!
-    Sweeping changes to custom game modes
-    Many quality-of-life tweaks and improvements

Later on this month there will be a newsletter with an updated roadmap, taking us past 1.0 and into the future for Empires of the Undergrowth.

This long, long journey that we've been on and has transformed our lives is so close to completion now, and the kind patience of our community has allowed us to make our dream game into reality. From the very bottom of our hearts, thank you. We'll see you in the savannah.

[Asid]

First Post-Release Newsletter! May-June 2024
Thu, 13 June 2024



EotU 1.0 is here, so let's talk about where it's going in the near future!

We’ve put many of our best years into Empires of the Undergrowth, and it is finally released. Welcome to our first newsletter in a post-1.0 world! For all of the many new people who are joining us, you are most welcome, and we hope you’ve been enjoying the game since launch on Friday, 7th June 2024. It’s been a rollercoaster of a few days for us, to say the least, and we’ve got a lot to talk about - so let’s get to it.


Matabele ants in a custom game from Zvistic

First and foremost, thank you so much for making sure that our launch to full release was a successful one. So far, our highest concurrent player count was on the Sunday after launch - peaking at 6,367 - absolutely annihilating our previous best of 2,509 which happened nearly 2 years ago when the fire ant update was set live. These are stunning numbers for our little ant game, far higher than we could have hoped for, and we will be eternally grateful for that.

On launch day we also posted a new roadmap, detailing some of our plans for the immediate future of Empires of the Undergrowth. This newsletter will mainly deal with that, but we’ll also talk about some of the coverage that the game has been getting and how the launch itself went.

1.0 Launch

In the early evening of 7th June, we took a short break from our preparations to do a short livestream celebrating the reach of 1.0. It was great being able to take a quick breather with more than 800 of you watching at one point, and to be honest this was for us as much as it was for everyone else! The recording of the livestream is available on YouTube for anyone who would like to have a look:




Read on...

[Asid]

Fixes & Changes - First post-release patch for Empires of the Undergrowth
Thu, 4 July 2024



We've released the first patch of fixes and changes for Empires of the Undergrowth, following its release into 1.0 last month. This deals with most of the more common issues that have been reported - more patches of this scale and type are likely to come in the near future.

Thanks to everyone who's been helping to test this patch in the optional beta over the past several days!

Changes

    5.1's titans can now spawn in huge creature landmarks in freeplay
    Added a system to restore saves from backup in-game rather than manually (not yet localised)
    Added some extra protection when reloading or quitting the game when defeat rewards are being saved
    Increased save backup number to 5 (up from 3)
    Bullet ant tech tree video added
    Scroll added to behaviour toggles box (will only appear when needed)
    Added more recent localisation for Polish and Czech
    Updated lighting for custom game levels and extra levels, and changed some underground tile grids to the new ones
    Whip spider main menu icon is replaced if arachnophobia mode is active
    Added arachnophobia hats to hybrids
    Creature stat list can now show percentages to a single decimal point


Fixes

    Reduced chance of all backups corrupting
    Fixed some small reverb problems in Tier 5 lab music
    Food taken from dead critters should now look closer to what it comes from
    Wood ants now turn to their targets before each shot
    AoE resistance now displays as a percentage in the Inspect tool
    Creatures mounted on another are now killed when shaken off and landing off the tile grid
    Fixed low resolution shadows in Tug of War 3
    Large underground creatures in 5.1 and 5.3 can now only demolish a tile if at least one of its neighbours is demolished
    Quadrupled VRAM allocated to overground tile grid textures - should improve issues when rapidly moving camera around the map
    Inspect tool health-per-second now includes buffs (such as the Matabele medic aura)
    Fix for whip spiders rapidly pinging from their creature encounter narration in 3.2
    Bullet ant species hex now used in the improvements menu
    Allowed marker placement through some plants that were blocking it in 3.2
    Matabele colonies should now always drop termites when they sell a tile
    Creatures that reach zero health while mounted will always drop to the floor to actually die
    Water on the minimap removed on 5.3
    Termites will no longer take sun damage in the ending cinematic of 5.3
    End game messages now say the NG+ level that has been unlocked if this is not the first NG+ completion
    Corrected some issues in the credits
    Fixed a ping issue in Occupation 2
    Texture size optimisations (should help with some blurry issues)
    Skimmer in Battle Arena will now fly and land when there are enemies at the midpoint
    Fixed some overhanging moss in the final formicarium / terrarium
    Fixed an issue where loading a damaged creature with a star level would restore its health
    Prevented ants walking into a rock in 5.1
    Fixed an issue where several ants hatch costs were being affected by upkeep in custom games
    Fixed an issue where bullet ant lean pupation was not applying in custom games
    Fixed an issue where UI scaling 150% would cause formicarium rewards to be off the bottom of the screen and hence unselectable
    Fixed an issue where Matabele colonies would drop seeds instead of termites when an upgrade was cancelled
    Speed chambers now drop lignocellulose for termites and termites for Matabele when sold
    Fixed an issue where food refunded into storage chambers owned by Matabele ants was seeds (and hence was worth a lot less)
    Great blue skimmer displays health in battle arena again
    Fixed an issue where ants would leave via the top of a tunnel exit on Strawclutch
    Fixed an issue where poppy plants would appear on some custom game levels when loaded that were not meant to be there
    Earwig nymph can no longer spawn as part of a wave in freeplay
    Fixed an issue where huge creature landmarks if they could not find a slot could cause all other landmarks in the current queue to not spawn
    Fixed an issue where under some circumstances less lignocellulose would spawn than was supposed to in custom games
    Fixed some issues preventing AI controlled Matabele ant colonies from hunting termites
    Lignocellulose landmarks now can only spawn weaker termites early game, ramping up to larger ones later game