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.Įmpires of the Undergrowth - Jump Point Search Pathfinding 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. 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.

More info to come with the full newsletter, but check out the streams on YouTube. 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. Expect the newsletter in a few days!Ī work-in-progress shot of a side mission 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.

We haven't entirely decided on the exact species that will feature but it will be of the Solenopsis genus. 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. The focal species for the 4th tier of the formicarium will be fire ants. Many other things were also decided, and they will have an impact on both the long-term and short-term development of the game. We were almost entirely sure of what the next playable ants would be, and the meeting has cemented that decision. We've recently had a meeting to discuss the direction for the rest of the game. Leafcutters doing their thing in this widescreen shot from Steam user Himmuguegeli Thank you so much! Now, on to the actual content of the newsletter! The recent reviews have been pushed into 'overwhelmingly positive' territory - and we recognise that's directly down to you guys.

To start with, a small distraction from the main event - Steam have recently held a summer promotion whereby leaving reviews gains you points.

Empire of the undergrowth first mission