And so July rolls around to August, so it’s time for our July newsletter! I think we can best surmise July for us using various clichéd yet accurate adjectives such as “busy”, “stressful”, “productive” and “challenging”. As we approach something close to an announcement time we’ve weeded out various long-standing issues, delved deeper into the Unreal Engine 4 code than we ever intended to, and animated a ladybird. Pretty standard for us.
New Creatures
Ladybirds & Aphids
Ladybirds, or ladybugs depending on your parlance, are of course famously insectivorous beetles that love an aphid or two. One of our Kickstarter backers – Maggie – requested they be added to the game as part of her reward tier so here they are! In our game, you’ll be able to harvest honeydew from aphids but your capacity to do so can be severely diminished by the ladybirds. Check out the GIF below – a beetle flies into the scene off-camera, walks over to the aphids, takes one to eat then flies off. They’ll needed to be fiercely contested on some maps to ensure your colony has an ample food supply.
A ladybird snatches a honeydew-producing aphid
Funnel Web Spider
Something that took us somewhat by surprise is the popularity of the arachnids that will be featuring in our game. When we started posting pictures and videos of the finished models we decided to add an arachnophobia warning to the posts, since we know that is an issue for some people. We’ve relaxed on this over time since we figured by now people pretty much know what to expect from us, but we still decided to warn people about Segestria florentina, a European funnel web spider.
Everything about her screams menace, and our animator Matt has once again done an incredible job of bringing this fearsome spider to EotU. We can’t wait to show you her lair – she sits at the entrance to a tunnel made of her own webbing, which is attached to long tripwires which allow her to sense the slightest movement. If an ant strays too close, it’s lights out for them. Watch her animation set in the GIF below.
The animation set for Segestria florentina
Slave-makers
Some species of ant specialize in conducting raids on neighboring colonies to take their unhatched young. Most of the stolen pupae and larvae are eaten, but a few of them are raised as new workers and soldiers for their captive colony, hence the name of slave-makers. In one of the early access levels, your ants will encounter a colony of Formica sanguinea, otherwise known as blood-red ants. When they take your young from their nursery tiles, that tile will become unusable for a significant amount of time – so unless the slave-makers are dealt with soundly you’re going to find yourself outnumbered very quickly.
Slave-makers steal pupae and larvae from a helpless Formica fusca nest
Woodlouse
Woodlice are likely familiar to practically everyone who’s ever looked under a dead log in their garden. They’re isopod crustaceans that feed mainly on decaying plant matter. In nature, they’re too tough for most ants to take down. We still want our in-game ants to be aggressive, so to represent the innate toughness of the armor-covered woodlouse, we’ve given it a “bunker down” ability as you can see in the GIF below. When it enters this mode, the woodlouse takes significantly less physical damage. A tricky critter to take down.
A woodlouse bunkers down to fend of its attackers
Music & Sound
Our composer and sound designer Liam has been working through some challenging technical difficulties to get his dynamic music system working. The issue he was having was to do with the timing of new clips starting or ending, which because of the way the engine works could sometimes be a beat out of sync and therefore sound wrong to the ear. He believes he’s now solved this issue with some workarounds and redesigns, and has now got back to the task of finishing up the music needed for early access.
Liam has also started the task of getting the voice of the narrator – played superbly by the talented Callum Edmunds – into the levels. He’ll speak as the levels progress, commenting on the evolving tale of your ants, and introducing new creatures the colony encounters. He’ll also provide some more traditional RTS commentary, such as informing you when your queen is under attack or when your ants see an enemy.
Level Design & Balance
John is furrowing his brow regularly as he works to complete the six levels required for early access. One particularly ambitious level (known internally as “2.1”) is keeping him up late as he works to include all of the planned events and timings.
With such a small team (3 developers and 1 social media guy), the issue of balance is obviously very difficult when we’re in the developments stage. This is why our beta before the main early access starts will be so vital – we have in the region of 900 people who bought into the beta tier on Kickstarter or Paypal, which should give us a large enough player base to get significant feedback for the numbers we need to tweak. Obviously we will continue to balance and change things after early access starts – so if you’re planning on giving the game a spin later this summer now would be the perfect time to get registered on our forums and introduce yourself to the small but passionate community of ant fans already talking about the game there.
As John completes the preliminary designs for the levels, he hands them over to Matt for an art pass. This means that all the pebbles, plants, and intricate texturing gets added after the layout and scripted features of a level are done. We hope to have all of the levels playing and looking nice in time for early access to start, but as mentioned feedback on all of these points will be very much appreciated.
