It’s time to do one of our bi-monthly newsletters. For those who have recently joined us, welcome! We do newsletters and vlogs on alternate months, and since April had a vlog (where I actually went outside) May gets a newsletter. Everything is covered in both formats for the convenience of people who have a preference of watching or reading.
This month, we’ll be going over our continued effort to remaster older artwork (thanks to our excellent artists) and also to optimise the game, as well as work that has been done recently on improved UI specifically regarding controller support. Let’s get stuck in.
The Exploding Ant Update
Firstly, I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has downloaded and played the Exploding Ant Update, our first DLC. I think I’d be significantly better off if I had a dollar for every time someone hasn’t believed me when I say, the exploding ants and exploding termites are real species! We didn’t make them up.
Again, thank you for all the feedback and we’re really glad people are enjoying sending their enemies flying with Colobopsis explodens. If you’ve played and have an opinion, it would be really useful if you’d leave a review of the DLC on Steam. This gives us a solid indication of people’s thoughts, and informs where we take the game next.
We’re close to finalising our plans for another DLC now – and we’ve begun the development process in several ways. I can’t talk about what it is just yet, but as soon as the team lets me, I’ll yap on about it until I’m blue in the face.
Remastering
At the start of the year we expanded our art team, and we’re now in full swing with updating older game assets and bringing the game’s visual identity up to date. The recent environmental reworks – such as the rainforest – are one thing, of course, but our character artists have also been hard at work. Leafcutters have recently had a complete overhaul and some of the enemies have had some aspects of them enhanced, such as animations and textures. Soon, even a few of the titans (creatures that get their own health bars in the UI) will be updated along with a bunch of others. Let’s go over those that are in the works at the time of writing.
American Bullfrog
The incumbent ruler of the swamp is getting an entire overhaul – models, textures and animations. The slightly more youthful appearance is complimented by weightier and more deliberate animations (watch this part of last month’s vlog to see them), and new materials to better simulate the dampness its amphibian skin. As the imposing area boss of Cold Blood, we’re glad that we have the opportunity to give it the visual fidelity it deserves.
Whip Spider
We rather like Big Whippy’s look as is, so her model is staying the same. However, she is getting updated materials and animations (watch this part of last month’s vlog to see). Our animators have had a blast working with the unusually-proportioned pedipalps and legs of Heterophrynus batesii. Soon she’ll be matching her updated lair, which was changed from a piece of bark to a knotted cage of plant roots with update 1.1 a few weeks back.
Emperor Scorpion
The emperor scorpion is one of the more recent additions to the game, arriving with version 1.0 last June. However, in updating its animations our artists decided to take the opportunity to remake it completely from scratch.
It’s a touch sleeker than it used to be and its attacks are more snappy, but it has the same huge claws and fearsome temperament. The new feel to the attack animations gives a distinctly twitchy, skittish feel that is very befitting of the king of scorpions.
Juvenile Eastern Newt
The juvenile eastern newt is one of the tougher non-titan enemies from the 4th tier of the game, and its bright orange colouration always makes it stand out against the greens and blues of the swamp. It’ll be getting a complete rework – here’s a still of the work-in-progress model in its natural setting of the green swamp bathed in moonlight.
There’s also some talk of reworking the snaking system to allow this creature to have more natural movements as it trails the back part of its body behind it – that system also applies to salamanders and velvet worms. We’ll be showing off those animations once the updated system is online – remember to follow us on our social media (Bluesky, X / Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) for Screenshot Saturdays when we like to show work in progress stuff like this.
Spiny Devil & Checkered Beetle
Other creatures getting updates include the spiny devil and checkered beetle – here’s one of their animations each (an attack and a death respectively). These two aren’t getting updates to their model or textures for now, but I think you can see Jack’s (our animator) style coming out with the animation changes.
That clear lunge forward when attacking reads more easily when there’s a lot of units on screen, as is typical for an RTS like Empires of the Undergrowth, and adds a deliberacy that conveys intent.
Currently Unremastered Ants
For anyone who’s waiting for remasters of other ant species (slave makers, wood ants, etc) – they’re coming, don’t worry! Our art department’s ordering has some logic to it but it’s also a healthy mix of what we feel most motivated to work on first.
Ongoing Optional Beta & Optimisations
We’ve had an optional beta running for some time now – it fixes things that are currently bugged in the live build. It’s available to PC and Mac Steam users, and if you’d like to join in please have a read through of this post that details the password process to access the beta branch, as well as listing all of the changes made in it.
There are likely to be some updates to this optional beta before we set it to become the live build, and if you have a little time to give it a whirl we’d be much obliged. Apart from various fixes and balances for the base game and DLC, one of the main intentions of this current beta is to test a slew of optimisations that have been made to textures and texture streaming.
Texture streaming is a system that loads in artwork over time rather than all in one go, in theory cutting down load time and more efficiently using VRAM. As things stand, the process is not very well optimised for Empires of the Undergrowth – Aron, one of our more recent hires, has spent a lot of time recently working on this system to allow it to properly do its job. This should be a very good thing for people on lower end hardware in particular.
UI Overhaul & Controller Support
Two of our developers are currently elbows-deep in reworking the UI. This is long overdue, but it has a particular focus on making things work better with controllers – while the game is certainly playable on a Steam Deck or with an XBox / PlayStation gamepad as things stand, we feel there’s quite a lot that can be done to make this way of playing significantly better, so we’re doing that.
We’ve been consulting with people who are knowledgeable about such things and taking advice – so, controller players rejoice – your time is nigh.
Packaging Freeze
For the entirety of the project (and particularly after we started supporting multiple platforms and storefronts) when we decide we’ve made enough changes to warrant a full-on update, it takes one of our developers the better part of a week to do all of the processes needed. Since we’re a small dev team, that can have a very tangible effect on development time; it’s one of the reasons that we make larger updates less frequently rather than smaller ones more often.
After the next large update to the game, we’ll be taking time to automate as much of this process as we can. There hasn’t been a breathing space to do this until now, just after our first DLC has been released, when we can dedicate dev hours to what will be a huge future time saver.
YouTube Channel – Now With Less
Subscribers to our YouTube channel may have noticed that some weeks back, we renamed it to be a solely Empires of the Undergrowth one. It was mainly that anyway, but as Slug Disco takes on more publishing projects, we felt everything was getting a bit muddied and diluted.
That’s why we’ve opened up the Slug Disco Games channel, where we’ll be posting everything Slug Disco that isn’t Empires of the Undergrowth-related. If you’ve been a fan of Ecosystem, Beetle Uprising, or Horticular, liked the Adapt demo, or are intrigued by the look of Strange Seed, Green Again or Primordial Empire, I’d highly recommend subscribing.
This also has implications for the vlogs that we post up here. Until this point, they’ve regularly shared news about our publishing projects, but now they’ll be almost entirely EotU-focused, with some rare exceptions if there’s something particularly spicy to share from elsewhere in the Slug Disco universe.
ANTCON 2025
We’ve been to the previous two shows – Slug Disco will once again have a presence at ANTCON in Carmarthen, Wales. Set in the lovely venue of the Ant Antics store, ANTCON is the world’s premiere ant keeping event. It’s a great way to meet fellow ant keepers, listen to some talks from scientists and enthusiasts, pick up a colony, and see the latest ant keeping kit.
Check out this video we put together from the 2023 event!
This time, marketing content creator Hei Man and character artist Jack will be there, and we’ll have a small booth with a game of Empires of the Undergrowth set up for you to play!
ANTCON 2025 is on the 24th and 25th May.
Screenshot Central
The only reason I write these newsletters at all is to get to this part of it – Screenshot Central! I occasionally trawl through the Steam community tab and the screenshot channel on our Discord, and whenever I write a newsletter I pick three of my favourites for this section. If you’d like to join in, just keep uploading that good stuff to the Steam community tab, or better yet, jump onto our Discord and get involved. Friendly, ant-loving gamers guaranteed!
To get a better angle on your shots, hold down the shift key when you enter screenshot mode (F9 by default). This will uncouple the camera from the ground and allow you to get extra creative with your screenies.
