Apart from 4 new levels set to roll out over the next few months (thank you to everyone whos been helping test and balance them) the main bulk of this update is under-the-hood changes. To deal with a persistent problem experienced by a number of laptop users, weve accelerated plans to upgrade the game engine by several versions. Were always reluctant to do this since it invariably breaks lots of things, and most of the time over the past month has been spent dealing with the fallout. Once again, thank you to everyone whos helped us iron out those wrinkles. Particular thanks to Scyobi_Empire who helped us diagnose the initial laptop issue. Theres also a new menu for the extra levels, which will give a description of them and a preview of their minimap, as well as an estimate of how long theyll take to complete and any reward associated with them.

Features

• Extra levels now come with a description and minimap preview when selecting them from the menu
• New extra levels added to be rolled out every 6 weeks starting on April 2nd
  • Occupation - a wood ant level not unlike the campaign level New Home
  • Cramped - a heavily infested leafcutter level with a surface, kill all enemies!
  • Enemy of my Enemy - a unique game where digging is instant and done with the mouse; packs of enemies are hostile to each other. Get them to kill each other before they kill the queen!
  • The Culling - a black ant level with interesting enemy spawning mechanics

Fixes

• The game will no longer crash on startup when using specific Intel graphics chips
• Fixed an issue where non-aggressive buried enemies were heading to the queen when dug out
• Fixed an issue where after a freeplay save one of the enemy colonies would become un-enterable
• Fixed an issue where ubers were linked to the wrong freeplay setup check boxes
• Fixed a pathing issue on The Crucible demo map
• Fixed a crash that could occur at low frame rates
• Fixed an issue in 2.1 where night creatures could get stuck in the tunnel exit
• Fixed an issue where creatures on top of tunnel exits could get stuck
• Fixed an issue on 2.1 where first night creatures to spawn would immediately despawn (there are now more creatures at night)
• Night creatures in 2.1 will now be more attracted to combat
• Fixed an issue with an ant getting stuck in 2.2 on a specific ramp
• Enemy woodworm dug out at start of 3.1 are now friendly again and hence the narrator makes sense
• Fixed an issue where the uber mole cricket would freeze instead of doing its thump attack
• Creatures will no longer decelerate when they spot and item of food or an enemy (movement should look smoother when going to gather food)
• Minor cosmetic painting issue fixed on 3.1
• Fixed an issue where the scientist was not coaxing your ants out when you retreated underground in formicarium challenge 3
• Fixed an issue where loaded food items underground could count as enemies being in your nest (this could cause a computer ally in freeplay to never stop protecting you)
• Fixed an issue where the scientists finger jab would aim at dead ants
• Changed victory animation on 3.1 and 3.2 so they correctly come out of the tunnel exit
• Minor cosmetic fixes to 2.2 (water edges and painting issues)
• Dug out a tile that should have been in the leafcutter demo level (on top of the tunnel exit)
• Fixed some potential issues with bots
• Freeplay AI enemy colonies will now leave an enemys nest faster after the queen is dead
• Fixed an issue with freeplay AI colonies that caused them to sometimes place a marker off the map resulting in the associated ants breaking
• Fixed various minor issues with Freeplay AI colonies
• Fixed a minor issue where leafcutters could rarely teleport to a plant to climb

Changes

• Upgraded to Unreal Engine 4.24 (up from 4.20)
• Minor optimisations in plant climbing
• Changes to how AI colonies in freeplay decide which resources to harvest from
• Cheating freeplay colonies can now resurrect more than one dead group at a time if they have no resources and their ants in groups are all dead
• Minor bot optimisations
• Minor tweak to the way trails work
• Improved checks added to food pickup meaning food should go ignored less

Known Issues on Linux

We have become aware that some Linux users are experiencing graphical problems with this version. In our tests these have only been minor but some may be having more serious issues. As a first step we would suggest ensuring you have the latest distribution of your particular OS (with an approved graphics driver), but if there's still no joy please let us know your distribution version and system specs, and we can put some time into properly troubleshooting the issue. It's possible that forcing use of the Vulkan API might fix some Linux graphical problems you're having. You'll need to add the -vulkan command line argument as a launch option. Thanks to DiloDog_ on Steam for the screenshot used in the artwork for this post!