A whole bunch of fixes have been made, mainly regarding the fire ant update and freeplay (there’s plenty more changes to freeplay coming in a larger update a bit further down the line). Extremis fans will be pleased to know that level is now playable again, and the poor bullfrog will no longer get beaten up by its lunch!
Thanks to everyone who’s helped to test this patch over the last few days.
Patch Notes
4.1 Cold Blood
- Bullfrog will now always eat creatures intended to feed it instead of being beaten up by them if they get too close
- Titan health bar will no longer appear during feeding events if the bullfrog is dead or has hopped away
4.2 A Bridge Too Far
- Player’s ants still in the Monomorium colony after it floods will now die
- Monomorium nest entrance now looks correct after end-of-level flood cinematic
- Reduced ‘Top of the Hill’ level end requirements on all difficulties
- Underground aesthetic updated
Formicarium Challenge 4
- A few decals added to cupboard interior after FC4 for extra detail
- Fixed an issue where continuing play too quickly after FC4 could cause the end to not properly happen
Freeplay
- Little black ants & big-headed ants will no longer be called Atta cephalotes in defeat screen
- Fixed a convoluted issue in freeplay causing random leafcutters to spawn in the place of dead queens
- Fixed an issue in freeplay where if dead enemy colonies were in the game, creatures would be less likely to attack the player
- Fixed an issue where the freeplay setup info would always appear as if 4 players were in the game (1v1v1v1)
- Fixed an underground tile that was crashing games in Basin
- Fixed an issue that could cause fire ant queens in freeplay to be off the ground
General Fixes
- Extra level Extremis will not crash the game any more
- Fixed carried aphids sometimes being removed if the ant is distracted whilst picking it up
- Fixed refund being prevented for 2nd refuse tile / leaf drop-off chamber
- Moving queens in 2.2 can no longer be killed by environmental creatures
- Fixed army ants despawning in Beetles Rise Up! which sometimes made the level unwinnable
- Fixed autoclicker food duplication issue
- Various UI elements made more stretchy to account for languages with longer sentences
- Distance increased between Battle Arena lanes to prevent knockback abilities hurling critters into the other lane
- Fire ant & little black ant queen mesh repositioned so they should float less
- Fixed population totals not being updated when a tile is cancelled before being built
- Removed access to a decorative plant that looked appetising to leafcutters in 3.2
- Buried creatures (! & ? icons underground) will now only ever be visible by their rendered outline; no more accidentally seeing the model poking out somewhere
- Fixed an issue where Formicarium Challenge 2 would never end if all creatures were dead at some point after spider spawn
- Can no longer click through augmentations menu to select a tile
- Reduced size of fire ant worker eggs so they are not poking out the top of the queen
- Cancelling a tile before it is built will now correctly update population totals
- Corrected some spelling issues in the Freesound credits
General Changes
- Replaced queen worker chamber crown icon with a flag
- Team stripes added to abdomens of fire ants, little black ants & big-headed ants
- Reduced size of all little black ant eggs to make them properly little
- 'Play More' button removed from 2.2
- Couple more first-time playthrough hints added to the first formicarium
- Numerous texture optimisations; they should pop in faster
- Font update in minor improvements panel
- Various animation optimisations added
- Some lab decorations moved closer to the formicarium so they can be seen in play
- Objectives will now update faster when something has changed
- Star power scale is now taken into account for minimap & physical size of buried creatures
- When an indestructible tile is made destructible (by, for example, a toad burrowing through it in 4.1) the tile break effect will play
- Chinese localisations updated
- Credits updated
Known Issues
- Under some circumstances, fire ants seem unable to place pheromone markers on the surface in freeplay
- On rare occasion, fire ants can get stuck when they're part of a bridge and the bridge is disassembled
- Green lynx spiders can rarely get stuck at the base of a pitcher plant
please let us know in the discussions if you see any of these issues!