Empires of the Undergrowth: A game about ants

[Silver Wolf]

I'll have to give it a try next month on my other computer.
My laptop's video card is messing up the game.

[Jubal]

Oh dear - what's happening? Can you get a screenshot?

[Silver Wolf]

It's just my old Nvidia (Geforce GT520M cuda) graphics card.
It's probably severely outdated and doesn't seem to be supported. I got a warning about that problem when I started the game.

[JeffNevington]

Ahh its a shame you couldn't get it working.  That is quite an old card, its worse than integrated intel graphics available these days (which are also not really recommended for gaming). 

We are not entirely sure what the spec requirement will be yet.  So far we have listed "nVidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB / AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB" as the minimum.  It might run with lower spec hardware than that, to a point, but this should give you some idea.

Whilst you are pricing up your new rig, here is a video of our new wolf spider 

[Jubal]

Ooh lovely What species of wolf spider is it, assuming you've gone for a specific one?

[JeffNevington]

This is Arctosa littoralis, also known as a Beach Wolf Spider. Her and her spiderlings cause problems for a wood ant colony trying to establish a nest on the beach.  I want to add quite a few more spiders eventually, everyone who played Sim Ant seems to remember the big spider.  For early access we are working on one more spider, Segestria florentina, who is quite different.  She makes funnel webs in cracks and holes, the player will find her underground.

[Jubal]

Oh, lovely I really like spiders. If you want any arachnological contacts at any point, my mother is a specialist on the fen raft spider (Dolomedes plantarius) and is conservation officer for the British Arachnological Society so I may be able to be useful there!

[JeffNevington]

What an awesome floating beast! This reminds me, we promised fire ant rafts to our backers.  There is a long road of development still to go  .

Although the game doesn't really focus on arachnids, they will no doubt become a major feature and I love making contacts with people interested in the game from a more scientific outreach / biology perspective.  We exhibited the demo at ENTOSCI 2016 (entomology conference for schools) and that went down really well (mostly because we were the only ones with a computer game in a hall of school children.. haha).

We are really busy at the moment as you can imagine, but more opportunities to showcase the game to a niche crowd are always welcome.  If she knows of any events / competitions etc, especially where younger people might be involved, and where promoting a video game wouldn't be frowned upon (that can be a tricky one in this setting), I would be very interested to know.

By the way Jubal - the forum you advised us on is trundling along quite happily.  It isn't growing much anymore but we have some regular visitors now.  It should look nicely established by the time we release the game so thanks for the help with that! -> http://forum.eotugame.com/

[Jubal]

I'll ask some of the contact I have about possible showcase venues etc and see if anyone has any ideas

Glad to hear that the forum's doing well! I should really visit it more but time is always against me...

[JeffNevington]

Sounds great .

No need to visit the forum, you have enough to deal with here. The main thing is that its working out quite nicely with the fans, I look forward to dealing with hordes of spam on the boards when the game releases.

[Jubal]

Aye, good luck!

I included the Arctosa Littoralis as an EotU section for the latest Updates from the Forge newsletter:
http://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5194

[JeffNevington]

Awesome description, thanks!  I will let our friends know, I'm sure I know some people who would be particularly interested in Township.

[Jubal]

Thanks, I spotted the tweet - and definitely, the more teams we can get sharing the newsletter, the stronger it & its readership get as a whole, it's a positive feedback loop

[JeffNevington]

We are fast closing on our closed beta and early access release.  It's making me very itchy.  There is still no demo update but we are considering producing another just after release with the latest, much needed optimizations.

I have a nice selection of images and videos for the last month of progress here, things are really coming on:
http://slugdisco.com/september-newsletter/

[Jubal]

I love the death of a queen video, well played

The spiders with hats are fun too (did you know that there's a sorting hat spider, Eriovixia gryffindori? ) I think for most arachnophobes the scuttling motion is more of an issue though so I'm not sure it'll help them much (but it's a great idea!).