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Woah! The environment is so much bigger now! That also has me thinking, it would take a really long time to get the ants back and forth from the castle to the edges of the map. Maybe you should add like outposts to stop along the way.

The grass looks great on fields of nothing but grass, but when it comes into contact with other terrain types it looks a little too blocky in my opinion. If possible, it might be a good idea to only have the grass tufts start a very short distance in from the grass color, allowing it to have a slight buffer and thus not have the lines of grass extend into mud or sand at the borders.

How lovely! The graphics are really coming along! I think that some lighting could really add a ton of atmosphere to the levels! Like, dappled lighting through tree leaves, big shadows from clouds, and stormy darkness shattered by lightning! Additionally, i would love to see the scale enhanced! Currently all the models are around the same size, and it leaves the ants at an inconsistent scale (ex the tree trunk vs veggies). Obviously the scale doesn’t need to be realistic, but adding much larger obstacles could really set the scene and add atmosphere ^^

When this comes out, instant wishlist.

Reminds me of Pikmin

Maybe instead of placing buildings down you can get the ant peeps to build them? With like a timer and an animation of ant peeps buildin the building in question

The background really adds a lot to the game!

My friend suggested the stump being a dungeon

looks so cool

<3!

That raised the game in so many levels (quite literally)

This looks amazing! I like the in depth explanation of how it's working.

What is this? A Level Generator for ANTS?

Love a novel approach to level gen!! This looks so cool! Edit: I also like how each of your videos has a pretty distinct addition to the game. "Level gen," "day and night cycle." It's a really fun development cycle to follow.

This was the best description of shaders, I found it super useful thank you.

You could add a enemy termite colony to compete for the ressources with the ant one

Amazing video ! ✨

What would be really cool if you had a multiplayer later and the other players could play other colonies.

This game looks really fun and etntartaining to play as of now! I always wished to have an ant colony simulator and i cant wait for the full release! A thing you should add: Ants in real life use their jaws to cut moss and grass. They do this in order to clear the path and work more efficently. So in the game you should make that the ants are slow in the grass and add a building for cutting it (like a job). I also think that grass should be a resource wich you could use to make something, but you would need a lot of grass to make it. EDIT: I played the prototype in the description from your first video on this game and it looks AMAZING!! I CANNOT WAIT TO PLAY IT WITH ALL THE NEW STUFF!!

Love the visuals! Very cute and wonderous. The tiny nature aesthetics always fill me with joy and a desire to explore.

Beautiful work, I feel like you broke down the process brilliantly. Inspirational stuff!

I would like to see plant/flower/mushroom animations they could dance a bit to the music :)

what you did is just crazy, it looks so good, good luck to keep going !!

You should also add bees in the beehives so there would be more creatures which would add up the intensity

Damn love how the game is going, really hope im going to play it some day, and im happy you got away from where you were before, random game making really does make some good ideas, also please add tophats! on lil ants, on crows, on slimes- just tophats! or even just on the mayor x3

Keep it up! I can't wait to stream your game, I played the beta and had so much fun until I ran into the fertilizer bug tehehe, probably bc I was playing for a while, ya got a fun game here

Yes youtube keep recommending game devs to me

are there lychees in the game

Amazing video! I love how your game is shaping up. It already looks so good. And the insights into the level generation process you implemented are super valuable for me.

You should start off by making the start gameplay consist of having to be a queen and findin or building a nursery and then slowly build your colony of ant people like in real life

I was thinking with the mushrooms, it might be interesting to add some kind of "necromancer" enemy there that uses the zombie fungus well-known for infecting ants to resurrect killed ants to their side. Another idea that popped into my head was a mimic spider that tries to sneak into your base, but that might be less appropriate as you can't really direct your ants to attack directly.

What is this, a level generator for ants!?

Doesn't using RGB channel masks limit you to 4 terrain types?

Episode 3 of asking for a tech tree.

who knew stampy could be a game dev?

They should make a movie called Forest Chunk ^^

looks great! one thing I can recommend is adding some randomized direction to the generation, the sticks in the stump cluster look a bit too perfect for example, same with the flowers and "trees" since the flowers and trees are supposed to stand up though, make the direction random, but limit it to being a smaller value, like 5-10 degrees to the right or left. while the sticks can just be set randomly from 0 - 360 degrees, some different stick sprites, or varying lengths could help spruce up the natural feeling. Well done as always, really looking forward to the next devlog :D

while using a shader for the grass is very cool, it may not hurt to explore other options for texturing, as this seems simultaneously very limited and overly complex.

neat

Hi, I dont understand how with the draw call to the CG for the grass, you get grass in front and behind of some element, like a "z-axis" ?

what about a flying/scout caste? the edges of the map could be foggy until theyre explored, and a quick moving (but low hp and unable to attack) flying ant can be sent to explore and look for resources? perhaps itd need to actually make it back to the main castle to 'communicate what it found' (actually get rid of the fog where it explored), and if it died on the journey nothing gets uncovered?? would probably need more balancing but it could be interesting!

It looks a lot nicer with the new terrain. Although I feel the objects in the scene need more unique texture variances because seeing the same texture multiple times by each other can be kind of repetitive.

If you haven't played Anthill before, it's quite similar conceptually to this game, so might be worth taking a look at :)

Very nice! Also, you might find "wave function collapse" useful for generating levels. But this works well too.

compression not liking that grass at all XD

Ideas for the game: - Fungus farming: someone suggested this already, but some species of ants in real life bring leafes to farm a fungus that they later eat. - Aphid and caterpillar farming: some species of ants also "milk" caterpillars or aphids which are small green bugs that produce honeydew for ants to eat. Ants also protect aphids from predators and winters. Some aphids can also build little (~1 cm) structures where they live. - Zombie fungus: there is a species of fungus that infects ants and alter their behavior. Infected ant climbs on a plant and die, then the fungus grows out of the ants head and spreads its spores to ants below. You can of course alter this hoever you want. - Termites: I don't have any specific ideas but termites are cool so why not add them to the game? - Venom ants: a new ant type that uses venom to fight. - Some times ants use their mandibles to launch themselves or enemies! - Some ants can commit suicide to spread chemicals and immobilize enemies! - Some ants can produce silk! (But I guess if you wanted silk in game, it would probably be a spider product). - Some ants build nests out of their own bodies! - Some ants live in colonies of other ants, but don't work, just steal food. - The level could end with the queen flying off to make a new colony. No, I am not an ant nerd. Yes, I did just read the Wikipedia page for ants.

If they're ant people shouldn't there also be an underground aspect to the game?

I love how the buildings aren't just squares, and that you need to place them strategically if you want to fit them in an area!!

Just remembered my idea for the previous video, what about needing to defeat all enemy's bases in order to win, instead of the boring leveling system?

add a giant enemy spider