Formicide Alpha Demo v0.19.5690.36634: Download
Last updated: 8/1/15

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Currently Supported Platforms: Windows 8, 7, Vista

Known Bugs and Issues:

• Certain graphics cards display horizontal line gaps through the rocks on the Wasteland map.
• Dying as a result of being ignited by the Fire Ant's flamethrower counts the death as a suicide instead of being killed by the Fire Ant.
• The first time some effects are displayed after starting a match, there may be a slight hiccup in the game frame rate.
• In rare cases, using the Hunter's special ability Blink causes the edge of the player to get stuck in the terrain at the teleport location.
  • Temporary workaround: If this happens, try pressing the dig key (S). If you're still stuck, press the suicide key (F2).
• When being used next to terrain, the Hunter's Blink ability will often not teleport the Hunter very far, if at all.
• XNA-related issues on Windows XP (may not run). Contact us at info@rockwallgames.com if you're on XP and want to play!

v0.19.5690.36634 Release Notes:

• Class Changes: Removed energy and alt fires from many classes to streamline gameplay!
  • Biomite:
    • Changed special to Crawler Mite:
      • Launches a huge Crawler Mite at a slow speed, absorbing damage and digging through terrain.
    • Removed Mega Mite from Mite Cannon (alt fire).
    • Reduced Gas Bubble expiration time (explodes into gas cloud more quickly now).
    • Changed Dirt Bubbles to explode to nearest point possible where clicked (generally this will be specifically where you clicked, but does have a max range, and will explode upon terrain collision).
    • Slightly reduced gas damage over time.
  • Fire Ant:
    • Increased damage for Flamethrower DOT.
    • Slightly increased Flamethrower damage.
    • Removed Hellraiser from Flamethrower (alt fire).
    • Removed Flaming Ax from Fire Ax (alt fire).
    • Fire Ant now explodes upon death, spitting out 3 bits of napalm.
  • Hunter:
    • Changed Blood Dash for Bloodseeker (alt fire):
      • No energy cost.
      • Can only be used while invisible.
    • Removed Web Shot from Widow Rifle (alt fire).
  • Shock Trooper:
    • Removed Reflector from Taser (alt fire).
    • Removed Mega Orb from Thunderclap (alt fire).
    • Jaunt (special) now creates a smaller version of the Mega Orb upon teleporting.
    • Changed Taser to look different when successfully striking a target.
    • Changed Taser art to look more distinct from Thunderclap.
  • Soldier:
    • Removed Homing Missile from RPG (alt fire).
    • Removed Incendiary Blast from Shotgun (alt fire).
    • Increased number of Mini Bombs released from overcharged RPG rocket.
    • Increased damage from overcharged RPG rocket direct hit.
    • Increased Shotgun max ammo to 8 from 2.
    • Increased Shotgun cooldown to 32 frames from 1 frame.
    • Increased Shotgun reload time to 150 frames from 60 frames.
• New Feature: Mystery Box!
  • Mystery Box is spawned at Mega Powerpads (1 per map), and will contain a powerful powerup when destroyed.
  • Mystery boxes take considerable amounts of damage before blowing up.
  • Explosions knock players back, and eventually deal massive damage.
  • Can drop one of 2 new powerups:
    • Mega Shield:
      • Similar to the Personal Shield, except it's huge and protects everyone inside.
    • Bomb Frenzy:
      • Rapidly spawns several large timed bombs near all enemy players.
• New Feature: Multikills and Kill Streaks!
  • Multikill banner for mutiple enemies killed in rapid succession appears above player's head.
  • Kill Streak banner appears for killing 3 or more enemies without dying. Stars will accumulate per kill until death to signify kill streak.
• Map Changes:
  • Wastelands:
    • Added Mega Powerpad to center top of map.
    • Changed dirt arrangement in center of map.
    • Changed top half of the map to open up an area for the Mega Powerpad, and block some projectiles from entering.
  • Ice Caverns:
    • Added Mega Powerpad to center bottom of map.
• Visual Updates:
  • Destructible terrain nows spawns particles when destroyed.
  • Changed Red Shock Trooper lightning to properly reflect team color.
  • Added visual effects to the deaths of Biomite, Fire Ant, Soldier, and Shock Trooper.
  • Added small glow effect to Widow Rifle bullets and Shotgun pellets.
  • Added red overlay to screen when killed.
  • Added green overlay to screen when collecting a health powerup.
  • Updated shield hex overlay animation.
  • Updated UI for Biomite to reflect dirt collection rather than energy (functionality has not changed for the Biomite).
  • Added blinking low health indicator on player health bar.
  • Updated icons for various firing mechanics and specials as needed for class changes.
  • Updated trail drawing to appear smoother.
  • Other various asset improvements.
• Miscellaneous:
  • Kills and deaths are no longer visibily recorded, and instead points are now shown on scoreboard.
    • Players receive 1 point per kill, and 3 points for being in range of a beacon when their team captures it. Points are never subtracted.
  • Beacons can no longer sway to either team after match has ended.
  • Winning team becomes invulnerable after match has ended.
  • Various art assets were optimized to improve load times and memory usage.
  • Added an "out of ammo" noise for all weapon primary fires.
  • To reflect changes in energy mechanic, powerpads no longer spawn energy powerups, and instead only spawn Small Health and the occasional Personal Shield.
• Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed a bug that could cause networked players syncing to server positions to repeatedly get stuck in terrain while walking on the ground.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause players having the Biomite's Bio Mass bubbles create dirt on them to permanently get stuck inside terrain if standing on a rock.
  • Fixed a bug that would cause the client to skip forward in time more quickly than it should under laggy network conditions.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented forces from being correctly applied to entities spawned as the result of an explosion.
  • Fixed a bug with team point bar positioning immediately after joining a server.
  • Fixed a rare rendering bug that could cause tearing at the top of the screen.

v0.18.5603.33538 Release Notes:

Formicide has been greenlit by the community and is coming to Steam!! Thanks so much for all of your support!

• Point locking:
  • Point control beacons must now be captured in order.
  • Beacons are locked (cannot be captured) until it is the next beacon in order for a team to capture.
  • Arrows point to the unlocked beacons.
• Players are now automatically respawned at their home base instead of requiring clicking to spawn.
• All dead players are now spawned at the same time.
• New effects have been added to the team home beacons.
• Added an indicator to the energy bar which shows that it stops regening over time once it's 50% full.
• Added an indicator next to the energy bar to show the number of times the current weapon's alt fire can be fired based on the player's current energy.
• Every weapon's alt fire has been updated to only require energy to use, instead of both energy and ammo.
• Updated the energy bar to turn red and disabled while reloading to reflect that weapon alt fires cannot be used while reloading.
• Energy rewards from killing a player now home in on the player that got the kill.
• Fixed a bug that occasionally caused a shield on a player to start flashing as if it's about to wear off as soon as it was applied.
• Tweaked point control beacon capture rate to cap more quickly but for a smaller amount.
• Moved the respawn timer closer to the center of the screen.
• Class Changes:
  • Biomite:
    • Decreased automatic energy regeneration rate to 3.3%/sec from 6%/sec.
    • Gas Bubble toxic gas duration decreased slightly after bursting.
    • Dirt Bubble rebalanced to create dirt in a larger area with a higher energy cost.
    • Dirt Bubble ammo cost decreased to 0 from 1.
    • Mega Mite ammo cost decreased to 0 from 1.
  • Fire Ant:
    • Fire Ax max ammo decreased to 4 from 6.
    • Fire Ax Reload time decreased to 120 from 180.
    • Explosive Ax energy cost increased to 33.3% from 25%.
    • Explosive Ax ammo cost decreased to 0 from 1.
    • Flamethrower alt fire changed to Hellraiser:
      • Fires an explosive payload that delivers a line of explosions along the ground after it lands, leaving a trail of napalm behind the destruction. Costs 50% energy.
  • Hunter:
    • Widow Rifle Web Shot energy cost decreased to 12.5% from 25%.
    • Widow Rifle Web Shot can now be fired continuously by holding the fire button down.
    • Widow Rifle Web Shot webs now half as large.
    • Widow Rifle Web Shot ammo cost decreased to 0 from 1.
    • Widow Rifle Widow Bite can now be fired in single shots rather than in bursts of 3.
    • All Hunter primary and alt fires for both weapons can now be used without taking the Hunter out of stealth. Instead, using any weapon while stealthed now reveals the Hunter's location for a split second before fading away.
  • Shock Trooper:
    • Reflector ammo cost decreased to 0 from 1.
    • Thunder Orb ammo cost decreased to 0 from 1.
  • Soldier:
    • Incendiary Slug ammo cost decreased to 0 from 1.
    • RPG max ammo decreased to 3 from 4.
    • RPG Reload time increased to 145 from 135.
    • Homing RPG energy cost increased to 33.% from 25%.
    • Homing RPG ammo cost decreased to 0 from 1.
• Updated the shield flash while wearing off to flash more slowly.
• Updated the art for all powerups.
• Fixed a bug that caused the aim direction of the Hunter's Widow Rifle Widow Bite to be unresponsive.
• Updated the Biomite's class selector button portrait from placeholder to finalized art.
• Moved the respawn timer to the middle of the screen.
• Added an indicator to the energy bar to show that energy will stop regening once the bar is 50% full.
• Fixed a bug that occasionally allowed a player to be damaged while shielded.
• Fixed a rare crash on the load screen.
• Reduced the frequency of entities popping to different positions when syncing with the server.
• Fixed a physics bug that occasionally would cause one entity colliding with another from directly above or below it to miss their collision.
• Fixed a very rare player movement bug that would cause the player to get stuck to a ceiling and appear to be falling forever until starting to move again.
• Removed the button to bring the player to the greenlight page.

v0.17.5498.21573 Release Notes:

• Completely overhauled the class selection UI:
  • Choose a class by hovering over their portrait and clicking.
  • Provides a general overview of each class, as well as detailed information about their weapons and special ability.
  • The number of teammates that have chosen a class is displayed under each class portrait.
  • The Biomite portrait is placeholder.
• Class Changes:
  • Biomite:
    • Reduced energy regeneration rate.
    • Reduced particle effects to address some frame rate issues.
  • Hunter:
    • Increased Blood Dash (Bloodseeker alt fire) damage to 80 from 50 (Kills all classes in a maximum of 2 hits).
    • Changed Web Shot (Widow Rifle alt fire) to fire much faster, but create smaller webs.
    • Increased Web Shot ammo cost to 1 from 0.
  • Shock Trooper:
    • Increased Tasebolt (Taser primary fire) fire rate by about 30%, reduced damage per shot by the same amount.
    • Increased Tasebolt reload time to 1.5 seconds from 1 second.
    • Increased Tasebolt max ammo to 20 from 8.
    • Increased Reflector (Taser alt fire) ammo cost to 1 from 0.
    • Increased Thunder Orb (Thunderclap alt fire) ammo cost to 1 from 0.
  • Soldier:
    • Added Overcharge mechanic to Incendiary Blast (Shotgun alt fire).
    • Added visual effects to Incendiary Blast.
• Players now spawn with a brief invulnerability shield.
• Shield now blinks when it's about to run out.
• Added button hover and click sounds.
• Fixed a graphical error with shield destruction effects.
• Fixed a bug that caused most in-game textures to appear less crisp than they actually are.
• Throwing the Fire Ant's Fire Axes and then immediately using his Flame Dash special ability in that direction now correctly launches the axes instead of causing him to instantly murder himself.
• Fixed a bug that caused the mouse cursor to display improperly in screen captured footage of Formicide.
• Fixed an uncommon client framerate bug.
• Fixed a bug that caused a filled point bar to not correctly line up with its notches in some cases.

v0.16.5456.25988 Release Notes:

• New Map: Ice Caverns (Point Control). A long map with a large, fairly open area near its center control beacon. Large amounts of destructible terrain cover nearby rocks.
• New Class: Biomite
  • Speed: Average
  • Jumping: Good
  • Health: 120
  • Energy Regen: Fast
  • Digging: Fast
  • Weapon 1: Mite Cannon
    • Primary: Shoots 3 Mini Mites in a spread-shot pattern. Can pick up gas and dirt buffs from Biomite bubbles.
    • Secondary: Shoots a Mega Mite that deals damage as it travels through players. Can pick up improved gas and dirt buffs from Biomite bubbles.
  • Weapon 2: Biomite Bubbler
    • Primary: Shoots bubbles filled with poisonous gas that explode on contact or after a short period of time. Gas will expand slowly for a few seconds before dissipating.
    • Secondary: Shoots bubbles filled with biomass that explodes after a few seconds, creating new destructible terrain in a small area.
  • Special: Poison Trail
    • Spawns a deadly trail of poisonous gas behind the Biomite as he moves.
• New UI Effects:
  • Special Bar: Shows the current cooldown for the player's special ability. A sound effect is played when the special ability bar has filled up.
  • Energy Bar: Shows current and max energy, as well as more obvious ticks for energy costs.
  • Health Icon: Shows current health as text and as a fillable icon.
  • Ammo Icon: Shows current ammo as text for the selected weapon, as well as a fillable icon for all equipped weapons. A sound effect is played when a gun has been reloaded.
  • Team Score: Now shows as a bar at the top, showing the score as a filling bar as well as numerically.
  • Point Beacons: Shows total number of beacons, a beacon's current ownership status, and what team has players that are currently shifting the beacon's team ownership.
  • Respawn Timer: When dead, shows your respawn time at the bottom of the screen.
  • Killspam: Killspam has been restylized, coloring player names by team and highlighting kills you're involved in.
• Modified Wastelands (Point Control) to have easier access through the center spike pit.
• All classes now slowly regenerate energy over time, with the Biomite regenerating slightly faster than the rest.
• Improved digging effects and speed significantly.
• Improved team effects for fire axes and burning damage.
• Improved powerup effects. They're way shiny now!
• Changed sound effects for health, energy, and shield powerups.
• Added orange color to system messages (eg. announcements for players leaving or joining a game).
• Added effects to control beacons to make their locations more obvious.
• Added winning and losing music to match your uncontrollable emotions after a win or loss.
• Updated the Soldier's rocket texture, which is now also colored to the player's team color.
• Modified player death rewards to contain less powerups overall, and have a much higher tendency to spawn small energy pickups.
• Players can now do a ground jump for a fraction of a second after leaving the ground.
• Guns now automatically start reloading when their ammo is empty.
• Manually reloading a gun now empties the gun's current ammo before starting to reload.
• Added a new bindable hotkey to select the previously equipped weapon. Default key is Q.
• The first weapon is now selected for a player each time they respawn, rather than selecting the weapon they had equipped when they last died.
• The Fire Ant's Flamethrower is now considerably more responsive when aiming and firing.
• Most things are now drawn behind terrain instead of in front of it.
• Improved player movement to prevent getting de-snapped from the ground when walking down a slope while moving fast.
• Reduced the amount of time to wait to load the next map after a match ends from 20 seconds to 15.
• Reduced average memory usage on the client.
• Fixed a reloading bug that sometimes caused the reload indicator to not display correctly.
• Fixed a rare bug that caused a player's input to not be updated properly and get stuck in an incorrect state until the player did something.
• Fixed a rare bug that caused some sounds to play forever if they were playing when the loading screen was hit.
• Fixed a bug that caused the aim direction of a player's weapon to be slightly wrong for a split second after changing weapons.
• Fixed a bug that caused the game to hang for a second when transitioning from a match into the loading screen.
• Fixed a rare client crash that would happen in some cases when a player received a chat message while on the loading screen after connecting to a server.
• Fixed several rare server crashes that would happen in some cases after a player left the server.
• Fixed a bug that caused the camera to be off screen in a corner or on the edge of the map when the game started if the curcor was on the edge of the screen or the game was alt tabbed when the game started.

v0.15.5335.35844 Release Notes:

• Fixed a bug that caused the hosting window in the Formicide client to hang forever if trying to host for the first time.

v0.14.5324.33982 Release Notes:

• Class Changes:
  • Fire Ant:
    • Effects for Fire Axes no longer sometimes fail to display.
    • Throwing Fire Axes while dashing will launch them at high speeds and no longer immediately murder the player.
    • Direct hits with Ignited Fire Axes (Fire Ax alternate fire) deal 50 damage in addition to the explosion damage (100 total).
  • Hunter:
    • Updated effects for Widow Rifle to match team color.
  • Shock Trooper:
    • Updated lightning effects on Taser and Thunderclap guns.
    • It is no longer possible to get stuck in terrain in rare cases when using the Jaunt special ability.
  • Soldier:
    • Minibombs released from Overcharged rockets no longer immediately explode upon contact with a player with an active shield powerup.
• Shield now reduces damage from incoming rockets by 90% (there's still a bit to clean up with shields in general).
• Effects for capping a point in the Wasteland map are now synced with the server.
• Added pre-caching of textures and sounds for many game events. Game hiccups immediately before the first time an asset is displayed are significantly reduced.
• The text "SPAWN" has been added to arrows pointing to valid spawn locations for a player.
• Energy is now displayed below all allied players in addition to hit points.
• Kills to win on team deathmatch maps (Crystal Cave and Sunken) has been reduced to 10 from 20.
• Added a configurable max number of players that can join a server.
• Fixed a crash bug that would happen if someone tried to join the server with an out of date client.
• Touched up colors on the Wasteland map.
• Touched up various particle effects.

v0.13.5309.37427 Release Notes:

• New Game Mode: Point Control. Two teams battle over control beacons with selectable classes. Holding more beacons than the enemy team generates points over time, and the first team to 100 points wins each game.
• New Map: Wastelands (Point Control). A long but narrow arena using the badlands terrain. Players spawn from each side and fight over 3 control points. Action tends to focus on the center control point, but the balance of power can shift quickly.
• New feature: In-game chat is now available. "Enter" can be pressed once to use team chat, or can be pressed twice to use global chat.
• Class Changes:
  • Soldier:
    • Increased damage on Shotgun Overcharge Blast to 35 per pellet.
    • Increased velocity on Shotgun Overcharge Blast.
    • Increased impact damage on Rockets and Seeker Rockets to 40 (deals 100 total from AOE dmg).
    • Gave "fuel" to seeker rockets, causing them to drop after 10 seconds.
  • Hunter:
    • Increased firing rate of Widow Rifle by 30%.
    • Increased velocity of Widow Rifle bullets.
    • Increased cost of Bloodseeker dash to 50 from 30.
    • Increased AOE of Bloodseeker dash damage.
    • Fixed bug causing non-player entities to bleed from Bloodseeker attacks.
    • Blink (Hunter Special) now grants brief invisibilty from enemy units. Using a Bloodseeker dash or the Widow rifle removes this buff.
  • Fire Ant:
    • Flamethrower primary and secondary now ignite players.
    • Ignited players take damage over time, and ignite Fire Axes.
    • Increased Fire Ax direct damage to 50 from 35.
  • Shock Trooper:
    • Changed taser primary to a ranged zap. Deals 35 and pushes the target back.
    • Failed Jaunts (from bad placement in terrain) will refresh its cooldown after 0.5 seconds.
  • Engineer:
    • Added a button that lets you know the Engineer will be playable one day... not yet though.
• Removed "non-gravity" frames from air jumps. Ground jumps are still higher while holding down the jump key, but air jumps are now uniform.
• Hit point and energy bars now indicate how much they changed by "springing" to the new amount.
• Remade all class skins.
• Messages are now displayed when a player joins or leaves the server.
• Team-based games now use different colored class skins depending on the team of the player.
• /fps is available as a chat command to enable or disable display of the current frame rate.
• The camera can now be panned around the map while the player is dead by moving the cursor to the edge of the screen.
• Improved trails on multiple projectiles, including the Soldier's Shotgun blasts, the Hunter's Widow Rifle shots, and many others.
• Improved effects on multiple explosions, including the alt fire of the Shock Trooper's Thunderclap, all of the Soldier's rockets, the Fire Ant's ax explosions, and many others.
• "Special ability ready" trails are now only shown on the local player.
• Added an exit confirmation dialog.
• Temporarily removed the Badlands Arena map.
• Fixed several bugs with effects not displaying when a player collected a powerup.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Formicide Demo to not work properly if installed over a previous version without first manually uninstalling the previous version.
• Fixed a crash bug that would happen in rare cases in team games when a player died.
• Fixed a bug that caused a player's input to behave erratically on their client in some situations.
• Fixed a bug with player movement that would cause them to no longer be snapped to the ground if firing certain weapons while walking.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the server from properly notifying all clients of a player's updated cursor position in some situations.
• Fixed a bug that prevented firing animations from displaying correctly for networked players in certain situations.
• Fixed a bug that prevented some player data from syncing correctly upon connecting to a server in rare cases.
• Fixed several rare client crash bugs, all related to displaying the user name of a player who had already left the game before another player joined.
• Fixed a rare server crash bug that would occur when a player managed to get a kill after disconnecting from the server.
• Fixed a client bug that would cause the leaderboard to be empty for a player who joined after the match ended and before the next match began.
• Fixed a client crash that would happen if another player closed the client while on the loading screen.
• Significantly reduced the overall amount of network traffic between the client and server.
• Significantly reduced typical memory usage on the client.
• Slightly reduced load times on the client.
• Made multiple improvements to logging.
• Fixed a minor memory leak on the server.
• Slightly improved responsiveness of networked player inputs.
• Added a loading screen tip about panning the camera around the map.

v0.12.5226.36182 Release Notes:

• Added visual effects to air jumps.
• Reduced air friction on players significantly, allowing them to use lateral weapon knockback in the air more effectively.
• Reduced air acceleration on players significantly to balance this, resulting in a slight decrease in air maneuverability. This resulted in slight changes to the jump heights for each class, though their balance is relatively similar.
• Updated Sunken terrain by removing one of the coral pits.
• Updated skins for the Fire Ant and Soldier Ant.
• Updated art for Shock Trooper's Taser.
• Increased projectile speed for Soldier's Shotgun.
• The jump key (spacebar) can now be tapped for a small jump, or held down for a higher jump.
• Weapons are now automatically selected for classes, instead of asking the player to choose as many weapons as there are actually available for the class.
• The Gauss Gun now correctly displays its trail all the way through the line of dirt that it digs, and displays the explosion at the end point of the line dug in the dirt instead of at the beginning.
• Fixed a rare crash-on-match-restart bug in the client and server.
• Fixed a bug that would cause many textures to fail to load correctly on the client when they were attempted to be loaded while a UAC dialog was active on the client's computer.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the client from failing to display correctly on very high resolutions (such as laptops with 3200x1800 displays).
• Fixed a bug that would cause the client to crash if changing the monitor's brightness while running the client on a Hewlett Packard laptop.
• Added a loading screen tip about short vs high jumps, and about air jumping.

v0.11.5212.25561 Release Notes:

• Increased air friction effects on players, resulting in reduced acceleration while in mid-air.
• Slight decrease to gravity for players.
• Adjusted player jump velocity to compensate for the decrease to player gravity.
• Class Changes:
  • Shock Trooper:
    • Increased Thunderclap primary damage by 40%.
    • Increased Jaunt projectile speed. Port faster!
    • Decreased Jaunt cooldown.
    • Increased AOE for Taser primary.
    • Increased max health to 125 from 100.
    • Slight increase to Taser alternate fire damage.
  • Fire Ant:
    • Increased Fire Ax damage to 50 from 40.
    • Added slight kickback to Flamethrower primary.
    • When firing straight down in mid-air with the Flamethrower, the Fire Ant will fall very slowly (essentially hovering).
  • Soldier:
    • Slight increase in Shotgun reload time.
    • Increased Rocket Launcher secondary (seeker rockets) fire rate.
    • Decreased max health to 175 from 180.
  • Hunter:
    • Adjusted Bloodseeker AOE (reduced slightly in general, no longer hits behind the Hunter).
    • Fixed issue allowing Bloodseker to steal health from allies.
    • Decreased max health to 100 from 125.
• Changed "Sunken" map to be slightly more open, and rearranged its powerpads.
• Changed "Crystal Cave" map to be slightly more open, and rearranged its powerpads.
• Increased powerup spawn rate at all powerpads by about 120%.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing all rocket-based weapons from firing correctly.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing the Hunter's Blink animation from correctly displaying on anyone's client other than the Hunter that used Blink.
• Fixed a bug that would periodically cause networked player inputs to become severely desynced on the client, causing them to move in extremely erratic and unpredictable ways.
• Fixed a bug that would happen occasionally when joining a game while someone is using a flamethrower which would cause fire from the flamethrower to continue to burn forever on the client of the player that joined.
• Added divisions to health bars.
• Energy bar divisions which are partially filled are now drawn with a darker color than energy bar divisions which are completely filled.
• Added randomized tips on the loading screen.
• Tweaked entity movement to reduce the chance of players getting snapped onto the terrain in undesirable situations.
• Updated various visual effects.

v0.10.5205.35334 Release Notes:

• New feature: Teamplay is now available. Currently Crystal Cave and Sunken are team-based, while Badlands Arena remains free-for-all.
• New resource: Energy. Energy is consumed to fire some weapons, and is shared among all weapons equipped on the player.
• New mechanic: Special abilities. Each class has a special ability it can periodically use at no resource cost, which is available when the player is leaving a blur trail. The default key for special abilities is left shift. For those that had a previous version of the demo installed, the key will still be bound to X, which can be rebound in the "input" menu. The input menu lists special abilities as "tertiary fire".
• New feature: Classes.
  • New Class: Fire Ant
    • Speed: Very Fast
    • Jumping: Good
    • Health: 100
    • Weapon 1: Fire Axes
      • Primary: Throw axes that stick into walls and damage ants. Axes stuck in walls are explosive and can be ignited by the flamethrower.
      • Secondary: Throw ignited axes! 15 energy.
    • Weapon 2: Flamethrower
      • Primary: Shoots out a line of fire that damages enemies, and ignites axes and flammable gas.
      • Secondary: Sprays flammable gas that spreads out. 10 energy.
    • Special: Flame Charge
      • Rapidly charges through a line, providing temporary immunity to fire, and leaves a wake of napalm in its path.
  • New Class: Soldier
    • Speed: Slow
    • Jumping: Poor
    • Health: 180
    • Weapon 1: Shotgun
      • Primary: Fires 6 shotgun pellets that deal damage upon impact
        • Overcharge: Fires 8 pellets that move extra fast and deal double damage
      • Secondary: Fires an explosive incendiary round.
        • Currently has no overcharge effect
    • Weapon 2: Rocket Launcher
      • Primary: Fires a rocket in a straight line that explodes upon impact
      • Secondary: Fires a homing rocket that tracks the player's cursor
        • Overcharge: Both primary and secondary fires explode in a large radius for bonus damage, and drop minibombs that explode after a short time. 25 energy.
    • Special: Overcharge
      • Overchages the Soldier's weapon, improving the next blast of either the shotgun or rocket launcher
  • New Class: Hunter
    • Speed: Very Fast
    • Jumping: Good
    • Health: 120
    • Weapon 1: Bloodseeker
      • Primary: Slashes an enemy and steals health at melee range
      • Secondary: Dashes through the air, damaging anything that is passed through. 30 energy.
    • Weapon 2: Widow Rifle
      • Primary: Fires a hail of bullets
      • Secondary: Fires sticky webs that greatly slow enemies, but do not affect the Hunter. 20 energy.
    • Special: Blink
      • Instantly teleport through the air in the direction of the cursor
  • New Class: Shock Trooper
    • Speed: Fast
    • Jumping: Average
    • Health: 100
    • Weapon 1: Taser
      • Primary: Rapidly shocks nearby enemies
      • Secondary: Deals damage and forces projectiles back in a large radius. 5 energy.
    • Weapon 2: Shockwave
      • Primary: Blasts out a cone of charged energy, damaging and pushing back anything caught in its path
      • Secondary: Unleashes a ball of energy that violently explodes over a huge area, dealing immense damage. 1000 energy.
    • Special: Jaunt
      • Opens a portal that teleports the Shock Trooper to it after a short time.
• A message is now displayed when a player (or team) wins a match.
• Player (or team) kills are now displayed at the top of the screen.
• Reskinned the leaderboard.
• Began reskinning the weapon selector - images were removed, but they'll be back soon.
• Updated the default "dig" hotkey to be S.
• Updated the default "tertiary fire" hotkey to be left shift.
• Updated player movement to be snapped to the ground regardless of if the player's velocity is downward or not.
• Fixed a bug that would cause laggy clients to accumulate more and more lag with no hope of ever catching up.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the "this program has stopped working" dialog from popping up in the event of a crash on either the client or server.
• Fixed a bug that would prevent a dead player from seeing another player's name by hovering over them with the cursor.
• Fixed an uncommon bug that would eventually cause killspam messages to become, and remain, totally wrong.
• Fixed an uncommon bug that would periodically spawn a player inside terrain in the top left corner of the map.
• Fixed several client memory allocation issues.
• Updated weapon secondary fires to use energy instead of ammo in deathmatch
  • Widow Rifle: Web Shot, 20 Energy
  • Clever Girl: Incendiary Blast, 50 Energy
  • Flamethrower: Flammable Gas, 10 Energy
  • Gauss Gun: Black Hole, 100 Energy
  • Hellraiser: Raise Hell, 50 Energy
  • Pinkerton: Blinky Mine, 30 Energy
  • Pulse Cannon: Pulse Turret, 50 Energy
  • Rocket Launcher: Seeker Rocket, 25 Energy, 1 Ammo
  • Teslator: Overcharge, 5 Energy

v0.9.5174.28256 Release Notes:

• Completely overhauled the menu UI.
• New feature: Map rotation. A dedicated server can now be configured to cycle through a list of maps.
• New feature: Map configuration options. Initial values for variables for a given map can now be optionally set during map rotation on a dedicated server.
• New feature: Variable values now persist between matches. A given match can now affect what happens in future matches.
• Reorganized the log directory structure.
• Integrated Google Breakpad on the client and server to assist in debugging crashes.
• Increased player max walk speed.
• Added a player spawning animation.
• Improved how and when player footstep noises are played.
• Tweaked player movement to prevent getting snapped onto platforms that the player jumps past.
• Fixed a server bug that allowed stale network messages from a previous game to erroneously be handled and used during the current game.
• Fixed a client crash that would happen after restarting a match a few dozen times.
• Fixed a client and server crash that would happen if setting a value for an entity-attached variable in uncommon cases.
• Fixed a client bug that prevented sound effect volume from being properly adjusted after setting it to a new volume in the options menu.
• Fixed a client bug that allowed some sounds to play even if sound effects were muted.
• Fixed a client bug that caused the game to stutter when clicking the Host button in the Play menu.
• Slightly reduced the amount of initialization data needed to be sent to a client connecting to the server.
• Slightly reduced load times on the server.
• Fixed several minor memory leaks on the client.
• Slightly reduced memory usage on the client and server.
• Fixed an uncommon bug that allowed some sounds to not stop playing when loading for the next match.
• Fixed several validation functions that were added in the previous patch.

v0.8.5157.40315 Release Notes:

Many major performance, memory usage, and stability fixes in this patch, as well as a slew of other bug fixes and improvements.

• Fixed an insanely huge memory leak on both the client and server that caused memory usage to increase by as much as 40 mb, or more, on each match restart.
• Reduced the average in-game memory usage of the server by as much as 75% (!!!).
• Significantly reduced the performance cost of creating and destroying terrain on the server.
• Fixed multiple separate server crashes that would occasionally happen if a player disconnected from the game immediately before something happened to that player, including dying, spawning, taking damage, or colliding with another entity.
• Fixed a server crash that would happen when multiple entities had their hit points changed in the same game frame.
• Fixed a server crash that would happen in an uncommon case involving a player selecting a new weapon to equip.
• Fixed a server crash that would happen after the server started a new match 50 or so times.
• Fixed a server bug with player ID's getting registered more than once.
• Fixed a bug that caused most of the rest of the player input to be ignored while pressing the key to clear terrain (thanks Rubber Bullet Gaming!).
• Fixed a bug that caused a player to permanently get stuck in terrain in uncommon cases in areas with low ceilings (thanks Rubber Bullet Gaming!).
• Rewrote part of the entity movement logic to fix a very rare bug that caused a player to permanently get stuck in terrain, unrelated to the other stuck terrain bug.
• Fixed the rocket launcher's firing animation.
• Added effects to widow rifle, shotgun, and hellraiser projectiles.
• Redid the textures for the coral on the Sunken map.
• Hellraiser alt fire no longer digs straight down through destructible terrain, instead digs down on a slight angle.
• Shield powerup no longer destroys black holes or the Hellraiser alt fire.
• Small update to Widow Rifle ammo consumption.
• Fixed the fire trail particles of the Hellraiser alt fire.
• Cleaned up the spikes on the Badlands Arena map.
• Fixed the Clever Girl gun to no longer aim below the cursor.
• Added some additional logging that will aid in future debugging.
• Updated the server log folder structure to be consistent with the client log folder structure.

v0.7.5149.33182 Release Notes:

Lot of new tech in this patch, including being able to create terrain, and a dedicated key to dig yourself back out of it. Several bug fixes and movement improvements were also added.

• Added a new dedicated "clear terrain" key that defaults to left shift which clears out all destructible terrain in an area around the player.
• Added a new prototype weapon, the Bio Gun, to the "Sunken" map that creates dirt with its alternate fire.
• Fixed a bug with some selected options not being properly saved to the config from the dedicated server.
• Fixed a rare weapon selection bug that caused the wrong weapon to appear to be selected after a player spawned if the player happened to be changing weapons exactly when they last died.
• Updated player movement to more smoothly collide with terrain in specific cases.
• Fixed a rare player movement bug that caused players to pop off the terrain and appear to jump when they reached the end of a ledge even though they hadn't actually jumped.
• Made many tech changes and additions in preparation for some upcoming features.

v0.6.5141.6823 Release Notes:

The name of the game for this patch is stability. Changes were mostly to eliminate crashes and other bugs.

• Fixed multiple server crashes. One known rare server crash still remains.
• Fixed multiple client crashes. No known client crashes remain. If one happens, we don't know about it yet. Let us know at bugs@rockwallgames.com!
• Fixed a weapon selection bug that caused an incorrect weapon to automatically be selected when a match ends and the next match begins.
• Fixed a weapon selection bug where "choose next weapon" and "choose previous weapon" were doing a hardcoded check of mouse wheel up and mouse wheel down in addition to their actual key bindings. They just check the actual key bindings now.
• Moved the configuration file from a "Formicide" folder in the user's AppData folder to a "Formicide Demo" folder in the user's Documents folder. This will cause settings to disappear that were saved from the previous patch.
• Fixed a crash upon game initialization in Windows XP (There are still other XP crashes).
• Improved logging support to assist in tracking down issues preventing Formicide from correctly running in Windows XP.
• Changed the sprite draw order to make the "world edge" color draw at a point in the draw order where it no longer covers animations that extend outside the playable terrain bounds.
• Fixed a rare bug with some sounds playing forever if they happened to be playing when the map changed.
• Fixed a bug with a player not being able to rechoose weapons before the first time the player spawned.
• Shield powerup no longer destroys other powerups.
• Slightly increased dirt destruction on several weapons.
• Added a placeholder "Game has ended, starting new game momentarily" message.
• Added a placeholder "Press F1 to change weapons" message.