[OUTDATED!] Formicarium Trap-jaws, Melee Rufas, etc.

Have you ever wanted to use Trap-jaws, Melee Wood Ants, or Leaf-Cutter Medias in your Formicarium? Well, now you can! Using the magic of save-editing and a little help from an extra level, you can now play the unplayable! This guide will walk you through the process of obtaining these ants.

Disclaimer

This method is not only outdated, but also incredibly inflexible. It was meant to be a shortcut method of save editing, so that players don't need to Hex Edit to do stuff like add and remove ants.

Unfortunately, this method required total precision, so if someone tried to do it but accidentally missed a single space, for example, the save wouldn't load.

Because of that, I do *not* recommend trying it yourself. Even if it does still work (which I'm fairly certain it doesn't), if you mess up you will lose your save unless you can figure out what went wrong.

After the Fire Ant update releases, I plan to make a better guide that will show how to add change the ants you have unlocked into other species, since that doesn't require you to add a new entry to the save file (which is how most game-breaking typos and mistakes are made when doing this method). But unfortunately, since a lot of the upcoming ants are already present in the game files (albeit in an unfinished state), I can't show that method until after they release, otherwise people would have access to them earlier than planned (which is bad for the game's development).

If I had a better understanding of why save files are written like they are, I would also make a guide on adding new entries to a colony (thus allowing you to exceed the normal number of ant species you can use). But since I don't, I have to rely on shortcut methods like the outdated one shown in this guide, which as I've come to learn, are very risky and can easily break a player's save file if they make any mistakes.

If someones save is ruined by one of my methods, regardless of why, I don't want to be the one who caused it. So that's why I won't be posting any guides on shortcut methods like this - I need people to know what they're doing before they try it, at least partially.

If for whatever reason you are editing a save file - no matter what it is you are doing - make sure you back it up! You can do this simply by making a copy of the save file itself, and putting it somewhere safe - that's all up to you. That way, if you mess something up, you can just paste the backup back into your save folder (make sure you rename it to the be the same as the file you're editing when you do, that way it actually gets replaced). Sure - it's an extra file, so it'll take up storage space - but take it from me, if you mess something up, and you don't know how to fix it, you're going to want a backup to revert it to. Otherwise, you'll have to recreate the save from scratch, which usually takes more effort than just doing the campaign all over again to get back to where you were.

With that, I digress. You may keep on reading this guide, or whatever else. I don't want to make this longer than it has to be.

Prerequisites

Before we can begin, you must meet the following requirements:

1) You must be able to play the Extra Level "Extremis" (previously known as "Holdout Extreme"). If it isn't released by the time you're reading this, then fast-forward your clock (tested to work on the day of 7/20/2020) to when it is. Yes, it works, and no, you don't need to update. Most extra levels are added to the game early but are hidden until their proper release (similar to the "Babysitting" extra level).

2) You must have already unlocked (in Extremis) all ants you want to add to your Formicarium. To do this, play the level (you may have to lose a few times) until you've gotten enough points to do so. Alternatively, you can edit your points via a Save Editor[www.saveeditonline.com].

3) You must have a text editor capable of copying binary text. This is necessary to copy code. The best one (from my experience, anyway) is Notepad++. Go look it up.

4) Backup Your Save Files. This guide only works if things are performed exactly right, and will prevent you from reusing your save if you mess up (trust me, I lost a lot of saves figuring this out).

Step 1 - Copying the Data

Alright, with that aside, it's time to begin. Navigate to your save folder and take the following steps:

• Open the file "ExtremeHoldOutProgress.sav" in Notepad++. This is the progress data for Extremis. Now that you've unlocked the ants you want while playing in the level, their data should be stored here.
  
  
• Find the lines of code for the ants you want. Each segment should start with three "NUL" characters (tested in Notepad++) followed by "bANT", where "ANT" is the name of the ant in the code (for example, "bTrapjaw"), and few then a few more nonsense characters followed by "BoolProperty" and a few more characters. Select the segments you want, beginning at the three "NUL" characters and ending just before the next segment's three "NUL" characters.
  
  
• Use the "Copy Special" tab to "Copy Binary Content". Normal copy and paste will NOT work, because the 'nonsense characters' must also be copied and they will not be if you try to copy them normally.

That's all you need to do in that file. Next, we need to get the data into the colony itself.

Step 2 - Transplanting (pasting) the data

Now that you've got the data copied to clipboard, return to your save directory and open the save file of the colony you want to edit in Notepad++. (Do not open the "LevelData" ones, because they're not even related to the ant selection). Be sure to backup your save data, because if you make a mistake, your save file will break! (Also, if you mess up bad enough, you might not be able to load any other Formicariums, either, due to some unknown error. The game will just freeze on pressing the "Load Formicarium" button.)

Next, take the following steps:

• Paste the data into a new line in your save file before the two segments at the bottom labeled "none" but after the segment labeled "ColonyData".

When I did this, I copied the black ants data from the Extremis save as well, then used that to replace the black ants data in the colony save. This ensured that I wouldn't make as many errors. If you don't know what I mean by this, then don't try it. Please.

Step 3 - Have Fun!

Enjoy your new ants!

A few notes:

• Ants you add will indeed work in Freeplay.
  
• Leafcutter Medias will still say that they store fungus, but in actuality they don't really do anything beyond serving as a stronger fighter.

Files & Useful Links

• Save File Example (Replaces your 7th colony, so back it up first!) - https://www.dropbox.com/s/pj2plrwu25nc90g/Colony7.sav?dl=0

TODO

• Add more screenshots.

[TheRexYo]

Glad you pulled it off, make sure you remind people to backup their saves. Otherwise you'll end up in the same position I was in.

[AntBZK]

I finaly get little black ants and bigheaded ants. I'll share a guide (based on this guide) on the official discord this weekend. Just like you said, it's very simple when you get the pattern. All you need to do is copy-pasting. No fear of data leaking because they are all from save files.

[TheRexYo]

@shmowpow Nope. I don't memorize this stuff, and the last time I played the game was over 6 months ago.

[TheRexYo]

@Krissey Not that I'm aware of

[shmowpow]

Do you know the Hex for Bigheaded ants and Little black ants?

[Krissey]

Is there any way that we can give the bonus stats from the royal jelly to other ants by messing with the code? I'm trying and so far no result.

[TheRexYo]

Mainly because this isn't like a simple text file, there's a lot of garbage text that you actually have to disect in a Hex Editor, not to mention a bunch of other Unreal Engine weirdness.

[TheRexYo]

It's a bit more complicated than that.

[TheRexYo]

That's fair. I will likely be making a tutorial on it down the line because I don't see the developers adding a way to get these species in the Formicarium, so when that happens if I can find a way to make it sensible for most peeps you can always check here then. It's a long ways off though, the developers haven't confirmed or denied the possibility yet.

[Krissey]

But since it may leak the info for the Tier 5 ant, it is fine if you decide not to say anything about it