I noticed that idle ants especially around the queen tend to run around A LOT, this obviously puts quite some strain on the system (especially due to the constant pathfinding).
The thing is - it's not necessary. Idle ants don't run around. Actually they will basically stay in place until they have to make room for another ant coming it's way.
Here's some videos of my own ants where you can actually see how little overall movement the idle ants perform:
So my suggestion is make idle ants move less (=stay in place most of the time) and instead add some idle animations like ants cleaning themselves (I can make some videos of ants cleaning themselves, my majors do that a lot). These idle animations could even be toggled off for further increased performance on weaker systems.
p.s. If you could make a tropholaxis animation of two nearby idle ants feeding each other that would be awesome and really add to the atmosphere of the game.
The thing is - it's not necessary. Idle ants don't run around. Actually they will basically stay in place until they have to make room for another ant coming it's way.
Here's some videos of my own ants where you can actually see how little overall movement the idle ants perform:
So my suggestion is make idle ants move less (=stay in place most of the time) and instead add some idle animations like ants cleaning themselves (I can make some videos of ants cleaning themselves, my majors do that a lot). These idle animations could even be toggled off for further increased performance on weaker systems.
p.s. If you could make a tropholaxis animation of two nearby idle ants feeding each other that would be awesome and really add to the atmosphere of the game.