AntWars

Category	Rank	Score	Count
Coolness	1171

tehskull 2012-08-28 18:59

Can't seem to get anything to happen...
I hit Space bar a bunch to get ants to spawn, but that never happens.

gaeel 2012-08-30 14:24

I'm giving you a big 5 in Innovation, because I like the idea, and it reminds me of SimAnts, which has a similar feel. And I think this game could make for something great.

Now obviously, this game is far from feature complete, it would have been nice for there to be at least one more thing to do, like another swarm of ants or even just one big tough bug to kill, and some kind of victory condition based on doing it.

A few suggestions for a future version:
- Make the upgrade controls mouse driven (keyboard shortcuts are cool, but with a game this simple, why not just have an small array of buttons at the bottom)
- Make it so upgrades are free, but ants with lots of upgrades cost more to build.
- Have it so we can make more than one kind of ant, saved as "presets"
- Communicate with the player more, maybe have the ants scuttle around when they don't have orders yet, it's hard to see that the ants are under the flag.
- Allow selection of multiple ants.
- Work on the pathfinding AI, make ants use pre-existing tunnels to get where they're going

I hope you make a more feature complete version of this, I have a feeling that something good can be made with this simple mechanic.

garygreen 2012-09-02 21:25

I really like the idea of the game - it's a shame you didn't have more time to finish it. I managed to control the ants some of the time, but I wasn't sure though why some of my ants vanished. Did they die?

wukkopi 2012-09-06 13:24

Thanks for your comments and improvement suggestions.
TehSkull: Ants does spawn right beneath the flag, and it can be quite hard to spot them.
Gaeel: I struggled a lot with pathfinding (A* doesn't quite like when it is given this much cells (pixel = cell) to check). Also i didn't have any upgrading code done when there was only 10 hours left and I was very tired by that time too. So I rushed with keys :).
I'm not planning to improve this prototype further, but I'll definitely will redesign and rewrite from scratch (when i have more spare time).
garygreen: Basic idea I tried to get here was that, ants will live for a certain amount of time. And while they'd be alive they should collect food so you can make stronger and faster ants which in turn can gather more food in their lifetime.

Once more, thanks for you constructive comments.

rawbits 2012-09-11 16:31

Nothing happens no matter how I try except hover over shows some text and clicking shows a circle.

tomhunt 2012-09-12 03:51

It's an interesting idea, and I can kinda see how it fits in with the evolution theme. It seems like it could have benefited from a sharper focus on some core activity (i.e. make ants -> gather food -> "evolve" -> repeat). The keyboard controls seem kinda all over the place.