FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD48 → Ants Are Awesome

Ants Are Awesome

By indigowolf

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall4283.4842
Fun3783.4342
Innovation2493.5940
Theme4623.5542
Graphics5933.1842
Audio2
Humor3592.6837
Mood5143.1339

Comments

konect 2021-04-26 05:38

This game need graphic improve and I can't listen the sound so that's why I put one,but I love the goal

sinusquell 2021-04-26 10:39

This is a lot for a compo game. Comgratulations :)

james-gillespie 2021-04-26 10:47

There is a lot to love about this, with a bit more work it could be something quite cool. Would love to play a more complete and polished version of this.

anthonyharmitage 2021-04-26 13:40

You've achieved pretty much in such short timespan, good work!

northerndonut 2021-04-26 13:41

Fab little game, love the artwork

madelfino 2021-04-26 13:48

As a big fan of RTS games, I think this is an awesome entry. Would definitely love to play a move fleshed out version but a fun quick game to play still. I did run into an error on my second playthrough after my initial defeat:

___________________________________________ ############################################################################################ ERROR in action number 1 of Draw Event for object oUI:

Unable to find any instance for object index '12' name 'oTunnelBlueprint' at gml_Object_oUI_Draw_64 ############################################################################################ gml_Object_oUI_Draw_64 (line -1)

machrom 2021-04-26 13:49

You've done a lot in a small amount of time. Loved seeing the ants work, I would love if the mouse could be held down instead of constantly clicking.

Great job!

indigowolf 2021-04-26 13:52

@madelfino Thanks for highlighting it, I believe I know the cause. I found an issue last minute before submission and put in a quick work around by manually placing a dummy object but the work around will only work on relaunch rather than restart. An oversight on my part. Glad you enjoyed it though, if I hadn't wasted 12 hours messing with the auto generation I had a lot more ideas to implement. Maybe in the future.

indigowolf 2021-04-26 13:53

@machrom Yeah, that was something I was going to go back to but ran out of time. Thanks for playing!

twowolf 2021-04-26 13:55

Ants ARE awesome. Unforunately...

d.png

This happend three times, Otherwise great game will wonderful potential.

indigowolf 2021-04-26 14:01

@twowolf Does this occur randomly after restart or immediately?

twowolf 2021-04-26 14:20

@indigowolf It happened about randomly. More than about 5 minutes in each time.

indigowolf 2021-04-26 14:25

@twowolf Thanks, I believe it is fixed now. Thanks for the help.

twowolf 2021-04-26 14:38

@indigowolf Is it? Thanks, I'll try it out again

azagaya 2021-04-26 15:50

Cool game! When i read "colony game" i thought "he had an ambitious scope" haha. I liked the result. I would love to play it again with some sound! Well done!

oysuta 2021-04-26 15:57

Big fan of these kinds of games, kudos for trying something this tough for a compo... and having anything at all to show for it! Others may disagree, but I kind of love the aesthetic, it's quite nostalgic.

I didn't manage to accomplish much... I dug into my neighbor's house but then they came and ate my queen.

afroant 2021-04-26 16:22

Holy Lag, Ant-Man! It took me awhile to notice what minerals were. Loved the throne art! I couldn't defeat the last queen before accidentally running out of minerals :( You don't see a working RTS made in 48 hours everyday. Great job!

indigowolf 2021-04-26 16:35

@afroant I'm guessing you had quite a few ants :') I originally started out trying to make nice clean optimised path finding and generating... Then I looked at the clock and next thing you know every single tile and is being checked every frame.

panzershrek 2021-04-26 17:29

It took me a while to figure out how the game work, but it's kinda cool ! Very impressive to see a startegy game in compo. Well done man

chris-delta 2021-04-26 17:59

I had some fun fighting the first enemy queen, and watching my preposterous army of ants stream through the tunnels to wherever they're going, and I actually lost despite my insane numbers because I picked a poor spot to attack from, which exceeded my expectations of the strategic depth of a game where you don't control your units directly.

If might have been more strategically interesting if you got fewer ants (making digging more costly instead of instant) and if minerals/gold spawned in clusters (giving meaningful places to dig towards and potential points of conflict). As well, I'm really not a fan of the art, though I understand it's more utilitarian than properly stylistic; I personally dislike pixel art that doesn't align to pixel boundaries, and as well a lot of colors blend where they shouldn't or contrast where they shouldn't.

A small oversight that I won't rate based on, the mineral cost of mining means that you can soft lock the game by running out of minerals.

indigowolf 2021-04-26 18:18

@chris-delta Thanks for the awesome detailed feedback. You're absolutely spot on. I was way too ambitious with my original idea and ended up wasting tons of time with path finding and enemy tunnel generation. I also realised the soft-lock issue right before submission but was so sick of staring at my disgusting code I couldn't face going back in.

greg-the-egg 2021-04-26 18:52

I'm a huge fan of the genre. Sim Ants, Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, the indirect strategy/management sims. It's really impressive the system that you were able to come up with in the 48 hour time limit.

At the moment, it's missing a lot of QoL things that a modern Sim Ants would have. For example, click and drag digging.

However, the core gameplay and system are great, and I hope that you keep working on this project.

ancooper 2021-04-26 19:53

Сool game, but I still haven't figured out how it works. My ants don't attack the enemy queen. :thumbsup:

slimabob 2021-04-26 19:53

WOW! This is really impressive for the time allotted! The AI is a decent challenge and it's a lot of fun to watch the ants stream into the enemy base! The ants exploding into blood clouds when dead was a great touch! I thought I had beaten the game when I killed the first queen, only to pan down to see an entire enemy ant kingdom had sprung up while I was struggling against my neighbors! Great job on the game!! :v:

kadams 2021-04-26 20:07

Had a lot of fun, the mechanics weren't super clear to me but I think I got the hang of it.

indigowolf 2021-04-26 20:14

@ancooper Strange, I'd not encountered that, it could be that they are trying to focus a single enemy soldier that isn't accessible or visible as the graphics do all kinda blend together unfortunately. For the most part it's just a case of building a tunnel to the enemy queen and they should attack eventually.

indigowolf 2021-04-26 20:14

@slimabob Thanks, I appreciate the feedback!

gibss 2021-04-26 20:52

Solid AI work, figuring out what each building did is a bit of a challenge but I don't think too much is missing. Just a bit of text to explain what a building does for instance.

dragonsbeardgames 2021-04-26 23:14

Great game, I love ant simulator games. Had a lot of fun with this one, though kind of got soft locked as I ran out of minerals.

too-lazy-cat 2021-04-27 01:03

A little bit confusing at first but plays great! Loving it!

adam-wilks 2021-04-27 03:38

Very interesting game. Coincidentally I also made an ant colony game for the compo, but I think you were able to put more game mechanics in the allotted time. Interesting to see the different ways it can be done. I had the player controlling the individual ants, but I think controlling the general shape of the colony without controlling individual units allows the player to be less overwhelmed. This is something I struggled with in my own game.

I also liked that your game had an interesting resource management and combat component. It gave the game direction.

Really liked the graphical style. Great job overall!

lorwon 2021-04-27 08:13

I have an ant colony at home ! I love your game good job :) (even if I do not know why but my ants will not attack the other queen :/)

venezia 2021-04-27 09:51

This was a lot of fun :) One of the games I spent the most time with so far. I'm absolutely terrible at it, and the objective took me a bit to figure out, but enjoyed it thoroughly and would play again if it gets fleshed out someday! Great job!

retrome 2021-04-27 13:46

Nice game! Pretty fun to manage actions. The graphics are good enough to distinguish friends from enemies.

Game need fixes on building: 1. You can spend resources on blueprints where no blueprints are built. Expectation: noting happens when there is blueprint or empty cell under cursor. 2. Sometimes blueprints are built instead of barracks. Expectation: barracks are built when barracks are chosen to be built.

Good entry!

vincent-abel-grimalt 2021-04-27 15:26

Very nice Game, and actually at whole lot for a compo ! Good job @indigowolf

lone-wolf 2021-04-27 16:11

Nice game fellow wolf! I enjoyed this a lot once I figured out how everything worked. Would love to see more buildables like a gate that your warriors guard and a wall that enemy miners can't mine (Might need some thought put into it to keep game balance)

At one point I had been playing for so long that there where literal millions of ants and I was starting to get serious FPS drop (And my PC isn't on the slow end of the spectrum). Maybe every 50 or so ants could merge into a bigger ant?

@retrome you probably didn't have the required resources for the barracks, you need 500 mineral and 50 gold IIRC

indigowolf 2021-04-27 16:34

@lone-wolf thanks for playing! The FPS drops really bad eventually, due to the short time the pathfinding and auto generation had to be hacked together in the most inefficient way imaginable.

retrome 2021-04-27 16:38

@lone-wolf, thanks for the clarification! I think minerals were lost on accidental blueprint right before building barrack. Don't remember exactly amount but I felt like resources were enough. I'll try be more clear: expectations were to build blueprints only when blueprints are chosen and only barracks are built when they are chosen to be built.

anton-savinov 2021-04-27 17:17

Didn't expect to sink so much time into a compo game about ants. Amazing job!

indigowolf 2021-04-27 18:57

@retrome yeah, sorry about that, when you run out of materials for barracks it defaulted to the blueprint for some reason. It was a little bit of an oversight honestly, i only threw in the building last minute.

nyanpierre 2021-04-28 03:09

Really nice game !

jimbly 2021-04-28 14:02

This game is AAA! Definitely ambitious, but it's a nice little simulation, it is fun to watch the ants run around. I played a few times, and thought I was going to win my third game but apparently they opened a secret passage right to my queen and killed her rather quickly... their queen died seconds after the "defeat" screen showed up, so at least we both got wiped out...

I would have liked a little more to do (maybe set rally points for the warriors?), and being able to drag-place the dig order would have helped a lot, I think.

indigowolf 2021-04-28 14:10

@jimbly Thanks for the feedback bud, I am planning to start work on a post compo version built from the ground up with the intention of supporting multiplayer, so everyone's feedback helps.

beats 2021-04-29 06:00

Feels like AOE with ants, I see alot of potential, however more instructions would be useful and the enemy was way to OP when attacking the base, also felt like I was in and out of control of the player ants at times. I feel the game would be much more fun with a bit more balance and control.

strangeryann 2021-04-30 15:39

It's a shame it's a bit confusing I got stuck at that part dinn quite attack the enemy queen ant for some reason dinn really the building selection menu - like how you choose what building you wanna build next is? same with plain digging - i gotta use up a ressource building that blue time in order to get more ressources from the ground and then I can build more rooms? got me scratching my head a bit ^^#

11_fourmis_2.png

with controlling the ants you feel like you're playing "against" rather than "using" the system ^^# the ants digging are pretty satisfying tho lacks a tutorial imo - even if just on the itch.io page yknow nice work tho - looking forward what U cook up in 6 months :-D

bereg 2021-05-02 13:59

The potential of this game is great. The type of indirect control is perfect. I loved watching ants trying hard to fulfill my demands. Of course, the game desperately needs polishing and balancing. Also, a proper tutorial would be great. But overall, it's a cool concept and it has everything to transform into a fully commercial game. Congratulations!

indigowolf 2021-05-02 15:22

@bereg Thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it. I've already started on rebuilding it from the ground up with the intention of hopefully bringing a fully fleshed out end product to life.

shigor 2021-05-09 21:48

That screen shaking when you try to scroll too much to any side is intended? Made my eyes hurt a bit...

tomssuli 2021-05-27 20:24

Nice work with the AI for this little of time! I'd like to see an advanced edition of this game as I loved Sim Ant back in the day :)