Defend your colony from the evil red ants! Collect food! Kill things!
Contact me if you would like to help get a Linux build up! The windows build was built on Windows 7, 64 bit, but should be compatible with 32 bit as far as I know. Your milage may vary - let me know if it works for you!
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Development details:
This is my third Ludum Dare, and the first one I have finished. I wanted to use a C++ based game engine, as I am doing a technical job interview in the next few days where C++ is a assessed, and I haven't done any C++ in several years :)
So, that said, I used the Angel game prototyping engine (built for game jams like this). See (http://code.google.com/p/angel-engine/) I've never used it before, but it seems fairly well rounded. The docs are a little out of date though, so digging through source code was necessary. I built the game in 40hrs, finishing with 4hrs to spare.
GIMP was used for graphics, Xcode for programming (Angel engine needs XCode to build on Mac). I used SFXR for sound effects and the music was taken straight from the Angel engine demos.
I wanted to add more functionality: Rain that hurts ants, the ability to travel down the anthill and dig underground, random insect encounters and magnifying-glasses of death, more terrain types (rocks, grass etc) and also more AI functionality (ants will help other ants / communicate where food deposits are). All of these features got cut due to time :)
I'm super stoked to have actually finished this to a point where it works and is fun - a bit of a personal milestone for me :)
Things I learned:
* I HATE XCODE! SOOOO MUCH HATE!!! There were many occasions where a physical bug in Xcode itself would prevent me from being able to build my game. I would have to delete entire methods and re-type them before Xcode would link them correctly.
* Next time, I'll be using a JS-based html5 engine, so it's much easier for people to play and vote :)
* If your game engine supports a scripting language, such as Lua, use it. It will save you a lot of time.
I like it when the entry really tries to play to the theme, and not around it. Creating an awesome platformer with a "tiny world" sprite sheet is awesome, but innovating on gameplay to meet the theme requirements takes a lot more, IMO. Thanks for this. I miss SimAnt :))
I liked collecting the food and finally proving who is superior...that would be blue. It would be nice to have an attack button. I liked the music, AI, and fun factor. Good job!
Gameplay is super smooth and fun, graphics are great, sound is not annoying :) Difficulty is way too easy. My blue ants crushed the reds in 2 minutes with me basically doing nothing at all.
Well made game, the text positioning could've been better but apart from that there's not much I can copmlain about. Nice graphics and music, the leveling system was a good touch too.
Excellent game! Great fun to play :). Victory at commander level with a population of 85. It took ages to track down that last crafty red ant! Anyhow really great entry, amazing you can make that in 48 hours.
Love the music! SimAnt was one of my favorite DOS games back in the day. I wish the movement controls were mouse-based instead of WASD; it was strange seeing all of the other ants moving in straight lines while I had to move at 45° or 90° angles.
Wow! Love the whole sim-rpg concept. Could have kept playing this game for quite a long time ^_^ . Nice controls - wouldn't mind seeing this one expanded on. - Cheers!
this is a great concept - it's a shame you had to cancel those features you wanted to implement
I really enjoyed being an ant :D it induced some "hey, don't hit my buddy!" feeling - being like a big brother for all the ants, which got even better since the player becomes bigger and stronger as the game progresses
Looks cool, unfortunately I can't play it, as I'm on Linux. I'm only posting because your game shows up on my queue when I search for "HTML5" so I need to clear it out. Looking forward to your entry next time! :)
Comments34
Can you share a bit about the development? What tools/frameworks did you use? Where you familiar with them? How well did it work out?
Fun game here.
I won with only encountering 1 red ant, I must try again !
Or the Windows build, I guess ;)
I have always loved the fact of just controlling one player of a team, and the rest controlled by the AI. (Like in my game)
It could have been a bit more difficult.
Difficulty is way too easy. My blue ants crushed the reds in 2 minutes with me basically doing nothing at all.
Overall a great game!
Nice graphics and music, the leveling system was a good touch too.
I really enjoyed being an ant :D
it induced some "hey, don't hit my buddy!" feeling - being like a big brother for all the ants, which got even better since the player becomes bigger and stronger as the game progresses
*ahem*
And the game was pretty good too!