Entomologist here; for farming I’d suggest drawing inspiration from real life cases: some ant species farm and protect aphids that feed on sap from live plants and release sugar which the ants feed on. Other interesting farming case is the renowned leaf cutter ants which cut fresh leaves and flowers and use them to feed a special fungus which in turn produces protein that the ants harvest. And there’s a family of Asian ants that deliberately cultivate a kind of plant that grows on trees and make shelter and food for the ants.
As an ant enthusiast, I love this!! 😂 Cultivation of leaves, flowers, and fungi could also add a lot of colour-and brings things back around to that original terrarium concept!
Oooh, going forward with that type of thing in mind, many membracids also have nymphs which ants facultatively farm for honeydew. In game, there could be some migrating membracid inspired animals that will have nymphs in an area which act as a temporary food source, disappearing as the nymphs grow into adults and fly away. This would be a fun way to have a temporary, energy rich food source players can attempt to take advantage of.
i think you should change the color of the pheromone trails based on what type of ant it is. Like archers have a different color pheromone trail than the basic ants.
Maybe a bit much if too many different colors are used. I would maybe suggest having a small quantity of categories. So for example, work/gathering related be one color, and combat based ants have their own color. Can help you identify your warriors path quickly which I figure is important for something like combat emergencies. Only way to know for sure is through trial and error.
My worry about this, is I'm going to add more terrain types like sand and mud. And the pheromones have to stand out against all backgrounds, so I'm not sure how much leeway I have for colors
This is starting to look so exciting! I recommend looking at both StarCraft and Pikmin for ideas. The campaign could have so many varied maps: - Conquer an enemy base - Hold out against a tide of enemies - Explore a cave and return some cool artifacts to your lair - Defend a weaker ant colony - Solve a tough fight with limited resources - Avoid special hazards unique to the map, like periodic floods, wind or unkillable anteaters - Capture the flag - Fight a boss with unique mechanics - Tower defense - Control both the overground and the underground - Get back before dark when the monsters come ... you are gonna make a campaign, right?
A campaign system has weirdly not yet been mentioned afaik! Pikmin has of course been one of the first sources discussed for the antlings and the enemies.
Lovely. A few suggestions on Victory condition? Maybe the win condition is to gather enough of specific items in order to grow a new Queen, which will eventually leave the nest to fly away and start a new colony somewhere else. It seems to me that the entire purpose of these adorable ant creatures is to expand their kingdom, and in order to do that they need to prepare the next generation; i.e. the next Queen Ant. And thus, imagine a "world map" where the player picks the location of the next colony, where the Queen Ant will travel to with a small group of workers; and of course, the map will feature biomes with special setbacks and benefits. It would also help if the global difficulty increases with each new colony built. It could also bring a small roguelike element to it, with the chance to unlock new features or improved bonuses as new colonies are built. The true game victory then happens when a global percentage of the "world map" is achieved, like, 90%. By the way, I keep saying "world map", but in fact I'm picturing a playground, or a garden. A very Pikmin thought, if you please. Anyway, adorable game concept so far. Keep it up!
kind of like in "Terra nil" where a zoom out into the world to reclaim. So an animation of a Queen finding a mate and starting a colony, would be a perfect addition to the game.
This honestly feels like it would make a great civilization like game with real time pvp and pve. Almost like clash of clans crossed with BTD and Polytopia.
The tomatoes and bread and stuff could have a reason to be there so something like the tomatoes fall from a tomato plant that grows there and sometimes passing people drop things, this could lead to further locations with different foods and enemies and other benefits/deficits. You could also include that in the day to day cycle so that every time a day passes a couple tomatoes fall or maybe have a random chance that a person drop some food or resources. edit: Another cool addition is the chance for raindrops to fall with some special use.
I think it would be really cool if there were ants that couldn't do damage but instead they could carry a big leave over their heads as a sheild for the other ants. Maybe enimies could be programmed to target thise first. The ants could line up and when maybe 5 are ready they could get a leaf (You can experience with diffrent amounts of ants to balance the game) The leaf could have a visual representation of how much healt it has left. Very nice video!
You should add walls as an extra line of defense against large hoards of enemies, but also a burrowing enemy that can dig under them to keep players on their toes. Also a dung beetle that launches its ball like a trebuchet or ballista would also be cool.
Maybe steer the game towards a age of empire like game, where other ant colonies exist and fight each other for ressources, so you have to expand and defend parts of your land against the others. And if you really want then you can make an all out attack to kill the queen.
This is looking great so far! I'm wary about the money system you mentioned - having a building system that just requires you to get money and then plop down new buildings seems uninspired and doesn't really dovetail into any of the existing systems. Perhaps you could connect buildings into the wood and clay resources instead - you place down a blueprint, which then requests a certain amount of wood and clay. If there are no woodhuts or potteries with the appropriate resources, its ants just try to gather those resources from the closest natural source instead. Thus you can build without specifically collecting those resources, but it's more efficient to actually collect them and stockpile them for when you want to slap down some buildings quickly. I also had the thought that you *could* add an extra step to the larvae production chain by having the Castle produce *eggs* instead of larvae, which then have to be incubated in a Castle or Nursery to become larvae. The Castle would produce eggs very quickly, up to a certain cap, but the rate at which it turns an egg into a larva is quite slow, meaning you'd need more nurseries to up your production of larvae. In practice this would be very similar, but it'd be a little bit more realistic, and would also mean you couldn't put down a nursery on the opposite side of the map and have it produce larvae out of nowhere - any larvae production has to have a secure logistic route to your castle, giving you more routes to worry about and forcing the player to keep their base relatively compact without placing an arbitrary limit on where they can build. One thing I will suggest for food is that you imitate how real ants have a "crop" - a sort of special food store in their gut - and when another ant is hungry any nearby ant will feed them from their crop. This means you don't have to make all the ants go eat individually, instead food can radiate out through the populace, being passed on from ant to ant, centred on your food production. Regardless, I'm interested in seeing how things progress from here!
Im in love with this idea. Reminds me of one of my favorite youtubers AntCanada. This idea of indirectly controlling the ants by directly controlling the environment.
In my opinion, you are a true Indie Game Dev, with trully unique and original ideas and projects, in the contrary of a lot of content we see these days. As a biologist and ant lover, I always dreamed about a good ant-like game, there is so much potential for those little wonders ! I planned to make it myself since I have a bachelor degree in video game devlopement but I lack the time and the coding skills, so maybe I'll share my ideas with you instead !
When planning how to communicate enemy resistances and vulnerabilities, it might be useful to take inspiration from a game like Lobotomy Corporation. In Lobotomy Corporation, there are four damage types, and any creature in the game can have a range from 0-2 that represents how they react to that damage type. 1.0 means they react to it normally, 2.0 means they take double damage, 0.0 means their immune, and 0.6 means they only take 60% of the damage.(resist 40%) In Lobotomy Corporation, each enemy also has a dedicated page, sort of like a coded entry to communicate important things and story stuff. I think it would be cool, in this aspect, to have a codex, from an “adventurer ant” that allows you to right click on an enemy to open up their entry on the side of the screen that includes important information like their resistances and vulnerabilities, and a short text blurb about them as a creature. I think it would all go a long way to making the world feel more alive, and it’s pretty modular so it can expand as your project does.
These devlogs are extremely satisfying to watch. From the subtle music, to the crispy and cute visual style, to even your speaking voice. Really makes for a relaxing and entertaining video that I look forward to each time you post.
Still need a victory to aim for, a goal, some purpose. That will inform your design choices. I really like the exploratory nature of ant colonies - maybe do migratory ants? Starting with one colony (castle) and looking for the next place to set up chop and protect your Queen while she is (slowly) migrating into the next colony from the old one. Sounds like a fun, ever-changing Tower Defense with additional mechanics to me!
You should make specialized buildings for enemy parts. Beetles would give upgrades to the (not honey)pot ants, lasting longer, and maybe even having a chance to not use a durability on hit. Not sure for flies and slugs, but having an enemy similar to your ants that fight as a colony(probably termites, a whiter version) to get their supplies and maybe some other rarer items as well.
I'm sure people have pointed this out to you already, but Microtopia released a demo on Steam recently. Quite different in some aspects, but they do pathing to manage your ants and some other elements in an interesting fashion.
Ideas for development of the game: 1. As the ammount of buildings grows the visual distonction is guing to get harder. Maybe try adding slight bits of other colours depending on building role for example red for military, darker brown for crafting etc. 2. Adding resource progresion Clay could be the most basic resource, then using clay bakery you could turn it into baked clay neded for more advanced crafting buildings. Clay mixed with red flowers(as it seems you will add more plants to the game) could give you red clay, and red clay then put into clay bakery would give you red baked clay used for military buildings. This would add nice simple chains of resources serving as currencies. Clay > baked clay Clay > red clay > red baked clay This would also add more resources without adding more building because bakery would make and store both types of baked clay. 3. I think it would look cooler if nurseries crafted ants the same way military building do. 4. Weapon: clay bombs that could be made of baked clay, wood and red flower. They would deal area damage with the drawback being that the bomb cap per building would be 3 (instead of other warrior type ants cap of 10) and their crafing being more advanced. Their role would be countering big crowds of weak enemies(perhaps oposing colony in the far future?) 5. Production buildings. Their recognisable colour could be slight blue, thus adding blue flower, blue clay and blue baked clay. Again expanding chain without addind too many buildings. As oposed to crafting buildings they would slowly produce specific resources after initial investment. So mines/ farms this would let you turn down resource respawn rates also the blue flowers could be really rare or even limited(not respanwning at all or doing so very slowly) thus pressuring players into expanding/exploring further in search of these blue flowers. 6. Obstacles, you already made the pathfinding so maybe add some sort of unbreakable walls to path around. These could have a brakable parts that would be possible to attack and break( bomb could deal bonus damage to them) 7. Have fun and good luck with the development!
Something I always like to see in city building games like these is leveling up the city hall or central building, unlocking more buildings, upgrades, or resources. That might also be a good way to ease players into the mechanics of the game and scale enemy difficulty.
From what I've understood, you have three main types of buildings, and I'm not sure what this separation serves: - The Castle and Nursery come with their own ants, and can be ordered to gather food along a path, which produces larvae, which they automatically distribute. - The Wood and Pottery stations must be provided larvae before they can operate, and can be ordered to gather one type of resource along a path, which they automatically distribute. - The Archery and Armory stations must be provided larvae before they can operate, and can be ordered to spend a resource along a path (i.e. spend ammo to defend an area) The one thing that seems odd to me is how worker ants are abstracted away, yet larvae are a resource. There also doesn't seem to be much of a point to the castle/nursery distinction. I'm curious to see where the design will go next, especially considering the shape of the colony will be influenced by the way resource gathering and pipelining of resources works.
An additional mechanic for the enemies could be they attack nearby ants on their path to the castle. Ants who are killed would need to be replaced with more larva at their home building. This also could lead to more variety in enemy types by modifying how much they will prefer to attack nearby ants vs beelining to the castle
I do like the new bow color and I think it would be good to use the clay as a building resource so when you build it the ants grab the resources and haul it to the building location. Another unit that would be good is making a worker ant that specializes in building,harvesting, and hauling.
For victory conditions I think you could lean into the eta side of the game and have an enemy computer attack with an ant colony that you are fighting for territory. And in the future you can have multiple species of ants to choose from like fire ants, carpenter ants, weaver ants and more.
as someone who loves base building, i'd love leafcutter ants who add "fences" made of leaves so if there is a wave of enemies they can either be halted, slowed, or atleast funneled. I know that would end up making this a bit of a tower defense game but I don't think that is a particularly bad idea, i think if you have enough unique types of ants/buildings, and perhaps enough types of terrain or obstacles, perhaps even seasons? ocassional challenges? then itll keep the game dynamic enough to be more than just building and defending.
The game is looking great so far! It's very pleasant to the eye and the mechanics so far are easy to understand and interesting to play around with. Can't wait to see how it turns out and eventually play it!
A cool Idea for the enemies would be that they all target different things, for example the slugs could go straight for the castle but the flies would also attack your units.
I like the idea that the ant-people don't really need money to build things, it's just a nice happy little colony of ants building and defending. But if anyone can make ant-people use money in some way, it's you.
It looks like youre starting to hit your stride! Now that the base concept is decided, you have room to work on features and details. I love the change to the bow color. Im hoping maybe someday there will be multiple colonies with different colored houses! Like a pink flower petals colony vs a green vines colony vs a fall leaves colony.
I have no idea how feasible this is - but adding brightly colored outlines as an accessibility option could be nice. In order to reduce visual clutter, you could even make it so when groups of the same type of ant are huddles together, it only outlines the outside of the group, not every ant individually.
I love the idea but I wonder how this would look if you were to make the buildings and exploration more like Dungeon Keeper? Either way, can't wait to see more!
You should add a carpenter and maybe a refinery that separates minerals from clay to make stone, but since stone is heavy a slight decrease in speed maybe?. An advancement system would be nice too. A cultural menu when (e) or a key is pressed opens showing resources, the colony level, and overall well-being.
I think this is going to become a tradition for me at this point but I shall keep postulating that you bring back the mosslings as some sort of ally/friends to the ants as they were cute and it's sad to part ways with them
I do like this new build that destroys the sources because the last time I played, my map got really crowded with sources and whatnot and I wouldn't be able to build many more if I kept it up. There wasn't any way to get rid of them unless I collapsed them into a bigger unit.
The pot helmet on the ants are quite similar to ants carring pottery around, got me confused for a while. Adding the horns to the helmets could help, but I think the fantasy of the pot head would fail... Hmmmm
I love watching this game develop! Also, i just realized that i wasnt subscribed to you, if anyone else is in my boat, save youself some time and hit the button now rather then later.
1. I think there should be small paths around or connecting the buildings, or a tint, where most of the buildings are, just visually, so that you can more clearly see where the city is. 2. There should be fire ants, or weaver ants as enemies, like they could start a town, and launch attacks at you, though it could be hard to code 3. You should be able to chose what kind of ant you want, like factions with different traits for example bulky ants, that are slower but hit harder, long ants, that carry more resources but have less HP... etc
make another building that converts pots not to warriors, but use the pots as tools to improve hauling capacity. (which becomes more relevant over longer distances and gives a trade-off how to use the resource)
You could have male ants fly in, which can sell you upgrades, maybe new ant types or some sort of meta upgrade like an overall speed boost or carry capacity.
think it could be fun to have opposing ants as an enemy type, should be fairly simple to recolour buildings and ants to fit and have them do raiding parties to try and take over your nest. it would be repetative for the whole game but having it as one of multiple victory conditions would mix up the gameplay decently well.
Idea: Bombardier beetle that fires ranged explosive attacks. They do area damage, but don't do much damage. Devastating for your groups of weak archers, but the durable melee ants, whose attack method causes a bit more spreading out, absolutely dominate these beetles. Just thought it would make for a good way to set up this sort of type-based favorability, without simply editing numbers. You know?
It would be interesting to have building or units upgrades, for example that the ants can move faster or buldings have more resistance. I imagine this game as sort or a survival type of game
regarding weapon types, I think having ranged and melee is best as a dichotomy unrelated to damage type/resistance. Then enemies like flies could have a flying type, that only ranged units can target. This is a very common trope, so I think it would both be intuitive, and increase the dimension space for combat and supply chains. Certain beetles could be phased to fly in, and 'land' near objectives, where they then lose their flying tag. Flying enemies that launch grounded ones, grounded ones that launch flying ones. Perhaps an enemy type walks in, then at an hp threshold it flies away for backup. Perhaps that's significantly too complex, but the point being it opens up a lot of design space for essentially nothing.
Entomologist here; for farming I’d suggest drawing inspiration from real life cases: some ant species farm and protect aphids that feed on sap from live plants and release sugar which the ants feed on. Other interesting farming case is the renowned leaf cutter ants which cut fresh leaves and flowers and use them to feed a special fungus which in turn produces protein that the ants harvest. And there’s a family of Asian ants that deliberately cultivate a kind of plant that grows on trees and make shelter and food for the ants.
I agree, using real-life examples in a game is always a nice detail for people who know a thing or two about nature
As an ant enthusiast, I love this!! 😂 Cultivation of leaves, flowers, and fungi could also add a lot of colour-and brings things back around to that original terrarium concept!
As someone who has a love for ants, yes. I love this aspect of how some ant species evolve, and frankly think this would work greatly mechanically.
Oooh, going forward with that type of thing in mind, many membracids also have nymphs which ants facultatively farm for honeydew. In game, there could be some migrating membracid inspired animals that will have nymphs in an area which act as a temporary food source, disappearing as the nymphs grow into adults and fly away. This would be a fun way to have a temporary, energy rich food source players can attempt to take advantage of.
I love this!
i think you should change the color of the pheromone trails based on what type of ant it is. Like archers have a different color pheromone trail than the basic ants.
he said on the discord that he might do that, but it'd be difficult to make all the colours visible and distinct considering there's no outlines
I think that would be too much visual noise.
Maybe a bit much if too many different colors are used. I would maybe suggest having a small quantity of categories. So for example, work/gathering related be one color, and combat based ants have their own color. Can help you identify your warriors path quickly which I figure is important for something like combat emergencies.
Only way to know for sure is through trial and error.
@@merccc1 i like this idea. color based on role. i like doing this in the colony games i can do it in.
My worry about this, is I'm going to add more terrain types like sand and mud. And the pheromones have to stand out against all backgrounds, so I'm not sure how much leeway I have for colors
5:01 mom im on tv
what
@@jaxpianoteacher I'm literally the guy in the picture
dude that suggestion was really nice :) i really liked how the design tourned out
Congrats son.
@@bolognesa777 thanks
I think a fire ant would be a great way of introducing a little bit of magic in the game, and have more rock paper scissors for the combat
now i want him to add these XD
Like... FIRE ant
Smart
Oh you mean fire fire ant
alternatively chemical warfare
I like that the attacks are just less effective, rather than the enemies being immune to certain attacks.
Ants should also have a "chemical" or "acid" damage type. I mean, they're ants...
Well they are ant *people*, and using chemical damage would kinda go against the idea of crafting
maybe some kind of brew that makes their spit dangerous or something
Maybe they could get drops from slugs or wasps and use that for poison arrows. Also they were gonna be added I think but decided on arrows
@@thewizardslime6764 Many ants farm various other organisms, maybe the ant people have domesticated bombardier beetles?
You could have an alchemist’s hut which turns clay, slug slime and wasp stingers into toxin grenades for some aoe DoT type effect
I love the visual of Chucking a bay into an archery range to make them into archers lmao
"You will be a soldier"
Slow but steady we're getting Age of Antpire
This is starting to look so exciting! I recommend looking at both StarCraft and Pikmin for ideas. The campaign could have so many varied maps:
- Conquer an enemy base
- Hold out against a tide of enemies
- Explore a cave and return some cool artifacts to your lair
- Defend a weaker ant colony
- Solve a tough fight with limited resources
- Avoid special hazards unique to the map, like periodic floods, wind or unkillable anteaters
- Capture the flag
- Fight a boss with unique mechanics
- Tower defense
- Control both the overground and the underground
- Get back before dark when the monsters come
... you are gonna make a campaign, right?
A campaign system has weirdly not yet been mentioned afaik!
Pikmin has of course been one of the first sources discussed for the antlings and the enemies.
PIKMIN
when I was in the discord I recommended something similar and specifically looks at SC for inspiration
we are either both smart or both dumb
Lovely. A few suggestions on Victory condition? Maybe the win condition is to gather enough of specific items in order to grow a new Queen, which will eventually leave the nest to fly away and start a new colony somewhere else. It seems to me that the entire purpose of these adorable ant creatures is to expand their kingdom, and in order to do that they need to prepare the next generation; i.e. the next Queen Ant.
And thus, imagine a "world map" where the player picks the location of the next colony, where the Queen Ant will travel to with a small group of workers; and of course, the map will feature biomes with special setbacks and benefits. It would also help if the global difficulty increases with each new colony built.
It could also bring a small roguelike element to it, with the chance to unlock new features or improved bonuses as new colonies are built.
The true game victory then happens when a global percentage of the "world map" is achieved, like, 90%. By the way, I keep saying "world map", but in fact I'm picturing a playground, or a garden. A very Pikmin thought, if you please.
Anyway, adorable game concept so far. Keep it up!
i hope this gets implemented, its a really good idea!
kind of like in "Terra nil" where a zoom out into the world to reclaim. So an animation of a Queen finding a mate and starting a colony, would be a perfect addition to the game.
1) Have you tought about adding drops from enemies?
2) Will you add enemies with ranged atacks?
I would love to see bees, imagine they start their own colonies too and you have to destroy and fight back... Imagine it was multiplayer
Probably will do both of these at some point
@@LycheeGameLabs what about life stock animals?
i really adore the style you draw the buildings in, theyre so charming and cozy looking!!
This honestly feels like it would make a great civilization like game with real time pvp and pve. Almost like clash of clans crossed with BTD and Polytopia.
The tomatoes and bread and stuff could have a reason to be there so something like the tomatoes fall from a tomato plant that grows there and sometimes passing people drop things, this could lead to further locations with different foods and enemies and other benefits/deficits.
You could also include that in the day to day cycle so that every time a day passes a couple tomatoes fall or maybe have a random chance that a person drop some food or resources.
edit: Another cool addition is the chance for raindrops to fall with some special use.
I think it would be really cool if there were ants that couldn't do damage but instead they could carry a big leave over their heads as a sheild for the other ants. Maybe enimies could be programmed to target thise first. The ants could line up and when maybe 5 are ready they could get a leaf (You can experience with diffrent amounts of ants to balance the game) The leaf could have a visual representation of how much healt it has left.
Very nice video!
You should add walls as an extra line of defense against large hoards of enemies, but also a burrowing enemy that can dig under them to keep players on their toes. Also a dung beetle that launches its ball like a trebuchet or ballista would also be cool.
Absolutely loving thoose devlogs of yours! I can't wait to try out this game 😊
Oh un DocGeraud sauvage !
Maybe steer the game towards a age of empire like game, where other ant colonies exist and fight each other for ressources, so you have to expand and defend parts of your land against the others. And if you really want then you can make an all out attack to kill the queen.
with the extra that you can have a thick PVE on top of ant Wargames
This would be a lot of programming, but I like the idea
@@aaronhpa Now that gets me thinking that some ants could convert wild bugs into army units to lead war.
The little pot helmets make me want to cry? This game has amazing vibes, cant wait til it comes out.
You could have some of the enemies be other ants, either with a bit of a different design or just a different color
The little clay helmets are adorable!
This is looking great so far! I'm wary about the money system you mentioned - having a building system that just requires you to get money and then plop down new buildings seems uninspired and doesn't really dovetail into any of the existing systems. Perhaps you could connect buildings into the wood and clay resources instead - you place down a blueprint, which then requests a certain amount of wood and clay. If there are no woodhuts or potteries with the appropriate resources, its ants just try to gather those resources from the closest natural source instead. Thus you can build without specifically collecting those resources, but it's more efficient to actually collect them and stockpile them for when you want to slap down some buildings quickly.
I also had the thought that you *could* add an extra step to the larvae production chain by having the Castle produce *eggs* instead of larvae, which then have to be incubated in a Castle or Nursery to become larvae. The Castle would produce eggs very quickly, up to a certain cap, but the rate at which it turns an egg into a larva is quite slow, meaning you'd need more nurseries to up your production of larvae. In practice this would be very similar, but it'd be a little bit more realistic, and would also mean you couldn't put down a nursery on the opposite side of the map and have it produce larvae out of nowhere - any larvae production has to have a secure logistic route to your castle, giving you more routes to worry about and forcing the player to keep their base relatively compact without placing an arbitrary limit on where they can build.
One thing I will suggest for food is that you imitate how real ants have a "crop" - a sort of special food store in their gut - and when another ant is hungry any nearby ant will feed them from their crop. This means you don't have to make all the ants go eat individually, instead food can radiate out through the populace, being passed on from ant to ant, centred on your food production.
Regardless, I'm interested in seeing how things progress from here!
Im in love with this idea. Reminds me of one of my favorite youtubers AntCanada. This idea of indirectly controlling the ants by directly controlling the environment.
In my opinion, you are a true Indie Game Dev, with trully unique and original ideas and projects, in the contrary of a lot of content we see these days. As a biologist and ant lover, I always dreamed about a good ant-like game, there is so much potential for those little wonders ! I planned to make it myself since I have a bachelor degree in video game devlopement but I lack the time and the coding skills, so maybe I'll share my ideas with you instead !
When planning how to communicate enemy resistances and vulnerabilities, it might be useful to take inspiration from a game like Lobotomy Corporation. In Lobotomy Corporation, there are four damage types, and any creature in the game can have a range from 0-2 that represents how they react to that damage type. 1.0 means they react to it normally, 2.0 means they take double damage, 0.0 means their immune, and 0.6 means they only take 60% of the damage.(resist 40%)
In Lobotomy Corporation, each enemy also has a dedicated page, sort of like a coded entry to communicate important things and story stuff. I think it would be cool, in this aspect, to have a codex, from an “adventurer ant” that allows you to right click on an enemy to open up their entry on the side of the screen that includes important information like their resistances and vulnerabilities, and a short text blurb about them as a creature. I think it would all go a long way to making the world feel more alive, and it’s pretty modular so it can expand as your project does.
These devlogs are extremely satisfying to watch. From the subtle music, to the crispy and cute visual style, to even your speaking voice. Really makes for a relaxing and entertaining video that I look forward to each time you post.
I do think that Flying enemies should have a shadow underneath them to give better perspective about where they are!
Still need a victory to aim for, a goal, some purpose. That will inform your design choices. I really like the exploratory nature of ant colonies - maybe do migratory ants? Starting with one colony (castle) and looking for the next place to set up chop and protect your Queen while she is (slowly) migrating into the next colony from the old one. Sounds like a fun, ever-changing Tower Defense with additional mechanics to me!
You should make specialized buildings for enemy parts. Beetles would give upgrades to the (not honey)pot ants, lasting longer, and maybe even having a chance to not use a durability on hit.
Not sure for flies and slugs, but having an enemy similar to your ants that fight as a colony(probably termites, a whiter version) to get their supplies and maybe some other rarer items as well.
I love watching this. It's always fun to see what you add next. And i must say, I absolutely love the organic art style you use for this
this is starting to look real good!! love your designs!
Just subbed to this channel specifically for this project, it looks great!
I love seeing it come together!! Cant wait to see how it will come together in the end
Loving the look and the systems you've developed so far. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out ~
Crazy how much you've got done in what seems like such a short time. Looking forward to your next devlog for sure.
I'm sure people have pointed this out to you already, but Microtopia released a demo on Steam recently. Quite different in some aspects, but they do pathing to manage your ants and some other elements in an interesting fashion.
lmao the pot ants i love them :D
Ideas for development of the game:
1. As the ammount of buildings grows the visual distonction is guing to get harder. Maybe try adding slight bits of other colours depending on building role for example red for military, darker brown for crafting etc.
2. Adding resource progresion
Clay could be the most basic resource, then using clay bakery you could turn it into baked clay neded for more advanced crafting buildings. Clay mixed with red flowers(as it seems you will add more plants to the game) could give you red clay, and red clay then put into clay bakery would give you red baked clay used for military buildings. This would add nice simple chains of resources serving as currencies.
Clay > baked clay
Clay > red clay > red baked clay
This would also add more resources without adding more building because bakery would make and store both types of baked clay.
3. I think it would look cooler if nurseries crafted ants the same way military building do.
4. Weapon: clay bombs that could be made of baked clay, wood and red flower. They would deal area damage with the drawback being that the bomb cap per building would be 3 (instead of other warrior type ants cap of 10) and their crafing being more advanced. Their role would be countering big crowds of weak enemies(perhaps oposing colony in the far future?)
5. Production buildings. Their recognisable colour could be slight blue, thus adding blue flower, blue clay and blue baked clay. Again expanding chain without addind too many buildings. As oposed to crafting buildings they would slowly produce specific resources after initial investment. So mines/ farms this would let you turn down resource respawn rates also the blue flowers could be really rare or even limited(not respanwning at all or doing so very slowly) thus pressuring players into expanding/exploring further in search of these blue flowers.
6. Obstacles, you already made the pathfinding so maybe add some sort of unbreakable walls to path around. These could have a brakable parts that would be possible to attack and break( bomb could deal bonus damage to them)
7. Have fun and good luck with the development!
I like that the enemies are not just invulnerable to the wrong type of attack
Definitely looking forward to playing this one! Oh, and the brown bow is definitely an improvement!
Something I always like to see in city building games like these is leveling up the city hall or central building, unlocking more buildings, upgrades, or resources. That might also be a good way to ease players into the mechanics of the game and scale enemy difficulty.
I love your game, such a unique idea!
Awesome to see this progress!
This is looking really cool! Like I'm very hyped!
From what I've understood, you have three main types of buildings, and I'm not sure what this separation serves:
- The Castle and Nursery come with their own ants, and can be ordered to gather food along a path, which produces larvae, which they automatically distribute.
- The Wood and Pottery stations must be provided larvae before they can operate, and can be ordered to gather one type of resource along a path, which they automatically distribute.
- The Archery and Armory stations must be provided larvae before they can operate, and can be ordered to spend a resource along a path (i.e. spend ammo to defend an area)
The one thing that seems odd to me is how worker ants are abstracted away, yet larvae are a resource. There also doesn't seem to be much of a point to the castle/nursery distinction. I'm curious to see where the design will go next, especially considering the shape of the colony will be influenced by the way resource gathering and pipelining of resources works.
Maybe shadows for anything flies? Awesome vid! Really look forward to these each week!
Man I'm so hyped for this :)
very epic bruh, game is shaping up nicely
bow change is def a good one
Since you asked: Bows look good.
Also, nice to see the game's shaping up.
I love this!! The pot ants are my new favorite :)
An additional mechanic for the enemies could be they attack nearby ants on their path to the castle. Ants who are killed would need to be replaced with more larva at their home building. This also could lead to more variety in enemy types by modifying how much they will prefer to attack nearby ants vs beelining to the castle
The game is advancing very nicely, well done !!
Its been fascinating to see the development of this game
I do like the new bow color and I think it would be good to use the clay as a building resource so when you build it the ants grab the resources and haul it to the building location. Another unit that would be good is making a worker ant that specializes in building,harvesting, and hauling.
For victory conditions I think you could lean into the eta side of the game and have an enemy computer attack with an ant colony that you are fighting for territory. And in the future you can have multiple species of ants to choose from like fire ants, carpenter ants, weaver ants and more.
as someone who loves base building, i'd love leafcutter ants who add "fences" made of leaves so if there is a wave of enemies they can either be halted, slowed, or atleast funneled. I know that would end up making this a bit of a tower defense game but I don't think that is a particularly bad idea, i think if you have enough unique types of ants/buildings, and perhaps enough types of terrain or obstacles, perhaps even seasons? ocassional challenges? then itll keep the game dynamic enough to be more than just building and defending.
A new episode, Awesome!
The game is looking great so far! It's very pleasant to the eye and the mechanics so far are easy to understand and interesting to play around with. Can't wait to see how it turns out and eventually play it!
I love the pots XD!! They are hilarious!!
The graphics are great! Love it!
A cool Idea for the enemies would be that they all target different things, for example the slugs could go straight for the castle but the flies would also attack your units.
I like the idea that the ant-people don't really need money to build things, it's just a nice happy little colony of ants building and defending. But if anyone can make ant-people use money in some way, it's you.
I love where this is going
Woah the pot ants are kinda like soldier ants who usually have big heads
Good job this look great
Give us the spicy ants
It looks like youre starting to hit your stride! Now that the base concept is decided, you have room to work on features and details. I love the change to the bow color. Im hoping maybe someday there will be multiple colonies with different colored houses! Like a pink flower petals colony vs a green vines colony vs a fall leaves colony.
A gameplay idea, you could have some enemy types go after the resource nodes instead to represent other animals competing for resources
I have no idea how feasible this is - but adding brightly colored outlines as an accessibility option could be nice. In order to reduce visual clutter, you could even make it so when groups of the same type of ant are huddles together, it only outlines the outside of the group, not every ant individually.
Looking good.
“I’ve taught them about industry” Oh no it’s happening again
I love this! 🐜
loving it already
This is gonna be a great game, I can just feel it
I love the idea but I wonder how this would look if you were to make the buildings and exploration more like Dungeon Keeper? Either way, can't wait to see more!
yaay, new awesome vid!
You should add a carpenter and maybe a refinery that separates minerals from clay to make stone, but since stone is heavy a slight decrease in speed maybe?. An advancement system would be nice too. A cultural menu when (e) or a key is pressed opens showing resources, the colony level, and overall well-being.
Loving this, very much the sort of game I wish I could write
This game looks like it's gonna be so much fun!
I think this is going to become a tradition for me at this point but I shall keep postulating that you bring back the mosslings as some sort of ally/friends to the ants as they were cute and it's sad to part ways with them
I do like this new build that destroys the sources because the last time I played, my map got really crowded with sources and whatnot and I wouldn't be able to build many more if I kept it up. There wasn't any way to get rid of them unless I collapsed them into a bigger unit.
I'll definitely buy this game when it releases
Those helmets should have horns and the enemies should turn into a food source after they’re defeated.
Awww, they can have babies now! 💖
The pot helmet on the ants are quite similar to ants carring pottery around, got me confused for a while. Adding the horns to the helmets could help, but I think the fantasy of the pot head would fail... Hmmmm
Make dirt walls with wooden beams for your colony!
I think you should add separate ants to carry resources, making the worker ants more focused on their work task.
I love watching this game develop! Also, i just realized that i wasnt subscribed to you, if anyone else is in my boat, save youself some time and hit the button now rather then later.
Make a juggernaut :). It has boots in its legs, and when it sees an enemy it runs to it, 50% critical hit
1. I think there should be small paths around or connecting the buildings, or a tint, where most of the buildings are, just visually, so that you can more clearly see where the city is.
2. There should be fire ants, or weaver ants as enemies, like they could start a town, and launch attacks at you, though it could be hard to code
3. You should be able to chose what kind of ant you want, like factions with different traits for example bulky ants, that are slower but hit harder, long ants, that carry more resources but have less HP... etc
You could have a carrier ant of some sort that picks up other ants to take them further. The ant could use a beetle husk or something
make another building that converts pots not to warriors, but use the pots as tools to improve hauling capacity. (which becomes more relevant over longer distances and gives a trade-off how to use the resource)
At some point there should be other ant colonies that you can conquer and expand your colony. Which in turn gives you many colonies to manage.
It’s super cute and already looks fun ❤ 💕
You could have male ants fly in, which can sell you upgrades, maybe new ant types or some sort of meta upgrade like an overall speed boost or carry capacity.
think it could be fun to have opposing ants as an enemy type, should be fairly simple to recolour buildings and ants to fit and have them do raiding parties to try and take over your nest.
it would be repetative for the whole game but having it as one of multiple victory conditions would mix up the gameplay decently well.
the art style of this game is very cute!!
Idea: Bombardier beetle that fires ranged explosive attacks. They do area damage, but don't do much damage. Devastating for your groups of weak archers, but the durable melee ants, whose attack method causes a bit more spreading out, absolutely dominate these beetles. Just thought it would make for a good way to set up this sort of type-based favorability, without simply editing numbers. You know?
OMG shshjksh can't wait for new to prototype to test those out
It would be interesting to have building or units upgrades, for example that the ants can move faster or buldings have more resistance. I imagine this game as sort or a survival type of game
regarding weapon types, I think having ranged and melee is best as a dichotomy unrelated to damage type/resistance. Then enemies like flies could have a flying type, that only ranged units can target. This is a very common trope, so I think it would both be intuitive, and increase the dimension space for combat and supply chains. Certain beetles could be phased to fly in, and 'land' near objectives, where they then lose their flying tag. Flying enemies that launch grounded ones, grounded ones that launch flying ones. Perhaps an enemy type walks in, then at an hp threshold it flies away for backup. Perhaps that's significantly too complex, but the point being it opens up a lot of design space for essentially nothing.
This is a cool idea