Upcoming Free Browser Based Game: Ant Colony

It’s been a full year now.  From interface, storylines, and graphics, we’ve got great work starting to boil now.  I’ve got a new appreciation for the concept of CONCEPT.  For example, we’ve gone from painted and illustrated style artwork and graphics to high-poly rendered 3d.  Finally we’ve narrowed it down to a 3d cell shaded style of graphics, and I’m very happy.  Thanks to Leech we’re looking at interfacing 2 Flash objects on-screen with 2 AJAX/PHP/SQL based objects for the actual browser game.   Essentially a quadrant style interface of Map, Player, Hive Status, Description window that all interacts with each other.  Plus a universal Flash based Chat box so everyone can insult each other as their eating other players hives.  This may seriously hurt our existing server in terms of bandwith and using shared network resources.  That’s a problem I look forward to having.

While Leech is blasting away at code and making databases talk (with syntax that makes as much sense to me as AM mexican radio) I’m working on an efficient way to take 3D Studio rendered cell-shaded artwork (with fully rigged character skeletons), trace it to vectors via Illustrator, and import it into a Flash environment.  Sort of a comic book style presentation of characters.  At this point and time I think I’m going to skip the Swift3D software, not only pricey, but honestly we’re trying to keep things fairly basic to keep productive.  If you’re not familiar, hit Google for details, it’s actually really cool stuff.

Thanks for all the e-mails from folks interested.  From the story perspective I’ve decided to accelerate the storyline to push players into the “post-apocalyptic ant evolutionary” stages earlier than planned.  I previously had various stages of the game based on good ‘ol backyard style ant colonies, but now we’re going to make that simply the training or tutorial area.  Wait, you didn’t realize an ant colony game could be based in a dark Fallout style world?  Oh yes.  Lets be honest, nothing is more badass than staring down a mushroom cloud.  And, when your colony’s soldier ants are carrying M16’s looted from a military base in Nevada… eh, I’ve said too much.  But ultimately the objective is to colonize mars, and combat human populations there.  AvH?

Last thing, take note… And please email me feedback.  We do have to turn this into a sort of revenue generator, so while there will be no pay-to-play, we’re thinking about allowing end-game players a chance to subscribe for some cheap monthly fee to be able to fight as the human colonies against other ant players.  What do you think?

We’re still a long way from play test, but anyone that has contacted me in regards, is on my first list of contacts who we hope can be our lab rats.  Still probably 12 months out from now, but hopefully sooner.

We’ve been on and off with development the past year and haven’t updated the website in months.  However I have responded to many e-mails and it appears there is interest in our concept.  So I thought I’d offer a quick update on the going-ons.

Our concepts moved a little too quickly into interfaces and art, and now we’re stepping back into hammering out more of the ‘hive’ concepts in terms of how the resources your Hero Ant will be responsible for exploring for help grow your colony.

While not exactly an RTS game, there will be an RTS element to the play.  In a sense we’re trying to hybrid a bit of MUD-style character movement, with an RTS colony game… which ultimately will be confronted with obstacles and definitely other players.

Finally, we haven’t ruled out the concept of this browser-played game being scaled for play on browser capable mobile devices.  However that is moving to far “ahead” again while ultimately we’re trying to create a competitive core rule-set first.

Please keep comments and e-mails coming.  Thanks.

The ruthless Queen Ant has put your leading character, the Hero Ant, in charge of managing the colony. Your Hero Ant can perform a certain amount of actions each day to accomplish the needs of the colony’s survival and growth.  These currently consist of gathering resources with Slave Ants, exploring terrain with his Soldier Ants, building up your colony’s defense, and managing the evolution of your Ants.  From humble beginnings as a small forest ant pile, you will evolve your colony through storyline guided hardships escalating to survival in a post nuclear world and beyond.

The Queen Ant is the driving force behind your colony’s Soldier and Slave Ant production rates based on the resources you collect and fight for.  She also is important in guiding movement through the different areas of the storyline, and also offers guidance where needed to learn the game mechanics.  So while the player, or Hero Ant, determines success in battle, resource gathering, management and evolution of the Ant Colony, it is the Queen which produces the Slave and Soldier Ants for you to control.

From a developer’s standpoint the Queen Ant will be the leverage we have over players to control the flow of the game’s story and balance.  From a player standpoint, she is your catalyst of advancement in growing your Ant Colony.  She is key to your Ant Colony’s survival, and your reason for existing as an Ant at all.  She will also eat you if you fail to obey her orders, and will remind you of this regularly.

You have crawled into what is currently the developer’s forum for Ant Colony.  Ant Colony is a web based game currently in the early stages of concept and code by two amateur designers.  This blog is a means to publish and evaluate content as it is being developed.