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[bersaelor]

So, yes, I too was playing Dwarf Fortress and thought (while my third fortress flourished and I just made my first adamantine sword) :
"this is so great, so much detail!
"These dwarfs look like my own personal busy ant-hive..."
"... wait someone should totally make a game about an ant-hive controlled like dwarfs in DF!"

Being a mathematician by trade (like toady) I got slightly distracted for a month, putting lots of effort into realistic plantlife (properties and colors based on their genes, reproduction, usage of nutrients based on groundmaterial etc) and now heavily working on more commands I can give my little ants.
The simulation-core is written in C++, the current 2D graphic-layer in Apples Spritekit, I was planning to move it to Cocos2D at some point, but the SpriteKit enabled my iPad to show 200 agents without dropping fps. (while simulating up to 1000 agents in the nonvisible parts)

here's a (programmer-art) picture of an ant I selected to check it's current metabolism:

 
A friend of mine volunteered to narrate a short video recently, and I'm still missing input from the pro-simgame-crowd:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do7LLrA-LPA

[Levi]

From my half-assed viewing-from-work-while-trying-not-to-be-noticed viewpoint, it looks pretty awesome.  I like the art style.

What is the genetank stat? 

[Brewster]

Looks great and will fall well into the "indie casual" group! It's a strong spin-off of Sim Ant which I did enjoy when I was a kid.
I personally enjoy a bit more complexity to my games now which bugs aren't capable of doing so I don't think it's for me. Best o'luck! there are people who WILL enjoy this game.

[nomoetoe]

Interesting, Doesn't look like something I'd enjoy playing, but I bet there are plenty who would. There is potential and I haven't seen much like this, I hope you don't have too much trouble getting it made.

[bersaelor]

Thanks for the replys:
@Levi/Genetank: I could have called it "Sementank" yet but went for the less awkward
Basically males fill it continously if they have proteins stored up, if they have enough they look for females of their species with non-full genetanks to .. you know.. . Each Individual has a set of genes that influence its attributes (attributes=genes&training) and when a female lays an egg she mixes her genes with the genes of the semen in her.. gene_tank.

@Brewster: I actually never played Sim Ant, for me it's far more Dwarf Fortress with Ants instead of Dwarfs. The bugs are rather simple (they are just bugs) but the ants are pretty impressive. Obviously ants are not wearing equipment like dwarfs but then again dwarfs don't mutate/evolve. Right now we only have the option to tell your queen to lay basic worker- or soldier-eggs. But there will be many more options later (leafcutters, honeypots, acid-spraying ranged, tanks....). As you can see in the beetle-picture, each creature is made out of pieces and in the long-run the player will be able to design ants before laying the eggs by picking bodyparts that your queen has genetical info for (not unlike Master of Orions ship-designing). One unlocks more genetical options by finding males in the wild and letting workers bring them to the queen.

@nomoetoe: Again, there's plenty of complexity in ant-world, once one looks close. Enemies one has to dodge will come from such a wide variety as all kinds of spiders (hunting, webbuilding, colony-spiders.. check out the fb-site for concept art), ant-lions (if you don't know what they are, basically tiny sand-monsters from the beginning of Return of the Jedi) to such creepy elements as Ichneumon wasp (laying endoparasites into your ants, thats were the Alien-guys got their ideas from).

[Sheb]

It looks really cool. Is it going to be iPad only? Will you put a demo up at some point?

[bersaelor]

@Sheb: Right now the graphical layer is based on SpriteKit, so I only have a working MacOS and iOS Version (my normal job is coding iOS Apps for clients, MTV/Viacom in europe mostly). If you have either device, send me an email/pm and I can supply you with a demo. If I can get some funding to work more on it, I will make a Windows/Android version in Cocos2D which should be pretty easy since SpriteKit is quite similar to Cocos2D. And the graphical layer is as separated from the core-game as DF is separated from the tilesets, so only 10% of the games current code.

[Sheb]

Sadly not, but I'll keep an eye on this.

[kytuzian]

This definitely looks like something I would be interested in. Very cool!

[Alehkhs]

 

Given my love for all things ant, I will definitely be following this project. Hoping for an Android/Windows option to try out soon!

[Uristides]

Will it have ant-mimicking spiders as vampires? 

[bersaelor]

@:ant-mimicking spiders: Of course we wouldn't miss those:

All its animations are drawn, I just haven't put the code for it in yet. Shouldn't be too difficult though, since It'll use the same method to find prey that male beetles use to find mates for example. It's on the list

[IndigoFenix]

Looks cool.  Might I suggest using some kind of alien bugs instead of ants?  Because this is...absolutely nothing like how ants reproduce.  Also that will give you freedom to make all kinds of crazy genetic upgrades if you feel like it.

[bersaelor]

Well, I was taking my inspiration from the wikipedia article about army ants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_ant#Queen_behavior

For males to access the queen and mate, they must run through the workers in the colony. Males that are favored are superficially similar in size and shape to the queen. The males also produce large quantities of pheromones to pacify the worker ants.

So they do in fact mate several times (army ant queens seem to produce more workers then they can store semen from the nuptial flight?)
The garden-variaty of ant is obviously mating during the nuptual flight and later making eggs using the stored semen.
We will combine those too and let the player decide which semen to use for which new ant but also which developmental path they take (of course different casts still are sisters).
We will also allow ourselves the creative liberty to unlock more castes going into the game, so that the players anthive will have access to caste from more then one ant species in one game.

[bersaelor]

Today I have friends coming over to shoot the kickstarter video, so I'm excited but also nervous (never been the shy programmer stereotype but not entertainer either )

Anyway, we have a new trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7njXB-zTawk&list=UUlDvJe1yX2JfH0Lmssb4tIg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7njXB-zTawk

since I did manage to add Day&Night-Cycles in between all the legal, tax and marketing stuff you have to go through to start a kickstarter.