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[bersaelor]

what is this a game for-

* rabidgam3r is brained with a half-brick

I love how this is coming along! This is gonna be one of my most-played games, I can feel it.

I'd be delighted, after all these hours of working on it

you guys aren't getting enough coverage

Sadly yes, Kickstarter needs to get the other 7/8th.. which is hard without major media coverage..
Somehow I need to pay my designers wage for the next half year (paid her the last 7 from my private savings, it's barely minimum wage but she needs to pay her rent). If we don't get the money I will still continue, but progress will be much slower since I also have to take new projects in.
(We all sent out tons of mails again last night, which is Thursday morning US time)

Why always use the higher attribute number for the offspring of ants?

Yeah, thats the way it works, between the (I) and the (II) gene it always takes the highest number. Gene (I) comes from parent (I) and is randomly chosen from the parents (I) or (II) copies and gene (II) from parent (II).
Multiplier gets multiplied with numbers, if both attributes are multipliers the result is 1. So one multiplier sometimes makes a super-bug, but a beetle who randomly got two x. is really screwed in one of his departments. The advantage in this system is that inbreeding is really a force to be dealt with.

[bersaelor]

An Article I wrote got featured big time over at www.erfworld.com

Rob Balders comics are really nice, it's about an US-gamer-dude who is somehow transported into his battle board game and becomes one factions warlord.

[Anvilfolk]

Sweet!

Do you have some demo code you can send? If there's enough gameplay in there already, you could probably get people excited about it! I guess media outlets are generally wary of games they can't really see a LOT of already.

Admittedly, RPS has been pretty crappy about this, featuring games by totally unknown developers with no experience, and not covering other really good ones from people with experience...

[bersaelor]

Dear friends, I have been very busy the last days, trying to add as many programming in between all the marketing as possible.

Here is our new dev-update with the results (the hive is more intelligent every day).
http://youtu.be/_T1T4SWK8W4

Furthermore, are any of you experienced 4Chan or tumblr people? I was told I should do more advertising there, but I have no account/experience with either.

Thank you and please tell me what you think about the update

[Vendayn]

Rockpapershotgun actually did an article on this kickstarter

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/11/30/formicarium-ant-game/

Didn't see anyone link it...so...here it is.

[Zireael]

I loved both the update videos. Can we have a beta soon? So that we can provide concrete feedback?

[bersaelor]

Rockpapershotgun actually did an article on this kickstarter

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/11/30/formicarium-ant-game/

Didn't see anyone link it...so...here it is.

Oh yes, I wanted to mention this.. so many things in my head these days...

I loved both the update videos. Can we have a beta soon? So that we can provide concrete feedback?

Working hard in it, every hour I don't have to do marketing/spreading the news. It's definitely getting closer! (You can also watch me live, I'm streaming development sometime on twitch now)

[Vendayn]

It is pretty close to its goal, but there is only 3 days left.

[sebcool]

SQUEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeee. . .

Ahem. PTW.

[bersaelor]

Ok, first the bad news.. we did 68% and the project wasn't funded.

Now the good news: We managed to rally 535 people behind this in 28 days that were willing to pledge 13677$! That is an impressive result for a project that was virtually unknown a month ago. Also for those following the updates, I did implement some key features during the campaign and it looks better every day.

This is just the start - not the end!

Many projects have been quite successful in their second attempt, I have been asked by indie festivals to submit our game, we have interest from german federal science-education funds so it's actually all looking really ok!
We did setup a forum to keep in touch with all of you during development and already have a big thread we're collecting what to do better in a second attempt. Or for the redditers we have a subreddit on http://www.reddit.com/r/formicarium/ !
I'll be working for lunch-money for a while now, but I'm continuing Formicarium at the side. Expect a dev-update monthly/bimonthly, I'm hoping if we have a much bigger demo by the time of the next campaign, we'll be able to start off much better (we mostly did fail at the first 7 days, then after the RockPaperShotgun article it went ok, but overall we learned a lot).

Ok, and so it's not just text for you, here's a picture of my preliminary underground  material-layer algorithm (I wrote yesterday):

[Mephansteras]

Definitely going to reback for the second campaign!

[Sinistar]

Dammit, saw this thread a while ago, then forgot about it, remembered again few days ago but forgot to back it again! Arhghhnblarhh potato for brain.

Anyways - I'm glad things are actually not that bad right now! I'll definitely back it on the second run, for sure!

[Anvilfolk]

Yeah, super bummed this didn't really work out as a campaign I'll be eagerly awaiting the next campaign!

[h3lblad3]

To be honest, I always thought a good demo would have done wonders for the game.

While demos are notorious for dropping sales on big budget POS games, I feel that, in the case of an indie kickstarter game, a demo would probably show that you know what you're doing and give something for people to be wooed by. A lot of people have been scared by kickstarters not finished, after all.

[bersaelor]

To be honest, I always thought a good demo would have done wonders for the game.

While demos are notorious for dropping sales on big budget POS games, I feel that, in the case of an indie kickstarter game, a demo would probably show that you know what you're doing and give something for people to be wooed by. A lot of people have been scared by kickstarters not finished, after all.

Well, I didn't want to release it to early. Especially since it's very close to DF in many aspects and I didn't want to scare the masses away. But now we have ample time, I was working on it most of today and it makes good progress. Expect a new dev-update video before NYE and a first demo in January (for MacOS Yosemite, not testing on other machines atm, the release will cross-platform). [ I did promise a demo before the end of the campaign but after the last hope to reach our goal dissipated I spent some xmas time with my gf, so everything is a little slower now]