Looks to me like the point of this entry is how the mobs are implemented, not what the mobs are. Worker spits slowing webs. Easy enough. Soldier melees. Easy enough. They also carry back players if the players are pheromone covered. Easy enough. Bombardier shoots chemical bombs. Easy enough. Flying ant flies and melees. Easy enough. Fleas paralyse and run away. Easy enough. Guard ant rams and walls. Easy enough. (Might want to add a thing where you can't destroy blocks in their biomes or else you'll get assaulted by spare rams) Queen works as an npc and makes eggs. Not too hard. Larvae just crawl around and can be made into pets. Sounds easy. It's all a lot of coding, sure, but it's not like one npc that knows your every move and has a bazillion ways of reacting, or is unable to be reasonably placed in the map due to size or shape. And it's good because it takes a bunch of simple things and puts them together into one big efficient biome.
I think I explained the situation wrong. The response from Welsh was something about how the responses were not based on artistic skill...Oh well. Whatever happens happens. If you look and see some of the extra features...(quoted from front page) Each colony has different size limit. Some will stay with few numbers, while other will try to build colony that covers entire planet. Colonies very in the level of aggressiveness, some Queens have group of workers with few soldiers, while other focus on building enormous armies of all classes. Some Queens choose to focus on underground domination, while others spawn a lot of flying worriers. Queens can adopt to many different environments and then produce ants which are suited to survive in the present environment. Changes can include, sizes of ants, color, and behavior. That definitely isn't very easy to code...
Actually I think those shouldn't be any more difficult to implement than anything else in the suggestion. A lot of those would be simple number manipulation, and sense in one of the Question/Answer sessions the devs said we already will see some humanoids working together, I assume that they have at least the basic code for an organized AI, otherwise majority of my suggestion already should be in the game in one form or another, so only small changes and adjustments should be required to make it work with a group of ants. Again this is just how I see at it with the information we have atm, I might be wrong of course.
This is by far the best one i've seen! Oh and the story was hilarious! It would be awesome to build a base and send a few researchers to some ruins and end up letting these things out, being force to defend your base until evac arives!
I totally love this Idea! I actually could imagine this kind of mechanics with not only ants but also other creatures! Just think of all the possibilities this would create! :alien:
I think if I was going to tame any ant, it would be a RamHead. I'd plug my base door with his head and he'd be happy to do it. I could bulldoze the neighbor's houses!
I hate to admit it, but it kind-of does! You had to pick the best alien idea of all didn't you, you bastard!!!
Well as some of us already disscussed starting on page 2, this is not very original idea at all, on top of that some people can careless about ants that live together, which is absolutely fine. However I did put a lot of time and effort into this work, I wanted to make good presentation and at interesting story and descriptions for those who cares about stuff like that. I also learned quite a bit about creating sprites, which I found out it to be real pain in the ass haha, which made me have much more respect for all sprite artists. So I don't think this is best or even that much of a great idea, it would be fun to have in the game if it is implemented with its full potential, but that is not to say that more than half of entries in this contest so far, would also be awesome to have in the game. The point is that I have learned a lot from participating, and at least people have fun with those ideas!
Maybe that was the whole point of the contest, and none of them were going to be implemented at all... I found a scandal! IT'S A FRAUD! jk
It doesn't have to be an original idea. It just has to be a GOOD idea. And you just have to be the first to grab it. > You have earned both points so far!
This is SO awesome. The whole design, the different aspects of how this would affect gameplay. Freakin love it! Edit: And to add to the discussion about creativity etc.: This is a complex sandbox game we are talking about. Terraforming creatures, that alter the terrain and destroy buildings haven't been added to one of those in this scale and it would just open the game up to a lot of different creature designs. That's the reason I really really like the idea. I mean, they don't have to be ants at all. Just give them hair or something and nobody would even think about saying "uuuuh, EVERY game had that".
Thank you guys! I appreciate that people really getting the possibilities of mechanics that are involved in the idea, once you get past behind "Oh look giant ants monster, whatever.."
Dude, nobody would EVER say that. Any nerd or gamer (aka ANYONE HERE) worth his salt knows that ants are just inherently COOL. They're also really mad at themselves that they didn't at least try to make ant-like monsters for the contest! Even VAGUELY ant-like!