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[ratalaika]

Ant Wars

Introduction
Ant Wars is intended to be an strategy game for mobile phones. The game will be turn based. Allowing the players to think before moving and also been able to check the game when they can and now all the time like on a RTS.


Gameplay
The gameplay will be mainly about destroying the enemy ant hills.
In order to achieve that you can conquer empty ant hills on the way, move resources from ant hill to ant hill to allow better attacks, create looots of ants!

This is intended to be, for now, a multiplayer only strategy game in which you can challenge random players or friends.


Climate effects
The game will have a climate bar that will reflect the weather status in the following turns. So you can see if for example it will be raining or if there is danger of grasshoppers. Such things should be taken into account before moving ants because rain could kill some of them. Also a wild grasshopper can kidnap one or two ants from the ground if they are moving from ant hill to ant hill.


Ant Hill Types
There will be four ant hill types that the player will be able to choose before starting the game.
Each type will give you 10% more of boost in the specific field.
The types will be:

• Attack: 10% more of attack power when attacking other ant hills.
• Defence: 10% more of defence power when defending own ant hills.
• Speed: 10% more speed when moving resources from ant hill to ant hill.
• Work: 10% more of resources gather each turn.

Multiple battles
The battles could last for days. Because the players will be make the movement whenever they can. So when someone will make a move we will trigger an alert to the other player to notify it that the enemy make a move (push notifications). A player could run multiple games at the same time and just move on each of them whenever he want / can.


Current status
Right now it's playable in offline mode against your self. We are working know on the server so we can add the multiplayer side.
About the graphics we have completed part of the tiles of the map.


The team
We are two developers:

• ratalaika as programmer
• AtskaHeart as graphic designer

Screenshots

Game play map.



Speed ant hill design.



Resource ant hill design.



Sample button.



User flags.



Current games window v0.1


Updates
07/09/2014
We added some buttons to the game, so right now we can show some images . The background is in alpha yet! We moved with the server code, but we found some problems we are trying to fix :/. The main GUI is almost completed!

04/09/2014
If anyone to help us with some play testing of the pre Alpha version let me know over PM! It may be ready in a few days! If you want join as tester it will be a great help (Android device needed)

02/09/2014
After all weekend working on the game I finally finished all the friend system (searching people, adding friends, removing friends), I made the challenge system as well so you can challenge other people. Today I finished the push notification system. We also started making the GUI I uploaded a sample of the button and the user flags .

29/08/2014
After a day full of work I finally finished the account creation and the login system .

27/08/2014
After a small meeting yesterday the team has decided to add climate effects to the game! (Check climate effect section)
We have also moved a lot with the server, right now we have almost all database setted up .

[danieru]

Cool, will it be available for Android?

[ratalaika]

Cool, will it be available for Android?

Yes it will be available for Android and iOS at first. We are considering making a Facebook version.

[danieru]

So are you using a framework or particular language?

Have you figured out a method to discourage the losing player from abandoning the game?

[ratalaika]

So are you using a framework or particular language?

Have you figured out a method to discourage the losing player from abandoning the game?

I'm using LibGDX plus a personal framework over it for the client. And NodeJS + Socket.IO for the server.

About leaving the game, we probably remove the option of leave after the first turn so he can only leave if is not interested din playing. If he is going to lose after more turns he won't be able to leave, so he has two choices continue playing and lose with honour or avoid playing and lose without it, the way of losing by non playing can be reported and if someone loses loots of times that way he may be blocked.

[ratalaika]

Information updated. Added a section about the new climate effects 

[oodavid]

I'll be keeping an eye on this, loving the theme and am keen to know how the mechanics end up working - if I could in any way persuade you to try out swarm behaviours based on player criteria I'd be the happiest man ever! Something like:

Ant A: 20% of population, move randomly, seek food
Ant B: 30% of population, follow Ant A, protect
Ant C: 50% of population, follow Ant B, pursue enemy ants

[ratalaika]

I'll be keeping an eye on this, loving the theme and am keen to know how the mechanics end up working - if I could in any way persuade you to try out swarm behaviours based on player criteria I'd be the happiest man ever! Something like:

Ant A: 20% of population, move randomly, seek food
Ant B: 30% of population, follow Ant A, protect
Ant C: 50% of population, follow Ant B, pursue enemy ants

Thanks!! I'm glad you like the project . But I don't think we will add such a complex behaviour on the first version hehe. We want to keep the game simple so all kind of players will be able to play.

Also resources will stay "under ground" so in order to gather them you will need to do it inside an ant hill, not like in AoE where you go to a rock to mine and grab them back to the city hall hehe.

[oodavid]

I'll be keeping an eye on this, loving the theme and am keen to know how the mechanics end up working - if I could in any way persuade you to try out swarm behaviours based on player criteria I'd be the happiest man ever! Something like:

Ant A: 20% of population, move randomly, seek food
Ant B: 30% of population, follow Ant A, protect
Ant C: 50% of population, follow Ant B, pursue enemy ants

Thanks!! I'm glad you like the project . But I don't think we will add such a complex behaviour on the first version hehe. We want to keep the game simple so all kind of players will be able to play.

You've broken my dream of low-level-swarm-micromanagement.

[ratalaika]

I'll be keeping an eye on this, loving the theme and am keen to know how the mechanics end up working - if I could in any way persuade you to try out swarm behaviours based on player criteria I'd be the happiest man ever! Something like:

Ant A: 20% of population, move randomly, seek food
Ant B: 30% of population, follow Ant A, protect
Ant C: 50% of population, follow Ant B, pursue enemy ants

Thanks!! I'm glad you like the project . But I don't think we will add such a complex behaviour on the first version hehe. We want to keep the game simple so all kind of players will be able to play.

You've broken my dream of low-level-swarm-micromanagement.

Haha sorry! But who knows if the game has enough audience he may consider doing a version 2 with more complex behaviour

[oodavid]

In all seriousness, this looks like great fun, it's a nice theme and personally I find Ants super interesting - I guess you guys moreso since you're making a game about them!

[ratalaika]

Updated information with ant hill types and added the speed ant hill picture

[SnoutUp]

This looks really neat and seems like kind of game I'd really like to play. I hope to see some gameplay videos/GIFs soon!

[ratalaika]

Information updated!! Added resource ant hill! Also account creation and login system done :D.

This looks really neat and seems like kind of game I'd really like to play. I hope to see some gameplay videos/GIFs soon!

Thanks!! We are working now on the server <-> client interaction so there may be an alpha demo soon .

[ratalaika]

Information updated!

After all weekend working on the game I finally finished all the friend system (searching people, adding friends, removing friends), I made the challenge system as well so you can challenge other people. Today I finished the push notification system. We also started making the GUI I uploaded a sample of the button and the user flags .

[ratalaika]

If anyone to help us with some play testing of the pre Alpha version let me know over PM! It may be ready in a few days! If you want join as tester it will be a great help (Android device needed)

[ratalaika]

Information updated, I added a picture of the current games window in v0.1.
We added some buttons to the game, so right now we can show some images . The background is in alpha yet! We moved with the server code, but we found some problems we are trying to fix :/. The main GUI is almost completed!