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[antho]

Anthophilia is a game where you're a bee.

Check out what I've done so far at anthophiliagame.com

I'm using UE, many materials and assets from the internet, and everything I've tried to soak up about programming and game design from people online in my spare time in the last decade, in my quest to make an interesting game with very few resources.

Gameplay:
You fly around an infinitely large world, collecting nectar and pollen to grow your hive and unlock upgrades, and gradually influencing the ecosystem and watching it develop. All of the gameplay mechanics are designed to represent real ecological processes and actual bee behaviour.

What I have made so far:
An infinite world, created by a complicated procedural generation process
A varied ecosystem, in which hundreds of species of real plants interact with each other, and respond to your choices, changing the environment over time
Various 'bee senses' represented by fancy effects indicating scent and other things
"Nice camera flight."

Other stuff I'm working on for launch:
Some kind of HUD to let you know the name of each flower you visit and its properties, the current demands of the hive, how much you are carrying, etc
Tweaking the various ecological systems and gameplay mechanics so everything is balanced and fun
Basic sound effects and background music

What else I might do in the future if I get enough caffeine/collaboration/support/etc:
VR Support!
More interaction with the hive
Online collaborative multiplayer
Awesome sound effects and background music
Fancy menus, info screens, a flower database, achievements, etc

Stay tuned for the devlog.

[Schrompf]

Impressive rendering! But I guess it's not your engine. High Quality Assets! But I assume they're bought or downloaded from somewhere. So yes... nice camera flight.

Now that I got that off my chest, the serious part: I'm not sure if just flying around and aggregating stuff by simply being present is a nice game mechanic that can carry a few hours of gameplay. But I like the idea of unlocking real world encyclopedia entries. And maybe you can top that by requiring to combine different "flavours" (say: colors) to meet certain requirements of your hive. Let's see how it turns out.

[antho]

Heya, thanks for taking an interest

Firstly, you make a very good point that I couldn't have made this game without all of the amazing resources various talented people have made available online, and I owe a huge amount to the whole internet game dev community not only for all the assets and software but for teaching me everything I know. I'm currently compiling a list of everyone I need to credit and trying to work out how best to do so, thanks for the nudge. On the shoulders of giants..

Secondly, yes you're absolutely right that I need to make way more demo videos to show off other features, and there is still a lot of work to be done. But I'm glad it looks like the camera flight is all that's going on so far, because a lot of effort has gone into making some fairly complicated things that are happening in the background invisible

Under the hood there's the system I came up with for multi-threaded procedural generation of the landscape and intelligent procedural instantiation of the vast quantities of hundreds of different types of object which populate it, which is constantly being done all around you as you move. Also, in the medium term, as you pollinate plants, the ecosystem is altered accordingly, spreading the species you pollinate and diminishing the ones you don't. And in the long term, if you do a good job as a bee, something mimicking ecological succession occurs and grassland slowly becomes a rich forest.

I only want to use open source software, and I love UnrealEngine's rendering engine, so I'm using UE. That presents a challenge as UE is not at all well suited to changing any aspect of the landscape at run time.. So I had to create a new terrain system (involving plot twists like: having to include custom collision detection and lots of custom rendering stuff) and foliage system (with such exciting episodes as: the built-in game-space querying system being too slow to use for detecting flowers, and many other workarounds being needed to get everything to work seamlessly and rapidly enough), in addition to the actual procedural landscape generation and ecosystem evolution process, and everything else..

As for game play, I definitely share your concerns about creating an engaging experience.. I'm currently working on various mechanics which aren't visible yet, but which will be integral to how it plays. For example: you have a carrying capacity for pollen/nectar, and also must return to the hive by the end of the day. The Queen of the colony makes various demands which alter the 'honey value' of different flowers temporarily or give other bonuses (e.g. quadrupling the value of lavender for 10 minutes or giving a fixed bonus if you can deliver some rose nectar in 30 seconds, that kind of thing). I'm hoping this will create an interesting path-optimisation question for the player and make a spectrum of skill - if you know the area around you, which flowers are where, and can intelligently decide how to make a round-trip which visits valuable flowers while reacting to the shifting whims of the Queen, the game will reward you.

I'm also going to include other bonuses, for example a 'chain' bonus for collecting flowers of the same species within a certain time of each other. This will vary from species to species (for example, one species might be very sparsely placed, but have a long-lasting, and large, chain bonus, another species might be packed into dense patches and offer a shorter one). Different species also have different regeneration rates and base value.

And yep! You guessed it I'm considering eventually putting in certain bonuses for creating different mixtures of flavours, textures and aromas, which will vary between species, possibly represented by colour in some way, although I'm not totally decided on how that will work yet, and whether it is truly necessary or overkill.

There will also be lots of upgrades you can 'spend' your honey on, and colonies will swarm under certain conditions, giving you the chance to move location. Upgrades to your bee will last one day, upgrades to the hive will last until you leave in a swarm, and genetic upgrades will be permanent.

However all of this needs a lot of play testing and development, and I've come to the point where I need to get a nice HUD working before I start tinkering with mechanics again.

I guess I'm aiming for a careful balance between the lasting and intense engagement of say a skate game, something like candy crush, or certain FPSs, where you also chase points and bonuses in a similar way, and the serene elegance of something like Flower, which I really enjoyed. Very different concepts but I think it could be interesting and kind of fresh.

I'm totally self-taught and have never used any 3D software until a few months ago so this has all been quite a challenging journey from a personal perspective Which I will detail in this very devlog as soon as I have a moment! So if you're interested in more details, please stay tuned.

EDIT: forgot to mention upgrades and swarming

[Schrompf]

Thanks for clearing that up! We're all standing on the shoulders of giants, so no worries there. And you did add quite some cool things on your own, which changes my perception of the material you displayed. I just thought it to be ... I don't know... dishonest that you simply put up that material, which sure looks stunning, but you don't drop a single line about what part of that is actually your contribution. So thanks again for the explanation.

And personally: I'd leave out the score hunt. In my books it's a cheap way to get a basic gameplay going, but it also devalues the still atmosphere and silent beauty of the scenery. A relaxing flying game with slightly lower pacing and more long-term goals might suit better. Plus I don't play score-hunting games. To me they're intrinsically boring, I don't care about ratings and comparisions. I want to explore some cool places and situations, and then be done with the game and start another. Therefore please add your encyclopedia with some short'n'sweet details about every plant.

[antho]

Thanks for clearing that up! We're all standing on the shoulders of giants, so no worries there. And you did add quite some cool things on your own, which changes my perception of the material you displayed. I just thought it to be ... I don't know... dishonest that you simply put up that material, which sure looks stunning, but you don't drop a single line about what part of that is actually your contribution. So thanks again for the explanation.

I'm glad you think it looks stunning, thanks!

I'm trying to extract the constructive criticism from your comment and I think part of it might be that I shouldn't post what I've managed to achieve until I've written up how I achieved it, is that right? I'm sorry, I've been feverishly reading everything I can on this site for days but obviously I still don't have the hang of things. I just shoved up a quick 'here's what I'm up to'-style post while I try and work out how to write a more complete devlog, talking about all the details of the work that went into it, but it was certainly not my intention to seem dishonest in any way, shape, or form, and it's extremely disturbing to hear that's how it appeared.

And personally: I'd leave out the score hunt. In my books it's a cheap way to get a basic gameplay going, but it also devalues the still atmosphere and silent beauty of the scenery. A relaxing flying game with slightly lower pacing and more long-term goals might suit better. Plus I don't play score-hunting games. To me they're intrinsically boring, I don't care about ratings and comparisions. I want to explore some cool places and situations, and then be done with the game and start another. Therefore please add your encyclopedia with some short'n'sweet details about every plant.

Have you ever played Flower? It sounds like exactly what you want - a relaxing flying game with no score chasing and a slow pacing in which you explore some cool places and situations and then you're done with it and can start another game, with a similar grass-and-flowers theme to it. It's awesome, definitely check it out if you haven't. I can't possibly compete with TGC!

I'm aiming for something a bit different. I love open worlds and sandbox sims that give you an interesting insight on some aspect of life. I was watching a bee one day and thinking about what it would be like to have her 'job'. The thought stuck with me and now, years later, I think I have a small chance of being able to use my limited skills to make something engaging based on that idea.

If you just want to swoosh through the grass and dodge through the forests and explore until you get the 'you've tasted every flower in the game!' achievement that's obviously totally fine.

If you want to watch the ecosystem and the hive develop, you have to spend a bit more time getting to know them and learning how to work with them. All the bonuses in the game are designed to nudge the player towards acting like a real bee. For example, the 'chain bonus' mimics the fact that real bees try to collect pollen from the same species at the same time, resulting in more successful pollination. The 'queen demand' bonuses are based on the fact that real bees have to harvest different flowers at different times depending on what the hive needs - certain species being better for raising young, others being better for a quick energy boost, etc.

And if you want to get really into it and plan your strategy and shape the world in an interesting way, or build some kind of really extreme hive, with a load of genetic specialisations for certain plants or biomes, you can.

I'll definitely consider the encyclopaedia idea. There are so many great features I'd love to add, but I literally have no experience and and am working completely alone with no resources other than this aging PC, no budget, huge time constraints, etc. I think VR support would also be extremely cool and it should be easy to support it if I can get my hands on some kit to test it with. If I had more time I'd love to add the ability to build a hive cooperatively online with other players, which I think I could do in a relatively simple and effective way. I'd love to have more time to tweak everything for the most realistic and varied possible environment. Perhaps even include a bumblebee mode :D And a million other improvements and details. If people seem to be interested in the game and I get some positive feedback, I suppose I could do some kind of crowdfunding campaign to get more features in.

[Schrompf]

Good luck on your endeavours! Just one thing to put in the right context:

I'm trying to extract the constructive criticism from your comment and I think part of it might be that I shouldn't post what I've managed to achieve until I've written up how I achieved it, is that right? I'm sorry, I've been feverishly reading everything I can on this site for days but obviously I still don't have the hang of things. I just shoved up a quick 'here's what I'm up to'-style post while I try and work out how to write a more complete devlog, talking about all the details of the work that went into it, but it was certainly not my intention to seem dishonest in any way, shape, or form, and it's extremely disturbing to hear that's how it appeared.

Let's put this straight: to me it appeared dishonest. I'm an old'n'grumpy programmer, I did my own engines for ages and I still enjoy doing so. I see thousands of games pop on Steam every year, buying assets and code snippets from their engine of choice's stores, putting it all together at suboptimal levels of reliability, and then calling it "their work". It just rubs me the wrong way. AFAIK others are way more laid-back on the topic of asset stores.

So, to avoid my personal wrath, one short additional paragraph saying "engine is UE, assets are from the internet, I did the streaming landscape generation and the basics of gameplay." would have sufficed. I'd nod, admire the pictures, and then move on and return once you got the basics of the game going. And that's what I shall do now. Have a nice day, stranger.

[Zireael]

I'll definitely consider the encyclopaedia idea.

An encyclopaedia would be an excellent thing in that sort of a game. "Wait, what is that flower over there? Have I seen it before? What is it called?"

Also, I have to agree with Schrompf that you should have mentioned "assets are from the internet", otherwise people think assets are created by you.

[antho]

Hi Zireael, thanks for the interest and advice. Yeah it's now pretty clear that I should have said I didn't make all the assets from scratch or make the engine myself. I'm gradually learning, totally my bad. I certainly didn't mean to imply I had.

Impressive rendering! But I guess it's not your engine. High Quality Assets! But I assume they're bought or downloaded from somewhere. So yes... nice camera flight.

I see thousands of games pop on Steam every year, buying assets and code snippets from their engine of choice's stores, putting it all together at suboptimal levels of reliability, and then calling it "their work". It just rubs me the wrong way.

I don't want my devlog to turn into this kind of debate, but while the above comments still stand in it, I have to fiercely distance myself from them. If you're a struggling new developer trying to make your first game, there's absolutely nothing wrong with working with the materials available, putting your own stamp on it, and being proud to have created something. If you want to share that with other people on Steam and manage to make a buck or two from your game, that's a real achievement, and you deserve to call that your own work.

I've put many hundreds of hours of coding into Anthophilia, but that's not a good thing. If you can make an interesting statement or an engaging experience, with 5 minutes of coding and a bunch of free assets, as a game which people want to buy, you're a genius.

It's a bit of a shame that some young aspiring developer might wander onto this thread, with dreams about, say, learning how to make a game where the player can fly around a cool world they've designed, made from assets they spent weeks finding online, and be worried that they will be mocked for only making a simple camera flight game, and have the impression that what they've achieved is not really "their work". Plus, since I specifically talked about the infinite procedural landscape and evolving ecosystem in my post, there really is no way to imagine the "nice camera flight" gag as constructive criticism. It's just a cheap shot that doesn't even apply to me, and it makes people who only have limited skills or resources feel bad about themselves, and personally, I think that kind of sucks.

Oh well.. Onwards and upwards. Back to work

[Schrompf]

If you're a struggling new developer trying to make your first game, there's absolutely nothing wrong with working with the materials available, putting your own stamp on it, and being proud to have created something. If you want to share that with other people on Steam and manage to make a buck or two from your game, that's a real achievement, and you deserve to call that your own work.

Sure. Didn't want to imply otherwise, sorry if I came across that way. Just say what's yours and what's from other sources, and you're done.

[Zireael]

absolutely nothing wrong with working with the materials available

There is nothing wrong with it, indeed - my own project also uses freely available stuff.

BTW I can't wait to see the "evolving ecosystem" you mentioned, any sort of evolution is right up my alley!