Game Design and Project Resources: The Workshops Quarter > Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley
Empires of the Undergrowth: A game about ants
JeffNevington:
I have been working on an ant colony management game for a while now and posted around here a few times in relation to that. We just put out a new demo (with some much overdue performance enhancements) and so it seems like a good time to do an announcement about it in the indie alley. You can grab the demo (0.064) for Windows here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/empires-of-the-undergrowth/downloads
It's a bit like the original dungeon keeper, crossed with sim ant. I stress "a bit like", I don't know if we can truly do either of those immortal titles justice.
You start each level with a queen and a couple of worker ants, and you have to build up from there. You need to gather food, build more workers and soldiers, and most importantly, defend your queen. Currently in the demo, you can only explore underground maps - but you can see overground in action on our steam "coming soon" page. http://store.steampowered.com/app/463530
This is how the underground looks (after a lot of digging)
And here is a shot of the overground (the beach)
Our team is really small, there are just three of us, and only one gets to work on the project full-time (slowly eating away at our modest kickstarter pile). We have to try and do as much as we can on a tiny budget. That includes making our own sound effects:
If you have any trouble with the demo or have any feedback or anything else, let me know :ogre:
Jubal:
Ah yes, I was doing that sound-generation method for my own game recently!
I'll check it out, been looking forward to test-driving this one for a while :)
JeffNevington:
That's great. You seem to give everything a go :D
One day it would be nice to have mod support too. A few people have already expressed an interest in making their own scenarios.
Jubal:
OK, I've had a few runs through the three available maps!
Main reaction - kudos, it's a lovely game. It looks pretty - not just "looks the part", but the whole thing is really quite visually pleasing, the sounds are good, the controls are smooth and make a lot of sense. I sense there's a lot more content to come, but what's there is already an actual fun game and I've enjoyed playing through it. The fact it's quite scenario-driven thus far perhaps limits replay value a bit, but the scenarios are good fun; the "critters" and "the nest" took me 3-4 attempts each before getting the knack of them. Surrounded I wanted to play more of to see more other enemy bugs but I also enjoyed it less, I think simply because I don't like the "fight waves until you die" RTS scenario style so much.
Detailed thoughts/notes:
- When I first booted it up, the graphics settings were weird and so fuzzy I could barely see the camera until I tweaked them (I should've got a screenshot but didn't, sorry)
- It definitely makes my fan boost up quite a bit faster/laptop heat up a bit, don't know if this is normal
- I definitely wanted more of an info base - like mousing over enemies to see what they were or something (both in terms of their species and in terms of getting some sort of tactical sense of how tough they were). The research is clearly good behind the game, and it would be good to see more of that coming through.
- Similarly I needed a bit more clarity on my own side - I guess some of this may be covered by the tutorial, but even so it might be good to flag up "worker ants are workers, black ants are soldiers" more clearly within the UI.
- UI stuff in the top right corner might be a bit small, I wasn't using it much & found I preferred to just look at where the scent markers were
- I felt like I wanted more tactical options at times, though I imagine this is something that will be fixed as more content comes in/different maps - the scenarios as they are work well for the game as it is, but Critters and The Nest at least are fairly pure rush-tactics styley, especially the second half of The Nest (though that bit is good fun!)
- The scent-trail mechanic works very nicely, I really like that and the way it pushes towards a non-micromanaged playstyle
- For Critters and The Nest, I found there was a strong weighting towards learning a map with a couple playthroughs before winning it - because it's not always clear when you're going to hit a chamber with critters in it, learning roughly where those are gives one a huge advantage
I'd very definitely be interested in scenario building if the option was available :)
JeffNevington:
Awesome feedback, thanks!
What you say about it being "scenario driven" hits a chord with me. We have been aware of this for a while and although I was working on a full blown bot colony AI, it has taken a back seat for the moment as we ramp up to early access (which will be primarily scenario driven). The fact is that it is much easier for us to make engaging content in this way than create a balanced bot AI that changes tactics. The plan is to release 4 new scenario style missions for early access (with a bit more of a story, including narration), and a "pet formicarium" mode, which is a bit more free and the danger is controlled by the player. After that, I want to pour effort back into the bot AI and developing a nice skirmish mode.
I have noticed all sorts of things happening with graphics on first boot of the game. We need to look into that prior to release. As for your fan - it is a pretty heavy game. We have been working on getting the CPU load down: the main culprits here are movement, collision and individual ant behaviour AI. The GPU load is also high; this is a symptom of having free reign of UE4 graphics. There are still optimizations to be made there, but the main thing I think we want to do is make sure that lower graphics settings still look nice (we haven't paid much attention to anything below maximum so far).
Having more info on the species is really important - as they are real species. Hovering over for their name seems sensible - also there is health bar info if you hold down "alt", perhaps that could include some stats too. We want a creature wiki in the game anyway to give all of this information but that's not so helpful in the heat of battle.
Clarity on how to use your ants is understandably difficult. When I watch people play on Youtube, I find it incredibly frustrating "NO NOT LIKE THAT, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG". Totally our fault as we have no tutorial yet. Distribution of ants in your groups has a massive effect on colony efficiency, and arguably the most important group (the "home" group) is unlabeled.
More tactical options should emerge as we include more ant species. The next one planned is a type of wood ant, which sprays acid as a defense mechanism (so.. ranged ants :P). The introduction of tile-based upgrades should diversify your army more and effect who you want to send in first.
Again - with the scenario based missions, learning the level is a significant part of it. Actually I don't like chamber shapes being unknown - I don't think we will be having long elaborate cave-ins in the next missions (unless they don't contain enemies). You should always know if you are about to dig into danger (at least to a large extent).
Really appreciate you taking the time to give such a thorough breakdown of your experience!
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