Alive and Ticking: Now with exploding ants
by Tom Bampton · 11/03/2006 (12:45 am) · 12 comments
When we were originally working on concepts for Alive and Ticking, Nauris sketched up some concepts for critters. After getting the A-Star code running, I threw together some simple AI using some past GID assets for placeholder.
At that time, it didn't really work properly and I since rewrote a bunch of the AI code. Whilst the critters have been there for most of this year, they were disabled. The other day I finally got around to making them work again so there was something to do in single player games.
If I remember correctly, the ant was made by Ben Chavigner and animated by Matt Mitman. The anthill was made by Logan Foster.
The AI is pretty simple. The ants run around aimlessly until they see a player, then they home in on him and explode. They will respawn at their anthill if it hasnt been blown up.
Screenshots don't really do it justice, so here's a video.
Click for video, ~9.4MB Zipped WMV
At that time, it didn't really work properly and I since rewrote a bunch of the AI code. Whilst the critters have been there for most of this year, they were disabled. The other day I finally got around to making them work again so there was something to do in single player games.
If I remember correctly, the ant was made by Ben Chavigner and animated by Matt Mitman. The anthill was made by Logan Foster.
The AI is pretty simple. The ants run around aimlessly until they see a player, then they home in on him and explode. They will respawn at their anthill if it hasnt been blown up.
Screenshots don't really do it justice, so here's a video.
Click for video, ~9.4MB Zipped WMV
About the author
Recent Blogs
• A Game in 2750 Days• GID23 and NPC Editor
• Fun with Lua
• How NOT to make a game
• Thinking Outside the Box
#2
11/03/2006 (1:09 am)
The camera is already on the list of things to change. There has been a Mac build for ages.
#3
11/03/2006 (1:19 am)
You do realize you have "Ant Attack" there dont you? The old speccy game :)
#4
11/03/2006 (1:40 am)
Damn, guess thats another thing to add the the enormous list of other games that can be made on this codebase :) 
#5
11/03/2006 (3:56 am)
Did you get the A Star from a resource here at GG? I should probably try to plug this in for the Skelly pack.
#6
11/03/2006 (5:44 am)
Nope. A general A-Star solution would have cost me far more time then just implementing it myself, and would have been significantly slower. There are a ton of optimizations that I could do due to the way I implemented the level code.
#8
11/04/2006 (8:14 am)
Yeh, you can die. I just had invincibility turned on when i took the movie since I was trying to track down an obscure bug.
#9
11/04/2006 (11:23 pm)
how much of a performance hit do you get using the a* navmesh stuff ?
#10
T.
11/04/2006 (11:51 pm)
I haven't measured performance yet. I suspect that I am roughly at the limit to what I can get away with using the current code. However, I havent done an optimization pass yet. The best that I can say for now is with 24 ants, the framerate is pretty much the same as without them.T.
#11
-Your game looks fun, going to give us a demo when your ready?
11/05/2006 (9:43 pm)
thats pretty good, I've been thinking about trying out a navmesh system, I'll have to check that A* out. -Your game looks fun, going to give us a demo when your ready?
Torque Owner Matthew Harris