Dotting the i's and crossing the t's Kyra19:12 0 comments

Hello, dear readers! It’s time for another updates, yes; it’s been two weeks since the last one. I hope that you’ve had a good time.

Things draw to a close, now, with a lot of deadlines in the near future. We have to have all the code finished by Monday, as well as the promotional material. The trailer that we will be making will also be posted on this blog, so keep your eyes out for that.

Further along in the week, we’ve got the presentations on Wednesday, followed by the symposium on Friday. Don’t forget to visit us if you’re there!

After that, it’ll be over. You won’t be hearing from me on this blog anymore. I suppose it’s sad, isn’t it? Alas, all things must end, sooner or later, and so must this. However, not before we deliver a finished product! Which is what I’ll talk to you about, now.

I mentioned last time that we had new sprites, and those have been implemented now! Although the game is not completely finished yet, I can share some exciting screenshots with you!

(Bear in mind, though, that the FoV for the player has not been completed yet, so what you’re going to see now won’t show that off.)

In this first picture, you can see two of our enemies: a beetle, and a green spider. Now, the green spider is new; it works almost completely like the original spider, except it fires off three shots of venom and those shots do not slow you or damage you over time, but instead they just damage you.

Here, you can see the green spider in action; you have to be really careful when dodging those shots. Good luck with that!

Pictured above is the player using the stun ability! Of course, normally, there would be an enemy in front of you, but getting the timing of the screenshot right was a bit tricky. Perhaps you’ll see that in the trailer! When you use this ability successfully, you stun the enemy for a little bit.

I hope you can agree with me that the graphics look really good, and I’d once again like to thank our artist, Ivan, for doing such a wonderful job. Without him, things would probably be looking a lot worse.

Now, let’s move on: we are currently in the progress of making the finishing touches. Dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, you know how it is. I, myself, am in the progress of creating the sound effects and the music. Most of the sound effects have already been added, and the music is already largely composed, but I still have some work left to do.

I’m not a composer by any stretch of the imagination, but I believe I have done a pretty good job so far on the music. However, I won’t be letting you hear my work just yet; you’ll have to play the game to hear it. (Perhaps I’ll use it in the trailer, though, so you can hear it then; you’ll see when that time comes.)

Earlier on, I mentioned something about the FoV. This is something that Paul is working on; we’ll make it so that you can’t see everything on the screen, but only the things that the ant would, realistically, be able to see. Of course, this FoV won’t be the most advanced system, since we have a very limited timespan for this particular element. However, a very basic version has already been made, and I’m sure it will turn out great.

Another thing we’re working on is the menus. Up until now, we’ve only concentrated on the actual playing of the game, and not of the title screen and settings and related stuff. So, that’s a thing we’re adding.

Something that might be interesting to note is that you will be able to choose between two control schemes: moving with pathfinding (right-click) or moving with the WASD keys. This has been added after a lot of consideration and discussion; in the beginning, we had planned to only use pathfinding, but we’d added the WASD controls before the pathfinding was finished, and some of us preferred playing with that. So, in the end, we decided to give the player the option to choose between the two! This way, we can’t go wrong.

All in all, we’re almost done, sweet readers, which is a very good thing, since that’s how far we’re supposed to be! Let’s see how this all turns out, right?

Of course, I still have to tell you a fun piece of ant trivia! I’m really glad this is coming to an end, because I’m running out of those. However, I still have this for you: you can find ants on almost every continent; in fact, the only continent where they don’t live is Antarctica! (Yes, even though the name even begins with “ant”.)

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Another update Kyra16:27 0 comments

Hello, my dear readers, it has been a while again. I hope the new year is treating you well. I am here to bring you some more updates on our ongoing project, Antless. Unfortunately, I have to admit that there is not a lot of things I can tell you, because things have been moving pretty slowly over the past weeks, due to it having been the holidays and all. Yes, we will have to work hard these coming weeks to make up for the time some of us – including myself, if I’m being honest – have spent slacking while we could have been working on the project.

However, let us get to the updates! First of all is a very exciting announcement, in my opinion. Our artist, Ivan, has finished most of the sprites! Oh, and they do look good. Have a little look at this image, for example:

[image description: an image showing off some of the new sprites.]

Now, you might not be able to tell what everything is, so I’ll give you a short list:

·         Among the insects, you see six ants. The ones most to the left are the standard sprites. One is pictured with a bow and one with a sword, which are the two weapons that will be available in the game. You also see the same ants, but in red. This is what the player sprite will look like while you’re using a damage boost. The ones with the yellow circle around them are what the player sprite will look like while you’re using the shield ability.

·         The three other insects are the stag beetle, the bee, and the spider. I hope you’ll be able to tell which is which, yourself.

·         Next to the normal ant with the bow, you see what the arrow will look like when fired. Next to the normal ant with the sword, you see what the javelin will look like, which is an ability. Next to that, and above the bee, is what the trap from the trap ability will look like when placed down.

·         To the right of the insects (and weapons) are three objects below each other. The top one is the chest. The ones below it are the health shrine; the one filled with a red liquid is unused and the empty one has been used.

·         To the right of that is a wall. This is what a wall will also look like in-game.

·         To the right of that are two rows of, in total, seventeen sprites. These are what the item drops will look like. They are, from top to bottom and left to right: the shield ability, the snipe ability, the trap ability, the mana power-up, the all stats power-up, the stun ability, the damage and DoT power-up, the damage power-up, the DoT power-up, the damage boost ability, food, the health power-up, the health and mana power-up, the javelin ability, the luck power-up, the mana regeneration power-up, and the mana and mana regeration power-up.

·         At the bottom, you see the HUD. On the left, you see the health bar; on the right, you see the mana bar; in the middle, you see three empty slots, which is where the abilities you have will be displayed.

·         In the background, you see the floor tiles.

Not pictured are the ability icons, which have already been made. I suppose, sweet readers, that you’ll just have to wait and see those later on. I have to tell you that they, too, are very well-made.

Second, which is a bit of an anti-climax, I suppose, I will discuss some changes in the AI. It’s not perfect yet, but enemies are a lot smarter right now. They don’t really get stuck behind walls anymore. This is largely due to the fact that we’ve added a sort of line of sight to the enemies, and, when they can’t see you anymore, they go to where they saw you last. Also, you can no longer stand behind walls to avoid the spider’s ranged attack. You probably didn’t know that that was possible, but it’s been changed so that, when the spider can no longer see you, it starts chasing you again so that it does see you.

We have also changed the scale of the rooms. Previously, they were seven by seven tiles, but now they are fifteen by fifteen tiles, giving you more room to walk and attack. We have also implemented a camera that follows the player, making walking around a lot easier.

That’s been most of the news, so I must now bid you farewell, but not before sharing another piece of ant trivia with you: of all animals, the ant’s brain is the largest in proportion to its body size.

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