{"author_link":"\/author\/yselftool\/","author_name":"YSelf Tool","author_uid":"10854","comments":[{"author_name":"jprogman","author_uid":"15225","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 4:29am","epoch":1346041440,"text":"What program did you use to create this game? I'm unable to run the game as it kept on getting a critical error message before I even get the chance to play. I'm using windows 7."},{"author_name":"geekygenius","author_uid":"6529","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 6:06am","epoch":1346047260,"text":"I tried playing, and it ran, but not very fast. My fps was less than 1. Win7 64Bit Ok graphics card. (Can run tf2 at 60fps)"},{"author_name":"jprogman","author_uid":"15225","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 6:42am","epoch":1346049420,"text":"Oops my bad. Finally figured out that I needed after skipping part of your note about XNA frontend.\r<br\/>I have horrible performance issues with this game. I'm using a Win7 64-bit OS with 2.3Ghz dual professor and 512mb GPU."},{"author_name":"dredlockz","author_uid":"15024","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 8:11am","epoch":1346054760,"text":"I couldn't run it, I get that message about not having a suitable video card. \r<br\/>If your game doesn't strictly require it, you should change your XNA profile from hiDef to Reach, since hiDef isn't supported by a lot of devices. I'll check it later at my gaming computer :)"},{"author_name":"dvdking","author_uid":"14173","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 8:14am","epoch":1346054940,"text":"You should have done some performance optimizations. It's very slow. I have no more then one frame per three seconds.\r<br\/>My computer is not that bad..."},{"author_name":"YSelf Tool","author_uid":"10854","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 4:18pm","epoch":1346083980,"text":"&quot;You should have done some performance optimizations. It's very slow. I have no more then one frame per three seconds.\r<br\/>My computer is not that bad...&quot;\r<br\/>\r<br\/>The computers are not the problem, my code is it. I have optimized some parts already, but it did not become faster. \r<br\/>\r<br\/>I am taking look at it atm, the ants are definitely the problem, not graphics or robots (without ants it runs fine, with ants but without ant-drawing not fine)."},{"author_name":"YSelf Tool","author_uid":"10854","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 5:29pm","epoch":1346088240,"text":"Found the bug, was (as always) really stupid...\r<br\/>(spawned not one, but an infinite amount of ants).\r<br\/>Some other optimizations too, update will follow soon."},{"author_name":"kevincorrigan","author_uid":"15028","time":"Aug 28, 2012 @ 8:59pm","epoch":1346187240,"text":"I couldn't get it to run, and the controls sound confusing."},{"author_name":"Pitzik4","author_uid":"8883","time":"Aug 28, 2012 @ 9:14pm","epoch":1346188140,"text":"I can't run it. When I run it from the command prompt it just prints a blank line and then exits. I'm using 64-bit Windows 7."},{"author_name":"Karel","author_uid":"12356","time":"Aug 28, 2012 @ 9:38pm","epoch":1346189580,"text":"Ambitious, but I really couldn't get anywhere... The controls are too difficult."},{"author_name":"Desi Quintans","author_uid":"14456","time":"Aug 29, 2012 @ 4:40am","epoch":1346214900,"text":"I had absolutely no idea of what I was meant to be doing. I tried playing with your instructions on one screen and your game in the other, but it didn't awfully help."},{"author_name":"YSelf Tool","author_uid":"10854","time":"Aug 29, 2012 @ 3:13pm","epoch":1346252880,"text":"The game seems to be a little bit too difficult atm, now that the ants spawn in huge amounts.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>Your goal is to kill all of them, and sorry, I did not have the time for good controls."},{"author_name":"evilseanbot","author_uid":"7902","time":"Aug 30, 2012 @ 10:38am","epoch":1346322780,"text":"Some interesting ideas, but the interface definitely needed some work."},{"author_name":"DaveDobson","author_uid":"10977","time":"Aug 30, 2012 @ 10:10pm","epoch":1346364300,"text":"This looks interesting and complex, but the controls were very difficult to understand - a lot of them, and not included in the game interface, and the art (though in a cool blackline style) was too abstract for me to know what the different buildings and resources were.  I tried a couple of times, built some cubes, and wandered around the map, but eventually an ant I didn't see came and ate my robot, and I seemed to be done.  I really like the ambition and the overhead view, and the coding seems pretty solid, but I think you might need to give users a little more onscreen help (and fewer options, like maybe a single build key) to help them out.  Good luck with it if you decide to work more on it - I think there's some potential here."},{"author_name":"imef","author_uid":"9591","time":"Aug 30, 2012 @ 10:42pm","epoch":1346366220,"text":"The game worked fine up to a point when it crashed..."},{"author_name":"vilya","author_uid":"10456","time":"Aug 30, 2012 @ 10:57pm","epoch":1346367120,"text":"This is hugely ambitious, but I think it suffers from the extremely complex controls. You really need to streamline them for this to be playable. I'd suggest something like (for example) left-click and drag to move the cursor, right-click and drag to move the camera, plus some clickable on-screen icons for each of the different things you can build.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>I hope you do a post-compo version of this with better controls - I think it's got some great potential."},{"author_name":"YSelf Tool","author_uid":"10854","time":"Aug 31, 2012 @ 6:45pm","epoch":1346438400,"text":"Yes, I really want to keep this project running and am already working on a post-ld version. Controls and GUI is what I really want to change nearly completely, the current are far to complex (and not what I wanted them to be).\r<br\/>@DaveDobson: It was inconvenient to create the models, currently I am working on a blender export script."},{"author_name":"Cipher","author_uid":"13577","time":"Sep 2, 2012 @ 1:50am","epoch":1346550300,"text":"No suitable graphics card found...cant run"},{"author_name":"Beanalby","author_uid":"11055","time":"Sep 2, 2012 @ 3:56am","epoch":1346557860,"text":"Sounds like it could be interesting, it's way to complex for what little user interface is provided.  Even with referring back to the mass of text, I couldn't figure out what was going on or how I was supposed to go about accomplishing anything."},{"author_name":"PaulSB","author_uid":"1626","time":"Sep 4, 2012 @ 10:28pm","epoch":1346797380,"text":"It ran fine for me and looks good, but man I had no idea what to do and failed to make any sort of progress. But good effort, keep at it :)"},{"author_name":"mohammad","author_uid":"14064","time":"Sep 7, 2012 @ 9:31pm","epoch":1347053160,"text":"Dude XML is one of the main internet scripting languages!\r<br\/>Make it a web!"},{"author_name":"mohammad","author_uid":"14064","time":"Sep 7, 2012 @ 9:53pm","epoch":1347054480,"text":"Liked it!"},{"author_name":"Cracky","author_uid":"14963","time":"Sep 8, 2012 @ 2:52am","epoch":1347072420,"text":"Game is just really confusing, I have no clue what's going on or what I'm supposed to do."},{"author_name":"AaronYip","author_uid":"4897","time":"Sep 10, 2012 @ 8:02pm","epoch":1347307020,"text":"I applaud your ambition, but perhaps too many features (and the pretty extensive control panel to operate them) ultimately didn't quite work out for the better. Because there's over a thousand games to play, players can only afford to spend a few minutes on most games--or only a few seconds if controls don't make sense. Good games try to make that count: the few minutes isn't spent reading up on controls or features and instead spent diving in and having fun. \r<br\/>\r<br\/>I would have really enjoyed a version of your game simplified to just robots and only constructing buildings (just 5 buttons on screen, one for each building, no other controls except a mouse click). Everything else--where the building gets built, creating\/equipping\/moving robots, etc--happens automatically. I liked your idea and it has a lot of potential to be really cool, but atm I'm unfortunately not really sure what to do or how to do it..."}],"images":["ld24\/10854-543be7bacea237642dc017f64683f410.jpg"],"links":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.mediafire.com\/download.php?j3yey830f3tej3e","text":"Windows"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.mediafire.com\/download.php?cf9mfdq2mgscive","text":"Windows Reach"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.mediafire.com\/download.php?gy06y954gc8d0dd","text":"Source"}],"metadata":{"g_key":"28804","g_author":"10854","g_event":"LD24","g_eventkey":"12","g_subevent":"COMPO","g_urlkey":"28834","g_title":"AInts vs Robots","g_status":"UCHK1","g_place":"604","g_commentcount":"24","g_site2_node_id":"0","g_hide":"N","g_has_icon":"Y","g_rqueue":"0","g_random":"0"},"nds":[],"node":null,"orig_images":["http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/\/163678\/10854-shot0.png-eq-900-500.jpg"],"text":"AInts vs Robots:\r\n\r\nAInts vs Robots is kind of an RTS.\r\nYou play the robots, the AI the ants, who want to destroy all of you robots.\r\n\r\nUPDATE #1:\r\nFound the performance bug:\r\nI added each breeded ant not one time, but always, that is fixed now and the game runs smoothly (at my notebook).\r\nSome other performance optimizations done.\r\nAdded XNA Reach version.\r\n\r\n\r\nWhat about Evolution?\r\nThe ants - starting with just two of their kind - grow and change like natural evolution works. If you kill just the weak ones, the new ants will be stronger, if you kill the strong ones the weak ants will breed.\r\n\r\nHow do the robots work?\r\nEach robot consist out of parts, needing at least a core (body) and one other part to survive.\r\nThere are two buildings, a stealmine and baracks, and two materials, steal and synthetics.\r\nEach robot produces synthetics - more, if he has a \"Syntheter\" - steal is produced inside a stealmine.\r\nYou can build a stealmine on stealdeposits (black), and baracks on grass (green) or stone (gray).\r\nTo create a robot you need to produces enough parts (inside a barack) and then create a robot out of it. Each robot can have at most one part of each type.\r\nRobots can stand still, move to a point and attack ants.\r\nIf a robot does not have enough energy, he can't move. To get more energy (weapons and the syntheter need much) the robot can contain a \"reactor\" or be near baracks or stealmines, because nearing to buildings there is more energy. A full robot - with a core\/body, legs, reactor, syntheter and both weapontypes needs to have baracks near to have enough energy.\r\n\r\nThe ants decide themselves to idle, to move, to attack or to breed - that's the reason the game is called AInts vs Robots. Ants need no ressources.\r\nThe Robots have less AI, but shoot themselves when they shall attack.\r\n\r\nThe game is controlled nearly complete with the keyboard:\r\nArrows: Move Camera\r\nMouse Wheel: Zoom Camera\r\nW,A,S,D: move cursor (green block)\r\nChange module to produce: N\r\nBuild: B (stealmine on stealdeposit, baracks on grass\/stone)\r\nProduce module: P (while the cursor is above baracks)\r\nCreate robot: R\r\nMove robot (to the cursor): M\r\nAttack ants (near the cursor): T (like \"tackle\")\r\nEquip robot: E (while it is in baracks)\r\nChange robot selection: PageUp, PageDown\r\n\r\nThe selected robot is shown at the top of the screen in the middle, at the side of it the next robots to change to with PageUp and PageDown.\r\nIn the lower left corner the current selected module to produce is shown, right of it all modules lying at the baracks (selected by the cursor).\r\n\r\nI have prepared four maps (which are stored as images), because of the lack of a menu a random one is chosen.\r\n\r\nFor the game I used my own little XNA frontend library (so C#, XNA and .NET).\r\nBecause of the lack of time (and what you can read below \"Annotation\") I was not able to release a version with Mono\/MonoGame for Linux\/Mac.\r\n\r\n\r\nAnnotation:\r\n\r\nSince I have huge performance drops since today evening (when I added breeding), I was not able to add many sounds, a menu, more animations or any music. The game may not be playable if I do not find the bug the next days and upload a new version. I have already profiled the game and removed\/changed everything which needed a lot of time, but it has not become better (strange, because I did not add time intensive code before the first performance drops came). \r\n\r\nUnfortunately I did not commit the last perfectly running version to SVN, which did not had breeding (so no evolution), but was a nice RTS (with robots, ants, production and fighting).\r\n\r\n\r\nConclusion:\r\n\r\nIt was a lot of fun to program a whole weekend, even if I am not satisfied with the result. 48 hours are enough for a small, neat game, but not enough for a huge project, so I need to plan to do less next time. I needed a lot time to create the models, so I am going to write a blender export script for my own XML model format, because with blender I should be able to create models faster. Maybe I will use 2D graphics next time, for sure I will take some more looks at Mono and MonoGame. \r\n\r\nI hope, you (who have read the text till the end) will have fun playing the game (if that is possible - I hope I will find the bug).\r\n<\/p>","title":"AInts vs Robots"}