{"author_link":"\/author\/aaronsnoswell\/","author_name":"aaronsnoswell","author_uid":"5348","comments":[{"author_name":"Endurion","author_uid":"103","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 6:38am","epoch":1335162780,"text":"Waiting for the Windows build"},{"author_name":"mikelovesrobots3","author_uid":"5908","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 6:39am","epoch":1335162840,"text":"Nice job! I've totally got a soft spot for ant games."},{"author_name":"Rusty Moyher","author_uid":"4571","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 7:27am","epoch":1335165720,"text":"Victory for tenderfoot! Smooth and fun.\r\rCan you share a bit about the development? What tools\/frameworks did you use? Where you familiar with them? How well did it work out?\r\rFun game here."},{"author_name":"FredericRP","author_uid":"4277","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 8:08am","epoch":1335168180,"text":"Good whole, original idea !\rI won with only encountering 1 red ant, I must try again !"},{"author_name":"TenTonToon","author_uid":"11273","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 9:07am","epoch":1335171720,"text":"Waiting for an iMac to play the game on...\rOr the Windows build, I guess ;)"},{"author_name":"maranas","author_uid":"11282","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 9:11am","epoch":1335171960,"text":"I like it when the entry really tries to play to the theme, and not around it. Creating an awesome platformer with a "tiny world" sprite sheet is awesome, but innovating on gameplay to meet the theme requirements takes a lot more, IMO. Thanks for this. I miss SimAnt :))"},{"author_name":"fatSquirrel","author_uid":"10782","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 1:18pm","epoch":1335186780,"text":"I liked collecting the food and finally proving who is superior...that would be blue. It would be nice to have an attack button. I liked the music, AI, and fun factor. Good job!"},{"author_name":"aaronsnoswell","author_uid":"5348","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 1:33pm","epoch":1335187680,"text":"Thanks for the feedback, fatSquirrel - Space is the attack button (you bite the enemy ants, just like your pickup food) :)"},{"author_name":"Julian Spillane","author_uid":"12162","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 1:55pm","epoch":1335189000,"text":"I'm also waiting for a Windows or web build. Looks fun!"},{"author_name":"AirRider3","author_uid":"7398","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 1:56pm","epoch":1335189060,"text":"I've love it!\r\rI have always loved the fact of just controlling one player of a team, and the rest controlled by the AI. (Like in my game)\r\rIt could have been a bit more difficult."},{"author_name":"Kvisle","author_uid":"3818","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 2:28pm","epoch":1335190980,"text":"Waiting for a Windows or Linux build."},{"author_name":"cmo7","author_uid":"11052","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 2:29pm","epoch":1335191040,"text":"Waiting for a build I can play, looks nice."},{"author_name":"aaronsnoswell","author_uid":"5348","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 2:30pm","epoch":1335191100,"text":"Thanks for the comments everyone! I'll have access to a PC tomorrow so I'll try and get a windows build up then!"},{"author_name":"Canard Sauvage","author_uid":"9578","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 2:53pm","epoch":1335192480,"text":"Please do, I really want the Windows build :)"},{"author_name":"skyboy49707","author_uid":"1802","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 3:02pm","epoch":1335193020,"text":"Pretty nice game! I really like watching the ants fight each other."},{"author_name":"hulahulahest","author_uid":"528","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 4:08pm","epoch":1335196980,"text":"Can't play (don't have MacOS X machine available)."},{"author_name":"AlwaysGeeky","author_uid":"11531","time":"Apr 23, 2012 @ 8:55pm","epoch":1335214200,"text":"Surprised how many people made a game containing ants... still very nice!"},{"author_name":"netmute","author_uid":"11213","time":"Apr 24, 2012 @ 11:43am","epoch":1335267480,"text":"Gameplay is super smooth and fun, graphics are great, sound is not annoying :)\rDifficulty is way too easy. My blue ants crushed the reds in 2 minutes with me basically doing nothing at all.\r\rOverall a great game!"},{"author_name":"Pyro","author_uid":"7230","time":"Apr 24, 2012 @ 5:33pm","epoch":1335288480,"text":"Very fun and addictive!"},{"author_name":"Ace","author_uid":"10247","time":"Apr 24, 2012 @ 5:40pm","epoch":1335288900,"text":"Well made game, the text positioning could've been better but apart from that there's not much I can copmlain about.\rNice graphics and music, the leveling system was a good touch too."},{"author_name":"Lucas Tiridath","author_uid":"5505","time":"Apr 24, 2012 @ 5:55pm","epoch":1335289800,"text":"Excellent game! Great fun to play :). Victory at commander level with a population of 85. It took ages to track down that last crafty red ant! Anyhow really great entry, amazing you can make that in 48 hours."},{"author_name":"cr0ybot","author_uid":"11084","time":"Apr 24, 2012 @ 6:13pm","epoch":1335290880,"text":"Love the music! SimAnt was one of my favorite DOS games back in the day. I wish the movement controls were mouse-based instead of WASD; it was strange seeing all of the other ants moving in straight lines while I had to move at 45° or 90° angles."},{"author_name":"the8donut","author_uid":"10453","time":"Apr 24, 2012 @ 9:04pm","epoch":1335301140,"text":"Fun game with smooth controls! Love the background too. Good job!"},{"author_name":"robcozzens","author_uid":"10944","time":"Apr 25, 2012 @ 2:15am","epoch":1335319800,"text":"Cool graphics."},{"author_name":"CherryNukaCola","author_uid":"4966","time":"Apr 25, 2012 @ 3:20am","epoch":1335323700,"text":"Wow! Love the whole sim-rpg concept. Could have kept playing this game for quite a long time ^_^ . Nice controls - wouldn't mind seeing this one expanded on. - Cheers!"},{"author_name":"Zythiku","author_uid":"10786","time":"Apr 25, 2012 @ 3:31am","epoch":1335324360,"text":"Reminded me of sim ant a little. Was fun even those the red ants never fought back. Somehow relaxing just collecting food."},{"author_name":"Orni","author_uid":"10771","time":"Apr 25, 2012 @ 6:59am","epoch":1335336840,"text":"this is a great concept - it's a shame you had to cancel those features you wanted to implement\r\rI really enjoyed being an ant :D\rit induced some "hey, don't hit my buddy!" feeling - being like a big brother for all the ants, which got even better since the player becomes bigger and stronger as the game progresses"},{"author_name":"ilo","author_uid":"12377","time":"Apr 26, 2012 @ 1:51am","epoch":1335404760,"text":"I derived a little too much enjoyment from making my ant dance to the music...\r\r*ahem*\r\rAnd the game was pretty good too!"},{"author_name":"Danik","author_uid":"2311","time":"Apr 26, 2012 @ 7:47pm","epoch":1335469320,"text":"Nice game, and great music!"},{"author_name":"davidpeter","author_uid":"3323","time":"Apr 29, 2012 @ 1:29am","epoch":1335662640,"text":"Fun game! I really liked the AI for the ants, especially how I had to fight my own ants to get to the food first :)"},{"author_name":"thegreystudios","author_uid":"12111","time":"Apr 29, 2012 @ 2:20pm","epoch":1335708900,"text":"Nice little game, neat AI :)"},{"author_name":"Cosmologicon","author_uid":"1151","time":"May 1, 2012 @ 4:31pm","epoch":1335889560,"text":"Looks cool, unfortunately I can't play it, as I'm on Linux. I'm only posting because your game shows up on my queue when I search for "HTML5" so I need to clear it out. Looking forward to your entry next time! :)"},{"author_name":"asfdfdfd","author_uid":"2404","time":"May 7, 2012 @ 6:48pm","epoch":1336416180,"text":"Exciting idea and cool music."},{"author_name":"JellyFame","author_uid":"12511","time":"May 12, 2012 @ 11:32pm","epoch":1336865220,"text":"Very entertaining, i love ants! Too bad it's so short."}],"images":["ld23\/5348-1f2c8c4db0aa628c1ba8a980fdf441a6.jpg","ld23\/5348-46b5e675a22bf840160933e7be4163c6.jpg","ld23\/5348-4fe4b24cba05f937ebe79f1ca629cc2e.jpg"],"links":[{"url":"http:\/\/dl.dropbox.com\/u\/52276321\/TinyColonyWin32.zip","text":"Windows"},{"url":"http:\/\/dl.dropbox.com\/u\/52276321\/TinyColony.app.zip","text":"OS\/X"},{"url":"https:\/\/github.com\/aaronsnoswell\/ludumdare-23","text":"Source"},{"url":"http:\/\/youtu.be\/jPYm36hWpwU","text":"Timelapse"}],"metadata":{"g_key":"30921","g_author":"5348","g_event":"LD23","g_eventkey":"10","g_subevent":"COMPO","g_urlkey":"30951","g_title":"TinyColony","g_status":"UCHK1","g_place":"166","g_commentcount":"34","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\/\/123793\/5348-shot0.png-eq-900-500.jpg","http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/\/123793\/5348-shot1.png-eq-900-500.jpg","http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/\/123793\/5348-shot2.png-eq-900-500.jpg"],"text":"**NEW**: Windows build added!\r\n\r\nYou are a tiny any in a tiny world.\r\n\r\nDefend your colony from the evil red ants! Collect food! Kill things!\r\n\r\nContact me if you would like to help get a Linux build up! The windows build was built on Windows 7, 64 bit, but should be compatible with 32 bit as far as I know. Your milage may vary - let me know if it works for you!\r\n\r\n---\r\n\r\nDevelopment details:\r\n\r\nThis is my third Ludum Dare, and the first one I have finished. I wanted to use a C++ based game engine, as I am doing a technical job interview in the next few days where C++ is a assessed, and I haven't done any C++ in several years :)\r\n\r\nSo, that said, I used the Angel game prototyping engine (built for game jams like this). See (http:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/angel-engine\/) I've never used it before, but it seems fairly well rounded. The docs are a little out of date though, so digging through source code was necessary. I built the game in 40hrs, finishing with 4hrs to spare.\r\n\r\nGIMP was used for graphics, Xcode for programming (Angel engine needs XCode to build on Mac). I used SFXR for sound effects and the music was taken straight from the Angel engine demos.\r\n\r\nI wanted to add more functionality: Rain that hurts ants, the ability to travel down the anthill and dig underground, random insect encounters and magnifying-glasses of death, more terrain types (rocks, grass etc) and also more AI functionality (ants will help other ants \/ communicate where food deposits are). All of these features got cut due to time :)\r\n\r\nI'm super stoked to have actually finished this to a point where it works and is fun - a bit of a personal milestone for me :)\r\n\r\nThings I learned:\r\n * I HATE XCODE! SOOOO MUCH HATE!!! There were many occasions where a physical bug in Xcode itself would prevent me from being able to build my game. I would have to delete entire methods and re-type them before Xcode would link them correctly.\r\n * Next time, I'll be using a JS-based html5 engine, so it's much easier for people to play and vote :)\r\n * If your game engine supports a scripting language, such as Lua, use it. It will save you a lot of time.\r\n\r\n<\/p>","title":"TinyColony"}