https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/smant-world-1

Friday

And there were the four of us, standing near a cactilli familly and sitting on a wooden pallet drinking a beer, trying to figure out what we were going to do. We picked a random theme from the list as it is not untill 03:00 am that the theme is revealed in Spain.

I suggested a quick brainstorming in which we would say one word each, and then with the 4 words we would make a game.

The words were "Ant" "Tree" "Wood" and "Boob" (yep...) So then we made a pitch for a game about "Ants", that were on an expedition on a "Tree", and of course that tree was made out of "Wood", and well about the last one, we play as the "Mother of the Ants: the Queen". So here you have a little incremental game about Ants building a small society and feeding on a tree!

The concept was:

"High Concept: Incremental game + “Open World” (2.5D ). "Look and feel: Unravel Meets Starcraft with Ants".

These was the visual experience we wanted to aim for:

We started early on Friday here in Spain so there wasn't much more room for us to work if we wanted to get some sleep, and ayway the theme hand't even been announced so it might have totally changed and with it, our small ant world idea would have flew away too.

Saturday

How lucky could we get? We got the right theme!

At first we tried to go full 360º navmesh around the branches and an orbital camera. So we spend the first morning figuring the navigation without physics and trying to flesh out a cool camera that would allow us to do so. Neither worked.

We had spent 25% of our time and we had nothing. Well, Pablo was advancing with the tree graybox so we had one static trunk with a wooden ring around it.

We felt like...

So we made a little stop to launch and discuss our options. One Churrasco after, Cafar managed to put up a basic orbital system for the camera that would ultimatellty diverge into the two cameras we have now, the 1st person camera and the tree-orbit-but-not-ant-orbit camera.

I started made a draft of the numbers for the incremental progression, and a first iteration of the vendors UI.

By this time Pablo had already started modelling the Worker ant, and by the time we finished placing small spheres as food on the wooden ring, Pablo had already started animating the worker Ant.

At the end of the day we had a working floor for a walking cube and some unused logic, so it was a little more than one day to go and

what should have looked like this

Looked like this.

Sunday Last hours! Pablo somehow managed to put together the Army Ant and the Drone and meanwhile Cafar and me wrapped the level design with the incremental logic. It was a bit primitive, but it worked. The problem was that the hired ants weren't moving, so we integrated a navmesh and it worked wonders! Almost wonders, I mean, the ants can actually fall from the tree but hey, this can happen. Right? ^^' Ok we included a reset position button just in case.

I made an Ant Bridge using a bit of here and there.

Pablo worked on improvements for the colliders and started working on the leaves to make the atmosphere feel more like a tree, and once Cafar integrated everything together along with the music suddenly the magic happened.

It worked! and we still had a couple hours to splat bugs (not ants tho) and polish polish polish.

:)

Here os a link for the game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/smant-world-1

The cool think is that although it seemed impossible, we managed to stay positive and with teamwork (and surprisingly not too much sleep deprivation) we made it together!

Thanks a lot to all of you Cafar: Code and integration Pablo Diaz Decerio: Art and animation Fran Romguer: Original Soundtrack Manu Scythe (me): Game Design and TrelloCheerleader-Producer

Thanks for your ANTENTION! ;P