Colony of Giant Ants

Yet so far, I am pretty sure I am the only one who suggested organized AI to such detail and extend (and I can always add more to it), while 90% of entries are single monster that looks weird and attacks the players, how original is that?

Thank you Emberleaf! Hopefully devs can clear things up little bit for us around here.

 

Really dude? You have no sense of humor, but i wont hold that against you lol. But my point still stands. There really are NOT very many games and or movies that implement ants and insects, and if they do, their generally a stupid spawn and kill enemy, not an intelligent, colony with different characteristics. Fallout I wasnt aware had them, but of course I refuse to play that since its a broken game, but thats another discussion for another time, so I of course wouldnt know they had it. But really, one game out of 100 isnt being over used, such as, again, zombies. I mean, zombies are so overused even Call of Duty has them. If this was an organized colony of zombies I'd be lambasting it for unoriginality like you are this. But this is NOT unoriginal when you get down to the nitty gritty. scary? not at first, but play against them, and it could quickly turn otherwise. Does looking at them give you nightmares? In most cases, no. But would implementing this in a game be fun as heck? you bet your bottom dollar!

 

Regardless, still think Vlad has some interesting monsters. Power to the ants!

 

Without a doubt simple monsters that just attack you are very unoriginal, but at times it can be rather difficult make something whose sole goal in life to kill you more unique, and I wouldn't say that an ant colony isn't more unique than most. In that conversation I was mainly talking about the idea that ants, as a monster, is rather unorignal and that ants aren't the only creatures that can be highly organized.

By the way, I'm loving the idea with the larva.

 

Well, maybe it doenst want to kill you. Maybe the monster tries to be nice to you, but accidentally kills you.

 

Not all ants will try to kill you. Some will, but some just want to do their own thing. in those cases they might have a perimeter they dont want breached so they will attack if you go past said perimeter, but otherwise wont try to harm you. maybe they wont. Depends on the random generation in your game the AI would be such that no two gamers experience will be the exact same...until about the millionth player, then they might start getting a few same, but the point is, you just wont know how they will interact with you right away. And maybe they dont want to kill you, but want to make the whole world their colony, you might want to kill them then and start a war or something. theres such immense potential.

 

Like creepers in minecraft. They want to love and hug you, but their emotions pile up inside until...
BOOM.


Sorry, couldn't resist making that reference...

 

I'm torn. On the one hand I'm jealous you came up with ants, first!

On the other hand, you did them so well. And I absolutely admire the idea of the RAM ants using their big specially-developed flat-heads to block passages. Now if only they tried to crush you against things, they'd be more like little insectoid thwomps.

I think perhaps for a whole colony of them, they could stand to be just a tad smaller?

 

Thank you!

However I cannot take all the credit for the RAM idea, as they are actual ants that are found in nature. (what do you know, there are actual door ant out there!). However I am pretty positive I am first person to suggest them to be put in video game (and Starbound might be first game to actually do that if this would be picked by devs). I did came up with idea of them ramming into things however haha

I mentioned somewhere in the text that size (and many other attributes) of the ants can very, probably would depend on planet where you would find colony.

 

Yeah, somehow I thought I'd remembered something about some ants that are like that. Bugs fascinate me so I know some other interesting facts.

Like perhaps your giant ant colony needs honeypot ants.

Players could kill them and get tons of restoratives, or just plain delicious nectar.

 

I actually was really considering to add those! (Alone with some sort of glowing ant that was created using DNA of lighting bug/firefly), but I simply couldn't thought of making them really interesting or dangerous for the player :\ Also it took me very very very long time to make those sprites, and pictures (around 3 days of almost constant work), so I was getting pretty burned out by the end of it. Perhaps I can find some free time next weekend and come up with couple more classes.

 

They don't HAVE to be dangerous to the player. Honeypot ants are pretty much just living treasure-chests. The challenge would be GETTING to the bastards, since they'd be well-protected. It'd be like finding the treasure room in a dungeon. You already went through the trouble of finding it, so now you get to break open some treasure chests!

 

And by open up some treasure chests you mean to say cut open some innocent ants just to see if they got anything good in them, right? Brilliant!

 

Alas, I am reminded of all those RPG's where I go out of my way to visit that far-off chest, only to find it has dumb things in it like lesser herbs and twigs...

 

Oh god, I sympathize so much with this. If it makes its way into Starbound I'm going to scream.

 

Wow this is really good! I can tell a ton of thought went into this! Those ants remind me of the bugs in Half Life 2 Ep. 2 Where you crawl through the cave and fight off those bugs! I can't wait to relive that in Starbound!

 

Poor ant...

I hope I'm not getting pulled into an argument I don't want to be in.

If anyone can actually come up with something completely original, they need to go do something awesome. Like write a world-famous novel. Because nowadays you'd find it hard to come up with something that doesn't already exist or isn't based on something that already exists. Also, they may have to be institutionalized because I'm sure I'd go insane if I thought about things that other people couldn't even grasp.
Tangent aside, my entry is metal. Well, more specifically, creatures that are essentially metal things, but have energy-draining properties. Would you say that's original? I certainly wouldn't. But it's a unique spin on things, and I think that's what matters most.
That, and the devs have to actually be able to program the AI. I'm not going to talk about all these great things that my monster can do (My monster sucks btw. All it can really do is sit there and maybe accidentally kill things that are stupid enough to not notice themselves dying, kind of like how people don't notice themselves drowning until it's too late in Terraria.) and then realize, "Hey, the devs can't actually program all this stuff in. Ergo, it's not gonna be as good as people are so hyped up about so they'll rage on the devs for not being able to program in something that I thought up." Being imaginative and creative is awesome, but practical and realistic is better in a development point of view, especially when the devs are doing this for someone for free as part of a contest. Don't forget that they have a deadline to keep, heavens forbid. That being said, the whole "colony of ants" thing isn't actually that complex, so I think it has (theoretically) just as much of a chance as the next guy's. What the criteria they'll actually judge it on will be, I don't know. It could be monster creativity, lore/backstory, or just plain ingeniousness. Whatever it is, I'm sure it'll be fair.

Feel free to flame me. It's not like I won't be paying attention to this thread because school will take up all my time tomorrow. Go ahead. Bring it.

But seriously, don't try to pick a fight because it won't work. Okay, I'm done now. Got it all out of my system.

 

I think sometime people try to think of something uniqe so hard, that they end up with a mess of an idea. All I gonna say is



True story.

 

This seriously had me laughing! Like hard core lol! But besides that point, good observations!

 

Well, at least I got your attention But don't worry, I'm not bitter about anything. If anything, I'm a pessimist and a realist at her finest. Oh, and I'm sarcastic. See the sarcasm?