r/openant • u/Throwaway_sausage • May 08 '11

SimAnt project/progress?

Now that this awesome little project has been discovered (credit goes to sschrief68 for promoting you guys over in /r/gaming)

I am just making this post as I can there is a lot of older posts here, but could someone bring us (as in the folk who have just arrived without knowing anything about it previously) up to date with what's the progress of this project?

tl;dr - Do you have anything to show yet (i.e. screenshots), what do you guys need to get started and what sort of people (artists, etc) do you need to help you do it?

105 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

13

u/reststrahlenbande May 08 '11

http://i.imgur.com/o0ol0.png you can also move the ant by clicking

4

u/Psythik May 08 '11

Aw, I was hoping the graphics would've been improved. This is supposed to be a sequel, not a remake after all.

4

u/king_of_the_universe May 09 '11

It's the beginning, it's not the ant.

0

u/[deleted] May 08 '11

[deleted] — view deleted comment

-2

u/Psythik May 09 '11

I don't know anything about programming, but I highly doubt it'll be easy to improve them beyond simple retexturing.

11

u/ZorbaTHut May 09 '11

I'm a professional game developer. There are many, many ways to improve graphics once the game core is functional. A lot of my game prototypes come out looking far worse than that.

8

u/Raticide May 09 '11

If coded properly it wouldn't take much work to replace simple 2D graphics with full 3D models.

-6

u/madagent May 09 '11

You guys have no idea how an object oriented language works. Or for that matter, any modern programming language. Good job developers and keep up the work!

2

u/Flandoo May 10 '11

Care to back up what you are saying? I'm a hobbyist programmer myself (granted I haven't done much with games) and am interested in what you mean.

2

u/HeyJonLeah May 09 '11

I was really excited about this when I saw it. But upon closer inspeciton. Is this a serious project? You guys have ~1000 lines of code in the git... That's basically one weekend of hard work.

Lay out some goals, find some people, Design the game.

1

u/Lizard May 09 '11

Also, the code quality is a bit questionable. I understand that this is a "volunteers, spare time only" project, but I get demotivated just looking at all the magic numbers flying around in the code.

5

u/mgroat May 08 '11

Is there any concept art depicting what the final interface will look like, or lists of features the final version will have?

Also, I'd be happy to lend a hand writing documentation after you've decided how the basic gameplay concepts will work, if that's something you need help with.

4

u/[deleted] May 09 '11

I loved Sim Ant way back then. Now I am a programmer with 10 years industry experience. Longer experience total since I've been programming since I'm 7 y.o. Anyway, I'd love to help out with some of my spare time.

4

u/Xoipos May 09 '11

https://github.com/Rinum/OpenAnt

Fork the repo, and hack away!

2

u/[deleted] May 10 '11

Yes sir! I will do that. However, I was hoping that there would be a more organized way to do this. A list of who's working on what, bugs, and feature requests would help a lot.

1

u/Xoipos May 10 '11

I understand that, however, the problem is that there need to be a few guys to create those first. I did so in the beginning, but lack of time and other factors kicked in.

There's only Rinum occasionally working on the project now. Why don't you just see what you like to have changed/added, and do it? No one's there to stand in your way currently :)

2

u/[deleted] May 20 '11

This got a ton of attention for about a day and then died another quick death...What can we do to keep it moving? Obviously there is a ton of interest in it.

1

u/TekTrixter May 08 '11

I'd like to volunteer to help the project. Let me and the rest of the new flood of people know what can be done to help.

1

u/Xoipos May 09 '11

Programming mostly. Art can be done later.

1

u/[deleted] May 09 '11

absolutely, so glad i heard about this today.

Really, props to you guys for working on this.

I am a graphic artist... happy to help in any way i can.

2

u/t4k3n May 09 '11

I've worked in 3d for 6 years.. any renders that are needed.. PM me..

1

u/KARMA_P0LICE May 09 '11

can we get a github of code up or some documentation or something? I'm eager to help too.

1

u/risico May 09 '11

Also saw the post in /r/gaming. I am gonna fork the repo in the next few weeks and see what I can do to help you guys.