Adding Pheromones to my Ant Game

[@henryjordan4183]

It may be a nice to give different buildings different coloured pheromone trails to help distinguish them more at a glance

[@ugochi-mu7mo]

I was gonna say that!

[@ugochi-mu7mo]

It would be better if it is only different for the types of ants, not individual buildings so the screen isnt too colourful

[@lwilso9152]

There’s a type of ants called leaf cutter ants which grow their own gardens to feed aphids. Maybe one of the ant types could focus on gardening to keep some of the original ‘build a terrarium’ vibes

[@okamiryun6963]

I have to point out leaf cutter ants eat mold they grow on the leaves they cut. Its a different ant species that farms and harvests honeydew from aphids. Still a good idea though.

[@barb56]

Ooh yes you could have farm buildings and then the ants could collect leaves to grow fungus. Also many ant species farm aphids, but leaf cutters only eat the fungus they grow by feeding it leaves

[@Synthetic_geth]

Actually leaf cutters raise a domesticated fungi, not aphids. Many ant species species raide and domesticate many insects like aphids, scale bugs, leaf hoppers, butterfly and moth caterpillars etc

[@weareinantartica]

​@@okamiryun6963leafcutter ants invented farming before humans!! wild stuff

[@Vennele]

Yes! Awesome! Great idea. 😊

[@valiang8867]

"Real ants don't do archery, but these are ant people and people DO do archery!" Pretty sound logic in my opinion

[@Vennele]

Yes! 😂

[@AFE-GmdG]

But some ants spray acid - i think it's similar to them.

[@hungrierforcontent]

This would be a small thing and mostly cosmetic, but as ants follow pheromone trails they will slowly create a kind of road, so maybe you could remove grass under the ants once a certain amount of ants cross it, a small thing, to add might be a small speed boost once they are traveled along enough, maybe indicated by the width of the dirt worn away. It might make the environment feel more interactive and fleshed out.

[@caitlinw8351]

love the pheromone appearance, very smell-y looking!

[@peglin5117]

“Archer” ants do exist, although they obviously don’t have a bow. Instead they spit sticky acid out their abdomen.

[@setster007]

Be cool if there were these upgraded archer ants that were called "true archer ants" and shot acid bolts instead of arrows, without consuming ammo, at the cost of having higher upkeep costs.

[@Lonewolf0840]

Upgrade the bows to acid launchers

[@TheMightyO999]

Just a suggestion, but instead of archery real ants spit acid, so that seems like a fun way to make these guys more antlike while still having a ranged unit.

[@brittanycrockett3564]

This could also make for a really fun combat unit variant for more complex gameplay. Why not acid AND archer units! Lends itself nicely to combat with damage types and resistances.

[@CrunchyCookie-sm1kr]

But he spent so much time making archery work 😢

[@SerafineSilverstream]

Most ants don't really shoot their acid over long distances, they use it more like a shotgun or even apply it via direct contact. It is like a damage over time effect that can stun and bring down targets much bigger than a single ant. Ants of the genus Crematogaster even have venom that turns into foam up and spreads over the target - this is particularly effective against other arthropods (and probably snails).

[@TheMightyO999]

Ooh, then it could be a short range AOE unit!@@SerafineSilverstream

[@itsgreenpro7064]

​@@brittanycrockett3564Same

[@blixt_]

I think the pheromone trail is a genius evolution of the waypoint system in RTS games, it actually makes the units look way more dynamic than the boring "here's a blob of units standing around doing nothing" (unless you're some kind of 150 APM player which I most definitely am not)

[@bjornk14]

Fun fact: ants looking for only turn left or right at an specific angle. If food is found they will then always take the most shallow angle of the trail on their way backan, leading to the trail becoming the shortest possible between the foodsource and the nest (since each turn becomes a slight "shortcut").

[@TheseWordsTouch]

No suggestions here, im wildly impressed and honestly cant wait for this to be released. I freaking loce games like this where you control a mini civilization, but without intense strategy learning curves. ❤ plus its super charming and cute.

[@ramuk1933]

6:38 Actually, they do. Some species of ants can spray formic acid on their opponents.

[@makingstuff1960]

Since you want your game to have more color, the buildings specifically, I think it would be nice if every building had its own color that matched the color of ant hats from this building. All in all, the game looks nice so far! Can't wait to see what comes of it in the end

[@IAmTheNobodyYT]

Woo new name! Ya did it, love it! For the arrow crafting, i think just the tipical “factory” could work great. The workers could bring wood there, and then take arrows to the archery range.

[@crinklyonion1410]

It would be interesting to see builder ants that the harvester ants supply materials to, and then each builder ant building is responsible for one assigned product, and you can assign a minimum production requirement.

[@denycast]

With the pheromonetrails I can actually see what gameplay could look like. And it is smart to have the ants and the buildings colorcoded. The archerants have a green hat and the building is has a green plant hat👍

[@mirasmussabekov4897]

This is Empires of the Undergrowth all over again. Me like. You know what? Ant colony should be a whole genre. Or at least an aesthetic. Keep on experimenting! 🐜

[@gamedevgoodness]

3:26 Unity actually does have official spline support with one of their packages. It's a very robust system and includes mesh extrusion 🙂

[@LycheeGameLabs]

Whoopsie!

[@mynamecatfish11482]

​@@LycheeGameLabs"Archer" ants do exist, although they obviously don't have a bow. Instead they spit sticky acid out their abdomen

[@peglin5117]

The archer house should have holes on the awning over the windows. Kinda to give more personality to the ants as they aren’t perfect.

[@thecalliezone6332]

This would be for a more late-game development but the vignette effect for the pheromones makes me imagine that you could stumble into an entirely different ant colony or some greater treasure type thing by following feint pheromones you find while managing your colony.

[@james14294]

I would suggest having a hotkey to show all trails and maybe colour them based on the base they are going to, the mouse idea is cool, but it would be nice to be able to get an overview of the whole thing. If you dont want it to make the mouse thing redundant, maybe it could have a cooldown or cost

[@HisaeYoshino]

Loving to learn about your process and progress :3 A suggestion: you can use the same color from the hat in the building that spawns that type of ant. This way it will be easier to associate what building does what and where each ant belongs to. You could explore the theme of the ant in the building as well, like the archer hat is made of leaves, so the building has them. Another example, the tank ant has an acorn helmet or something like that, so the building has acorns in its decoration or structure.

[@fizzyizzypop1300]

I think an interesting mechanic to include would be “nanitics” these are the first worker ants and truly jacks-of-all-trades. They are smaller and typically a lighter color than the eventual worker ants that are mass produced it be interesting to see the basic worker ants become larger and darker when upgraded.

[@caffeinated-studios]

5:45 It's unreal how that "final touch" adds so much to the game feel and play. Love that you will have to remember or trace your pheromone trails. I can imagine this getting more difficult to manage as your colony progresses, a built-in difficulty curve that matches game progression. Well done!

[@kae5717]

I love their little headbutt animation! It's so cute and funny. Here's a mean little idea: mimic type enemies that can fake out a building's pheromone trail, or disruption type enemies that can break an existing trail, based on how certain animals can manipulate their way around ants in real life. (i.e. there's a specific moth I heard about that mimics the pheromones and sounds? of a distressed ant queen, for example, to trick ants into bringing it into the nest. It then feeds on the larvae until ready to pupate and leave) (I specify a certain building's pheromone trail, to keep up the video game aspect: it would force players to recruit ants from a different building type to fight back. Rewards players who go for variety!)

[@samuelmcgowan2565]

Really like the art style. Small suggestion: I think the bows and arrows should be a colour other than black - I find the black bows and arrows a bit hard/awkward to see on the green background, and I also find the bows look a bit more like shadows than objects.

[@13x666]

This is word for word what I was going to type, uncanny. But yeah, black bows do look too much like shadows rn imo

[@aelamf]

as an idea you can make the pheromone path dissipate overtime, and then once you get better pheromones they last way longer

[@pandaberick]

It looks amazing! I can’t wait for you to add a bunch more to this strong foundation ❤ I like the idea of adding a carnivorous plant that lures lonely ants

[@zekestrangeradams6099]

you should add fire ants that have red on then. the fire ants could explode when they reach an enemy, or they could shoot fire at enemies

[@thatsmaik]

Maybe think about wind that pushes the pheromones partially away over time? Really awesome progress.

[@dragonracers51732]

It would be a cool twist if to place more buildings you have to place enemies but the enemy’s have territory so they must be spread out

[@hakonmarcus]

I feel like the black bow looks more like a shadow than an item - especially on a small screen ...

[@felixleitner3669]

The tiny mustache you drew in at 11:51 made me lose it haha

[@eli_the_great]

A really cool ant type would be crazy ants, which would be melee fighters with no defense, medium - low damage, but there's a ridiculous amount of them, and they can move at lightning speed.

[@MerlinSpace]

Now that theres a better reason than arbitrary game window size to build closer together, please make the playing area larger. Or make me buy more space, or make me defeat all the enemies occupying an area. The last third of games would always just be too much clutter and puzzling wherever there was still space for me, not as fun as the rest.

[@admiral_m_10k35]

I really appreciate you showing behind the scenes of how things works and so much transparency on "yeah I had to research this code". I'm at the beginning of the programming side of game design, so these videos are both extremely entertaining and help de mystify the entire process :)

[@AloxGaming]

Ideas: workers should inform archers where they have spotted mobs going somewhere (so they can intercept). --- archers should scream / inform archers that may be out of range for sight, if they feel overwhelmed and unable to fight the mobs near them. --- ants could be called Antlings? Ant-lings? --- The idea of pheromones being overlappable would be cool if the ants endup developing their own lines as it would add chaos to the mix and ants wouldn't be certain of the necessarily best route to an item, until of course it becomes a stronger pheromone line. --- Side note, I really enjoy your coding style and video making process, really fun and interesting to watch.

[@Mi..Mi..]

Alarm pheromones basically

[@SIZModig]

I think you should have some automated pheromone trails that the ants can produce as well, just at a different priority - say, if worker ants get attacked, then it would be great if they left behind a trail that the archers could pick up on.

[@jaypants1436]

Maybe you could add storage ants like honeypot ants

[@dylanartdrawing]

maybe at the start of th egame you can choose different ant species, like big ants being strong but not many, small fast ants that grow fast in population, or a polymorphic species, whis has workers of differnt sizes :3

[@CameronOwen101]

The real ant pheromone path funding is actually a breadth first pathfinding algorithm where the ant paths map out a distance gradient from the nest, from which they simply follow the gradient to get home. Kind of brilliant really.

[@aelamf]

i'd recommend reading children of time, has a lot of ant stuff in it

[@bv7dev]

Amazing! Last time I wasn't so sure if I'll be long-term-interested into this project, but this update made it really fascinating from a game design perspective. Congrats!

[@MatikTheSeventh]

Green works great for associating the building with the green-hatted archer ants

[@terra9279]

If you wanna see an excellent example of ants in games I would heavily suggest looking into Empires of the Undergrowth. Wonderful indie game that I love coming back too every now and then, and I think there might be some general ideas that could very much be incorporated into your own game. This is looking like a fun game though, keep it up, gl, and take breaks when ya need em!

[@KinxKlark]

It is such a nice way to add the pheromone trail concept to the gameplay, good job! I am glad you took the time to study the suggestion :D

[@anklo_143]

You should make two holes for the mandibles in the hat, I think this would make them look more like ant people

[@Icannothink]

Could you make different pheromones for different things like a “warrior pheromone” which will make more combat focus units follow it and same for any other type of unit you want

[@sadboiinasweater6104]

This game kinda reminds me of "We're Not Ants!" with the bug-y art direction and gameplay style. The pheromone trails in this game resembles a more refined version of the slime trails from WNA.

[@newtforgegames]

It reminds me, design wise at least, of mushroom wars. I used to love that game as a kid so this is looking so interesting to me!

[@joaonogueira3952]

You could do something like pokemon ranger, instead of binding pheromones to buildings, you draw a circle arround the ants you want to move, then continue with your path where you want to lead them. Maybe even circling points of interest or enemies to assing priorities.

[@TVtheTV]

I wish you kept more leaves on buildings, I think they look cool. Maybe some flowers or berries would look cool too. They could be white, red, pink, orange, yellow, etc. I just loved the leaf roofs.

[@gaminggaming7658]

The thing you did with the shader to make it a proxy for transformations was very cool, something like that being possible never even crossed my mind

[@mistyLmistake]

I think it would be really nice for the trail to leave behind a trail, so you do not forget what path your ants are taking

[@BurningSunBloodyMoon]

This is looking really neat so far! I like the idea of controlling the pheromone trails instead of the individual units. I do wonder if there are different behaviours you could desire with different types of ant, like having archers bunch up in squads or spread out to patrol. Perhaps each building could have different alternate pheromone trails with different behaviours - "patrol" vs. "attack" trails for archers, or maybe a "defend" trail which connects to another trail and causes them to try and hang around the ants assigned to that trail? Similarly workers could have "mine & collect" and also "build" trails, or you could have specific separate "collect" and "mine" trails as well as the current "mine & collect" trail. You could potentially have different pheromones be a sort of "technology" thing, where you can research them to provide you with options, or you could have it be part of the logistical game, where they need a specific resource to use more precise pheromone types. Since this is an "Ant" colony I think some element of how new ants are made is pretty important - like that's the Queen's only job, and the thing that makes ants different from just random little bugs. Maybe a creche building where larvae develop, and then workers take them to the appropriate building to develop further into a specific ant-type?

[@BurningSunBloodyMoon]

A lot of people have mentioned different real ant types like the aphid farming ants, leaf cutter ants growing mould farms, archer ants that spit, so having various different specialised ant types so you can specialise into different strategies would be rad!

[@Officialmotive805]

I love it. It would be cool to have scout ants that get sent out and come back with messages about unknown parts of the map. Such as food, enemies, etc.

[@АнтонМихайлов-ъ3г]

Slugs go down with archers' shots with so satisfying sound 👌

[@Lupiwillow]

Maybe the Slugs could separate the ant's paths, Causing them to go back to their building. Also the Slugs could make their own path. I am so happy on what you've done so far, can't wait for a Beta to get out! I'd also like the garden idea from leaf ants the garden could use new resources and could include Fungi, insects, and many more.

[@onlysmiles4949]

"If you're older you may remember flash games" my bones are turning to dust

[@Pockeywn]

i like the archers have green hats and green homes and i think maybe different coloured pheromone trails could be used to specify patrol loops for different any types

[@readingdino711]

I'm excited for this game to be finished. You're so creative, I'm definitely watching your other videos.

[@autumnkoalefant]

This is looking great. I love the art especially. If you’re looking for another enemy type, a carnivorous plant that sprouts next to player structures could be fun. Maybe it eats the ants, then you would need resources to maintain the population. Might be a good use for archery too, as opposed to melee.

[@GobliocBerger-hu2nk]

The crafting arrows which makes archers reminds me of Stronghold. This game has a heavy economic side even if it's an RTS, check it out ! I love the pheromones, its thematic and funny. Idea : instead of having card with building which makes it instantly, maybe it can be a blueprint and the ants must gather and bring ressources to build it ! Like in Settlers ! As some said : archer ants can be more original. The ants are really interesting IRL. Warrior ants have GIGANTIC mandibles, some ants ARE DOORS, their head is a flat "shield" used to close the tunnels. Leafcutter ants can be used to distract the enemies or be catapulted for an emergency (parantroopers). For the economic part : Ants enslaved other ants. They milk aphids, They cultivate mushrooms too !

[@alinep3868]

Lychee

[@ThePouetman]

I really enjoy the detailed shader explanation, it's really neat thank you

[@CosmoDev69]

red wood ants (formica rufa) or weaver ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) have acid "blasters" on their back, kinda like an archer ant :)

[@thelightsilent]

Looking good, cant wait to see whats next!

[@thelightsilent]

I use Krita for making art its pretty good lots of features and free.

[@iminthevoid4145]

i think you should make it so the plants slowly decay and that will attract the slugs and you can slow the decay by merging them.

[@Beets_Creations]

Love hearing your thoughts on the process as you work on each element. Keep up the good work!

[@brutaltman]

The game is looking really good so far, and i love the art style as well. Wanted to give you an idea for the future, when you begin to add more enemies it would be neat that spiders would be able to web buildings and prevent them from generating resouces or be harvested until you defeated the spider, on top of that clearing your buildings of the webbing give you silk. Idk just thought of that while watching.

[@kelpstorm]

i really love the visuals, and the implementation of the pheromones is pretty smart i think!

[@zachthesnack5900]

Maybe the worker ants, after collecting enough stone, could create barrier walls/hills that could tank hits from the slugs, protecting the buildings

[@raknieborak8937]

could be cool if you could make pheromone trails semi-round. I mean that if you drag it around and end close to the building, they walk around in circles instead of looping back

[@sergodobro2569]

Thanks for shader details! Loved them! I always wondered how some games like yours are smoothed, with fluent animations and interactions!

[@lorenzopizzu924]

Suggestion: think you should leave the worker ants to make their own paths, only controll the fighting ants. Its really cool looking at the worker antes sort themselves out. Great videos btw, loving it

[@coen591]

I am going to buy this game when you’re done. Already looks so fun to play. And really beautiful stylized art and icons😊

[@sawyeriii]

To continue with the pheromone idea... If the worker ants get close to an enemy, they could emit a danger smell that the archer ants are sensitive to( or simply the archer ant trail) as they run back their base( or a safe zone setup with other smells), maybe abandoning the working trail for some amount of time if the get attacked.

[@Professor_Brie]

This is really cool, and I quite like the art style you're doing for the game

[@PeacockLover127]

I think the bow should be blue it contrasts with orange and is more visible

[@Ciaolo]

It would be cool to let the ants create their own pheromone trails too. For example you release a pheromones trail to a resource, and it will fade over time, but then the ants will release more pheromones when going back to the nests carrying goods. When the source is depleted, the pheromones will not be released because the ants will go back empty handed. After a bit, they will not go to that site anymore.

[@lovebug4549]

I don't have any suggestions but I will say I absolutely love the aesthetic of this game!

[@elfenixoscurooscuro1625]

u could make pheromones be 2 types, one where the ants just follow it back amd forth and other where they spread out on it

[@GamesBySaul]

Love how the pheromones act as pstrol routes, thats super neat! I think for the bow though, maybe uou need to use white for it, just to make it really stand out

[@paninisauce6949]

I know there's probably been a few suggestions for specific names, but I'd like to add Antsy/Antsies to the list. It's a cute little pun that I think feels right

[@Rignchen]

What I would have done for archers is that each archer have an angle variable that starts at 0, then I take a straight line between the ant and the target and I rotate it the amount of the vaiable, then if the arrow ends up being under the targer, I increase the variable, otherwise I reduce it.

[@AFE-GmdG]

I like this art style. It's somewhat fresh

[@Beyhammer1]

The way i think about your ant people game is it taking things from real ant and making it more human

[@informitas0117]

If they have hats they should need 1 leaf resource in addition to the bow. I love when you can see where your resources go and not receive "magical" stuff for free.

[@ShadowDrakken]

wood ants can spit formic acid, in case you wanted a "more realistic" ranged attack :D You could also use body, head, and pincer sizes and colors to differentiate ant types

[@silverzelda596]

I know fire ants can create bridges by climbing on top of each other, maybe worker ants or another type of ant can be used to create barricades against enemies. Perhaps they make the wall along the pheramone path? I also would recommened watching Ants Canada, they do a lot of videos about how their different colonies interact under different circustances

[@sedatev7341]

I'm loving this style of video.

[@StanfordBrayden]

cant wait for this to be a game i can play, i want my little army of ants to take down behemoths

[@idostuff6179]

I've seen comments about the fact that archer ants do exist and that you should change the bows to acid, but I personally think that the little ants having bows adds a lot of charm to the game. I think you should keep it tbh

[@asdfghyter]

i wonder if some kind of hybrid pheromone system would be fun, where the player draws initial pheromone trails like in your prototype, but then the ant people adjust the trails according to something kind of like the real life ant pheromones? it probably wouldn't add any gameplay, but it might make the colony feel more alive and changing

[@jacksonsherbertgaming4437]

6:42 while yes there are ants that dont do archery there are ants who can spit formic acid out of some glands in their butt. Which in theory is similar.

[@alderblanco2362]

Im so invested in this, every time a new video is out im excited ❤

[@gydgeza8646]

Regarding your question last video on not being sure where on the town-builder-combat spectrum this would fall, it's starting to look less like an RTS and more like a colony management simulator thingy, a very simple version of dwarf fortress for example. You could also look into those for inspiration.

[@CrashingThunder]

This was quite a fun video. Lots of interesting bits and problems to solve. Definitely gave me some of those "coding adventure" vibes.

[@rutchjohnson]

Love the video and progress!

[@The_Takeout_Samurai]

I think another enemy could be a snail, just like the slug. But with a shell

[@Terrahex1]

You should use the same colors on the buildings as the units they create. With your archers wearing green hats, it fits that the archery range also wears green. It helps identify the buildings at a glance. Also I hate the double awning design of the range, and it looked better with leaves on top