Dotting the i's and crossing the t's Kyra19:12 0 comments

Hello, dear readers! It’s time for another updates, yes; it’s been two weeks since the last one. I hope that you’ve had a good time.

Things draw to a close, now, with a lot of deadlines in the near future. We have to have all the code finished by Monday, as well as the promotional material. The trailer that we will be making will also be posted on this blog, so keep your eyes out for that.

Further along in the week, we’ve got the presentations on Wednesday, followed by the symposium on Friday. Don’t forget to visit us if you’re there!

After that, it’ll be over. You won’t be hearing from me on this blog anymore. I suppose it’s sad, isn’t it? Alas, all things must end, sooner or later, and so must this. However, not before we deliver a finished product! Which is what I’ll talk to you about, now.

I mentioned last time that we had new sprites, and those have been implemented now! Although the game is not completely finished yet, I can share some exciting screenshots with you!

(Bear in mind, though, that the FoV for the player has not been completed yet, so what you’re going to see now won’t show that off.)

In this first picture, you can see two of our enemies: a beetle, and a green spider. Now, the green spider is new; it works almost completely like the original spider, except it fires off three shots of venom and those shots do not slow you or damage you over time, but instead they just damage you.

Here, you can see the green spider in action; you have to be really careful when dodging those shots. Good luck with that!

Pictured above is the player using the stun ability! Of course, normally, there would be an enemy in front of you, but getting the timing of the screenshot right was a bit tricky. Perhaps you’ll see that in the trailer! When you use this ability successfully, you stun the enemy for a little bit.

I hope you can agree with me that the graphics look really good, and I’d once again like to thank our artist, Ivan, for doing such a wonderful job. Without him, things would probably be looking a lot worse.

Now, let’s move on: we are currently in the progress of making the finishing touches. Dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, you know how it is. I, myself, am in the progress of creating the sound effects and the music. Most of the sound effects have already been added, and the music is already largely composed, but I still have some work left to do.

I’m not a composer by any stretch of the imagination, but I believe I have done a pretty good job so far on the music. However, I won’t be letting you hear my work just yet; you’ll have to play the game to hear it. (Perhaps I’ll use it in the trailer, though, so you can hear it then; you’ll see when that time comes.)

Earlier on, I mentioned something about the FoV. This is something that Paul is working on; we’ll make it so that you can’t see everything on the screen, but only the things that the ant would, realistically, be able to see. Of course, this FoV won’t be the most advanced system, since we have a very limited timespan for this particular element. However, a very basic version has already been made, and I’m sure it will turn out great.

Another thing we’re working on is the menus. Up until now, we’ve only concentrated on the actual playing of the game, and not of the title screen and settings and related stuff. So, that’s a thing we’re adding.

Something that might be interesting to note is that you will be able to choose between two control schemes: moving with pathfinding (right-click) or moving with the WASD keys. This has been added after a lot of consideration and discussion; in the beginning, we had planned to only use pathfinding, but we’d added the WASD controls before the pathfinding was finished, and some of us preferred playing with that. So, in the end, we decided to give the player the option to choose between the two! This way, we can’t go wrong.

All in all, we’re almost done, sweet readers, which is a very good thing, since that’s how far we’re supposed to be! Let’s see how this all turns out, right?

Of course, I still have to tell you a fun piece of ant trivia! I’m really glad this is coming to an end, because I’m running out of those. However, I still have this for you: you can find ants on almost every continent; in fact, the only continent where they don’t live is Antarctica! (Yes, even though the name even begins with “ant”.)

Read More

Another update Kyra16:27 0 comments

Hello, my dear readers, it has been a while again. I hope the new year is treating you well. I am here to bring you some more updates on our ongoing project, Antless. Unfortunately, I have to admit that there is not a lot of things I can tell you, because things have been moving pretty slowly over the past weeks, due to it having been the holidays and all. Yes, we will have to work hard these coming weeks to make up for the time some of us – including myself, if I’m being honest – have spent slacking while we could have been working on the project.

However, let us get to the updates! First of all is a very exciting announcement, in my opinion. Our artist, Ivan, has finished most of the sprites! Oh, and they do look good. Have a little look at this image, for example:

[image description: an image showing off some of the new sprites.]

Now, you might not be able to tell what everything is, so I’ll give you a short list:

·         Among the insects, you see six ants. The ones most to the left are the standard sprites. One is pictured with a bow and one with a sword, which are the two weapons that will be available in the game. You also see the same ants, but in red. This is what the player sprite will look like while you’re using a damage boost. The ones with the yellow circle around them are what the player sprite will look like while you’re using the shield ability.

·         The three other insects are the stag beetle, the bee, and the spider. I hope you’ll be able to tell which is which, yourself.

·         Next to the normal ant with the bow, you see what the arrow will look like when fired. Next to the normal ant with the sword, you see what the javelin will look like, which is an ability. Next to that, and above the bee, is what the trap from the trap ability will look like when placed down.

·         To the right of the insects (and weapons) are three objects below each other. The top one is the chest. The ones below it are the health shrine; the one filled with a red liquid is unused and the empty one has been used.

·         To the right of that is a wall. This is what a wall will also look like in-game.

·         To the right of that are two rows of, in total, seventeen sprites. These are what the item drops will look like. They are, from top to bottom and left to right: the shield ability, the snipe ability, the trap ability, the mana power-up, the all stats power-up, the stun ability, the damage and DoT power-up, the damage power-up, the DoT power-up, the damage boost ability, food, the health power-up, the health and mana power-up, the javelin ability, the luck power-up, the mana regeneration power-up, and the mana and mana regeration power-up.

·         At the bottom, you see the HUD. On the left, you see the health bar; on the right, you see the mana bar; in the middle, you see three empty slots, which is where the abilities you have will be displayed.

·         In the background, you see the floor tiles.

Not pictured are the ability icons, which have already been made. I suppose, sweet readers, that you’ll just have to wait and see those later on. I have to tell you that they, too, are very well-made.

Second, which is a bit of an anti-climax, I suppose, I will discuss some changes in the AI. It’s not perfect yet, but enemies are a lot smarter right now. They don’t really get stuck behind walls anymore. This is largely due to the fact that we’ve added a sort of line of sight to the enemies, and, when they can’t see you anymore, they go to where they saw you last. Also, you can no longer stand behind walls to avoid the spider’s ranged attack. You probably didn’t know that that was possible, but it’s been changed so that, when the spider can no longer see you, it starts chasing you again so that it does see you.

We have also changed the scale of the rooms. Previously, they were seven by seven tiles, but now they are fifteen by fifteen tiles, giving you more room to walk and attack. We have also implemented a camera that follows the player, making walking around a lot easier.

That’s been most of the news, so I must now bid you farewell, but not before sharing another piece of ant trivia with you: of all animals, the ant’s brain is the largest in proportion to its body size.

Read More

An update on all sorts of matters Kyra14:16 0 comments

Welcome, dear readers! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? A lot has been decided and made in the meantime. I hope you’ve had a good time while I’ve been quiet. Now, I hope you’re fully awake, because I’m about to throw a whole lot of information at you.

I’ve told you what our theme is, but that’s only a small part of it. I mean, you can have a nice setting all you want, but that does not immediately give you a good game. No, what you need is details. That is what you’re about to read.

I’ve already told you that the game will be based on the game Rogue. This means it’ll have procedurally generated levels and permadeath. First, I shall tell you a little bit about the level generation.

The floors will generally be made up of square rooms of the same size, placed in a rectangular grid. Sometimes, that grid will even be square. Some rooms will be empty, meaning that it’s basically a square you can’t go into. There’s the possibility of rooms connecting to make a larger room, and there will be hidden rooms with fake walls. Hallways can also span in place of rooms. There are a lot of details that I will not go into now, but that’s the gist of it. I’ll allow you a sneak peek at a level generated by our level generator. Bear in mind that this is very much not representative of what the game will look like.

As you can see in this image, there are three different enemies. We might add more if we have time left, but these are the ones we have:

The bee

Bees buzz around randomly, going this way and that in a random fashion. That is, until they see you. At that point, they come charging toward you, and you’d better kill them before they come too close. You see, once a bee touches you, it pretty much explodes in your face, damaging you quite badly.

The beetle

In this game, beetles are sturdy creatures. They take quite a bit of damage to kill, and can hit quite hard if you’re not fast enough.

The spider

Spiders are sneaky little things. They stay at a distance and spit at you. If you get hit, you’ll be both poisoned and slowed, so be careful!

At the moment, we have two weapons: a sword and a bow. These are pretty self-explanatory, but the general idea is that the bows fire ranged shots and the sword is for melee damage. You can only have one of these at a time, so choose what best suits your playstyle. Monsters can drop stronger weapons, though, so you can always switch later on if you manage to find a different weapon.

It’s not just a swing of a sword or an arrow shot that depends on your choice of weapon. No, our combat system is a bit more than just that. See, next to your basic attack, you can have up to three abilities, which you can use by using your mana, and one of those depends on what weapon you choose. If you have a sword, you spin around, swinging the sword around you in a circle. A bow, on the other hand, allows you to unleash a rain of arrows onto your enemies.

Of course, I did mention three abilities, didn’t I? The other two abilities can be found in treasure chests and enemies can drop them. At the moment, we have four different abilities, but more will probably be added:

Shield

The shield makes you invulnerable for a little while. This’ll be useful for when you’re charging into a group of enemies with your sword, or maybe you’re trying to get away instead.

Boost

This ability allows you to boost your damage for a little while. In fact, it doubles the damage you can do!

Trap

This ability allows you to lay down traps for your enemies. Once an enemy gets caught in it, it slows it down and damages it.

Snipe

With this ability, you can fire high-damage shots at your enemies. However, the mana cost of this is quite high, so make sure you don’t miss!

Now, weapons and abilities aren’t the only things that can drop. No, you can also find stat upgrades. There are upgrades for the following things:

·         Health

·         Mana

·         Damage

·         Health and mana

·         Luck

·         Damage over time (this adds a small DoT to your attacks)

·         Mana regeneration

·         Mana and mana regeneration

·         Damage and damage over time

·         Health, mana, mana regeneration, damage, and damage over time

Of course, you can also find food. This allows you to heal, which you’ll surely need as you progress; this game is many things, but easy is not one of them.

Sweet readers, we still have much to do the coming weeks. For example, the AI needs to be improved, because the enemies sort of keep bumping into walls. Right now, this is pretty much the only thing keeping you alive most of the time, though, because the combat system right now is a bit broken. That’s another thing we’re going to be working on. We are also going to create our own custom sprites, which will take a bit of work. Furthermore, we are going to add a line of sight-lighting system. Then, we still have the menus we have to put in, not to mention the music and sounds, which yours truly will be working on.

I’ll see you in a while with further updates, but not before sharing another interesting piece of ant trivia with you: there are entirely female colonies of ants that only reproduce asexually. This means that the queen somehow turns eggs into larvae without the use of sperm. This brings with it both risks and advantages. If you want to find out more about this, I have found an interesting little article here.

Read More

Our amazing story Kyra21:07 0 comments

So, if you're like me, you sometimes find yourself distracted in class. For example, last Tuesday, we were in a lecture about logic. At the particular moment I'm referring to, the professor was talking about infinity. However, the teacher was being a tad long-winded, and I, as I am wont to do, started typing random stuff in Word. In particular, I typed "sigh..." (except I did it in Dutch) and showed it to the person sitting next to me, my fellow member of Alpha Chicken, Paul.

After that, I opened Photoshop and made a lovely graphic involving the same phrase. It was beautiful, with rainbows and pastel colours and lots of flowers. Paul told me that there were too many flowers, but I – respectfully – pointed out to him that there was no such thing as too many flowers. He said what if we had an infinite amount of flowers, since the background noise was indeed still about infinity at the time, and I said that that still would not be enough flowers. He mentioned that we would also need an infinite amount of bees.

Now, it's been a while, and I don't recall the entire conversation, but a while later I jokingly said I should create the buttons for our menu. Paul mentioned my design for the button was too colourful and had too many flowers for the theme we were going with. This theme, sweet readers, was just a dull dungeon. However, I disagreed, saying that the dungeon could have a lot of crystals in the walls, because it was also a fantasy setting, and what's cooler than magic crystals? Okay, some things, but it's pretty high on the list of cool things. I also added that, because of the magic, there could also be flowers growing on the walls! Because flowers are also high on the list of cool things, of course. (In case you're wondering, unicorns are indeed on the list as well.)

So, Paul asked me what the enemies would be like in this slightly modified theme. I answered it would, naturally, be giant bees, referring to his earlier comment about an infinite amount of bees. Of course, only bees would be too boring, so I also mentioned we could add other insects, like butterflies. I liked the idea of butterflies. I pointed out we could have butterfly enemies that would flee from the enemy, but, upon being killed, would drop some sweet loot. At that, Paul pointed out how weird it would be for a big sword to drop from a butterfly, but I quickly retorted that the butterfly could drop its wings, improving your movement speed. Paul answered by claiming that wings in a confined place like a dungeon, with its low ceiling, would not help too much, but then we agreed that if the player was really small, it would be doable. Paul then wondered what the player would play as, and I simply answered a butterfly-sized human. However, Paul had a better idea: an ant.

Yes, that's right, dear readers. In case I haven't made it obvious enough, this is the story of how we decided on the setting of our game. You are an ant. You play as an ant, defending the tree you live in from harmful insects like bees and other ants and wasps.

Now, here is a tip, my dear readers: if you encounter a wasp (in-game or in the real world), flee and ask your mother for help. It's the heroic thing to do! If Achilles did it, you can do it.

Not that there's a mother ant in-game. That would just be silly, and we wouldn't want that, now would we?

Ah, but back to the point. It's not just that you play as an ant in a tree, no, you play as an ant in a living tree. A treant, or ent. Of course, since the levels are randomly generated pretty much infinitely, there's no definite ending. So, to summarise, you're an ant in an ent with no end.

If nothing else, we should at least win an award for most puns, right?

Oh, and I have a very interesting piece of concept art for you, drawn by our own very artistic Paul:

Now, the title for this game will be Antless. My original suggestion was Ænðless, but the others said that there were too many strange characters in there. I just thought it would be nice to put all those different words (end, ent, and ant) in one title. However, I can accept that not everyone appreciates that.

I am now going to leave you, my sweet readers, but not before sharing an interesting piece of ant trivia with you: in an ant colony, most ants are female. In fact, male ants are practically only used for reproduction! Until next time, where I shall update you again and share more interesting ant trivia with you.

Read More

Introductory post Kyra10:05 0 comments

Greetings!

As you might have noticed, we are Alpha Chicken Games. I can imagine, dear readers, what you must be thinking: ‘Where in heaven’s name does that name come from?’ Well, I shall tell you. The “Alpha” part comes from the fact that we are part of the Alpha mentor group. That’s quite easy. However, the “Chicken” part comes from something slightly more difficult: the first letters of our team members’ first names together form “KIPJ”, and if you just add an “e” to it, you have the Dutch word for the diminutive form of “chicken”. I hope that wasn’t too hard to follow.

Now, another thing you might be wondering is why we only have four members; after all, the groups are supposed to have five to seven members. The reason for that is basically just Fate having it out for us. Alpha used to have eleven students in it. Five of those students formed a group, leaving the other six to form the other group. However, one of those six decided to quit the study. The other one, well, he pretty much disappeared off the face of the planet. A slight inconvenience, but I reckon we’ll be all right in the end.

Ah, but I’ve gone on for far too long about those small things; I bet the reason you are here, dear readers, is because you want to know about the game we’re making! Well, we are making a modern remake of the old game called Rogue. Many of you may have heard of this game. After all it has inspired an entire genre, called roguelikes. Maybe you never really thought about the etymology of that name, but it basically means that a game is similar to (or, in other words, like) Rogue.

For those not familiar with the game, I shall provide a short description. It was a dungeon-crawler with randomly-generated dungeons and permanent death, or permadeath. The latter basically means that, once you die, you lose all progress you have made and have to start over again. The above screenshot shows an example of a randomly-generated floor. As you can see, the graphics – if you can even call them that – are very outdated. All things are represented by ASCII characters; it is completely text-based. This is, of course, one of the things we mean to improve.

Another thing we mean to improve is the level generator. Again, look to the screenshot above. You see that the dungeon is built in a three-by-three grid. All floors of the dungeon are made like this, with some small exceptions: sometimes, one of those spaces in the grid does not have a room, but instead just a hallway, either leading to another room or a dead end. As of right now, we are not entirely sure about how we are going to generate the dungeons. We might keep it quite similar to the way it was, except for the fact that floors will be larger. We might also make it so that every room is the same size, and that the rooms are connected without the use of hallways. The latter might lower the risk of performance issues. Dear readers, I shall bring you an update as soon as we have made a decision on this subject.

Read More