Ant Attack 3D Remake

Community Forums/Showcase/Ant Attack 3D Remake

ModestyBCatt(Posted 2004) [#1]
Just posted a pic to the Gallery thought I'd risk throwing a post in here too :)

I've played with Blitz3D a small amount so I figured it was time for a mini-project and here's the start of it...



I know there are other Ant Attack Remakes out there, but I thought I'd have a go at capturing the original feel of the game. As Sandy was an artist and sculptor I thought the black and white look was part of the essence of Ant Attack.

Anyhow, more information about it at my Blog...
http://modestybcatt.blogspot.com

Looking around I may even start a Worklog :)

Thanks,
Modesty


big10p(Posted 2004) [#2]

As Sandy was an artist and sculptor I thought the black and white look was part of the essence of Ant Attack.



Think that probably had more to do with avoiding colour clash. :)

Looking at that screenie brings back the memories. Ant Attack absolutely blew me away when it came out. Nice Job! ;)

BTW, how are you doing the map models? Are you building them in-code or did you do them in a modeller?


sswift(Posted 2004) [#3]
What is the idea behind Ant Attack? Like, what do you do?


big10p(Posted 2004) [#4]
Basically, you have to rescue your partner from the giant ant infested city. You can run, jump and throw grenades. You can play as the boy or girl. That's it, really. It was all done in 48K, though.


ModestyBCatt(Posted 2004) [#5]
"BTW, how are you doing the map models? Are you building them in-code or did you do them in a modeller?"

The maps are read in from BMP files. There's a /map folder than contains subfolders such as "default" "test" and so on. Each of those folders contains as many bmps as you want called "level1.bmp", "level2.bmp" ... "levelxx.bmp"

"/maps/tower/level1.bmp"
...
"/maps/tower/lewel17.bmp"

Here's a screen shot of the "tower" test map...


...and this is a scaled up version of the ground level map...


That maps is only 32x16 "tiles" but 17 levels high.

The original is 128x128 by 6 levels high.

As long as all the levels are the same size, i.e. they're all 128x256 (or whatever) they'll load in fine. So it's possible to make levels in PaintBrush :) You pick which map to load by changing the settings.ini file, but I'm going to change this to an ingame option soon.

Cheers
Modesty


big10p(Posted 2004) [#6]
Wow. That sounds like it would be difficult to get the separate height levels to fit together, though?

Also, does that mean each pixel in the BMP becomes a separate cube entity in-game? Or are you doing some kind of clever, dynamic mesh building?


Beaker(Posted 2004) [#7]
I loved that game. Good luck with it.


ModestyBCatt(Posted 2004) [#8]
"Wow. That sounds like it would be difficult to get the separate height levels to fit together, though?"

It's actually pretty easy once you get used to it. I create the levels in photoshop, so I can have each level on a layer, works well that way.

It's kinda cool feeding in bmps created from maze drawing programs too!

"Also, does that mean each pixel in the BMP becomes a separate cube entity in-game? Or are you doing some kind of clever, dynamic mesh building?"

Dynamic, there's too much for blitz to do if each one is a cube. It builds the mesh on the fly, so really there's only 3 surfaces to the map, North/South, East/West and Top/Bottom. All hidden faces are removed (never added in the first place really).

Zips along just fine, although I do fog out at the 128 "tiles" range.

Cheers
Modesty

Edit: haven't figured out how to quote posts on this forum yet!


Perturbatio(Posted 2004) [#9]

Edit: haven't figured out how to quote posts on this forum yet!


http://www.blitzbasic.com/faq/faq_entry.php?id=2


big10p(Posted 2004) [#10]

It's actually pretty easy once you get used to it. I create the levels in photoshop, so I can have each level on a layer, works well that way.



Ahh, now your're talking! ;)

Had a quick look at your blog and like the way you're doing the ant AI. Is this a well established technique or something you came up with? I haven't dabbled much in AI so I don't know.

Also, when can we play a demo? OK, I'm out of questions now, you'll be glad to hear :)

Welcome to the forums, BTW.


Boiled Sweets(Posted 2004) [#11]
I loved the original and by the looks of it this version promises to bring back ant madness to our machines once again.

A great choice of game to remake, good luck and let me know when a demo is available...

NICE!


Steve C ™(Posted 2004) [#12]
Looking wicked! I too loved this game when I had a speccy all those years ago. Can't wait for a demo/finished game :)


Big&(Posted 2004) [#13]
Yep, like the others said, looking great. Anything to do with speccy gets my thumbs up! :)


ModestyBCatt(Posted 2004) [#14]
Wow, you quys respond quick! Thanks everyone for the interest.

On the demo front, I've got a couple of weeks off work at the end of July and my daughter is still in the nursery then (bliss) to I expect to make leaps and bounds and post the demo around then. I'll be sure to let everyone know.

Had a quick look at your blog and like the way you're doing the ant AI. Is this a well established technique or something you came up with? I haven't dabbled much in AI so I don't know.


It's probably an established technique, most things already are, but I've not read about it anywhere. If it is then it's probably called something like Temporary Dynamic Waypoints.

I've used a similar system before when writing Bots for Quake. I'd let lose a bunch of dumb "ants" in a level who'd drop waypoints when they went out of sight of the last one. As ants moved through an area they'd optimize the positions of the waypoints and increase and decrease the strength. So a waypoint at a dead end would be weak and one at a cross roads would be strong.

Once they'd been through and "mapped" a level the waypoints would be saved and the Bot could use them for navigating.

That was quite a while ago now, but I've always had an interest in autonomous agents with very simple rules combining to form a more complex result.

So doing Ant Attack was pretty much inevitable really.


Rob Farley(Posted 2004) [#15]
"My Hero take me away from all this"

Ant attack was a very cool game...

Fix the grenades though! You used to fire them and they rolled over the land, up walls, down the other side etc! That needs fixing!


Wiebo(Posted 2004) [#16]
aaaaah, this brings back memories! This game was the only reason I endured the rubber keys...


sswift(Posted 2004) [#17]
It's funny you should make this game because I jsut went on a camping trip recently, and it was one of those games which I was reading about in my videogame history book while out in the wilderness with nothing better to do because of the rain.

The book said that this fellow really blew people's socks off and a lot of people couldn't figure out how he was doing this 3d stuff on that kind of system. It turns out that when he was aked what he was doing, he didn't have a word for it... but then he remembered his drafting classes and the word "isometric" and thus "isometric" games were born. Or something.


Perturbatio(Posted 2004) [#18]
If you want to play the original, go to his site: http://sandywhite.co.uk/fun/ants/
or
http://www.twinbee.org/hob/play.php?snap=antattack



*EDIT*
And if you're interested in looking at some of the source, go here: http://sandywhite.co.uk/fun/ants/AAsource.htm


Wiebo(Posted 2004) [#19]
And if you're interested in looking at some of the source, go here: sandywhite.co.uk/fun/ants/AAsource.htm


LOL


ModestyBCatt(Posted 2004) [#20]
Well here we go, sneek peek alpha download thing. Nothing to do yet but mill around and get bitten by ants (or crash)but here's a download...

http://www.prettyrandom.com/AntAttack/ant-attack.zip



More details at my blogspot, link in sig.


Murilo(Posted 2004) [#21]
Very nice. I get a steady 150fps here, and it's *real* smooth.

Cracking stuff!


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2004) [#22]
I love the original Ant Attack since it is probably the very first "3D" Game ever.


Perturbatio(Posted 2004) [#23]
pretty good, I can't however jump up whilst holding up+right at the same time, the other directions seem to work fine.


big10p(Posted 2004) [#24]
Very cool. ;)

The ant AI seems very effective. Wish I had some grenades, though! :P


Psionic(Posted 2004) [#25]
I saw this this morning and it brought back a lot of memorys' (some good, some bad ;-)))

anyway I knocked up a little ant model with a few anims, hope you find it useful!! Free for anybody to use...

DOWNLOAD from here:-
http://www.psionic3d.co.uk/cgi-bin/imageFolio.cgi?direct=Free%20Stuff/3D%20Models




Steve C ™(Posted 2004) [#26]
It's superb so far! Will look even better once you do proper gfx for the player and the ants.
Keep it up :)


ModestyBCatt(Posted 2004) [#27]
This...


1024x768 110kb gif


is a quite scary situation to be in!

The final ants will be in super-blocky format, but these look great in there too!

Cheers Psionic.

Mod


big10p(Posted 2004) [#28]
Just a heads up to anyone interested in 3D Ant Attack: there's a large (6 pages, or something) article in the latest Retro Gamer magazine. Has an interview with Sandy White, stuff about Zombie, Zombie etc.


ModestyBCatt(Posted 2004) [#29]
Just been leafing through that in WHSmiths. Stupidily I ordered the magazine online from the publisher at the start of next week thinking it'd save me a trip into town, still not here yet :(

Anyway

A bit late in the day but I've got a new version uploaded!

http://www.prettyrandom.com/antattack/ant-attack.zip

If you've been messing around with maps then just extract the ant-attack.exe and the media folder.

I've worked on the game framework a fair bit. So it's holding together much more like a game. Everything is pretty much a placeholder at the moment but nearly everything that needs to be in is in.

Plus, there's now more of a point to the whole thing. If you're playing the Antescher map then you can attempt to rescue the 10 girls. It's a bit tricky at the moment as you still don't have ammo, even though the gameplay is really pulling together.

There's not really much more game to add, mostly once the ammo is in, it'll be tuning and adding the final graphics and sound. All in all I'm quite pleased with how it's coming along.

Mod


Big&(Posted 2004) [#30]
Looking really good Mod. Another classic been done really well.

I did the same as you for Retro Gamer, might come this week.