Devlog 03 - First Person Ant-Shooting Minigames

Hello everybody, welcome to the third devlog of ICFTD Remake.

I can't believe February almost passed by and I haven't published anything. I really want to publish these devlogs more often but believe me when I say that there is a lot of work that went into this one.

I have read a couple comments here and there talking about the lack of character and ants in previous videos. I have to admit that I have way more interest in environment modelling and world building than in character modelling but there are also a lot of systems (which need a lot of programming and setup) that have to be done before throwing artwork into the game. Environment objects are static and don't interact with these systems so much and therefore, no matter how much these systems change, the artwork and setup probably won't have to be redone.

Characters and dynamic objects are a different kettle of fish, they usually have tons of component and systems attached to them so if these systems change in a future (and at this stage of the development they do change a lot) they all have to be changed. I think it is better to have a more defined gameplay before getting into these waters. This is the main reason I'm trying to delay to create characters and stuff I can get away with using placeholders for now.

But this month I wanted to work on some ideas I had for the first person shooting minigame even if that required to have a bit more artwork.

Let's shot some things!!!

Without further delay, here is the video that goes along with this post, I hope you like it, you'll also be able to see two new unseen environments, the mineshaft and SW Volcano.

We need ants!

Like in the original game, the ants are supposed to be Harvester Ants. You can observe that Cinemaware artists decided to take some liberties with the design, which is understandable, considering the medium limitations and the fact that they had to make to fit for a specific gameplay mechanic.

I have decided to take a similar approach and create something that resembles the real thing but that at the same time reminds to the original game art.

Hope you guys are happy with the result, but like everything else in the game... it will be changed in the future if it's not good enough.

Shooting Minigame

So now, about the minigame itself, I had several ideas on how to implement this, so I decided to try two of them for now. Like in the real world, I considered we could have two different types of ants in the game (workers and soldiers?) and depending on the type of ant you find in the area you'll get a minigame mechanic or the other (wave minigame or antenna shooting minigame).

Even when the minigame mechanics could be more polished, I think this is an interesting idea. One of the main unknowns of the game and one of the biggest points of suspense was when travelling to a location without knowing if you'll find an ant there or not. Additionally now, the player will have to rapidly adapt his strategy to the type of ant he's fighting.

These minigames are easily understandable just watching them getting played in the video, but here is a brief description.

Ant wave minigame

In the wave minigame a timed number of weak ants (workers?) appear. The player will have to aim properly to kill the ants and plan the reload times carefully. The game finished once the player kills all the ants.

Big ant / Antenna shooting minigame

In the antenna-shooting minigame, a lone big ant (soldier?) appears and moves "slowly" to the player. The player will have to aim to the ant antennas to kill the ant. The game finishes once the player removes both antennas and kills the ant.

Ideas and variations:

- The big-ant might decide to retreat if the player shots at his head enough times, even if he doesn't remove both antennas. The player doesn't get any evidence if no antenna has been hit.

- Antenna shooting minigame could have a previous set of worker ant waves before the big ant appears.
- Antenna shooting minigame could have multiple big ant waves.

Don't forget to watch the video, follow and subscribe to the newsletter to stay up to date with the development progress.

Thanks for reading and until the next time!

Josué