i been thinking about what ant game is gonna end up playing like I’m gonna start prototyping these ideas and see what works the first idea is kind of like a programming sim, you can edit the ants’ genome and have conditionals to make the species adaptive without mutation<\/p>\n\n\n\n
the dressing is that you are a human researcher trying to make a hyper adaptive genome to save humanity from extinction from environmental pressure. You are mutating ant-human chimeras as the test subject<\/p>\n\n\n\n
you have a limited amount of terrarium slots to create maps with, you can set what the map’s environment is like, and then drop a colony in. You use the terrariums to figure out what the ants struggle with, and then edit their genome to make them more adaptable<\/p>\n\n\n\n
once you’ve decided you’ve learned all you can from a terrarium, you cull the colony and empty the terrarium for reuse, because everybody loves depressing story elements<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’d say the gameplay is somewhere between a programming sim and a factory builder; you are trying to build a robust genome that lets the ants thrive without you needing to intervene with spot treatment mutations. You learn what resources the ants can gather, and then how to code a genome that teaches them how survive through shortages (maybe some kind of inefficent resource conversion that they can activate at a threshold you set)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
so the part I’m gonna prototype is the genome editor and resource management. Will it be fun to design a code\/factory\/genome that knows how to cope with different ratios\/quantity of resources on the map? maybe maybe<\/p>\n\n\n\n
with this concept, the target audience changes from people who like sandboxes to people who like optimizing, though I think they overlap a bit already that market exists, so I should also research existing optimization games to see what engages, frustrates, or bores<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Potential optimization choices: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 cost for spawning\/maintaining workers <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 worker behavior, physical ability <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 resource conversion <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 thresholds\/conditions at which all of the above change to allow for autonomous adaptation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
i been thinking about what ant game is gonna end up playing like I’m gonna start prototyping these ideas and see what works the first idea is kind of like a programming sim, you can edit the ants’ genome and have conditionals to make the species adaptive without mutation the dressing is that you are […]<\/p>\n