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The Plan
Note: This page is subject to change at any moment
Up to my(Oipo's) knowledge, only Rinum and me are currently semi-active. We started out from a reddit thread, with the desire to recreate Sim Ant in open source and modern technologies, and ultimately make it multiplayer over the internet. We have had help of a lot of people, as can be seen from our commit history.
- OpenGL based rendering
- Ultimately a server/client setup to enable multiplayer for a limited number of players.
- Interface to control the game
- Being able to control one ant specifically in everything
- Being able to control the rest of an ants nest via some AI hooks(like being able to say 20% of the ants go foraging)
- Being able to fight an opposing ant nest, controlled by the AI.
No art design yet
The reason we went with python is that Oipo had a python/opengl project laying around that he hadn't used yet. Having more people experienced in python at that time, combined with that project, quickly gave rise to the PyQt + PyOpenGL combo we have now.
At current, we have a pretty fast rendering engine available, and a proof of concept-ish interface which allows us to showcase an ant moving around a map, avoiding obstacles. It's known to work on at least Linux and Windows. There is also some OS X work done, but without a way to check this for ourselves, we have no idea in what state it is.
The current state is that there still is quite some interest from multiple parties, but no one to take up lead of how to do things, leading to a lack of motivation from everyone who wants to get involved.
Now that I have some time again, I have decided to take upon myself the lead role, create documentation, help people understand the code and the decisions that lead up to this point, and lead the project to a state of usability.
This page is first of many steps, and further steps require a lot of interaction with the reddit community, as that is where most interested parties can be found, on what is necessary to help motivate people to continue this project.
- We already have some art, but what we need now, is people designing the interface we want to use, as well as user experience design. Also known as concept art. This requires people to know the abilities of the current interface and the current graphics renderer. As far as a generic idea of how it should look? Don't ask me(Oipo). I'm a programmer trying to get people together to create this project. Not the one doing the art, sorry.
- Programmers. Oipo is the one who made the core graphics engine, and gave people the control to put images on the screen. He is also responsible for code review of all incoming pull requests. Rinum and Cibrong have done some minor edits here and there, keeping the project alive in the meantime. What we need are programmers who are willing to write big pieces of code on their own, creating one feature at a time. Preferably, by forking on github, and sending a pull requests for code review once a feature is made and tested.
- More people actively meddling in the entire process. Also known as armchair enthusiasts. It'd be really nice to have more people on the openant subreddit, and the openant irc. You are invited to ask a lot of questions, propose a lot of things, just to keep everyone's minds fresh on the subject.
- We need someone who wants to design the interface
- We need someone to program all the features of the game, listed above
- We need someone to further design the game