The Making Of Amazing Ants Part 4 blog - ahatch

In my last blog I talked about the influence board games in particular the creation of the Ant Warfare board game. In This blog I will tell what allowed me to make Amazing Ants in the first place.

The 90's were the emergence of PC gaming over console gaming. My Ant Warfare board game lived in the loft of my garden shed. I got a series of Tandy computers the first a CoCo3 which was short for color computer and I upgraded to better PC's as I could afford it as at the time computers were a luxury item.
I was introduced to world of shareware where you could play the first levels of games before you could decide to purchase the game. I got a copy of a turn-based game Warlords where you played 30 turns as Elvallie (elf race). The game was very good so I got the full version and discovered it's almost narcotic qualities. It also had a very good editor which I used to design whole army sets and maps so my first taste of modding. I followed the series into the new millenium often going to work baggy eyed because I had to play just one more turn. When they released the Battlecry game I switched to playing that.
In 2008 I got an opportunity to really work on a mod so I started work on what would end up as the 1035 Mod. In making the mod I had to learn to compile code as well I took the route of doing my own sprites which was very difficult. After 1 year I had released the Mod with 3 additional playable races which was quite an accomplishment. At that point I focused on improving the art so the next two years of the project I would mod stuff so that I could develop that skill.
At nearly the 3 year point in the project I got to the point where I wasn't having fun anymore and it was time to start something new. One day while uploading an update for the mod one my friends said "Andy why don't you just make your own game''.
From Modder to Game Maker
And so it was I started work on what would be Amazing Ants. Without being a modder first I wouldn't have had a clue where to start.