Idle-Ants

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  Main Screen

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  Ant Tunnel Selection

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  The Queen

Idle-Ants combines growing a colony of ants with an idle game. An idle game is type of video game that typically requires minimal or no active gameplay from the player. In Idle-Ants, the player has to start gameplay slowly, tapping on the ant hill to make ants go get food for your queen. The food feeds the queen, the queen lays eggs, and the eggs make more ants for more food. Eventually the game begins to play itself.

The goal of this project was to build a functional idle game. Tools: Our team’s chosen programming language was Python. We used the Pycharm IDE. This way our team was able to push and pull from GitHub. Our team used Kivy. Kivy appealed to the team because it is a freely distributable framework used for application development. We built classes which were implemented in the game logic and graphical user interface. Additionally we used JSON for storage. Each time one of the values of the game changes it is uploaded into one of the JSON files.

How to run: Users can run Idle Ants using Python 3.11. Idle Ants is available as a .py file and a .exe file. Once a user has the game set up, the graphics should encourage users to begin clicking around the game.

How we built: Initially the team discussed the game logic. Over time the logic altered some. Necessary tools to code were installed by each team member. Two team members did front-end work. These team members put together pixel art graphics, implemented buttons, and set up display functionality. Two team members took on back-end work. These team members concocted a system for storage, classes and methods for key functionality, and direct implementation of the game logic to code. Once the front end graphics were ready, all team members collaborated on combining resources to form a functional product.

Inspiration: This game came into the creative flow when Dylan was playing an idle game. I walked up to him and said what you wanna do for the hackathon and he said 'Let's make an idle game'. For some odd reason ants had popped into the picture and we begun building the ant empire.

Functionality: Users begin on the home menu. The home menu displays an ant hill. A key purpose of Idle Ants is for users to tap and swipe to earn currency. A user can automatically begin earning currency through repetitively clicking the ant hill. Users can likewise navigate to the tunnels. From the tunnels users have the option to enter three rooms. The first room is the Queen Aunt Room. Within the Queen Aunt Room users can click to lay eggs and/or multiply eggs. Users earn currency through performing these actions. The second room is the Incubation Room. In the Incubation Room users can interact with the program through hatching eggs. Users can also multiply the amount of eggs hatched within the incubator. Finally, the third room is the Food Room. In the food room a mountain of food gathered by aunts is displayed. Users can interact with this room by multiplying the amount of food gathered and/or upgrading the capacity of food that can be stored. While a user plays Idle Ants they are always able to go back to a previous room or navigate to a new room. This way the game has versatility and showcases the creativity of a game inspired by the dynamic insect of aunts.

Challenges: Figuring out the Kivy Clock and how to implement that into the main game loop. Converting our project to an AWS file (to be displayed on a Samsung phone). The process to convert to an AWS file failed towards the end of the execution phase.

Accomplishments: Successfully building a functional game. Putting together a game with multiple parts and components. Learning how to use and implement Kivy.

Built With

• kivy
• python