Hey, thanks for taking the time to write this.
I would like to know, what things do you find harder to do with this control scheme that you don't in others?
Also, I am curious, how often did you go back and optimize previous layers?
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q2: a few times. at least once each until i got the ability for ants to carry two resources at a time. then i began to lose steam and figured it wasn't that important to further optimize everything.
q1: hmm. this is a good question but i am not sure i can give a good answer. so maybe i'm not right about my diagnosis and should have not made one? overall, paths seemed like a nice way to visualize specifying specific sequences of actions, but something about it bugged me. i will describe some moments from my play experience:
i yearned for a way to split the flow of ants in a more mathematically pleasing way, but did not want to draw a supremely excessive number of paths - e.g. perfectly optimizing a den that wants 16 of one and 18 of another is only possible by drawing 8+9 paths... i suppose that is not a control scheme thing.
at times i wanted to send ants down specific paths to balance numbers out but i couldn't do that without destroying paths which i didn't want to do.
i did not figure out how to add nodes to a path between existing nodes, i was kinda checking out mentally at this point.
i found a trick where i could send an ant to grab a resource and plant it, and have that one ant repeat the action in that path a few times, to craft quickly. that felt like an exploit, but a good/fun one.
i did not feel very rewarded for trying to make perfect flows. seemed like more of a sheer numbers/waiting game.
this one is hard to get my hands on, i'll try though. in comparing your game to other games i have played, the node-path-ant-control is the only way to gain resource and perform actions, so i must wait for everything. i like when i have a body, and the factorizing supplements that, makes me more powerful. (e.g. i can pick up and deliver coal myself, but it is less work to get ants to help me.) not sure if this is useful, as it describes a fairly different dynamic... as i said at the start im not much of a factory gamer and for me it checks out that the root of my complaint is "im forced to play a factory game with no player-avatar-action component" ;P
hope that was useful.
Hey, reading your replies it seems like you only got to play the game for a few minutes before losing steam and giving up. The main point of the game is to optimize things and it's vital to beating the final level in a reasonable time. Optimizing a level multiplies the efficiency of each higher level (by providing more ants) so it's quite important. Therefore giving up and brute forcing things after the second level will lead to an unpleasant experience.
Like you said, this was probably caused by your distaste for the genre so I'm glad you were still able to somewhat enjoy the game. And thank you for your feedback.
hmm. i'm not sure how long a few minutes is or what you mean by brute forcing things, but it doesn't sound like this describes my experience well. i understand that optimization is key and i did optimize at the deeper more zoomed in levels in order to produce more ants at higher and higher levels. i'm happy to leave it with the understanding that i'm not part of the intended audience but i felt a bit bad about my experience being described incorrectly so i am only commenting to clear that up! congrats on finishing something that others seem to be enjoying for the jam :)