While I was in Germany for Gamescom at the end of August, I had the opportunity to meet and chat with the developers behind the upcoming strategy game Empire of the Ants. This ambitious project is very special because it is built on a very small scale and revolves around insects and the problems and battles that still survive in a small world.
In an interview with Senior Game Designer Matthias Varlet, I asked how the team accurately represents such a small world, while keeping all the key details intricate in the process.
Valette told me: “So, um, we use a technique called photogrammetry to process all the environments. Our artists then touch up these elements to make them prettier or poppier. But basically the pictures are transferred to a 3D model, and then we just make them This is kind of for environmental elements.
“And then we have the insects themselves, which have, well, for them, our 3D artists who really do a really good job of doing a lot of research on the insect itself, on the characteristics his, as he moves, on God. it’s like all the different things, so we see, there are a lot of videos on YouTube, and it’s good that before we started this project, we didn’t know that there were people. .. I would say cultivate, but that is not the right word. . They make these cities grow. like
The same goes for all other insects. There is a lot of documentation and such on the internet. So we recorded ourselves a lot. We thought, okay, let’s go see what this insect looks like, how it lives, how it moves, so we know how to animate it, not just how we will represent it in 3D.
You can see the full interview with Varlet below, where we also discuss the strategy system, multiplayer elements, and the scary spiders you’ll find in the game.
