|
It's HERE! A Brand NEW Ants Map!
Holy Choco Fishy Snax! Look out, Ants fanatics everywhere!
Here comes a BRAND NEW Ants Map: OCEAN! It's sun, surf, and sand!
The King of the Anthill, Mr. Joshua Howard, has heard and read your many requests for a new and challenging map. So for the last few days, he was missing in action from the Zone. Poof! He just disappeared into thin air! We think he probably locked himself up in his gigantic Anthill with a huge sketchpad and started brainstorming what the next map would look like.
For days, not a peep has been heard from this creative genius, until NOW! VOILA! He came out of hiding with Ocean, the new map for all you Ants fanatics out there!
We nabbed him for a few minutes to ask him a couple of questions about this new and exciting map.
Zone: Where did the inspiration for this new map come from?
Joshua Howard: A long-time fan of the game, Leonardoe, sent me a map idea. As much as I had wanted to do new maps for the game after its initial release (as part of Spike's World), it turned out that I never got the time to actually make it happen. So when Leonardoe sent me a map idea, I first thought how nice it would be to actually try to get a new map built. I decided to commit to doing some new maps and to make the first new map based on the basic idea Leonardoe had. Thanks, Leonardoe!
Zone: What's been the most challenging part of creating this new map?
Joshua Howard: It has been a long time since I used the tools to build maps, and they took a bit of time to get used to again. I also had to track down some of the old documentation I had generated about mapmaking, to make sure I didn't build a broken map -- things like how the food is placed, what points they have, what objects are on the map, etc. Once I had the information and had become familiar with the tool again, it was just a matter of tinkering a little bit every time I had a chance. Once I had a playable map, I brought it into work to play against others who also work at the Zone. After playing a bit, we would talk about what we liked or didn't like, and then I would tweak the map as needed. This happened off and on for a few weeks until the map was ready for general release.
Zone: Any little tips, tricks, or secrets you'd like to share with us on playing this map?
Joshua Howard: Just one, for now. Having read a bunch of player comments, and playing a lot with many good players, I realized that many players had their "favorite" Ant type, which they would always try to use before any other Ant. I played on this in this new map by building a trick into the map that will reward players who pay attention and who are ready to adapt to a different way to play than they usually might. And no, I won't tell you what the trick is -- you will have to figure it out for yourselves?
Wanna start playing Ocean? Then Download the Ocean Map now!
|
