@derstreber2
I suspect adding walls or more complex mazes will lead to more ants getting lost if they never find a path to food. You may need to give ants the urge to head back to the nest if they find nothing after a period of time. Maybe also head home if they notice they are not moving and the food pheromone they are standing on has degraded a lot, to keep ants from hanging out at the site of a depleted food source.
@captaincrazybone1350
I thing I've been noticing in your simulations are as soon an effective route to the source has been established it gets halted by massive traffic jams as ants going to and from the source compete for the same pathway, resulting in big pileups. This leads to another less direct route becoming the favored path as it's les contested. If i remember correctly ants will form a highway of three lanes. The two on the flanks going outward towards the food source and the central lane carrying food to the hive. Simply making ants heavier when carrying food might do the trick. It will make it harder for them to be slowed down by oncoming ants and ants going outward would follow the path of least resistance and go around, hopefully creating the three lanes.
@Misto_deVito6009
The new walk cycle is definitely a step in the right direction.
@spiritpowertx
When an ant arrives in the anthill with food, it should pause with a random timer before the ant goes back to look for food outside. This is to give the ant time to "virtually" deposit its piece of food at the bottom of its anthill.
@Kram1032
I wonder how real ants handle the "I wandered around for enough" because clearly they wouldn't normally just pile up at the last known food source and cal it a day
@Foxxactt
That Ant you filmed will be more famous than I ever be.
@captainahab5522
Something I noticed with real ant foraging behaviour is that returning, full ants will excite any ant that they encounter, making them move faster and forage more Also ants will avoid areas where they have explored a lot, unless food/ trail is present Also a lot of the colony will remain inside the nest to care for the larvae unless called to help collect a large food resource I think a good way to simulate these behaviours is to have less foraging ants to begin with, retuning ants excite outgoing ants increasing their movement and distance they will go from the nest, retuning ants can spawn new ants with the excited state Maybe ants that do not find food for a period of time act opposite of retuning ants, these discouraging ants could lay down a scent that repels outgoing ants, or could discourage outgoing ants, making them want to explore less and return to the nest Discouraging ants when contacting full ants return being outgoing ants, but do not get the excited state This should stop the ants from clustering in corners and in already explored areas
@Galakyllz
It may be a good idea to build in "starvation" that causes the ant to return back home as if it had food, but it doesn't boost the marker while in a starvation state.
@dstovell
It might be interesting to implement a return logic, that once an ant has been gone from a certain amount of time (say it got hungry), it will return to the hive and restart it's process. I think this would cut down on the masses of ant on the edges of the screen. Or perhaps one starves, dies and is returned as food by another?
@HDL_CinC_Dragon
Pezzza: Posts new video Me: "Sorry everyone, I just remembered I have to jump on another call. If you need anything from me directly, please send me an email and I'll respond to it as soon as I can." Also, I suspect adding obstacles will result in pathing similar to A*. That will be very interesting to see!
@DehydratedNoodles-zk6xc
I think having the ants return to the nest if they don't find anything after a while could help in speeding up the process of initially finding food and also help them avoid clumping around areas where there isn't any food anymore. Maybe they could leave a special pheremone for when they don't find food to help the others return home? Also, the ants look a little weird when they're moving in huge trails. It might help to add a bit of randomness to their leg movements and the direction they choose so it looks less like a singular wave and more like the individual ants happening to choose the same general direction.
@GrimOfDonuts
What if you treat markers like scents. Scents spread, so why dont the markers create smaller effects to the spots around them, which might help create more realistic solid roadways instead of constantly having ants run through the same exact road every time.
@LucenteEstreno
I love when at 6:50 the few yellow ants returning home take a longer root that summons all the ants stuck on the top side of the map! It's so cool and smart
@sheeptactics
great improvement! An idea you can add food weight, and an ant behavior where if they have no food and smell the food a nearby ant has, it can decide to help carry it to speed up food delivery!
@YOGURT1
The ant running with dual tripod is literally how almost every bug walks and runs.
@Jack_Wolfe
3:13 that looks pretty good.
@draconis17
in previous versions, the ants would disperse and start searching again once the food was gone for a while and the markers disappeared. Now that you've switched from linear to exponential, though, the markers never fully disappear, leading to the ants staying in that area forever
@randomexplosion6527
You should also add 'difficult terrain' where tiles can slow ants down (and then you'll also get hard obstacles by setting the slowdown to 100% if you implement it cleverly)
@jamesduston9292
The biggest improvement you can do for the walk cycle is is have the body bend and the head track to where the ant wants to go.
@PezzzasWork