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Like Atic Atac, this game will forever be synonymous with the early years of the Spectrum. When its 3D graphics were first seen, they impressed everyone. When the author Sandy White - a sculptor by trade - sent it Quicksilva, they flew him down from Scotland to sign a contract immediately. Forget whether the game lacked depth, because when Ant Attack represented a giant leap forward in computer graphics. The game is set in a massive city swarming with giant ants. Somewhere in the city is your other half (you can play a boy or a girl) who must be rescued. To defend yourself you can either jump on top of the ants to stun them or use your supply of hand grenades to blow them away. Despite the game's revolutionary features, it is difficult to control and its appeal wears thin after a while, but it should always be remembered as a landmark program in the history of the Spectrum.

Simple but effective use of colours. A really addictive game!

The Making of Ant Attack
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ormat: ZX Spectrum 48K
Release: 1983
Publisher: Quicksilva
Developer: Sandy White

Today the survival horror genre may have been transformed by hardware advances, and the likes of Resident Evil and Silent Hill, but back in 1983 an art student from Edinburgh was already finding ways of fraying the nerves and raising pulses with nothing but a humble ZX Spectrum. Ant Attack marked the very beginnings of the survival horror genre, and a full year before Knight Lore was released it also became the first example of a game developed with the action viewed from an isometric perspective.

Today it's difficult to look at those shaded walls and tiny sprites without raising a supercilious smirk, but in its day, Ant Attack was the most terrifying experience you could have on a home computer. Armed with only a limited supply of grenades and with a severe time limit you had to sneak into the infested city of Antescher and rescue your trapped partner. Interestingly, 3D Ant Attack was also the first game to offer the choice of playing as either a boy or a girl.



However, 3D Ant Attack’s creator Sandy White wasn't your typical bedroom coder. He learned his trade from very different beginnings. “Before writing 3D Ant Attack I was studying at Edinburgh College of Art,” he reveals. “For much of that time I had been up to my elbows in plaster of Paris, ribbon cable, radio control servos and Christmas tree bulbs. At the end of ’82 I had my own one-man show which featured three storytelling computer-controlled sculptures, each based around the SC/MP chip that was in Sinclair’s first computer, the MK14 – that’s how I learned to program.”

By this time he had been truly bitten by the programming bug. A period on the dole gave White the extra incentive to turn his experiments into a living, breathing game world. The inspiration for the title, however, derived from an incongruous origin. “I had just seen Superman the movie, because the next thing I did was make a little sprite which flew over this weird random landscape, though as history tells, it never occurred to me to make a Superman game. At this stage I was still thinking about the sculptural possibilities. Later on it became apparent that there was a striking similarity between the isometric structures in Ant Attack and etchings by M C Escher; the city was eventually named Antescher in tribute.”



Although the buildings contained in the city were blocky, clearly defined structures were noticeable. Indeed, the church and graveyard were designed by White’s girlfriend at the time, Angela Sutherland, who went on to found Perfect Entertainment. Standing outside the gates of Antescher could be unnerving in itself. All would appear quiet and the city devoid of inhabitants. A jump command was included to enable the hero to scale certain edifices and cross the city’s threshold. Then the tension would begin to mount. It was possible to slowly make your way into the heart of the seemingly deserted city, but once a giant ant became alerted to your presence it wouldn’t take long for more to follow. Dispatching initial attacks was essential if your position was not to be overrun. Standing stranded and defenceless on a hill as more and more rapacious insects swelled the ranks of your attackers could be a truly disturbing experience.

The swarming routines were one of White’s first considerations: “I had this engine that drew cubes and did little else, so the first thing I had moving around was a cube. This became a black cube, then a black blob. Then it became a herd of black blobs. What had become interesting to me were the flocking properties that grew out of simple rules given to the blobs. They could be made to either seek or avoid a cube that you could control with the keyboard. I did at one point consider doing a sheep farming game. I bet that would have been a big seller.

“Anyway, eventually in went a couple of human characters, and because of a bug one of the blob sprites was drawn as a human and started to follow the other human. Ant Attack was born. The blobs got legs and it became a kind of hide and seek while avoiding the blobs-with-legs.”

“I had this engine that drew cubes and did little else, so the first thing I had moving around was a cube. This became a black cube, then a black blob. Then it became a herd of black blobs. What had become interesting to me were the flocking properties that grew out of simple rules given to the blobs. They could be made to either seek or avoid a cube that you could control with the keyboard. I did at one point consider doing a sheep farming game. I bet that would have been a big seller." Sandy White

White created one of the most tense and exciting games for its time, and the coding behind the endeavour was anything but simple. Without the large internet-driven creative communities that exist today, he had to learn everything through trial and error. “I was not using an assembler as I had never heard of them,” he recalls. “This meant I had to assemble by hand, writing the mnemonics on a sheet of A4 and shoving the op-codes in the margin. Trouble was, when you wanted to insert a line somewhere you had to go back and recalculate all the jump offsets – it was hideously slow. Once the hex was put together on paper it was typed into my Softy. The Softy was a ROMemulator with four whole K of RAM which I mapped into the Speccy’s memory map via its rear connector. This meant that the whole of Ant Attack had to fit into 4K, leaving aside the data for the city, and some BASIC for the scoring screens.”



Though the game was only half complete, White was confident it had the potential to be a commercial success, but publishing was slightly less well organised in 1983 than it is today. “My first thought was to try Sinclair themselves, as they were already publishing their own games. Being very paranoid about the code, I sent a videotape of Ant Attack off to Sinclair Research, only to have it duly returned with a note saying they were unable to view it as they didn’t have a VCR. Looking around Smiths the following day I picked on Quicksilva as a good alternative, as they were the only publisher at that time who had put out a game with a colour sleeve. Everyone else was still at the stage of selling cassettes with black-and-white inserts – many of them simply photocopies, believe it or not.”

He telephoned Quicksilva, but the company was more than sceptical about a game which had characters climbing over 3D scenery and through windows on the Spectrum. But after sending a videotape, the company was convinced. “We were picked up by Rod Cousens (who went on to become an Acclaim supremo and now heads Codemasters) at the airport, and transported to Quicksilva’s Southampton office, cramped into the back of a Ford XR3i. Negotiations began. I thought 50 per cent was a reasonable sort of start, if a bit generous to Quicksilva, given that they had done none of the work. Yes, perhaps I was a bit naive. I insisted I would go no lower than 25 per cent. I think eventually they offered 20 per cent and locked us in the Post House Hotel until we agreed. We sneaked out early the next morning and flew back to Edinburgh without telling them. The next day I got a call, and they offered 25 per cent. Oh yes, we’d been very clever, but not clever enough to specify what it was 25 per cent of. Eventually I found I was getting 25 per cent of the ‘returns’, which means a quarter of what comes back from the shops, ie 25 per cent of 50 per cent, or 12.5 per cent-ish. A pretty average deal. You live and learn, as they say.”



The deal done and dusted, White had still to complete the game: “Panic ensued. The scoring screens were written in BASIC for speed, meanwhile the cover artwork was being created, blurb written and the game renamed by Quicksilva from Ant Terror – my brilliant name for it – to Ant Attack. I believe they bought the name for a few a few hundred quid from someone else who had written another Ant Attack. Wonder whatever happened to that?”

Press launches for games were rare in the early ’80s, and White vividly remembers hitch-hiking down to London to see the product for the first time at a computer show at the Barbican. “Everything was very homely. There, standing at a tiny stall with a massive pile of Ant Attack tapes, were the founders of Quicksilva. They were selling copies as if they were hot cakes. Some bloke called Jeff Minter from the stall opposite had apparently been asked what he thought of it and said it wasn’t bad.”

But for those who believe there is no heart in publishing, White recalls one moment which reaffirmed his belief in the industry. When the day drew to a close it became apparent to John Hollis – co-founder of Quiksilva – that White and his girlfriend had nowhere to stay. “We were both on the dole,” explains the coder. “But in a gesture I’ll never forget, John opened the till, reached in and removed its entire contents, and thrust them into my hands. Later, from the security of our posh hotel room, we counted many hundreds of pounds – more dosh than either of us had seen in one place, ever.”

For more information, visit White's website (http://www.sandywhite.co.uk/fun/ants/), where he recalls more about the game. This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in E92.

Soft Solid 3D Ant Attack
Producer: Quicksilva
Memory required: 48K
Retail price: £6.95
Language: machine code
Author: Sandy White



Sandy White is a quiet Scot and a sculptor by trade. His understanding of three dimensional construction is evident in his game, Ant Attack. Unveiled at the Quicksilva press show, it raised admiring oohs and ahs from the gathering. According to the press release, Quicksilva was so impressed by the stunning quality of the graphics, that they flew Sandy down from Scotland and signed a contract within 24 hours. A patent has been applied for to protect his 3D soft solid routines.

Quite simply, Ant Attack contains the most breathtaking 3D graphics yet seen on the Spectrum; as one of our reviewers pointed out, very similar to Zaxxon graphics, and quite as good as you can see in an arcade.

THIS IS WHAT YOU DO
The idea of the game is to enter the Walled City of Antescher (which has rested for a thousand years in the midst of the Great Desert inhabited only by the deadly ants who have made it their home), and rescue your girlfriend. Actually, it’s a non-sexist program which asks you whether you are a boy or a girl - the cute graphics distinguish between the two and make the main figure a hero or heroine according to taste.

Playing television studios with 3D Ant Attack - three views of the same scene.


Hero & heroine trapped in Ant Attack shock horror!




You can walk or run round the massive city which exists in a space many times greater than the playing area. You can also jump up and down and climb the walls or stairs. All this activity is necessary to avoid the giant ants which will attack within moments of your entering. Two weapons are provided; 20 grenades which may be thrown varying distances by pressing keys S-D-F or G and which will either stun or kill an ant depending on your accuracy, and the other weapon is your feet. Jumping up and down furiously on an ant will leave it paralysed and out of the running. Up to five ants attack at one time, but others will appear to replace the inactive ones. You can stand being bitten quite a bit, but too many bites will eventually result in loss of life!

GENERAL
The graphics are really stunning. The soft solid bit refers to the 3D effect achieved, not only with the buildings, which are all made up of blocks, hundreds upon hundreds of them, but also with the two humans and the ants. If your characters disappear behind a building you can press any of four keys (O/P/ENTER/SPACE) which will give you a view of the same location from another compass point. The effect is very like a scene in a TV studio where you can look at the action from four differently placed cameras. The cutting from view to view occurs instantaneously and without a flicker.

The excellence of the 3D is also seen when your characters are surrounded by ants. The individual elements of the picture all merge in a most realistic manner, so much so that it’s hard to tell who is who at times, and this adds to the difficulty of the game.

CRITICISM
‘The animation of the figures must be the best yet seen on the Spectrum.’

‘The most serious drawback to enjoying the game is the handful of control keys required. Four keys for the different view angles, four keys to throw grenades, two keys to rotate left and right, another for forward movement and another for jumping. It makes twelve in all. They are quite difficult to manipulate.’

‘It’s an extremely good game with plenty of action, but a little difficult to control at first.’

‘I found it totally confusing at first with all those keys and no joystick that could possibly help, but it’s so wonderful to look at that you’re bound to persevere.’

COMMENTS

Keyboard positions: highly complicated to master, though reasonably logical in placing. Perhaps a North/South/East/West system might have been easier
Joystick option: none possible
Keyboard play: very positive
Use of colour: varied opinions, but averaged out as good
Graphics: excellent
Sound: good
Skill levels: none
Lives: can be bitten