Microsoft Ants - Maps

Maps

Initially there were six original maps, varying in difficulty:

• Tiny - A very tiny map, 6 minutes in length, with no powerups, just food.
• Small - An 8 minute map, smaller in size than most others, but contains a few powerups.
• Gauntlet - A 10 minute map, contains two clusters of powerups, and a powerup flower to the top left of the map. There is only one source of food, and that’s a jelly at the bottom right of the screen.
• Medium - A 10 minute map, mainly associated with fighting and battling, even though there is 4 sources of food, there is only 1 powerup flower; hence the immediate decision is to get to the middle and get powerups, since if someone gets a fire-powerup, you could be in trouble.
• Treasure - Probably the most popular original map, this 12 minute map is varied and balanced for many different strategies and styles of play, there are 20 powerups symmetrically placed across the map, with food positioned in the middle, and around the outside.
• Islands - Considered the expert map, this 12 minute map is centered around the first minute, where you have to get to the swimant powerups, otherwise you could be in trouble.

In a rare move (and probably due in part to the constant complaining from Ants players), in early 2001 Microsoft Gaming Zone released a brand new original map, Ocean. Ocean was essentially a combination of Islands and Treasure squashed together and spread out over a much larger surface. This was cheered by the Ants community.

In late 2001 with the leaking of the normally heavily guarded Ants code which was used by Microsoft to create the Ocean map, several regular players began dissecting and analyzing the code, with the goal to create their own maps and eventually their own map packages. Soon, in early 2002, the code for map creation had been decoded and circulated among a few players. This resulted in an explosion of "homemade" maps and a release of the "Ants Map Wizard," courtesy of Ants player FCouples. Later, more Ants Map programs were created, including the Map Designer Program from Slayer. FCouples later improved his Map Maker, giving it better compilation facilities and larger map sizes, among other features.

The Ants Map Maker was a treasure trove for Ants players, who would collectively go on to create over 850 known maps, all from the original code. Once the average player was able to easily create their own map, however, most "new" maps ended up as unoriginal knock-offs of the six original maps and Ocean. Many of these maps contained bugs within the code which would cause a player's game to crash or to not start at all. One notable exception was the Popcorn map, a map 14 minutes long that combined the fun of Treasure with the skill level of Islands with an entirely new map layout added in, complete with barriers, additional food, and additional ants. Despite the increase in maps, and thus an increase in players to the site, Microsoft still publicly refused to acknowledge any of the new maps as "official" maps. By this time however, it was too late. Maps were everywhere, and the surge in availability of new maps, no matter how poorly constructed, once again caused a temporary increase in popularity and player population for Microsoft Ants.