Kingdom Chess News

First boss in Kingdom Chess! It's a small addition as there are plans for much more spectacular boss fights. A lot of polishing took place on both mechanical and visual levels. This month will be focused on promoting the game, so expect a new trailer to come out. Hopefully it will bring some newcomers along with valuable feedback.

Features added last month:
- Boss battle! Oh yes, the first boss has been added to the campaign as quest 4. New enemy type has been introduced - ghost.
- Cinematic depth of field, automatic screen aspect ratio adjustment and benchmark settings recommendation.
- Camera management improvements. Mostly under the hood staff but it was required for the depth of field to work properly.
- Automatic interactions and improved checkpoints - another polishing touches to smooth out experience in single player campaign.
- Inventory double click has been added. I just got tired of dragging everything around.
- Material improvements. Metallic surfaces got their values set up. Also non-metallic materials have been touched with specular properties.
- Minor improvements and fixes have been applied to tutorials and setting screens.
- Outline (post-process effect) have been improved to work better with translucent materials. It also allows inclusion of volumetric light effects, but I wasn't satisfied with the results as it required to blow up the sun or make everything foggy.
- Graphical assets have been updated on the steam store page.

Single player campaign has been expanded with new features. It's the same content but the hopefully now it feels more purposeful. There is a lot to add, fix and improve so focus will stay with campaign for the next month.

Features added last month:
- Quest system has been redesigned. UI is the same and quests are accessible through new NPC type - quest giver. At this stage 3 quest are available: collect quest (for player to generate income), kill quest and rescue quest. It's just an initial state where players can have only 1 active simple quest, but it can be swapped, reset, completed and replayed. Complete quest system will take form of a journal, where player's decisions will affect the world around them.
- Campaign now can be saved. It covers all the aspects currently available in the campaign.
- Defensive behaviour has been added to enemies, so they don't follow you back to the village. Also first set of enemies has been added to the outside world.
- Fog of war has been expanded to the outside world. Day / night cycle has been adapted to turn based gameplay and NPCs received simple daily routines.
- Dead host bug has been fixed for 3 and 4 player online games.

Online multiplayer has been improved. Only minor things and bug fixes, but it was needed. Not all the bugs could be replicated, please help by reporting it. This month new features should be added to the single player campaign.

Features added last month:
- Profile customisation has been restored and updated. Also environment has been included.
- Hiding Menu button on client side has been fixed. And camera lock after rematch has also been fixed.
- Tutorial is fixed. It requires an update, but not now.
- Illegal Premoves and client side premoves are fixed.
- Lobby details screen has been improved and character context information is fixed for the client side.
- Lobby waiting points has been polished and now character information is displayed on client side.
- Scenario details has been added to Battle / Host screen. Also promotion bugs has been fixed for online multiplayer.

Work on characters has been finished and all the related systems should work properly. More characters will be created as more content gets added. However this month "battle" will get few touches. There is a list of bugs that has been neglected for a long time. Also it will be a great opportunity for some minor improvements.

Features added last month:
- 5 new characters have been added. These are simple villagers only, just to diverse characters in campaign.
- Hair models and monuments have been restored.
- Inventory items have been polished (icons, drop models, prices).
- Inventory system received minor improvements (some icons relocated, inventory size increased, character view quality increased, "drag items into middle section to drop" added).
- Few bugs has been fixed (related to new character system).

Finally an update. After about 3 months of work, new character models are brought to Kingdom Chess. It couldn't be updated earlier because changes affected some core mechanics, so all old models needed to be replaced. This month some minor improvements should be made (hair models, inventory icons, item values, item drop models, monuments) along with creation of new models (bandits, villagers).

Here is summary of the improvements:
- More detail has been added. Base model has been rebuilt several times. Now it has about 3-4 times more triangles. Shoulders and hips are now properly connected with torso. All the body parts has been shaped look more like human but it's still very blocky as intended.
- All the previous models have been replaced (pawn, rook, knight, bishop, queen king and jester). 3 new models have been made (cannon, phoenix and elephant). Thanks the feedback received before, now it should easier to distinguish different pieces on the board.
- Skeleton adjustments have been made for the models to deform better. Also corrective bones have been added in few places and animations has been reloaded.
- Models are now properly divided for customization purposes. Before I could only add extra models on top of existing ones which was very limiting. Now body parts can be replaced in 4 areas: chest, legs, head and hands.
- Characters have been optimized in few areas. Materials have been put together into atlases to reduce draw calls. Separate body parts are merged into single models. Animations are optimised to reflect visibility and distance from camera. All that together allowed to increase performance by about 30 fps on my computer (standard setup with 32 characters).
- All the weapons have been corrected, to match new character models.
- It's now fully implemented into the game so everything works properly with all systems updated.