Master of Chess News

I'll keep it short and sweet this time, Master of Chess is available in Early Access!

It all started two years ago when a question popped into my mind - how would Football Manager, but for chess, work? In the end, you can't really tell FM is the main influence as my game allows you to play the games (but simulate them as well).

There's plenty to do still, and the game has its quirks, but this is the hardest thing I've done in my life, and sometimes I can't believe I got here.

Thank you for following me and I hope you'll have fun!

BRANE

It's been a long loooong trip and the rocky part is yet to come.

Early access release is coming very soon (I'll drop the announcement at the end of May). That's why I need your help (*insert 'once more I'm asking for your support' meme) to test out Master of Chess.



[h2]Known problems[/h2]

• The progress of your player character is not balanced and it's what I'm working on right now. He progresses too fast, with some playtesters having World Champion players younger than 17 (try to beat that, Gukesh!)
  
• Knockout tournament doesn't simulate properly with skipping rounds. (I already fixed this one, and will be part of next release)
  
• Names generation totally wrong for some countries
  
• Trophies rendering wrongly when the room is full
  
• Some minor issues with tournament qualification logic
  

[h2]Your tasks[/h2]

To have fun with the game as much as possible! And to report whenever game didn't allow you to. Things like:

• Obvious game-crashing bugs
  
• Minor grievences when game makes something you want to do hard for no good reason
  
• Unusual slowness and poor optimization
  
• Are you interested in translating the game? https://www.localizor.com/master-of-chess
  

[h2]My plan[/h2]

I must fix the problems I listed and also those that will be reported in the meantime. I also want to conjure up some kind of marketing campaign but obviously I don't know how. If you know a streamer that could be interested in streaming the game let me/them know!

A new demo version is out! While most of my and community's efforts go into testing and improving the alpha version of the game, I had to move some of that improvements back into the demo version of the game.

If you want to join the community or check out the alpha join here: Discord Link



[h2]What changed?[/h2]

• 🤵 All previous avatar sprites were removed. With help from my talented friend Lorenzo, we updated all of the avatars in the game. Aging of characters finally makes sense.
  
• Many QOL improvements were added like threat detection, material count, promotion etc.
  
• Numerous bugs were squashed
  

[h2]What's next?[/h2]

• I'm working on the alpha version of the game non-stop. Community at discord is hard at work finding and reporting numerous improvements/bugs
  
• I've added a lot of logic around tournaments and looking into creating save games next
  
• This amazing work around avatars wouldn't be complete if I wouldn't return the Player creation screen
  

[h2]Last but not least[/h2]

Have I mentioned that my free Opening Repertoire app is available on Steam? https://store.steampowered.com/app/2755460/Chess_Opening_Repertoire_Builder

I'm improving it from time to time, but Master of Chess is where most of the efforts go. Take a look at it if you're interested in chess openings.

We're getting closer to releasing this game. Alpha build is out and being tested.

If you're interested in helping out, jump to my discord: https://discord.gg/HYV8Zz8V2Q.

[h3]CORB coming in a week[/h3]

In exactly week from now 26th of February, Chess Opening Repertoire Builder is coming out. Wishlist it!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2755460/



[h3]What's happening with Master of Chess?[/h3]

The game is progressing with a nice and steady pace. There's improvements all around, but the biggest ones are around:

• Tournaments - this is a big part of the game loop, your player character playing many tournaments and progressing through the ranks so it makes sense I've finally took some time to give it justice. The UI of it is completely changed, the tournaments are generated with more idea behind them, and there's other types of tournaments now except the Swiss one. I've probably forgot some things but you get the gist.
  
• Openings - Did I tell you about CORB? Well, that's a small app I extracted from MoC and it helped pinpoint some issues Openings feature have in Master of Chess. There's plenty of improvements I did there and plenty more to come
  
• Avatars - Ever looked at the NPC avatars in the game and thought wow do those look weird? Well, it's because they were placeholders for the real deal. There's plenty of work around it in the background to make them consistent and awesome.
  
• Puzzles - Having just a couple puzzles to test your knowledge out is a thing of the past. Thousands of new puzzles have been added, but also some logic to track you puzzle rating and to pick appropriate puzzle difficulty over time
  
• UX niceties - or more commonly known as QOL improvements. I improved the match review screen in many ways and squashed couple of bugs. Also, a feature that was requested many times: picking what to promote to, has been added.
  

Now these are just things that pop into my mind right now, there's probably tens of other things I added or fixed in the meantime.

[h3]What's next?[/h3]

I'll spend the next week mostly focused on getting CORB to be clean and useful for users. It's going to be my first release on Steam so I want to do it justice. Then, the idea is to focus on Openings feature more, and to integrate it completely into gameplay. After that, I think the game will be ready for closed beta and we can take it from there.

Bye bye!