Master of Chess News

[h2]What's happening with the game? [/h2]

Last weekend I posted a short video announcement about Master of Chess Demo. It blew up on reddit, tripling amount of people on discord and doubling the wishlist count!

Join discord here: https://discord.gg/HYV8Zz8V2Q as it had a big revamp by two community masters to which I'm extremely thankful: @Taxtibe and @Zokaper



With all the new people that arrived there's been a lot more bugs reported, a lot more discussions about features and the look/feel of the game. At times I was overwhelmed but mostly I was extremely happy.

I'm happy because I'm finally sure: I'm not crazy. This game has real appeal to people who love chess as much as I do and I'm right in trying my best to deliver an awesome chess simulation game.

[h3]Enough with the pep talk. What's going on with the game? [/h3]

- Full focus is on fixing bugs and adding some UX niceties.
- I'm testing and figuring out the issues of the demo on Steam (it's still crashing fairly often)
- I'm updating to version 4.1 of Godot engine because it might resolve some of the bugs (and hopefully not introduce new bugs)
- I'm adding the Create your player screen and ditching the precreated campaigns


[h3]What's the plan for the future [/h3]

- Stabilize the demo (eradicate crashes)
- Fix more bugs
- Release a new demo build on itch.io next week
- Prepare a linux build (I am hoping this will give me more insight into why the game crashes, I'm still not sure!)

This gamedev journey was and continues to be a great ride! Cheers!

Demo of my game is still hidden from the public eye but some awesome folks tried it. If you want to test early builds then checkout discord: https://discord.gg/HYV8Zz8V2Q


So the demo is out and being played by strangers for the first time. It's really hard to get that out of the way as you don't want to scare people away by giving them too raw experience.


I'm happy that people really had fun and deemed it worthy to spend time not only playing but also providing valuable feedback. A lot of great ideas were generated in the first playthrough and this really gives me new motivation to continue making the best chess game out there!


I appreciate people giving feedback (the good and the bad!) so I decided to create a small public page where all the bugs reported can be seen and progress on them can be monitored. (this was also a suggestion from Discord :) )

https://www.imbrane.com/master-of-chess/tasks


[h3]What next?[/h3]

• I've decided to ditch selectable campaigns for initial release of the game. It's just going to be your custom chess prodigy. Enter: Player creation screen.
  

• I've compiled Godot Engine from source in an attempt to catch and eradicate a game breaking bug that has sneaked in the game. It's very hard to diagnose what's wrong so I can fix it.
  
• When the bug is fixed, I'll start readying the build for Steam
  
• Release demo on Steam! I'd love to do it as soon as possible, I hope by the end of May, but it is going to be tricky if this bug keeps bothering me.
  

Until next time!

[h2]What would a Football Manager game look like for chess?[/h2]

I started making this game with that question in mind. It looked simple enough in the beginning but there's little that connect the two games now.


But the real attraction for managerial games comes from adjusting game mechanics for optimal gains. In FM you bring new players, adjust your tactics, develop young talents and you enjoy seeing them succeed and flourish under your expert guidance. What would equivalent of that be in Master of Chess?

You develop your in-game player skills in MoC, and your opening repertoire becomes richer as time passes. This is good but isn't deep enough to keep the player engaged. That's why I decided for a more hands-on approach.



You play the moves on the board, but your in-game character 'validates' them. The better the character is the more precise he is in his calculation.

In order to design proper match experience in the game I decided for following restrictions.

All the matches in Master of Chess:

- Must be winnable for players of any real-life chess strength against any of the in-game opponents
- Must be harder to win if your in-game character is weaker than opponent
- Must be considerably different to playing chess online
[h3]- Must be fun[/h3]

[h2]What affects match outcome[/h2]

- Moves the player choses
- Player attributes (strategy, tactics and endgames)
- Play intensity of the player in the match
- Openings that are chosen (how familiar each of the players is with it)
- Element of luck/randomness like in any chess match

[h2]What is play intensity?[/h2]

- It is an in-match setting that can be adjusted
- If intensity is high, character calculation speed and precision increases
- But energy depletes faster if the intensity is greater
- When energy is low blunder possibility rises (precision degrades considerably)

These are the main pillars of the chess match experience.

On top of this the game then builds tournaments, opening repertoire development, getting chess titles, solving chess puzzles for faster improvement, getting prize money, having chess coaches and bunch of random events that happen throughout the game. You guide your player character through the chess world.

[h3]The Demo[/h3]

I think it's cool, and I enjoy developing it. Next week I plan to open up a demo to all the folks in Discord. If you're interested, join here: https://discord.gg/HYV8Zz8V2Q