| Author |
Message |
Steve Warner (Ceratopsian)
New member
Username: Ceratopsian
Post Number: 6
Registered: 12-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, January 12, 2008 - 2:15 pm: | |
I just posted my game Chaos, a large chess variant, which I created in 2001. Use your foot soldiers, elves, angels, serpents, mages, berserker, dragon, spirit, sorceress and golem to checkmate your opponents emperor. I would love to get some feedback on the game (positive or negative) especially from chess players.
If there is interest I will post the Intermediate Game of Chaos in which the pieces have special abilities on power squares. |
M Winther (Kalroten)
New member
Username: Kalroten
Post Number: 51
Registered: 1-2007
| | Posted on Sunday, January 13, 2008 - 10:36 am: | |
I don't like the realistic pieces. Chessplayers tend to prefer more abstract pieces. In my own chess variants I have used pieces with a character imprinted on them, such as D for Dimachaer.
Mats |
Greg Schmidt (Gschmidt2)
New member
Username: Gschmidt2
Post Number: 52
Registered: 1-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 15, 2008 - 10:56 am: | |
I like the fact that every game developer brings their own particular "twist" to their games. I think your game provides another example of that, sort of a "Fantasy Chess" genre with appropriately themed effects.
While I haven't played the game enough to comment adequately, I do have one comment about the graphics. I notice there is a green halo around the pieces. This can happen after a piece is reduced and the color dithering alters the "transparent" color green to something else. The dithering makes it hard to correct for this once it occurs. One way to mitigate that is first use a color that blends with the board making that the temporary "transparent" color. Then after reducing the graphic, change that color back to green (using the paint can). The pixels near the edge of the figure which aren't replaced will at least blend in with the board. Obviously, this works best for monochromatic boards. I've also hand edited some pixels after the fact, but that can be tedious and lead to choppy edges if not careful. Maybe someone else has some ideas on this too.
Don't set your expectations too high for feedback in this forum. The game creation/feedback ratio is fairly low. It would be nice if there was at least a download count maintained for each game, and perhaps a rating/review system, but there isn't. Keep them coming though as we all enjoy seeing new submissions, especially from game developers new to this group.
-- Greg |
Steve Warner (Ceratopsian)
New member
Username: Ceratopsian
Post Number: 7
Registered: 12-2007
| | Posted on Thursday, January 17, 2008 - 10:18 am: | |
I expect that there might be mixed feelings regarding the realistic pieces. I'm going to leave them as is for now (partially due to the fact that I don't really want to spend a lot of time on game pieces). I did notice the "green glow" around certain pieces. I am actually ok with this or I would have corrected it. Perhaps I'll change my mind at some point. If anyone else wants to edit or change the game pieces I'd be happy to take a look at them and if I like them I'll include them in future updates and more advanced versions of the game.
-Steve |
Karl Scherer (Karl)
New member
Username: Karl
Post Number: 360
Registered: 9-2000
| | Posted on Saturday, January 19, 2008 - 3:22 pm: | |
Hi Steve,
why have different images for the same piece type? The black and white captain have different images instead of just having different colour.
Having the same image like in chess makes it easier to see that they have the same movement.
Also, Archdemon (black sode only) seems to be the same piecetype as Angel (white side only).
Here not only the images are hugely different, but also the names.
This very artificial confusion puts me off playing this game, and I am sure it so does for many other people. There is a very good reason and huge advantage in userfriendliness!
I very much hope you can change your mind and at least offer an alternative piece set with same images and names for same piece types.
Happy programming!
Karl |
Keith Carter (Keithc)
New member
Username: Keithc
Post Number: 145
Registered: 8-2000
| | Posted on Sunday, January 20, 2008 - 10:42 am: | |
The halo effect - this is a mixed effect for me. Without some sort of halo the dark pieces would disappear on the black squares. The green is not an issue for me though I know that technically it is a transparency color effort fumble, it reminds me of a the green glow a certain spectral army had in The Lord of the Rings. I think where the green glow goes wrong is that the black side has it only on the foot soldiers while the white side has it on the foot soldiers and captains.
The different pieces - The different images for the same functional piece does make learning the game a little more difficult. Though I understand it aids the dark army vs. light army theme of the game. Chess sets that follow this idea (LOTR, American Civil War) don't have identical pieces on each side but for the same function they do have similar pieces.
Was the board enlarged? - was this board enlarged from a substantially smaller graphic? The borders of the black and white squares are blurred across and distance of 6 pixels and so look out of focus.
A note on enlarging graphics. While the larger graphic may look to have all of its squares the same size to the human eye the actual size, by pixel count, will vary slightly. For example taking 35 x 35 pixel squares and enlarging the graphic 50%. Some squares will end up 50 pixels wide while others end up 51 pixels wide. Normally this is not noticeable but when you are dealing with a rigidly defined column or row size it shows up because the average square size is not a whole number of pixels like 50 or 51, it is something like 50.5. If your board space is set to 50 then there is some drift. By the time you get to the bottom of the board the pieces are floating 5 pixels above the bottom of the board position. For example, the Sorceress. At the top of the board her base is clipped, at the bottom of the board she floats. Set your board space to 51 and by the time you get to the bottom of the board the bottom 5 or 6 pixels of your piece are clipped off.
The board spaces are different sizes - for example B7 is 46 pixels tall while B5 is 54. That is going to throw off piece placement.
Many of the pieces don't match the board definition of 51 wide and 50 tall - A lot of the pieces are larger than the board squares so the image will be cropped. The mage is 34 x 62 so 12 pixels of the image will get cropped. The sorceress is 41 x 54 and will lose 3 rows of pixels. The archangel losses two columns of pixels (off the right side) and the arch demon loses 3 columns of pixels. Some pieces are smaller than the than the board definition. The elf is 44 pixels tall while the elven archer is 50, so they end up with their feet not standing on the same baseline. Different pieces will be different sizes just as the pawn and bishop are in chess. However the underlying graphic, with transparent parts is the same height with transparent pixels above the pawn so they stand on the same baseline. I think your graphics for all of your pieces should be the same size and match the board definition. The visible images will vary in size with the difference made up with transparent green.
Basic game text should be part of the game's help file - the game's in game help file is too thin. I would include the content of the basic game text that was on the Zillions splash page plus a mention of what the specially marked squares are.
Board is 24 bit and 759K when it could be 8 bit and 225K - this may not really be an issue anymore like it was back in the day when Zillions launched given high speed internet access and roomy hard drives. So I am the one looking for feedback here. The board for Chaos Basic is essentially solid black, white, and red with a smattering of yellows and grey. Not a broad range of color. The board is done in 24 bit color when 8 bit color (256 colors) would make no visual difference and reduce the board size from 759K to about 225K. I have been going to the extra trouble of reducing the file size of my board graphics even on boards whose color range during design was quite a bit more than 256 colors. Should I bother to continue doing that? Haven't the reasons for doing so gone away?
As far as the actual game goes... well I have not played it. My interest in Chess variants is very low. Also, for a person that is graphically oriented and used to working at the pixel level this game is a rough tumble for the reasons mentioned above. I have watched Zillions play itself and the game does develop quickly and the AI does not get bogged down by the huge branching factor of the move tree. |
Steve Warner (Ceratopsian)
New member
Username: Ceratopsian
Post Number: 9
Registered: 12-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - 3:13 pm: | |
Karl - as Keith mentioned, the different pieces are being used for thematic purposes only. I do understand that this makes an already complicated game even more complicated. To spell it out, there are nine new types of piece movements, four of the pieces have different graphics for Black and White (foot soldier, captain, angel(demon), archangel(archdemon) ), plus the void squares.
There are two possible alternative piece sets that might alleviate some of this - let me know what you think:
Piece set 1: just use angels and archangels (get rid of demons and archdemons) and make all dark and light pieces the same.
Piece set 2: use pieces that look like ordinary chess pieces. Here are some ideas:
Foot soldier - pawn
Elf - rook
Serpent - bishop
Angel - knight
Mage - queen (the mage is "almost" a queen - it can't capture on void (red) squares
Emperor - King
For the "new" pieces, perhaps modify ordinary chess pieces.
Elven Archer - a "fancier" rook
Archangel - a "fancier" knight
Archmage - a "fancier" queen
Berserker - a "fancier" bishop
Dragon - a different "fancy" queen
This still leaves the Spirit, Sorceress and Golem, which as far as I know don't really have any chess analogs (maybe someone familiar with lots of chess variants could tell me otherwise).
Before I put in the work to doing this I'd like to get a little feedback. Do you think more people might try out the game if I created these piece sets?
Keith - I originally created this game in 2001 - I made the board, and created simple game pieces. I printed a lot of the images from my computer without much concern for how good things looked an how much memory was being utilized. I will consider trying to fix things up.
Another question: the Intermediate Game is just about ready. Graphically it is currently the same as the Basic Game. Obviously there are more things that need to be learned to play this next level. Should I hold off on submitting this until I have addressed these other issues?
I appreciate everyone's feedback! |
Steve Warner (Ceratopsian)
New member
Username: Ceratopsian
Post Number: 10
Registered: 12-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 23, 2008 - 9:22 pm: | |
I recreated the board, expanded the help file, made all the pieces uniform and added a piece set consisting of Chess and Fairy Chess pieces. I'm currently trying to make the sizes of the fantasy pieces more uniform. When I'm done I'll send in the revised version. Here are the Chess pieces I am using. If someone could let me know if these sound reasonable or not I'd appreciate it:
Foot Soldier - Pawn
Captain - upside down Pawn (can move and capture like a Pawn, and orthogonallly 1 or 2 spaces, can capture forward)
Elf - Rook
Elven Archer - upside down Rook (can move or fire like a Rook)
Angel - Knight
Archangel - upside down Knight (can move like a single or double Knight)
Serpent - Bishop
Berserker - upside down Bishop (moves like a Bishop through any number of pieces capturing all of them)
Mage - Queen
Archmage - upside down Queen (moves orthogonally then diagonally or vice versa)
Dragon - fancier Queen (moves like a Queen but can pass through friendly pieces)
Emperor - King
Golem - upside down King (moves like King but captures all adjacent squares)
Sorceress - fancy Pawn (interchanges with friendly pieces)
Spirit - fancy Bishop (moves 3 spaces freely) |
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