Cool Guy Chess - Prototype
Hi All,
(*Cheesy pitch*) Need to settle an argument around the office or home but lack the upper-body strengh for hand-to-hand combat? Not so refined that you can be labeled a chess grandmaster? Then COOL GUY CHESS might be the game for you.
Tutorial:
1. Cool Guy Chess is a 2 player "hot-seat" game, so choose your opponent
2. Both players are dealt 8 cards(units/cool guys), by hitting the Deal Card Button (alternating between player 1 and 2). Cards are selected randomly and more than 1 of the same Unit can be dealt to a player
3. Each Unit has an attack (red digit) and defend skill (blue digit) associated with the character.
4. Select the unit which you would like to play using the radio buttons found in the middle of the screen and hit the select button. All desicions are final. Once a unit has been selected, that unit needs to be played. "No do-overs" but you can try and skip a turn (sometimes doing nothing is better).
5. Select a square to move the selected unit to (again using the radio buttons) and hit the Inspect destination button. All units can move either 1 or 2 squares in a straight line - any direction.
6. Unit will be moved if destination is clear or engage in a fight if not clear.
7. Fights:
7.1 Attack skill will compete against the enemy unit's Defence skill.
7.2 Both units will roll a dice. The dice amount will be added to the attack/defence skills.
7.3 Higher stat takes the square and destroys the enemy unit. Player loses a life (displayed under score labels). Tie will lead to a victory for the attacker (fortune favours the brave).
8. Turn ends and next player goes into hot-seat. Rinse, repeat & conquer
9. When score count reaches 0 - player loses and must bow to the COOL GUY.
Please keep in mind that this is ony a prototype (first build) and that it was created by an absolute Noob developer using only a visual studio form application. The skip turn button will occasionaly break the game (still working on fixing that). All art was stolen - needed pictures to see if code works - so thank you internet.
All feedback will be greatly appreciated.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jmp14znnax75gcs/Cool Guy Chess Ver 1.1.zip
(*Cheesy pitch*) Need to settle an argument around the office or home but lack the upper-body strengh for hand-to-hand combat? Not so refined that you can be labeled a chess grandmaster? Then COOL GUY CHESS might be the game for you.
Tutorial:
1. Cool Guy Chess is a 2 player "hot-seat" game, so choose your opponent
2. Both players are dealt 8 cards(units/cool guys), by hitting the Deal Card Button (alternating between player 1 and 2). Cards are selected randomly and more than 1 of the same Unit can be dealt to a player
3. Each Unit has an attack (red digit) and defend skill (blue digit) associated with the character.
4. Select the unit which you would like to play using the radio buttons found in the middle of the screen and hit the select button. All desicions are final. Once a unit has been selected, that unit needs to be played. "No do-overs" but you can try and skip a turn (sometimes doing nothing is better).
5. Select a square to move the selected unit to (again using the radio buttons) and hit the Inspect destination button. All units can move either 1 or 2 squares in a straight line - any direction.
6. Unit will be moved if destination is clear or engage in a fight if not clear.
7. Fights:
7.1 Attack skill will compete against the enemy unit's Defence skill.
7.2 Both units will roll a dice. The dice amount will be added to the attack/defence skills.
7.3 Higher stat takes the square and destroys the enemy unit. Player loses a life (displayed under score labels). Tie will lead to a victory for the attacker (fortune favours the brave).
8. Turn ends and next player goes into hot-seat. Rinse, repeat & conquer
9. When score count reaches 0 - player loses and must bow to the COOL GUY.
Please keep in mind that this is ony a prototype (first build) and that it was created by an absolute Noob developer using only a visual studio form application. The skip turn button will occasionaly break the game (still working on fixing that). All art was stolen - needed pictures to see if code works - so thank you internet.
All feedback will be greatly appreciated.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jmp14znnax75gcs/Cool Guy Chess Ver 1.1.zip
Comments
1. Why does each player have to click their button to be dealt 1 card? Why not get all 8 on both sides? The case may be made for building tension to see which guys you're dealt, but since you can't influence the decision (nor do you understand the implication of each unit till later into the game), it got somewhat tedious.
2. The language use could be simpler - select your cool guy could easily be "select piece/guy/etc to move".
3. The move destination could be painted with colours on the actual board to indicate where it could move to.
4. It would be best to interact with the board itself instead of with a bunch of radial buttons, though I must say the radial buttons made sense after some (not too much) head scratching.
5. I want to know which pieces can move in what manner... Can that info be displayed somewhere or as you roll over each piece?
Then, interface aside, onto gameplay:
1. I really think the concept could be great, but to me there's too many parts of randomness to it all without the player being able to affect the process and to make their decisions super meaningful. The cards dealt are random - maybe they all add up to a certain point total so you never get into a situation where one side is seemingly totally dominant? Or maybe the players get to shuffle the arrangement of the random pieces they are dealt? This seems to totally lend itself to a kind of deckbuilding (either MtG style or Thunderstone style)
2. I personally have a dislike for games that rely a lot (arguably too much, but that's me) on dice. I feel they need to allow me a lot of control or else I'll feel like I'm winning and losing not on my skills but my dice rolls. Not sure how to incorporate that into your mechanics, but that's just my feelings on it.
Coincidentally I've also been looking at Chess variants lately, mainly with the goal of making the timeless chess game more random (less deterministic), yet not lose out on the intrinsic strategic element that everyone already knows. I came across this variant called Knightmare, which seemed very cool, relying on card draws to have effects - though it may seem a bit too random.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightmare_Chess
There are also other variants, but for the life of me I can't remember what they're called now...
1. I know the deal buttons are frustrating. I had it as a single button initially, but my random card selector dealt too many of the same card for each player (in some cases getting as many as 5 of the same unit). I will look to fix this.
2. Language used was to fit in with my (cheesy) theme, but i agree could be simpler. Could be worse - like having the word tosser in the title :) (just kidding)
3 & 4. My idea was to build the prototype in Visual studio and then rebuild in GameMaker once I got all my ideas into a working order (and got the basics of GameMaker down), so i will definitely keep these suggestions in mind for the next build.
5. I've updated the tutorial above to show how units can move. (2 blocks - straight line - any direction)
As for not liking the Dice & random characters...tough :). The whole idea was to give the game a board game feel and an element of luck, which i think i achieved.
i will check out Knightmare.
Thanks again for playing & for the valuable feedback - much appreciated.
Games like King of Tokyo is entirely dice, but the players get to choose to reroll twice, and get to accumulate resoruce to buy stuff out of a random heap of cards. Also games with decks of cards eliminate the possibility of the same unit coming up 5 times just because there are only 3 or 4 or whatever of a copy of that item in the deck. These are all examples of giving player choices value luck while retaining randomness and luck :)
Except in Dino Wars the players get direct control of their dinos instead of having random dice rolls. I played this game a lot against my brother when I was little and my main issue was always balance. There were some Dino's that were just way more powerful than any other Dino's. Basically we never played until someone won or lost we just played until our two strong dinos were killed because the player that had one of those left basically killed everything else with them. (granted it might just have been our own inability to play that well, but still.)
I think if you want to create a chess like game then you have to make players forget that they are playing a chess like. I mean anything that isn't reliant on the overall strategy will feel unfair because the players think off the game in terms of chess. So for instance if I have the stronger board position, but my opponent has a powerful piece that kills my pieces even when I attack him it will make me quit playing. I would feel that I'm the better player but that it doesn't count for anything.
I like that you are going a "Cheesy" route. I think that this game could work if you build it around the player feedback rather than making it the best strategy game ever. Make it as juicy as possible. Think along the lines of this(even though it's actual chess with juice):
You can hold off on the juice until you have all the basic gameplay elements done, but my opinion is that in the end it will rely on the juice to keep players engaged.
Hope this was helpful :)
But at the end of the day they're simply skinned chess, the gameplay remained the same :)
Of course there's Rooks Keep by our own SA guys, from what I remember they have a chess-cross-real-time-combat game going :)
My own vision of Chess... I haven't had time to work on it, but it involves cards (Which of my games don't XD), and I'll put a prototype together for next month's meet and see how it goes :)
@Tuism - since I live in Mpumalanga and can't attend the meets - i would love it if you could post your Card/Chess game for all to see. Also, if you could think of anything a noob could contribute to your game - throw it my way please. I don't get too many chances to learn from other game devs in Nelspruit.
I'd suggest unity mostly because it's programming language is c#, not some derivative. I'd suggest looking through the tutorials and maybe trying the Stealth Project tutorial. You've actually touched on the game loop a bit with Windows GUI.
while (program running)
if (something happened)
fire appropriate event
In Unity you can hook in to events and have things happen when those events occur.
Also, maybe look at state machines. It will help bringing sequence to an update loop.