Reply With QuoteFor some reason the video is cut off in the post... not sure if there is anything I can do about that?
Launch Trailer:
Push this game to your OUYA here: https://www.ouya.tv/game/Chess-2-The-Sequel/?pushToOuya
Website: http://LudemeGames.com/chess2
For some reason the video is cut off in the post... not sure if there is anything I can do about that?
Not that I'm aware of. It seems to be related to the browser being used. I can see the whole frame in Explorer, but not Firefox. My preference would be the reverse.Originally Posted by LudemeGames
Excellent looking game, BTW.
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Nice Job, I love the video.
Played this game like crazy yesterday and really enjoyed it. Online is solid (when you can find an opponent) and the game is extremely well balanced.
However I would like to see some AI difficulty levels and a large improvement in the AI for solo play. I haven't lost a game against it yet, and quite frankly it's also incredibly dumb, and doesn't react to any highly damaging strategic play. Allow me to show you what I mean.
A 5 move victory using Midline Invasion. It's a cheap and brutal tactic, and works damn well online against unsuspecting human players. It also works well against the AI as well which failed to register the aggressive movement of my king. I thought it may have been a fluke, but I playtested this move against the AI a further 7 times. Not once did the AI attempt to analyse the threat and simply move a pawn into check to prevent the victory, and thus further movement of my king.
The AI needs to pick up on this and see the king as a larger threat overall when using this highly aggressive tactic. It also needs to react to any major strategy played against it. There was one game (using the classic army) where once I gave free movement to both my bishops, I was able to penetrate deep into the opposition half and take almost everything dangerous out of play, eventually locking the AI king into check-mate. I gave no real thought into pulling it off, and there were numerous occasions where the AI's Rooks, Bishops, Knights and a single pawn could have stopped the attack in its tracks. But instead it was more focussed moving a rook back and forth over and over to counter a pawn I had brought past the Midline with my knight beside it. I made no attempt to move those pieces during the rather unholy massacre.
Just a couple of examples there. Fantastic game when playing against humans. But I feel the AI needs that extra bump. I'll be honest too. I'd even pay for different levels of AI difficulty, from easy (which is the level I feel this AI currently is at) upto Grandmaster. Not quite asking for IBM's Deep Blue here, but the sort of difficulty which could impress Garry Kasparov himself would be fantastic.
You're right, AgoSaracen26. The AI is pretty sub-par. I do plan to update the AI, but for now it's purpose is mainly just to give you a practice dummy so you can safely practice the rules without spending any of your crowns.
As with any feature, development time comes at a trade-off for other features. When weighting the month or so it would take to get a medium difficulty AI vs the plethora of other features/polish that were implemented in the same time period, the other features won out.
You're also right though that the real meat of the game is the solid online play. I'm trying to log on at the same time every day (5:30pm PST), so if you want a challenge that's probably a good time for regular players to congregate.
Also... as for "difficulty which could impress Garry Kasparov himself"... well, I'm just one programmer and the game is running in a very tiny box instead of a supercomputer. The changes in Chess 2 basically invalidate the decades worth of expert programmer work that have gone into making a great chess AI, so it's not exactly going to be some trivial thing to do.
I really like the look of this. I downloaded it last night (but my son wanted to watch me play Meltdown instead), so I haven't had a chance to check it out yet. Does it support 2 player offline, or is the offline just solo?
I had a play against the computer last night and had to quit when I realised the AI wasn't trying very hard to beat me, but I'm impressed with the games look in general and it plays very well.
It does have a couch mode (local 2-players), which I think is great!
On a sidenote, I found it tough to remember all the moves of my opponent's army. For learning the game, it would be great to have a tooltip on 'Y', so you could check on the pieces.
"Wait, what could the animal queen do, again? Wasn't there some limit...?"
Instead of a tooltip, highlighting opposing pieces could reveal their options in red, same as mine are highlighted in red.
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