Working on a narrative game.

There is still a lot to do:

• Points/Combo System
• Random enemy piece configuration (right now I jus placed a bunch of them manually
• Upgrade art from programmer art
• Refine enemy behaviour
• Should there be other enemy pieces and how should they behave?
• Should enemy pieces be able to take you?
• Powerups? (Bombs with AoE, extra pieces to attack with)
• ,,,

It got a little rushed towards the end there - there's a few things I'd like to polish up when I get the time. Overall though, I had a lot of fun making this! It's the most complete game I've written in Rust so far, so I'm pretty happy about how it turned out.

At the moment, I only have a macOS release, but I'll see if I can get Windows and Linux binaries up over the next few days.

Hope you enjoy! /jam/chess-jam/rate/252820

Pico-8 doesn't seem to have a full-fledged classic Chess. There are various Chess projects around but they seem to be "virtual chessboards". So they are typically 2-player chess free-for-all where you can move the pieces however you want.  So I thought I make a proper Chess implementation for casual chess players. How hard can it be?

This is an old project that I revived for the Chess Jam.

Intended Feature Set

• Full implementation of Chess rules. Not just a "virtual chessboard"
• Actual chess AI. Full-on minmax with Alpha/Beta pruning and some other optimizations
• 2-player mode
• Cute but readable Pixelart
• Juicy animations and sounds. Solid player feedback

Nice-to-have features that I will implement if I have tokens left.

• Achievements
• A cute portrait for the AI with facial expression that reacts to your moves
• Mutiple AI difficulties
• Different chess variants - Chess960 or Really Bad Chess

At this point I'm confident I will make the deadline as the game is already playable. Here are some progress GIFs

Game already recognizes Checks, Mates and Stalemates.

Castling and En Passant works!

This is what the game looked like last week:

And this is what it looks like RIGHT NOW:

A fair bit's changed visually, but now the game's more or less mechanically complete. Enemy pawns move, pieces can take each other, and there are win and loss conditions. I'm planning on having both a campaign mode and a free mode, but what form that's going to take exactly is the next part to figure out.  I've been thinking about making video game chess variants for over 20 years, so this is really fun to play with! 

You have full control over all settings, the most important one, Board size (current max grid size 26 x 26)

When creating a board setup you can also control the moves per turn(instead of 1 turn as normal chess you can choose up-to 26. Also edit turns each unit has, special abilities, health and damage per unit. Legions at war literally allows you to create millions of chess variations.  Do you want to play with pawns that has 2 X health or how about a rook that can move twice per turn? All is possible with the engine.

THE PAWN

Already equipped with the double movement special ability and the en-passant the pawn has been upgraded. The pawn can use it's double movement ability anytime and the en-passant has been upgraded to target all foot soldiers in the LAW engine includes : pawns, soldiers, snipers & grenadors.

THE KNIGHT

In legions at war all the chess units have special abilities. The knight has been upgraded.  and is able to transport foot soldiers at a range of 1 as well as stunning nearby opponents for 1 turn.

THE ROOK, BISHOP, QUEEN

The legions at war engine currently has 30 playable units, with modern air units moving at a range of 6. Incorporating chess units that can move at a range of 8 allowed us to upgrade these units with a vacuum loop attachment. Entering the vacuum these units are able to move even further than before.  With a tactical weapon load-out the queen can move at a range of 13, but sacrifices the ability to attack. As part of their special abilities they are also able to place vacuum loops across the board allowing other units to teleport or they can use their skills to sabotage a part of the board disabling the tiles for a set number of turns.

These chess units are just the start of the fun as Legions at war also has nuclear weapons, stealth bombers, sam sites any many more. No luck, no dice rolls the only way to win is to outwit your opponent.

Our team is busy with the single player campaign, that will offer extremely challenging turn based challenges and we are planning to release on steam Q4 2018.

Currently I use the Low Poly Chess Assets made by Devil's Garage (/t/211792/free-chess-game-assets-3d-low-poly-pack), but for the finaly version I will make my own high poly chess pieces (I plan to rig them so that they can show "emotions" by deforming themselfes).

Some chess rules won't be taken into account. For example it is possible to move if you are the player between the king and an enemy. You will sacrifice your king then.

The Script is written in LUA, while OpenComputers provides the Touchscreen, Hologram Projectors and System ingame to run it.

The Board consists of 4 Touchscreens, so you select the figures by clicking their field. (it could be one big screen when changing the config, but 4 screens was some extra challenge ;))

figures are projected by 9 hologram projectors (each of it covering 6/9 fields)

https://imgur.com/a/ujLzs

Theres still some improvements to do, like the offset of some Projections, add AI and Gamerules... 

I'll add download links for the script and built instructions to this post when done :)