Chess! V1.1 Coming Soon

[Mighty T]

Thank you everyone for the great release and feedback! I have been asked a few times when the next update was coming and wanted to provide some timelines for everyone to look forward to.

Within the next couple months I am happy to announce the next big release of Chess! I have been able to add much of the feedback provided as well as a full UI overhaul. I feel like some additional polish was needed and decided to redo the UI to bring a better professional feel to Chess!

Along with the UI redo will be a lot more menu/game/puzzle options!

If you have any additional feedback or enhancement requests please throw them in this discussion or a new thread!

[Thorn-Exile]

Great !

[Xyvir]

awesome, thanks for the update!

[Anonymous Bosch]

Please consider a free to play weekend or at least posting a deep dive video showcasing your improvements. I refunded this game once. I love the idea but didn't feel the execution was there yet. However, I do follow the game and am open to being persuaded and updating my review if warranted. You can see my constructive criticisms there:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198030806206/recommended/2373460/

[Mighty T]

Originally posted by Anonymous Bosch:

Please consider a free to play weekend or at least posting a deep dive video showcasing your improvements. I refunded this game once. I love the idea but didn't feel the execution was there yet. However, I do follow the game and am open to being persuaded and updating my review if warranted. You can see my constructive criticisms there:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198030806206/recommended/2373460/

Thank you for your input! Im a solo dev so I am a bit slow with these updates, but I have a made some good progress recently. All of the feedback received has been so helpful in designing and updating systems. And also future enhancements.

For your review I definitely understand the UI complaints, and that is probably my main focus right now. I am working with some outsourced designers as I know that is where I am lacking.

Performance at release was pretty poor due to having raytracing and high performance settings automatically turned on. I went through a series of hotfixs to try to improve performance. I think for most people I was able to get it to a "good" spot, but for lower end PCs it still was not great. I still am doing some updates here to improve performance, but i have seen some reviews say they have seen improvements since release.

I noticed you mentioned you couldn't zoom in the game. But you should be able to freely move the camera anywhere, were you talking about some other type of zoom? I have had a few people mention this and its possible I need a better way to convey that the camera can be moved even throughout the entire level.

Again, thank you for your feedback. In the next couple months I can release a free demo for a weekend to highlight the updates and improvements. Im also thinking about releasing a free demo of just 10-20 puzzles so people can get an idea of what the game is like before purchase.

[Anonymous Bosch]

Originally posted by Mighty T:

...I noticed you mentioned you couldn't zoom in the game. But you should be able to freely move the camera anywhere, were you talking about some other type of zoom? I have had a few people mention this and its possible I need a better way to convey that the camera can be moved even throughout the entire level.

It's been a long time since I tried the game so unfortunately I don't remember all the details. Camera controls for 99% of modern games follow virtually identical conventions and everyone knows them: during normal live gameplay you can dynamically zoom with the mouse scroll wheel and tilt/pan/rotate along the mouse axes (perhaps activated by a click or mod key), or maybe use wasdrf on the keyboard to do the same. I'm guessing that's not the case here or I wouldn't have bothered to remark on it. If other people are confused it's probably because what they are used to from every other game is not here and the alternative hasn't been adequately explained, or doesn't provide comparable functionality.

Originally posted by Mighty T:

Performance at release was pretty poor due to having raytracing and high performance settings automatically turned on. I went through a series of hotfixs to try to improve performance. I think for most people I was able to get it to a "good" spot, but for lower end PCs it still was not great. I still am doing some updates here to improve performance, but i have seen some reviews say they have seen improvements since release.

I'm sure graphics optimization is difficult and I don't pretend to know anything about it, but I have an RTX 20XX and I run plenty of great looking games with ray tracing just fine. This doesn't look or perform in the same ballpark regardless of settings (I think the build I tried had all patches except for the last one you published). The piece sets you're using look similar to those I've seen rendered in WebGL chess applets that run in web browsers on integrated graphics, so I'm not sure where all the resources are getting allocated. The focus of the game is the pieces, and it seems like those are the least detailed assets. Using high poly models with high resolution textures for the pieces would drastically improve the look of the game even if you got rid of some of the other environmental sugar.

Just some thoughts. Hope some of this is helpful.
Best of luck on the project.

[Mighty T]

Thank you for your input I will take those points and add them to the next update.

The controls should be hold right click and then WASD around. I will add some better instructions for future players.

Thanks everyone for your input!

[Mighty T]

We are approaching closer to release of the major update. We did some UI overhauls, performance, as well as many bug fixes.

We are now working on the new content portion. Things like puzzle improvements, gameplay additions and other cool features. If you have any input for new content please let me know so I can add it to the roadmap.

Sorry for the slow development, we are a very small team and working diligently to get this out!

[Xyvir]

Awesome, thanks for the updates.

Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.
I'd love to volunteer/contribute to this project anyway I can!

[Slap Lord]

Is back tracking or going backwards be available next patch?

Also would like to see a win or lose pop up when game is finished.