Firstly, I want to say thank you to everyone that has been playing the game and also to everyone reporting bugs on the discord channel, it's really helping to improve the game.
With that said here are the patch notes for the most recent update to the demo. There are smaller patches I've released to fix game breaking bugs (which I've not been posting about here but have posted on Discord), but seeing as this is quite a large one I've posted the patch notes below.
Changed/Added content
- Reworked the AI entirely - A custom solution is now used which fixes edge cases. For example the AI now correctly understands the courtesan and reflecting bishops.
The AI may be slightly weaker in standard chess positions, but should be stronger in edge cases/ be harder to break. As this is the first time the AI is being tested publicly, if there are any issues with it or strange moves taken by the AI then please let me know in the bug channel on discord. I'll continue to improve the AI over time - for example it will be possible in a future update to give the AI an understanding of the player's win conditions, so the opponent shouldn't allow the player to win using the no capture condition as easily.
There are now only 3 levels of AI - The middle level (challenging) is now the default level and the most tested so I would recommend using this. The easy level will likely make clear blunders, and the max setting, although it calculates more moves, may not actually increase the difficulty (but likely will increase the enemy's turn time).
I'm also pretty excited about the change too as it opens up a lot of possibilities - For example, atomic chess previously was either on or off for all pieces. Now I could theoretically allow one piece to be atomic while others are not.
- Removed the challenge level that deleted pieces lost on board
- Added 2 new optional challenge levels to unlock - 1. non-pawn/men are restricted to your first rank and 2. Rewards are $1 less
- Changed the challenge system - challenge modes can be unlocked by completing different criteria + Multiple can be selected at once - In the full game there will be 6 challenge modes and all can be enabled at once (if you wanted!)
Balance changes
- The "Pass them on" badge now only gives $1 for each undo remaining
- The target badge now only gives $1 for each target killed
- The Buffalo no longer has a zebra move.
Bug fixes
- Frozen pieces no longer pin player pieces between the frozen piece and the player king
- Pieces chained by the courtesan no longer pin player pieces between the frozen piece and the player king
- The dragon king now shows the correct possible moves if attacked by a bishop or rook
- Fixed a bug where the game sometimes wouldn't recognise the player having no possible moves
- Fixed some wording issues
- Fixed multiple bugs with badges failing while activating
- The SUGNOMA and Free Real Estate badges now work correctly with the Lost Coins badge
- Fixed a bug where getting the double king badge after getting the dragon king badge, did not give 2 dragon kings
- Fixed a bug where the badges that give coins, did not update the text for how many coins were held
- Fixed a bug where the checkmate light would remain green after a checkmate
- Picking up badges while loading a match is no longer possible - This fixes a bug where you could pick up the atomic chess badge while loading so the opponents pieces are not advanced a rank
To come (for the demo)
- AI improvements
- Inevitable bug fixes
- Adding juice to the UI
- I still need to fix the bug where the chain sound plays when a king moving around a courtesan
I'll likely be adding these as smaller patches over the next few days:
Also as a warning - The new update will delete any active save (as I've had to update save files to work with the new challenge system), so if you're on a run you want to complete, hold back on the download if possible. This update is hopefully the last time I will have to do this for the demo.