Hi All!
The demo for Passant will be launching on steam on January 28th!
The demo is now in the final testing phase. I've created a final version of the demo but I just want to get some playtesters to run through it and find any bugs, before releasing it to the world on steam.
If you do want to play right now - you can join the discord and download the current version of the demo from the "Updates" section. But please do provide feedback in the discord if you find any bugs. I'm also looking for feedback on difficulty and general game feel.
I will also open up a playtest of the game on Steam in the next 3-5 days (once steam approves it), so watch out for that.
Further Info about the demo
I mentioned it in the last update, but there will be 2 starting setups in the demo (these are the badges, pieces and coins you start with). There are also 2 challenge levels, which are extra levels of difficulty you unlock after completing a run, which as you might expect, provide an extra level of challenge. I've now nailed down what these will be in the demo.
- The 1st challenge level is the base version of the game.
- The second one unlocks after completing the demo once and makes it so pieces you lose in the game are permanently lost from your setup board. In the actual game this will likely be the last/hardest challenge level, as it completely changes the way you play and is extremely punishing.
There will of course be a larger number of starting setups in the full game and 6 different challenge levels.
Further Info about the chess AI
I'd like to use these updates to explain how certain areas of the game work. If you want to know something specific then please let me know in the comments, but this time I'd like to talk about the AI in the game.
The AI in Passant works by, at the start of your opponent's turn, feeding the current board state into a separate chess engine. This can give the AI the best possible move, but is modulated depending on the difficulty level selected (easy by default) by changing the number of moves ahead the engine considers.
The game comes with Fairy Stockfish (a chess engine that understands different rulesets) but theoretically a player could replace this, as it's a separate file that gets executed by the game (though it would need to understand the same rules).
The current rules of a match are fed into the chess engine using a .ini file, which the game actively edits as new badges and pieces are added. Fairy stockfish reads this .ini file so it is always aware of the rules and plays accordingly.
There are a small number of items or unique pieces which the chess AI is not aware of. An example of this is the vampire piece, which is a unique piece that can move/take any square up to 2 steps away, but becomes the piece it takes. The engine is aware of the movement of this piece, but not its ability to become the piece it takes. Because it's a unique piece I think abilities like this are fine and don't become too overpowered. Though I am keeping an eye on this and may restrict the use of abilities that the AI isn't aware of in one of the challenge levels.
If you have any other questions, please let me know below!
All the best,
Marc