Chesster [SFML Puzzle Game]

[zsbzsb]

Hey, I'm back again. I just couldn't stop playing this game.
I found 3 more bugs for you to look at.
1st is that when playing a game that has lost areas of the chess board(not meeting demand) pressing escape to exit the game does not reset the areas lost on the chess board. After exiting the game and beginning a new game the new game will have the old areas still covered up.

2nd is that I think you need to recheck your code for determining combos. I had a
KQQ
**K
and it still registered a queen's coronation. However it did not remove the king from the bottom line from the chess board. I noticed this a few other times but finally caught an exact example.

3rd is something along the lines of if you have positive points going into a turn and at the end of the turn you end up with negative the bars will flash on as if to block the 1st row and then will turn off as soon as they appear fully on.

And a suggestion would be to instead of just increasing the bars that block the board from the top left hand corner how about randomly choose which which corner they will block that round. And to add to that, how about instead of instantly removing all of the bars as soon as the points get positive, maybe remove one set at a time.

Another thing to add to the suggestion above, use combinations of the above to increase difficulty. For the 1st level keep it as it is. As the difficulty increases maybe then start to choose from which corner the board gets blocked and/or how many bars to remove a turn for positive points.

EDIT Had another crash, here is the error message so maybe you can glean some information from it.

Code: [Select]

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
  Application Name: Chesster.exe
  Application Version: 0.0.0.0
  Application Timestamp: 4fa871ca
  Fault Module Name: Chesster.exe
  Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp: 4fa871ca
  Exception Code: c0000005
  Exception Offset: 0001b7e7
  OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.256.6
  Locale ID: 1033
  Additional Information 1: fd00
  Additional Information 2: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160
  Additional Information 3: fd00
  Additional Information 4: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160

[CJ_COIMBRA]

Alright, I´ll definitely do some bug hunting before start adding new stuff again. Thanks again for the info!

On the bars layout, I´ll talk to the game designer and pass your suggestions to him. I agree with what you said about the bars being removed all at once, maybe this helps with increasing the game overall difficulty. Randomly spawning those bars is also cool and I like it. Maybe we could offer a difficulty level menu...

Out of curiosity, did you manage to get the 4th treasure?

[zsbzsb]

Out of curiosity, did you manage to get the 4th treasure?

After you mentioned this I did some more testing just for this. To start I tried the game at 0 demand. (You can change the demand in config.txt  )

I personally was able to to get the 4th treasure at 0 demand, but not at 100 demand. However it is possible to get the 4th treasure at 100+ demand because I am able to get combos 400+ or even 800+ sometimes. I just wasn't lucky that I already had 3 treasures when the big combos came in.

Now to the point, I think at the way it currently stands, the game is based a bit off of how lucky you are when the pieces respawn to keep adding to your combos. I thought of a few ways to change this.

• Stop respawning chess pieces until all have fallen and all possible combos being removed and then slightly lower the points required for treasures. And on the respawn, do it like a new game; don't allow new pieces that spawn to make combos.
• How about for total points over 1 turn for treasures, you can greatly increase required points for a treasure and then count overall points for a treasure.
• Even more interesting is like the first one, but instead of counting just the one turn's points, total the current turn + the last turn to get the points for the treasure

On the side, I found 1 graphics bug. The buttons to bring up the pieces moves, treasure list, or combo list slightly overlap. Therefore it is possible to place your mouse in the center of one of them and 2 buttons will highlight, not just one. Then this makes it impossible to know which is going to get clicked. 

[CJ_COIMBRA]

I managed to spawn the last treasure with 100 demand but I was already in the last turn so I couldn't capture it.

On the respawn, I did some work to prevent the respawned pieces to match with previously existing pieces (actually it's the same code of the game start)... if they are matching, then it is a bug! However when pieces fall down, they can  match with others. The plan is also to have a % of each kind of piece to spawn (so that you don't get too many valuable pieces or too few) and make it progressively difficult along the levels.

On the treasures, we will need to experiment different ways of handling their spawn.  The way it stands today was just faster to implement.

I am aware of this button bug. I let it pass for now because it wasn't killing the app or anything. One thing I also need to do is to rework the loading of the game.

We won't build another demo for some weeks, but I can provide you with the build I am currently working if you like.

[zsbzsb]

We won't build another demo for some weeks, but I can provide you with the build I am currently working if you like.

Sure, I would be happy to continue to test this for you. Maybe you could give me a download link in a PM or something. 

[CJ_COIMBRA]

Here is the latest build so you can try:
http://www.mediafire.com/?uuc98xwjo5e7q1x

Lots of things to do yet.

[zsbzsb]

Here is the latest build so you can try:
http://www.mediafire.com/?uuc98xwjo5e7q1x

Lots of things to do yet.

Thanks, I will start to play with it right away. 

Also, maybe if you are going to keep providing new builds how about leave the graphics out of the new downloads if the graphics have not changed as MediaFire has bandwith limits on downloads and my crap internet has a very small daily download limit. 

[CJ_COIMBRA]

Also, maybe if you are going to keep providing new builds how about leave the graphics out of the new downloads if the graphics have not changed as MediaFire has bandwith limits on downloads and my crap internet has a very small daily download limit.

Good point. I´ll do that next time. It´s just that recently the graphics changed so much that it became automatic for me to put the new gfx folders. Perhaps if I just provide the same gfx folder with only the new graphics (when they are needed) in the right path, it will ask you to merge the folders...

[zsbzsb]

Ok, I played the latest build you gave me and it looks good. I only found 1 bug. When you are in a game and press escape to go back to the menu the background image shrinks smaller. After beginning a new game again and pressing the escape the background will continue to get smaller. 

[CJ_COIMBRA]

I´ve uploaded a new intermediate build:

http://www.mediafire.com/?2u78da65o67qlpx

It´s not the official 2nd demo, but I´d like anyone interested to test it.
Lots of bugs fixed... lots of new bugs!
A few new features:
- three levels
- unique treasures for each level
- save/load (after level 1)
- some new animations
- new score frame layout
- dinamic score couting (a bit buggy yet)
- a decent looking loading screen
- new background musics (now from the definitive composer)


It´s running very high on memory (350 ~ 400 MB), I am still figuring out how to optimize that...

[CJ_COIMBRA]

Hi there.

After a long while I am posting and updated version of my project for OSX users only. This is because we are close to a definitive demo now and I wanted to level the OSX version together with the stable Windows version (which I'll post here in a couple weeks).

So if you are a mac user and cares about puzzle games, would you kindly test this build of my project? Any feedback would be appreciated! If you click something on the menu and nothing happens it's probably disabled because of issues between win/mac port I am still figuring out.

Chesster OSX
http://www.mediafire.com/?p7qo938pmqu4bc9

And this is the link to our most recent update on Indiedb
http://www.indiedb.com/games/chesster/news/chesster-update-puzzle-mode-final-level

Edit: I've included my own progress on the Puzzle mode so if you want to play from the very first puzzle, then overwrite your local "puzzle_selection.txt" file with the one attached. It's located on the "Config" folder.


Thanks!

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[CJ_COIMBRA]

I made a few progress with the Windows/PC version and here is link if anyone wants to test it:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?8eq83tl3d3s3sik

Thanks!

[Nexus]

I like the game a lot, and the graphics are indeed very polished. With the font and the music, it really conveys a cool atmosphere.

Some points I have noticed:

• The total score counter goes sometimes up higher than 1000, but after a lower number is visible... I haven't understood what that number represents.
• The right click to deselect the current piece doesn't work, one has to try an invalid move to deselect it.
• I was surprised that you can move a piece only once per turn. This prevented some of my strategies
• Maybe the scores need some balancing. For example, I would make the knight give more points than bishop and rook, since it's usually more difficult to get a combination. Also, some queen combos are quite difficult to achieve, and hardly pay off, when one can use the 3 moves for something better.

[CJ_COIMBRA]

Hi and thanks for the feedback, Nexus.

The issue with the total score is known and I will fix it before the final release. It's actually a visual problem only with the animated score counting. The score that is displayed in the end, after the animated counting stops, this one is correct (the other higher amount is not).

A few builds ago, one had to click the piece to select and then click again to land it. Now it works better if you just drag and drop the piece. I forgot to remove that warning of the right button. If you drop over an invalid tile, it will reset to the original tile.

The score definitely needs balancing. There's someone else taking care of it. But if you care enough, you can change the values in a txt config file under the Config subfolder.

One thing that I couldn't fix yet, and will eventually cause major problems is the memory consumption. The first idea that crosses my mind is to version the assets to lower resolutions since all assets are compliant with full HD.

Thanks again.

[Nexus]

What uses the biggest part of RAM? Aren't the textures stored in video memory?

Instead of loading everything in the beginning, you could also try to load some assets only when necessary (or shortly before). This would also reduce the loading time at startup.