Doom Battle Chess

[Fonze]

Current Events:

• Geo has taken up the task of designing a chess game that will be animated and have support for customizable piece-sprites and tile-choice.
  

geo said:

Judging from the list the technical stuff is 75% done.
THE DONE LIST
- 5 and 8 way sprite directions so you can see front, side, back, front side, back side *DONE*
- Pieces animate when moving if they have the animation images to do so *DONE*
- Select characters to be pieces *DONE*
- index image system so index.png can be different than the sprites *DONE*
- Select tiles light and dark *DONE*
- Black and white floor tiles to select. *DONE*
- Save settings, load settings *DONE*
- Actually play the game with mouse controls! *DONE*
- Actually win the game by capturing the king *DONE*
- 3D rather than 2D, but with 2D sprites for that Doom feel *DONE*
- 2D / Top down mode! *DONE*
- Camera controls, mouse and keyboard *DONE*
- Pause game *DONE*
- Arrange pieces and play. *DONE*
- cacos and painos need to float *DONE*
- Chess Clock countdown to victory! Settings in settings *DONE*
- Select human player or computer for both sides. *DONE*
- Promotion system. *DONE*
- Second chess clock that adds time. *DONE*
- En passant *DONE*
- Sounds! Ambient. *DONE*
- King Check Notification. *DONE*
- Force to move out of check. *DONE*
- Your own pieces cannot be moved to allow a checkmate *DONE*
- Other pieces need to be able to capture a piece putting the king into check. *DONE*
- Stalemate victory when there are no safe moves for the king. *DONE*
- The king and the rook change places once per game (castling) *DONE*
- Points system to show who is winning at a glance *DONE*
- Unofficial score system for the winner. Less pieces moved and captured is worth more points *DONE*
- Save / load / new game system *DONE*
- load / save multiple game files. *DONE*

TO DO LIST
- Improve AI to play itself and the player.
- Capture animation system / an actual animation to test it with pinkie vs imp and imp vs pinkie.
- Improved set piece positions
- Email files
- Encrypt email and setting files, but not the character setting files.
- Start screen that is different than the game screen.
- Sounds! Death and attack sounds or something like that.
- Click and drag controls rather than click, move click controls.
- AI needs castling.
- AI needs en passant.
- AI needs to select promotion piece.
- Allow for unlimited tiles and characters with a slider.
- Issue: If a king's only move is to capture someone, but if he captures that person it puts him into check, then it doesn't count as a stalemate victory.
- Whatever else I've forgotten about.

The OP:
So I love chess... and battle chess was always one of the most memorable games I've ever played. Each piece was animated and had different battle animations for each opposing piece. I always liked the concept, but have never seen it done nearly as well as the original DOS game.

I'd be willing to donate $100 US this time next year to someone if they could make a well-done battle chess game featuring Doom monsters as the chess pieces.

Preferably made for *Android OS* and Windows.

It occurs to me that the $100 might not be enough when considering the amount of work itd likely be, though from one person that's a nice chunk of change for a small game. Maybe if others feel the same we could start a gofundme website to take donations to be given to the author for being such an awesome guy, or gal.

[GreyGhost]

It's an interesting idea, but likely to be mired in copyright issues once money starts changing hands. I wonder how difficult it would be to write a beginner-level chess AI using ACS to play the game in ZDoom?

[geo]

I have made quite a few chess AI in my life. Never in GZDoom or a Doom port mind you. The chess part is easy or at least easy to a level of its a time sink. The more time you spend working on the chess part, the better the game gets and the easier it is to program.

Doom has all of the attack animations and walking animations. So I'd just steal them from there and have monsters fight for your amusement. Unless you want custom stuff. I know a few Russian sprite artists that do cheap work, but not enough for $100. Just because custom animation is labor intensive. Anyone serious about programming the project, can do so with those official Doom 1 & 2 animations and sprites.

Depending how busy a person is, the project could be done in a week with proper polish a month for a serious project... that can't make any money due to copyrights. If anything its a feather in someone's cap.

I always preferred Mortal Kombat Deception's version of chess. It makes it interesting, even without the fighting game tacked onto it.

This might not be what you want, but imagine this... every enemy has HP, you chose your pawns, rooks, knights, kings and queens from any monster. I suppose to balance it, you'd have a "finance" of 100 points, with cyberdemon being worth 60, Mancubus worth 40 and so on.

Their health and attack is based on what class they are. So a pawn has 1/10th of their health and attack. A pawn attacking a King would only damage a king, not kill him. The King still has the movement of a king. Then there are special places on the board that will buff whoever is on that special tile. That's how Mortal Kombat Deception chess was. Again, probably not what you want, but I'm just throwing that in to discuss.

[Fonze]

Oh I wasn't talking about chess in Doom, I was talking about an animated chess game that would look like Doom.

I realize that when money is involved people get to thinking about copyrights. There is a live background for the Android OS that has a Doomguy wandering around killing all the Doom 1 monsters. If that's only legal due to it being free, then technically this comes down to a semantics issue. We could donate to a person just for being who they are or just because we are thankful for what they've done. Of course it might make donations harder to come by, but all that comes down to is wording.

It doesn't need to be as free as doom in terms of animation and possibilities. Just straight up chess. Look up battle chess to see what I'm talking about. The pieces are all still until you click them, which they then are animated to move to a certain square. Upon reaching a square, if it is occupied both units move to stand on opposite corners and go through their battle animations. For example, when a knight kills a knight, but only a knight, in battle chess it plays out like a scene from Month Python and the Holy Grail, with the attacking piece cutting off both arms and legs before beheading the defender. It's quite comical.

I guess I'm thinking that the Doom look of it should be ok since others have done similar Doom-looking things.

I played the mortal kombat deception chess, it was fun, but not what I'm looking for. Though to do something like that in Doom would be nuts and prolly pretty fun.

*Edit*
I had thought about making a chess map in DB2 that would use monsters. Might wind up cheesy, moving pieces would be a chore, and if I made it it'd only be for 2 players, but that's something that wouldn't be too difficult to make.
I like your idea better of basing it more off of the MK Deception chess. If that was done itd be really cool if the player could play as the pieces during the fight. That shit would be so epic, haha. But this is all off-topic, as I'm looking for a separate app.
*Edit End*

[HorrorMovieRei]

Something a little like this, maybe?

[Fonze]

Hahahaha maybe a bit, but I wasn't thinking full 3D, and the battle animations would be more Doom-speed. The original battle chess was simulated 3D, much like Doom, only more 2D because the camera never changed. And the battle animations were pretty slow, but Doom-speed would be about right for a good experience.

I laughed so hard at the end of that video, but what was up with the Warcraft sounds? Couldn't have been done in Warcraft without heavy mods not worth doing, like the camera freedom.

[Maes]

Perhaps related?

[Fonze]

A small amount to the tangents, but not to the main point.

I don't want to keep getting off-topic or this thread will be closed. I'm looking for a seperate app that is a chess app first, with battle animations second, and the 2D Doom look (with monsters) third. It could be full 3D, but I was imagining something simpler, which is conveniently more cost-efficient as well. And not run in Doom, unless there is some way to run such a thing on a mobile device.

My thought is that if battle chess was made around the same time as the original Doom (actually 5 years previous), it should be relatively easy to create something similar nowadays. Being 2D would cut out most of the headache as well, I'd assume. And the Doom monsters already have sprites, they are even in use with my phones live wallpaper. So it can't be illegal to just make it and distribute for free, even if donations are asked.

[GreyGhost]

Fonze said:

So it can't be illegal to just make it and distribute for free

Unlicensed use of copyrighted material? Sounds slightly illegal to me. You might get away with it if the sprites are borrowed from a Doom IWAD instead of being incorporated into the chess playing app.

[Memfis]

My impression is that these "lol chess figures are fighting" games are only played by people who know very little about the game besides the basic rules but maybe I'm wrong.

[Fonze]

Well, it wouldn't be difficult to connect a phone to a pc to upload an iWad for use with the app in the appropriate directory.

But that brings up a slightly off-topic, yet related question: how did the guy who made the wallpaper get away with it? Or is the wallpaper illegal?

*Edit*
I would disagree. Its to each their own, I suppose. Even though I don't need animation to enjoy chess, I still to this day play Battle Chess on the DFend DosBox emulator, just because it's awesome. Keep in mind that I'm not talking about something with crazy graphics, Battle Chess was made in 1988.

[geo]

The Quake chess is impressive.

At this time I will say I'll make a chess app for 0 to 2 players. You can watch the ai play itself or you can play the ai or you and a friend can play on the same device. I say a chess app now with doom sprites. Later it will be something with battle animations.

It will not look anything as gorgeous as full 3D of Quake Chess.

[strike]
*edit* I'm doing the logistics of it now. To have a spider mastermind on the board, the squares need to be at least 200 px wide to tolerate the beast. The other tiles might look vacant, of course then there's the idea of why have 1 imp as a pawn when you can have 10 imps on 1 square as a pawn? But then why have a spider mastermind at all. I'm just having an idea why have set in stone pieces when they can be selectable?

The mastermind sized squares will make a 1840 x 1840 px wide board, but then there's always a zoom out to make it fit the any screen. It would be taller than 1840 considering monsters have height too. Maybe 1840 x 2000. I could always make everything else larger to compensate.
[/strike]

*edit*

An hour in and I have the board generating, and pieces appearing along with their class and what player they belong to. No way to control. Here's the first screenshot, which in my opinion just looks too big, empty and vacant. Time to tweak.



Here's a second visual attempt



*edit*

It is now 30 minutes later. I've put particle effects "under" the feet so I can tell which piece belongs to which player without having to use time to have the back of each piece. That will come later.

I think I can tighten up the grid height. It doesn't need to be as Y as it is X. It looks like the feet get hidden behind the mastermind's head.



Everyone should give me their thoughts and comments about the look.

[SavageCorona]

It sounds like an interesting idea but I'm against pledging money on something before it exists.

[GreyGhost]

geo said:

Everyone should give me their thoughts and comments about the look.

Swap the spider and cyber at one end, they should be facing their own kind across the board. Apart from that it's a promising looking start with the resized sprites.

[geo]

GreyGhost said:

Swap the spider and cyber at one end, they should be facing their own kind across the board. Apart from that it's a promising looking start with the resized sprites.

I always thought the king faces the queen and the queen faces the king to start. Looks like you're indeed correct. Looking back at my last chess game, looks like I had it right back then. That's good at least.

Resized sprites how? Like imps as tall as cybers? Right now the doom sprites are their real sizes, the resolution is just changed. The first image has a 1840 resolution full screen, while the other two are 800 resolution full screen.

[SavageCorona]

Yeah the king can never start across the board from a queen or as soon as that pawn in front of it goes it's checkmate.

[AndrewB]

The overwhelming majority of the work would be drawing the art. You can't just copy the frames from Doom. Every piece has a different animation for killing every other piece. Some of the sequences are surprising and funny, and often long and drawn out. That's what makes Battle Chess different than regular chess with other-themed pieces.

Also, a chess board is a top-down view, while Doom sprites are drawn from a level perspective. Another reason why using Doom sprites isn't a solution.

[geo]

AndrewB said:

The overwhelming majority of the work would be drawing the art. You can't just copy the frames from Doom. Every piece has a different animation for killing every other piece. Some of the sequences are surprising and funny, and often long and drawn out. That's what makes Battle Chess different than regular chess with other-themed pieces.

Also, a chess board is a top-down view, while Doom sprites are drawn from a level perspective. Another reason why using Doom sprites isn't a solution.

Battle Chess was almost a side view maybe 3/4ths side view. I think for the example I can make enemies scratch one another to death rather than custom animations where a revenant beheads Mancubus or a cyber demon curb stomps an imp.

I also have the Lego Chess video game somewhere.

Alright, starting the chess AI to make the computer play the computer.

*90 minutes later*

I have a basic system that determines a target from king to pawn. If no one can attack the king, can someone attack the queen and so on. It determines the weakest attacker to the strongest. Like if a pawn can kill a queen rather than a queen taking the queen, it will chose to use the pawn.

There's no system in place to move a piece yet nor is there even a way to tell it that there's a piece in the way, but it comes up with what to do. I'll tackle that next.

[scifista42]

This is how I would imagine the game and the pieces: (the blue side would feature the monster's dark variants from R667 / recolored)

[Linguica]

Why are the knights Barons of Hell and not Hell Knights? Cmon son

[SavageCorona]

scifista42 said:

This is how I would imagine the game and the pieces: (the blue side would feature the monster's dark variants from R667 / recolored)

http://i.imgur.com/jGIrQfM.png

Chaingunners are higher rank than Pinky Pawns? That's a big ass nooooope from me.

[Fonze]

Damn geo! I go to sleep and next thing I know... Lol.

Those pics and what you're describing are looking and sounding good. Idk how to write an AI for a chess game, but I'd imagine that for the animation, aside from just moving square to square, it would be handled in a check function once the attacking unit has moved to a occupied square.

Idk about monster choice, though. Its a subjective thing, so no big deal, but Idk if I'm feeling the spider mastermind. Not that it's important, but I see the monsters as:
King: cyberdemon/impaled Romero head
Queen: Arch-Vile
Bishop: revenant
Knight: baron/caco
Rook: mancubus/bull/baron
Pawn: imp

Which is funny because that's close to what you did. I'd say great minds think alike but I'm just average, lol. Of course the monster choice ultimately doesn't matter, but the spider and manc don't have melee attacks.

Oh, I also thought that the spider mastermind looked cool on the chess board in the last shot, where he/she wasn't actually standing on his/her square, but standing on neighboring squares, centered over the occupied square. That looked cool.

I know it's still in it's eaiest stages, but the board should eventually get smaller towards the far side to simulate 3D and a non-birds-eye view perspective. Still looks cool though.

I like what you're doing so far, and the fact that you are farmiliar with battle chess is very helpful too. I'm extremely eager to see where this goes.

Oh, also, your board is set up incorrectly with the white and black squares. White is always in the right corner. "White on the right," was the old saying if I remember correctly.

*Edit*
Took me a while to type that, but I like what scifista said about using the dark variants. Not sure about the monster choice, but once again, that's subjective. Oh and the impaled head of John Romero would be a hilarious king.

[geo]

Linguica said:

Why are the knights Barons of Hell and not Hell Knights? Cmon son

Yeah I thought of that after the photos were posted. Its changed, but In the future I'd like to have a selection. At least I'm not the only one that messed up with knights :-)

[SavageCorona]

I vote flying enemies (ie. Caco) be knights because they're logically the only ones who can fly over everyone else.

[scifista42]

Pinkies make the most sense for pawns, since they're melee only. I would balance higher ranked pieces as higher ranked monsters than pinkies. IMO, Chaingunner qualifies, as his pain-locking attack skill is more than decent. But that's just my preference. I also agree about flying Cacodemon posing as a knight. And then Revenant would replace the Chaingunner as a bishop instead of a knight.

[geo]

Alright, I'm back and back to programming. I think my first feat will be to make the board 3D instead of flat 2D. While it would be easier to make the game be 2D and look like the background is smaller, I think the 3D will just look more Doom. Especially after seeing the chessboard in Doom. Plus I can rotate the camera or something cool like that.

I'll switch out the monsters and the white on right.

Here you go:



Looking at the board now. I feel Arch Vile or the Romero head should be king and cyber should be the queen since the queen is so powerful. Discuss.

[Fonze]

scifista42 said:

Pinkies make the most sense for pawns, since they're melee only. I would balance higher ranked pieces as higher ranked monsters than pinkies. IMO, Chaingunner qualifies, as his pain-locking attack skill is more than decent. But that's just my preference. I also agree about flying Cacodemon posing as a knight. And then Revenant would replace the Chaingunner as a bishop instead of a knight.

Idk bro, I gotta disagree on the pinkies for pawns. It makes sense, don't get me wrong, but then we'd have to discuss lost souls. I think imps are more iconic Doom enemies and should be somewhere in the game. If higher monsters are used, imps should be pawns. If lower monsters are used, bulls could be pawns and imps could be something else, but they should be there.

I don't think any former humans should be represented, the monsters are cooler and more interesting, imo.

*Edit*
Just saw geo's new post. I'll check it out in a bit when I get a break. I'm working now, lol.

[geo]

Tell me which of Doom 2's tiles do you want for white and black.

I've got a 3D board going with a camera.

While I respect ya'all are having a discussion, I will make something to switch out your preferred enemies for pieces in some sort of preferences section. In the mean time, discuss away.

[Fonze]

geo said:

Alright, I'm back and back to programming. I think my first feat will be to make the board 3D instead of flat 2D. While it would be easier to make the game be 2D and look like the background is smaller, I think the 3D will just look more Doom. Especially after seeing the chessboard in Doom. Plus I can rotate the camera or something cool like that.

The 3D would be cool, but is probably not needed. You can do it if you want to though, I won't complain. The board isn't really big enough for the monsters to get smaller at the far end, so true 3D isn't important.
Also, adding 3D would add a lot more work to the animation side of it.

Looking at the board now. I feel Arch Vile or the Romero head should be king and cyber should be the queen since the queen is so powerful. Discuss.

I could second that... I love the arch-vile, I'd love to see it in here. But I also like the impaled Romero head as the king, but it would need brand new attack animations. I like the idea of the cyber being the queen.

*Edit*

I'll think about the tiles and get back to you when I get off work.

[geo]

5 hours later of programming. I am back with a 3D board, camera controls and a game that still does nothing, but damn it looks good. I wasn't meaning true 3D, just traditional Doom "3D" with sprites, although I guess the board is true 3D.

Its a little more cramped, the grid squares are now 64 x 64 instead of 100 x 100.

I hope everyone likes it. After clicking on the link they sure made an ugly gif with 16 colors. There's an HD version too on the page.

http://i.imgur.com/t9pJd95.gifv



There it is. Looks like imgur turned my giant gif into a video.

Once I get the computer to play against itself, I might make a screensaver out of it, but who has used a screensaver in the past decade?