I want to make chess more like a first person shooter. But still be turn based. Maybe that makes it a bit like x-com but still more abstract like chess is.
My idea is simple. Maybe in some ways I like the idea of creating the most general case of a game and then narrowing it down into a specific one. Which is what we are going to do. In fact chess could be considered a sub-set of my game.
In this game every piece is a more specific instance of the most general piece type. The general piece type has an HP, whether it is ranged or melee or both, a movement set, if applicable a range set. Its melee set would be the same as its movement set if a melee type. It would also have a range damage and a melee damage.
There are no random modifiers. This is supposed to be a pure strategy game like chess. Everything is one action per turn. A melee attack will cause the piece to occupy the position of its fallen foe. A "range" attack will not. A pieces melee set does not need to only have adjacent squares. Melee vs range basically only separates the property of movement after capturing a piece or not, and maybe damage amount.
To keep notation and interface simple it will be a general standard that the movement/melee set will not overlap the range set. In fact the movement/melee set could actually be different but it could be a general practice that for most pieces the are the same, that way you can get pawns.
So that's it. It's pretty easy to describe, but offers some of the features we like about non-chess games like line of site damage and pieces that can be at a disadvantage in terms of movement but might be hard to take down.
You also need specialty pieces like you have in other chess variants like bricks or ducks. And you need additional level pieces like item pick ups, grenades, hp.
In someways this is just a more expanded variant of fairy chess.
The idea then is that you could make all kinds of game modes with this:
- Standard chess variants like three-check (chess where the king can only survive three checks).
- King of the Hill, defining an area which when occupied gives points to your team.
- Capture the flag, and all its variants
- Juggernaut
- Oddball
Yes I want to make a cross between chess and Halo.
I do like the idea of having a single base piece that can be configured into anything else rather than having piece specific code even for the oddest edge cases.
So while rarely used to cover all bases the base piece should also have properties of:
- Is it royal.. does the game end if it is killed : Binary
- Self healing hp/turn : Int
- Healing delay : Int
- Area healing factor : Int
- Ranged healing allowed.. can it range attack its own pieces with opposite effect : Binary
- Range damage subtraction modifier
- Range damage scale modifier
- Melee damage subtraction modifier
- Melee damage scale modifier
Now here is the hard part. Converting a very capable base piece into sensible and fun specific pieces. The theoretical base piece of plain chess is insane. There are actually 5x10^67 different pieces that could be made from the theoretical base piece from chess. And yet only 6 relatively good ones were picked.
Now I suck at picking that sort of thing. So instead there should be a game mode that lets people play with random selections of the most popular pieces and procedurally generates one additional piece. Randomly generated pieces should follow a few good practices. One obvious one is choosing move and attack sets that are symmetric or built from other common pieces. At the end of the game people should vote if the piece was fun.
I know people have built similar things for fantasy themed turn based strategy games. Usually they allow moving more than one unit a turn. I think of Battle for Wesnoth. The problem with those games is, first, they are built around resource management more than tactics (so not chess). Second they allow moving more than one piece a turn. This turns into click spamming to get activity out of every unit instead of finding the best move. It also means that a side with more material gets even more advantage. More material in chess gives you more options and control, but you still only get one action.
But I would also like to make an RTS version of this with piece cool downs.
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Thinking you could name the pieces after infamous folks like the recent sniper, Hinkley, Killdozer, McVeigh, Unibomber, etc. - and share inconvenient truths about them.
One side is basically playing fog of war chess and mostly has pawns. That side also has like six kings that have to be eliminated.
In Ted’s side he starts at a random position on the first two ranks.
The goal is to use is unusual range pattern to try to locate him quicker using the pawn.
Maybe work in false flags, limited hangouts, propaganda, "suicides", etc.
Marvin Heemayer can be a character for a juggernaut game mode. Slow and nearly unstoppable.
Ted will have basically no mobility but a high power ranged attack to a few very far ranged squares. The range set pattern will demonstrate that finite skew fields are cumulative.
Probably a more reasonable set might be the armed carvery. It would have the same movement set as a knight with a halved melee attack. But it would also have a ranged attack of the three squares in front of it with a damage of 1. It might even be weaker than a standard knight. Making a piece have less than one melee reduces its movement. Sure it can attack without endangering itself but sometimes the movement is half the value.
One more idea while I'm listing them would be something a little weaker than a queen, and really an advanced bishop called a ninja. It would move the same as a bishop but have 2 distance range attack along the same directions as a rook, representing a shurukan at either 1 hp or 3/4ths hp. People would have to play test which is better.