I made a little puzzle game about a rogue chess knight

39 points by freetonik

Thought to share this simple game I made last knight; it turned out to be pretty addictive (for me, at least). Also discovered that native HTML audio elements play with bad delay in Safari, and found people complaining about this for years. Switched to soundjs and now it works fine, but does not seem to play on iOS.

aeon

Sounds play fine on iOS for me, fwiw!

Nice game, but seems like on some boards we get clusters of mutually protected enemy, so it’s not possible to fully clear those boards. Which is fine, just wanted to note it in case that wasn’t intentional.

freetonik

Huh, I couldn’t for the love of god to make it play sounds on my iPhone.

Yeah, the enemies are placed randomly, without any restrictions. I might fix this in future, or maybe use this chance to make a proper game using Godot.

But note that when you capture a piece, you don’t get a penalty even if the square is under attack.
- cgati
  
  Sound is also working for me, but not until I flipped the silent switch back to ring.
  - freetonik
    
    Oh! Thanks, I haven’t thought of that! Indeed, the switch restores the sound. I had it on silent for years :)
- freddyb
  
  I already on in level two. My son is less dumb and likes the game. Thank you. 😊
- brudish
  
  This is very neat, but without any insight into its construction I’m not sure this is on topic?
  - freetonik
    
    You’re right, sorry, I’ve added the show tag.
    
    brudish
    
    That’s a reasonable addition, but it still feels like it falls outside of topicality:
    
    Some rules of thumb for great stories to submit: Will this improve the reader’s next program? Will it deepen their understanding of their last program? Will it be more interesting in five or ten years?
    
    If you posted a blog about the creation of this game, that would be on-topic. I’ve seen other game posts get removed and I suspect it’s for similar reasons.
    
    freetonik
    
    OK, now the story links to a blog post about making this game. Hope that’s ok.
    
    brudish
    
    That was super cool of you. Thanks for putting this together!
    
    freetonik
    
    Fair enough! This actually gives me motivation to write about it, so unless the mods delete this within next 30 minutes, I’ll replace the link soon!
    
    chickadee
    
    This is really cool! One small thing: the green of the target square is the same brightness as the white of the chessboard, which makes it impossible to see when using a greyscale mode (specifically for me it was “bedtime mode” on my android phone)
    
    freetonik
    
    Thanks for the feedback! I’ve changed the target style, please let me know if it’s better now.
    
    huytd
    
    Nice game! I thought the pieces will attack me if I make a wrong move, it would be more fun if they do that ;)
    
    freetonik
    
    Thanks!
    
    Do you mean a piece would attack you and it’s game over?
    
    huytd
    
    yes, from what I understand, if we move to a square where the knight will get attacked, we only get negative score https://imgur.com/a/PHgoDsL maybe what I describe should be a death mode or something
    
    freetonik
    
    I see, yeah, death mode or hard core mode like that sounds interesting! I’ll consider it.
    
    andypiper
    
    Oh, this is fun! And I learned a little about your process as well. Thanks for the write-up. (I’m also sometimes annoyed by that silent toggle on iPhone masking sounds unexpectedly)
    
    freetonik
    
    Thanks! My process is pretty chaotic, and to be honest, I was slightly worried that the write-up would reveal the scope of chaos in my head :)
    
    aae
    
    I hope I don’t have to maintain this game!
    
    I would love to come across a statement like this in a commit message. It’d turn my scowl into a chuckle.
    
    freetonik
    
    This was a bit tongue in cheek; the code is very rough as I was prioritizing the speed of development; years of experience tell me how wrong this decision is, but hey, there is always this bright idea of “when time comes, I’ll rewrite this properly”.