A change to the perks received from protecting threatened pieces + revised colour coding of Pawns step Gigachess forward :)
GIGACHESS V1.19 CHANGELOG
A tweak to the rules governing Shieldguards makes it easier to clear Curses from the board, so now every time a Shieldguard point is earned, any Curse present on a Pawn is wiped out (this previously only happened every 3 Shieldguard points where it was paired up with the Viper Pawn downgrade)
The category names displayed on Endless mode's performance grading screen will now only change colour if the category's score is "good" (green) or "bad" (red)
A bug where a Blockade's Stock counter (accessible by right-clicking on a Blockade) would refuse to display immediately after viewing a hero piece's ID tooltip fixed
A bug where it was possible to blindly place Blockades and other Power-ups onto the board through the Help slides fixed
A bug where quickloading a saved Endless game with the Spawncycle mutator enabled could incorrectly set the Hyper threshold fixed
Assorted optimization tweaks have reduced CPU usage by ~10%
Added later via quiet patch (Jul 12, 2018 @ 1:04pm)
A bug where loading quicksaves and autosaves in Endless mode could restore incorrect SP values fixed
A bug where completing a stage in Puzzle Attack mode on Easy difficulty 3 below Par would display the standard 'Par' icon on the level selector fixed
A bug in Puzzle Attack mode where rewinding/resetting a stage and click-undoing a hero piece that had previously received a Queen-up could incorrectly reapply Queen-up status fixed
Some changes made to gamepad detection to expand compatibility with more models of USB gamepad
A bug in Puzzle Attack mode where restoring a captured hero piece through use of the Step Back / Rewind button would place it in a bugged state where click-undo on that piece could be exploited to erase Pawns from the board fixed
The pink and blue palettes previously used for both Pawns and Viper Pawns have been regrouped, so now Pawns are always pink and Viper Pawns are always blue
A bug where playing stage 47 of Puzzle Attack mode would have a greyed out Blockade icon present in the HUD despite there being no SP provided for that difficulty fixed
A bug in Knight's Dungeon where the tile touch overlay had stopped displaying on square 8,4 fixed
A bug in Knight's Dungeon where 2-Knight stages could start counting from 2 instead of 1 when viewing a Knight's move history fixed
As always, your bug reports and feedback on the community forums are a huge help! Thanks a bunch for playing Gigachess, please do share whatever's on your mind <3 http://steamcommunity.com/app/415910/discussions
Gigachess V1.18 Update | New Help Slides, Other Tweaks
Some new additions to the in-game reference material and a handful of miscellaneous improvements move Gigachess ahead :)
GIGACHESS V1.18 CHANGELOG
Clearing a stage above par in Puzzle Attack mode will now display Bogey or Double Bogey in place of the Par / Birdie / Eagle message at the Victory screen
The categories listed in Endless mode's performance grading are now coloured green or red to better indicate what's a positive influence and what's a negative influence when calculating performance
Two additional slides have been added to the in-game reference guide accessible from the drop-down menu, offering brief, pictorial summaries of Shieldguards, Cursed Pawns and Pawnwarps
Completion of individual lessons in the playable tutorial is now saved session-to-session to make it easier to unlock the Tutorial Complete achievement
As always, your bug reports and feedback on the community forums are a huge help! Thanks for playing Gigachess, please do share whatever's on your mind <3 http://steamcommunity.com/app/415910/discussions
Gigachess v1.18 Update | New Help Slides, Other Tweaks
Some new additions to the in-game reference material and a handful of miscellaneous improvements move Gigachess ahead :)
GIGACHESS V1.18 CHANGELOG
Clearing a stage above par in Puzzle Attack mode will now display Bogey or Double Bogey in place of the Par / Birdie / Eagle message at the Victory screen
The categories listed in Endless mode's performance grading are now coloured green or red to better indicate what's a positive influence and what's a negative influence when calculating performance
Two additional slides have been added to the in-game reference guide accessible from the drop-down menu, offering brief, pictorial summaries of Shieldguards, Cursed Pawns and Pawnwarps
Completion of individual lessons in the playable tutorial is now saved session-to-session to make it easier to unlock the Tutorial Complete achievement
As always, your bug reports and feedback on the community forums are a huge help! Thanks for playing Gigachess, please do share whatever's on your mind <3 http://steamcommunity.com/app/415910/discussions
Gigachess v1.17 Update | Endless Mode Mutators
Two new gameplay mutators for Endless mode are the big additions moving Gigachess ahead to v1.17 :)
GIGACHESS V1.17 CHANGELOG
Spawncycle & All Viper mutators added to Endless mode, joining Hardcore as ways to impose new rules onto any difficulty level, more info below!
A 5th page has been added to the in-game help slides accessible from the dropdown menu, offering a visual aid for how each hero piece's moveset is expanded while in Hyper state
A bug where Blockades and Trapmines could be accidentally placed immediately after loading a quicksave or autosave in Endless mode fixed
Alright, so the new Endless mode gameplay mutators can be turned on during the party builder phase and work like so! Left-to-right from the image above :)
Enabling the All Viper mutator makes it so 100% of Pawns spawn as Viper Pawns. Ordinarily, the frequency at which Viper Pawns appear is set by the difficulty level but switching this mutator on acts as an override. Nothing but Viper Pawns can be a little bit intense, don't let an opportunity to earn a Shieldguard point slip by because the Viper Pawn downgrade is a big deal!
Enabling the Spawncycle mutator sets up an ongoing semi-random Hits target where the Pawn spawn rate increases (and rolls over back to Novice level once maxed out) every time the target is reached. This means the pace of the game is no longer fixed and the spawn rate of new waves will continuously cycle, getting faster and faster and faster before resetting for a well-deserved breather :)
Enabling the Hardcore mutator starts the game with only 1 life and prevents hero pieces from replenishing their Hyper lifespans. Ordinarily, capturing a Pawn while a hero piece is Hyper restores that piece's Hyper lifespan to full (indicated by a slow pulse), but switching Hardcore on means maintaining a hero piece's Hyper state requires constant turn-on-turn chaining of attacks since there's no way to get back to full lifespan.
Anyhow, I hope you all have some fun with these new twists to Endless mode (although Hardcore's been around for a little while, just mostly hidden) and let me know what you think! Here's hoping everyone finds something they like in the Winter Sale and Happy Holidays :D
As always, your bug reports and feedback on the community forums are a huge help! Thanks for playing Gigachess, please do share whatever's on your mind <3 http://steamcommunity.com/app/415910/discussions
Gigachess v1.16 Update | Puzzle Attack time travel!
Improved undo/redo controls in Puzzle Attack mode and more move Gigachess ahead to v1.16 :)
GIGACHESS V1.16 CHANGELOG
Time travel controls added to Puzzle Attack mode, allowing you to step back through turns and redo the last turn -- check out the FFW / RRW buttons above the 'Undo' button at the bottom right of the screen!
A help panel now appears during the first play of Puzzle Attack mode which points out the new FFW / RRW buttons
The 'Change Stage' button now appears during Puzzle Attack gameplay instead of only returning upon losing a stage, allowing you to jump back to the level selection screen more freely
2 new pages have been added to the in-game reference slides accessible from the drop-down menu which describe the use of Blockades, Trapmines and Queen-ups with visual aids
The red light flash animation of the Trapmine sprite has been edited to better communicate that it targets the squares immediately above it
A bug in Puzzle Attack mode where music volume would fluctuate slightly when changing stages fixed
A bug in Puzzle Attack mode where clicking the Blockade icon during a stage's first turn would play the 'warn' sound effect fixed
A bug in Endless mode where loading an autosave could cause two particular tiles on the board to flash fixed
Added later via quiet patch (4:12 PM December 7th, 2017)
A saving bug affected stage 24 of Knight's Dungeon mode fixed
A handful of bugs affecting Puzzle Attack time travel fixed
Since Knight's Dungeon mode launched earlier this year, I've been meaning to introduce that mode's step forward / step back time travel control to Puzzle Attack mode and, after fooling around with it for far too long, it's ready to go live! This makes approaching tricky stages in Puzzle Attack mode much more forgiving since a single mistake in a turn can be simply wound back instead of the entire stage needing to be reset (which is still an option, of course). Fleshing out the in-game reference material was also something overdue, the expanded help slides now offer additional explanation of the various power-ups to support the hands-on instruction of the playable tutorial :)
As always, your bug reports and feedback on the community forums are a huge help! Thanks for playing Gigachess, please do share whatever's on your mind <3 http://steamcommunity.com/app/415910/discussions
If you've had some fun with the game,
Consider sparing a minute to write a short review for Gigachess <3
For any small indie like Gigachess on Steam, user reviews make a world of difference towards a game finding its audience. Games only improve as more folks get to play them! :D
Happy Halloween! :D
To everyone celebrating the season in spooky fashion, Happy Halloween! :)
Through Halloween here on Steam, Gigachess on first launch will be starting up in its Halloween skin! The stuff I've been working on recently is completely back-end and not very exciting, improvements to the sound manager and assorted optimizations, that sort of thing, but I'm planning to get a nice update out in the next month or so :)
As always, your bug reports and feedback on the community forums are a really big help! Thanks a lot for playing Gigachess, please do share whatever's on your mind <3 http://steamcommunity.com/app/415910/discussions
A Knight's Dungeon level editor and Steam Workshop support to go with it are the big ticket items in Gigachess v1.15 :D
GIGACHESS V1.15 CHANGELOG
Knight's Dungeon mode now features a level editor, allowing for easy creation and testing of custom stages
Steam Workshop support added for Knight's Dungeon mode, allowing custom stages to be shared and downloaded
Individual sound effect & music volume controls added, each with their own slider accessible via the dropdown menu
Mousing over hero piece icons at the Endless mode party builder screen now overlays a colourful preview of that piece's moveset
Hero pieces currently in their Hyper states now get a vivid colour applied to their expanded attack range grids for extra spectacle
The pulsing effect applied to attack range grids now improved
The sound manager has been completely rebuilt making for much more efficient use of sound channels and resources
Board squares now make a satisfying flash whenever a hero piece is placed on them
The turn advance button now plays its push animation when all hero pieces in a turn get moved
An in-game reference sheet of keyboard shortcuts has been added, accessible via the Input button from the dropdown menu
A bug where using click-undo on a Knight that had just received a Queen-up that turn would actually subtract SP instead of refunding it fixed
A bug where spent SP could be incorrectly returned to the player in special circumstances when loading an autosave fixed
Several bugs involving Hyper tallies getting scrambled with quickloading from the title menu or loading an autosave immediately after restarting an Endless game fixed
A bug where the Knight's Tour help panels could get stuck on the level selector fixed
A bug where using click-undo on a hero piece in the first turn of a restarted Endless game could restore the previous game's Shieldguard total fixed
A bug where activating manual control over border brightness could result in the entire board getting blacked out when restarting an Endless game fixed
Added later via quiet patch (1:38 PM September 11th, 2017)
Idling the cursor over a hero piece now brings up an auto-tooltip displaying that piece's name (Knight, Rook, Bishop)
A toggle control for displaying all Pawn attack ranges added, click the new button added near the bottom left of the board to switch this feature on and off
Persistent rebindable gamepad controls added, now including freedom to bind actions to an Xbox controller's right and left triggers
Quick-targeting is now disabled while the input menu is open
A bug in Puzzle Attack mode where using click-undo on a hero piece in the first turn of a restarted stage could curse that hero piece fixed
A bug in Puzzle Attack, Knight's Dungeon and Tutorial modes where hint overlays had stopped appearing fixed
A bug at the Knight's Dungeon Workshop Stages level selector where a single minimap block would flash for a frame out of place fixed
A bug when using a gamepad to switch between Standard and Workshop stages at the Knight's Dungeon level selector would fail to return the Browse Workshop button fixed
A bug where the 'Gamepad Connected' prompt could layer below the help, keyboard and gamepad panels fixed
The Knight's Dungeon Workshop is live and there are over 30 stages ready to be played! Fooling around with the level editor should be fairly self-explanatory but I've prepared a guide that walks through the whole process, from creating a level to sharing it with the Steam community:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1117090503
Trying to get everything Workshop-related into a functional, user-friendly state has been a huge job, Steam Workshop support presents its fair share of challenges and the Knight's Dungeon level editor was a bit of an undertaking so it feels great to finally be able to share. There's undoubtedly going to be lots of polishing and bugfixing to do there, so if you run into anything weird or buggy having to do with the level editor, the uploader tool or playing Workshop stages, please let me know and I'll get right on it!
If you've had some fun with the game,
Consider sparing a minute to write a short review for Gigachess <3
For any small indie like Gigachess on Steam, user reviews make a world of difference towards a game finding its audience. Games only improve as more folks get to play them! :)
As always, your bug reports and feedback on the community forums are a huge help! Thanks for playing Gigachess, please do share whatever's on your mind <3 http://steamcommunity.com/app/415910/discussions
Steam Workshop support is coming! :D
So after working on it for a couple weeks now, a Knight's Dungeon level editor is nearly complete and Steam Workshop integration is just about done! :)
The level editor is currently working quite nicely and gives full freedom to design a puzzle layout, set locations of Knights & shapeshift tiles, configure Par & SP values and then save the custom stage to an external file. Most of the work remaining to be done here has to do with making a proper interface for the editor controls and testing the heck out of it to make sure everything's tightened up.
While it's not yet available to the public, Gigachess's Steam Workshop is working nearly perfectly as of this morning! You'll be able to upload your custom Knight's Dungeon stages via a simple uploader tool or subscribe to custom stages from the Workshop and have them be ready to play on launch. There are a handful of things yet to sort out here but it's only a matter of time. At present, I've got about 25 new Knight's Dungeon stages waiting to be shared through the workshop which is a pretty alright start :D
I'm hoping to get the Knight's Dungeon level editor and Workshop ready to go live within a couple of weeks as part of the v1.15 update. There's going to be a lot of good stuff in this patch, including rebindable gamepad controls, separate music + SFX volume sliders and lots of polish :)
Thanks for playing Gigachess! <3
Gigachess v1.14.1 Update | Border darkening control
Special screen darkening controls and a round of polish + fixes step Gigachess ahead a micro-version! :)
GIGACHESS V1.14.1 CHANGELOG
The dungeon border surrounding the game board can now be darkened or lightened by using either the scroll wheel on your mouse or buttons 7 & 8 on a gamepad (often found in the classic start/select position), this overrides the scripted lighting changes that occur when entering a game mode or returning to a puzzle mode's level selector
The header text on the main menu panel and on the Endless mode party builder has been improved, now being larger and more header-like
The sharp corners on all menu panes have been rounded off
The party size help panel at the Endless mode party builder now vanishes when the dropdown menu is open, as to prevent text readability issues caused by the layering of UI elements
A bug where the help panels at the Endless mode party builder could get glitched and disappear fixed
A bug where the floating Shieldguard meter could get stuck on the Puzzle Attack mode level selector fixed
A bug where using a gamepad during a Knight's Dungeon solo stage would refuse to let the turn advance when no moves were available for that Knight fixed
A memory leak and cursor repositioning bug possible when exiting certain Knight's Dungeon stages fixed
Added later via quiet patch (10:48 AM June 29th, 2017)
A keyboard shortcut that toggles the custom mouse cursor on and off added, tap the 'M' key at any time to switch to your OS's cursor
Keyboard shortcuts for exiting the game have been tweaked, hitting 'ESC' while the escape menu is up now returns to the game and hitting 'Q' now closes the application (the instruction text on the escape menu reflects this change)
A bug where quickly restarting an Endless game while the wavespawn event for 2nd wave Pawns (cyan tinted) was in progress could spawn a double-wave in the 1st turn fixed
A bug where the Knight's Tour help panel that appears on first play would layer above the escape menu fixed
Scroll wheel control over the brightness level of the screen border is such an easy and simple thing to introduce that I'm embarrassed it's taken so long for it to occur to me! This will hopefully make it easier for people to focus if they found the dungeon border art distracting. The blackout leaves all clickable elements plainly visible, apart from the hidden brick that activates the title theme during gameplay ;)
Something really neat that's in the works but not quite ready to be unveiled is a dynamic/cycling difficulty option for Endless mode! With this, the difficulty will keep ticking up higher as you reach target scores, and then reset back to Novice only to start over again with a fresh target. This will probably be presented like an optional toggle/mutator like Hardcore, meaning it'll stack with whatever regular difficulty is chosen at the Endless mode party builder. In testing so far, it's proving to be pretty fun. There's a way to try this out right now, but it's secret! :D
If you've had some fun with the game and would like more people to play it,
Consider sparing a minute to write a short review for Gigachess <3
For Gigachess or any small indie, user reviews make a world of difference towards people finding the game more easily. Games only improve as more folks get to play them! :)
As always, your bug reports and feedback on the community forums are a huge help! Thanks for playing Gigachess, please do share whatever's on your mind <3 http://steamcommunity.com/app/415910/discussions
Gigachess v1.14 Update | Knight's Dungeon polish + other tweaks
Some nice improvements to Knight's Dungeon and a bunch of little fixes move Gigachess ahead a version! :)
GIGACHESS V1.14 CHANGELOG
In Knight's Dungeon, a Knight with no available moves now gets greyed out and passed over by the turn checker, speeding things up in any 2-Knight stage where one Knight is unable to move
A 'warn' sound effect now plays when attempting to click on an immovable Knight in Knight's Dungeon
New sound effects have been added when using the step forward / step backward buttons during a Knight's Dungeon stage
Placing a Knight on a Rook or Bishop shapeshift tile in Knight's Dungeon now plays a sound effect
The HUD has been rearranged during Knight's Dungeon mode, removing the unused 'Hits' counter and repositioning the 'Squares', 'Turn' and 'SP' counters to fill the space accordingly
When hero pieces get captured, the brightly coloured flash of the water around the board now lasts a little longer
The announcement text at the start of an Endless game now features the party size & difficulty selected
A bug in Knight's Dungeon where the move box (seen when hovering the cursor over an available square) could get stuck on the last square fixed
A bug where the Victory! + Defeat! screen flashes were layering below the icons in the HUD fixed
A bug where the skinny counters in the HUD, seen when the numbers being displayed grow past the triple digits, would remain visible after restarting an Endless game fixed
A bug where the 'Hint Unlocked' announcement had stopped appearing in Puzzle Attack and Tutorial modes fixed
A bug where the title theme could continue playing under Song A when using the Quickload button from the main menu fixed
Added later via quiet patch (10:04 AM 06/18/17):
A bug where restarting an Endless game would improperly update the running total of hits for a given hero piece towards their 250 & 1000 hit achievements fixed
The 'Pawnwarp Incoming' reminder text has been repositioned to appear at the bottom right of the screen, aligned with the bottom 2 rows of the board
A bug where using click-undo on a piece immediately after restarting a Puzzle Attack stage could glitch that piece into being King-downed fixed
The Easy + Pro hints for stage 27 of Puzzle Attack mode have been updated and the stage's par value has changed from 8 to 7
A bug in Knight's Dungeon mode where the randomized start position on the 4th Bonus Tour could place the Knight outside the board fixed
Hovering over the game mode buttons at the main menu now brings up a descriptive help panel offering a quick rundown of the mode
The escape and quicksave load menus have been rearranged for clearer button separation
Hints in Knight's Dungeon mode have been updated to include a Knight's starting location
Hovering over the power-up icons on the HUD now provides some brightened-up feedback of the icon as long the player has enough SP for a purchase
Stability when browsing the in-game leaderboards improved significantly
A rare collision bug where a multi-Pawn attack on a hero piece could result in a 2nd wave Pawn (blue tinted) sharing the same square as a 1st wave Pawn (pink tinted) fixed
A bug with Knight's Dungeon's new Knight disabler where click-undo wouldn't work in the turn where the Knight was moved to an immovable position fixed
A bug in Knight's Dungeon where the exit prompt wouldn't appear at the Victory phase of a 2-Knight stage fixed
A bug in Endless mode where a hero piece's Hyper state could activate after the piece had been captured fixed
A bug on the Puzzle Attack level selector where the buttons for stages 39 & 40 would switch to roman numeral versions when deactivated fixed
A bug in Tutorial mode where setting turn advance to permanent manual could prevent All-Strike SP bonuses from happening fixed
While observing some folks playtesting Knight's Dungeon, a common hiccup was the player would run out of moves for one of their Knights in a 2-Knight stage and get confused as to why the turn was still waiting for that Knight and not advancing automatically. It took more tinkering than I'd like to admit, but the turn checking logic will now skip over an immovable Knight! This Knight disabler mechanic will hopefully smooth out the experience :)
v1.15 will include improvements to Endless mode's performance grading, rebindable gamepad controls, plus a number of other tweaks, polish and fixes as needed. Something I'm planning to experiment with for a near future update is adding into Puzzle Attack mode the step forward / step back time travel that's in Knight's Dungeon. The quick stage reset that's in there now is alright, but having the freedom to travel back and forth through turns would really help make Puzzle Attack friendlier and more welcoming, I think!
If you've had a bit of fun with the game and would like more people to discover it,
Please consider helping Gigachess by leaving a short review <3
For Gigachess or any small indie, user reviews make a world of difference towards people finding the game more easily. Games only improve as more people get to play them! :)
As always, your bug reports and feedback on the community forums are a huge help! Thanks for playing Gigachess, please do share whatever's on your mind <3 http://steamcommunity.com/app/415910/discussions
