"puki" chess - Blitz3D
Community Forums/Graphic Chat/"puki" chess - Blitz3D
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 The board was rotating at the time, so it may look a bit strange due to this and the camera angle - but I promise you it is all square and in proportion. I'm trying to create a chessboard that is sort of a shiny metal (copper-like) board that has a sheet of glass on top. I will admit that I have *found* the chess pieces on my media hard-drive from a previous conquest. However, I'm more showing off the visual effect of the shiny reflection and that I think it looks kind of nice. I think the surrounding border piece actually looks quite smart - it is basically 4 stretched Createcube()'s. The border also hides the fact that this board is sitting on an infinite mirror plane - it hides the mirroring of the pieces outside of the board. Personally, I think the image has an almost 'rendered' look to it. However, this is an actual Blitz3D screenshot. The only reason I am posting this is I was surprised at how nice it looks in Blitz3D. |
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 Here is the finished board. I'm not over-happy with the reflections - however, I still think it looks good in Blitz3D. |
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| Looks good, did you model the board/peices yourself? |
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| I *found* the chess pieces on my hard-drive - they are okay. The only piece that is noticeably rough is the rook. This thing actually looks even better when seen running. There is also a moveable light which reflects/glares from the reflective board as it passes over it. |
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| looks great. |
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| The second image took a bit to load... At first i thought you just held down enter for a few seconds. |
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| Cool, i like chess.. not much good in it and can sometimes loose to GNU chess on easy mode, but i like chess... This looks great and would look wicked with a good skybox :) How are you going to do the AI? did you model the board/peices yourself LoL, aren't you allergic to modelling puki? :P |
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| I think it s very good because you made the right choice in colors. Think about it: The pieces of chess are very common to all of us as 3D objects. The chessboard is only a flatten cube but the final result is looks very nice. How many games with lower screen resolutions looks better than others in higher resolutions?. This is because they use more colors and they make better combinations among them. |
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| imo the chess pieces should have a little bit more shine and detail |
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| imo the chess pieces should have a little bit more shine and detail In those pictures the light source was directly above the centre of the board - I find a more side-on light assists with the shininess of the pieces. However, sometines the 'shininess' is overdone. Mine is quite subtle. There is not a lot I can do with the chess pieces as they are not mine - I'm limited to their geometry. Fear not - I will probably *find* replacements. The board does all the usual rotating (in all directions) and really does look cool when in motion. EDIT: How are you going to do the AI? Will start with the move rules, then put in a load of book moves. I will probably opt for an AI that analyses the 'value' of each legal move. Basically, giving values to various things and negative values to other things. A piece that is on a square whereby it is not protected by another piece (ie exposed and unprotected) would carry a negative value which would then have its piece value added to that score (so, the more valuable a piece, the higher negative score). Basically, I'd make up my own AI - I'm good at AI and don't see a need to look-up how chess programs are designed. Mine won't necessarily be any good at playing chess against someone who is good - but it should be able to beat a novice. |
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| Looking good, Puki. If you want some original chess piece models to replace your "borrowed" ones, then I'd be happy to make them for you. They don't take long to model. |
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| *put on puki hat* give me the models and code and we can call it quits :) |
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 I added some cheeky letters. Notice how, even if you rotate the board, the letters on your side will be the right way. EDIT: In fact, they don't - the mirror effect confused me - I'll have to move the other ones about a bit. Also, this shot shows of the light-glare on the board surface. No cube mapping/environmental stuff going on here yet. I'm thinking of doing that though for the pieces - to environment map the surroundings. |
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| Excellent work Puki :o) How long do you think it will take you to finishing coding the game? |
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| Well, I already have a chess game that I started with Blitz Basic 2 on the Amiga. That one was purely 2D. That was a talking chess program that used the Amiga's speech chip - it explains the reasoning behind this thread: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=71243 Kind of explains this thread too: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=70511#788302 How long it takes is really a case of how long before I lose interest in this. EDIT: I've sorted the lettering around the board now - all is in order. |
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| You're doing a great job Puki. I wish you the very best of luck for the rest of the game. |
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| i like it, keep it up! |
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| Wait... you actually program? I'm pleasantly surprised; it looks rather nice. |
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This is ChessMaster 10th Edition (ie the latest): I think mine owns it - visually. It's like visually comparing a Ferrari Enzo to a Robin Reliant. |
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| Looking great, but do yourself a favour and lose the numbers/letters unless you absolutely need them. Less is more in this case. |
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| You can turn them on and off at the touch of a button. This is a hand-crafted masterworks. You can turn lights on and off - move them about - add them - take them away. I've already started to implement the environmental mapping. My first attempt turned the pieces into glass pieces. |
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| I've put the lettering/numbers to use though. When you select a piece, the corresponding letter and number light up - it's purely a visual gimmick. It will probably prove useful in testing. |
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| puki: Get some simple 'blob' shadow sprites under those pieces. Also, I think the border & font size is a little big, it's a bit distracting. In fact thinking about it now, the color of the border makes me think of a an old CPU :) Get a wood texture on it like ChessMaster. |
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| I like the look of the board. As for AI, your on the right track! The key is to determine how to score the current position of the board, for both black and white. Something as simple as assigning a value to each piece, and adding value for pins, forks, and check or checkmate, and as you suggest taking away value when your in those bad situations. By using a valid move generator, and scoring the positions you can look at the scores several moves ahead. The goal is to choose the position that gives you the maximum score and your opponent the minimum. Simply put, the largest difference between the score for score=(white-black) thats positive (assuming your white). By using this strategy you can look moves ahead down more favorable lines of play. This is known as min/max pruning. It's and accomplishment to get it working. Judging from your signature marketing and screen shots might be your calling. |
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| I'm not doing any more to the graphics for a while now - I've done environmental tests and they proved to be very, very lush-looking. The thing is, it looks so realistic when running - almost like a hologram - it really does look nice in Blitz3D - just turning the board and watching the light glare glint off the surface and the pieces reflecting as they move - looks totally yum - it is just very 3D looking, like you could poke your paw into the screen and move a piece. One thing I want to add is shadows. I think a combination of real-time reflection, real-time lighting and real-time shadows might just pop the Large. The border of the board is changeable and you can alter the colour/texture - remove the letters/numbers. The chess AI does *seem* relatively easy so far. However, I don't predict it will play a strong game of chess against a strong opponent. It will certainly spot danger and be able to take advantage of player mistakes. |
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| The chess AI does *seem* relatively easy so far. Priceless! :) |
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| Well, it just seems to be logical. I'm not going to bother researching chess logic, in the same way I never researched AI for pathfinding, etc. The simplest thing to do was to make the computer move every single piece, for every legal move it could possibly make, check to see if either it (or its opponent) can create check/checkmate, take a piece, attack a piece, blah, blah. Then work out the best move based on the 'values' of every possible move. It *seems* simple enough to me. The computer can always see a check or checkmate, it can always see a piece capture or a threat to a piece after another piece has moved. Giving dynamic values to pieces makes it a doddle. Getting it to recognise the 'quirks' will be a bit more tricky - the base logic seems pretty simple. |
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| That's great for one move but a half-decent AI has to 'see' several/many moves ahead, for which the complexity increases exponentially. An AI that only sees one move ahead would be akin to playing against a monkey. Getting good at playing chess is hard for a reason - it's deceptively complex. :) |
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| The simplest thing to do was to make the computer move every single piece, for every legal move it could possibly make, check to see if either it (or its opponent) can create check/checkmate, take a piece, attack a piece, blah, blah. Well that is pretty simple but even a basic club player is thinking two or three moves ahead, and a good player will be thinking three to five moves ahead. |
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| If you only think 1 move ahead, your AI opponent will lose to the 4 move checkmate... |
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| As long as I can beat it in crushing, humiliating, victories. |
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