I had a great suggestion on my Discord to maybe create a Roadmap of the game. I created one this week because:

• The players would like to know when can they finally have their hands on this game and what it will take to get there
• It makes me question my plan for the game more and helps me scope it properly
• It reminds me of how much more things I need to do.

I've had couple of great ideas on that Discord but it's generally still a dead place because I got no idea how to run it and I'm usually too busy working on the game. If you still want to join, I do read and reply! - https://discord.gg/HYV8Zz8V2Q

Picture says 1000 words so I am going to keep it short. This is my ideal trajectory for this awesome game I'm building. All players should keep in mind that:

• I work on this game before and after my regular 8h job. That's 1-4 hours per week day and 1-20 hours on weekends.
• This is my first commercial game
• I'm doing almost everything myself (I do ask my wife and a my gamedev best buddy Lorenzo for suggestions and I am pretty sure some awesome people will come and test the game when it's ready).
• Burnout can kick in at any time and this roadmap may be extended. I do my best to keep that from happening.
• Most of the time I have no idea what I'm doing

In all it's awesomeness I present the roadmap for Master of Chess, a game in which you guide a young chess prodigy from his first tournament to eternal chess glory!

If you want to chat about the game, I created a Discord that I'm still not actively promoting anywhere, but there's few people with awesome ideas already there: https://discord.gg/HYV8Zz8V2Q

Focus​

In the previous progress log I outlined my plan for the demo of the game:

1. You create your chess player
2. You go through small "How to play a match" tutorial
3. You enter a chess tournament and play it out
4. If you do good you acquire Candidate Master (CM) norm.

And this week was all about number #2. I encountered a nasty bug in Godot (the game engine I am using for MoC) that totally crashed the game multiple times, and that wasn't much fun. In the end I managed to circumvent it and I do have bare-minimum tutorial about playing a match. Here's a short GIF:

Don't mind the weird numbers and confusing display, it's all to help me debug and to show what's going on under the hood. UI/UX is going to have a major rehaul before it goes in front of players. I hope the gif can also be useful to further shine light on the way the game will be played.

Another important thing I worked on in the past week is the main game start screen. It's still not as good as I wanted it to be but it's good enough, with an obvious reference to Netflix's hit show (and the biggest chess advertisement ever, probably) - Queen's Gambit:

What's next?​

Even though there's that bug that set me back and the tutorial isn't as good as I'd like it to be, it's time to set the tutorial aspect of the game away and focus on the game loop. This is the thing that makes or breaks the game so that's where I see myself spending the rest of March. It's mainly concerned by the #2 in my plan for creating a demo:

• You enter a chess tournament and play it out

The good thing is that most of the pieces are already implemented: the tournaments are there, the players are there, the match can be played. The bad thing is that everything is still too disjointed to get a proper feel of the game. It's time to make things fun!

Additional Notes​

• There was an awesome idea on my Discord from J1ngleJ4ngle about incorporating Chess Hustlers in the game. I am seriously considering adding it in the game as it:
  • Can provide more fun characters
  • Can provide additional source of income for the chess player
  • Seems to be relatively easy to implement with current game mechanics
• There was an awesome idea on Discord from osirf to have some kind of roadmap, I plan to dedicate some time for that too so players will have better understanding of where the game is and I'll recommit myself to finishing this game in due time.

I always thought about, always wanted to do it, but always put it off for later. Well not anymore!

It's time for my blog.

I'm not sure what will end up here, but I aim to document my struggle and journey from your average gamedev to still an average gamedev that has a game released on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2248900/Master_of_Chess

I'm not sure if it will be good, I am not sure if it will be helpful but I'll give my best to make it both. Let the journey start here.