As more people make their way through the game and post videos online I've begun to feel somewhat dissatisfied with the AI move decisions and had a few quick ideas to iron out specific issues.
Though I originally intended to release a larger patch with many more features, I decided to rush these initial fixes out quickly since they're extremely important to the gameplay and some players are still in the middle of their playthroughs. So without further delay, here's the new changes!
Update Details
Patch Download Size
- Windows - 30.7 MB
- Mac - 23.2 MB
- Linux - 23.8 MB
Changelog
- Added extra detail objects for interior hallways
- Fixed rendering bounds for a few characters
- AI: Now factors in board state for Spawn Pawn weight
- AI: Chance of Spy sacrifice reduced further; based on board state
- AI: Makes less mistakes on Normal mode as more pieces get lost
- AI: Further adjusted King capture and Spawn weights on each opponent
- Added Checkmate indicator UI icon to player status banner
The goal of these AI changes is mainly to make the opponents act more like a human without drastically increasing the difficulty. In doing so, however, this patch probably does make matches a little tougher, particularly towards the endgame as it does a better job saving its King. Like version 1.0.2, this is another breaking change for match guides or walkthroughs.
Previously, certain move types such as Spawning a Pawn would be weighed based on a constant value, adjustable per opponent. This was done for performance and algorithm simplicity reasons, as doing a whole minimax algorithm on these moves would increase the waiting time. But this resulted in some funky moves, particularly when the AI was sure to lose a piece since the average value of all moves becomes negative. In such a scenario, the AI preferred the constant value since it wasn't based on any board state. This resulted in terrible moves which can even ignore King danger and may even cost it the game.
With version 1.0.3, the AI now precalculates an average board weight value by running standard minimax, which is reused for all these "constant value" moves. This is possible thanks to new code that allows for "no move" turns as part of the initial search. So once this search completes, the AI stores that value as a baseline to use for Pawn Spawning and the previous 1.0.2 system that guards against poor Spy moves. This means that if an opponent is about to lose their King, that negative weight is still applied to the Pawn Spawn possibility and it becomes more likely to favor a saving move. This also applies for any sort of piece loss too, not just the King, making the summon Pawn move only likely when the AI deems it is safe to do so.
Finally, there's a new UI icon that pops up under a player banner once they have acquired Checkmate! This should help add clarity to the state of the game and more clearly display which player is ahead in objectives.
That's all for today, and thank you again to everyone that has tried out the game! The launch week is now over but I'll continue to monitor the game for issues and start work on that larger update. If you run into any bugs or have any questions, feel free to post here in the discussions or contact me on Twitter! Enjoy the update :)
-Matt