So I was considering making a chess plugin. I was curious if anyone had an opinion on if it'd be worthwhile to pursue and if anyone would have any opinions on feature sets. To create a board, I'd basically have the admin define a square for A1 and specify a size for each square (usually 1-3). Then, the plugin would create 32 NPCs with names matching that of each piece in the correct initial position. Of course one issue with that is the no-custom skin thing (unless you name the NPC with a pre-existing name), but all the alternatives I can think of sorta suck. So any input on that would be useful. Players would then have the ability to create a game if a board is open and sign up for a color. A board could be released by either player (or a mod or admin) and would automatically be released on both players leaving the server (that should likely be a setting). A player once registered on a board would then move by using a command such as /chess e2 e4 which would then cause the NPC to walk to that position, and if a capture, the enemy would go poof or catch on fire or something (is there a way to do custom animations?). The plugin would have logic for detecting illegal moves and would alert the player in such instances. I'd have it message the players on important events such as check, movement, checkmate, etc. I'm not promising I will do this, but I'm considering it. I haven't written for bukkit or hmod before but I've been programming for years including Java and game programming. Anyone have any input on the idea or good relevant references?
Maybe, you could use monster classes for some of the pieces (depending on how they are implemented). In chess, there are 6 pieces per side, so you don't need that many uniqes Maybe, "Evil" King -> Giant Queen -> Skeleton Bishop -> Pigmen Knight -> Spider + skeleton Rook -> Creeper Pawn -> Zombie "Good" Dunno, the passive mobs don't really fit . However, you could go with King -> Human Queen -> Bishop -> Sheep Knight -> Pig Rook -> Cow Pawn -> Chicken Another option would be to pay $10 and a specific NPC name and then you could use a custom skin. You could have the King and Queen with custom skins.
Giant, Spider mounted skeleton, sheep, pig, and cow all wouldn't fit. I'm also not especially thrilled with the idea of paying $240 (it's $20 per account now) for chess pieces ;p I could use Skeleton, Zombie, Creeper, Pigmen, Chickens, and default skin as well as some custom skins which would cut it in half, but without donations, I'm not paying for 6 accounts
You could use 3x3 squares to allow larger units. However, yeah custom skins would have to be dependent on donations. Alternatively, you could have a config for player names white_king=Notch etc. You can view all the current skins using minecraft<dot>net/skin/skin.jsp?user=Notch
That sounds good, I hope someone's going to make this plugin ^^ CHICKENS ARE EVIL! (Sorry, I just felt like saying that because that reminded me of some Minecraft Forum thread )
There's also the issue of the unit being readily identifiable as the piece it represents. How would you know that Notch is the king versus the queen? It is my understanding that the name hovering above the player will be the same as the name used for the skin. Is it possible to override that via just server-side mods? Ideally the skin would be as identifiable as a real chess piece. --- merged: Jan 16, 2011 12:11 PM --- There's also the issue of the unit being readily identifiable as the piece it represents. How would you know that Notch is the king versus the queen? It is my understanding that the name hovering above the player will be the same as the name used for the skin. Is it possible to override that via just server-side mods? Ideally the skin would be as identifiable as a real chess piece. --- merged: Jan 16, 2011 12:11 PM --- There's also the issue of the unit being readily identifiable as the piece it represents. How would you know that Notch is the king versus the queen? It is my understanding that the name hovering above the player will be the same as the name used for the skin. Is it possible to override that via just server-side mods? Ideally the skin would be as identifiable as a real chess piece.
The name above the head has to match the skin name. You can't have "White King" as the name and then have some custom skin. When you send a npc to the client, it looks at the name and then downloads the corresponding skin. If you could use spawn monsters that are under plugin control then I do think my choices would look reasonable. However, it would need bigger squared .
I decided to go ahead with this. I made a thread over at http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/chess.855/ If a mod would prefer to merge the threads, please do so. I don't know what your "style" here is
