2016-06-22 23:40:47

Hi all!

It's been quite some time since I posted anything, but today I'm happy to announce that I've just released a little strategy board game called Jungle.

Jungle (also known as Dou Shou Qi, Jungle Chess or Animal Chess) is a Chinese strategy board game for two players. While the game is easy to learn, it is far from trivial to master. This incarnation of the game contains a basic computer opponent with whom you can practice, and it also features an online lobby where you can find opponents from all over the world. The game currently runs on Windows (Windows XP and above to be exact), with support for other platforms planned based on interest. The game is free, so you can head over to www.blastbay.com and grab it right away.

For the impatient, the direct download link is:
http://blastbay.com/jungle_english_installer.exe

Have fun, and please let me know your thoughts!

Kind regards,

Philip Bennefall

2016-06-23 00:32:42

Hello
thanks for the game Philip
I'll give it a try.
greetings.

sorry my english, is not my native language.

2016-06-23 04:13:38

The game is prety awesome! Shame that I'm terrible at this kind of game. sad Anyway, nice work as always.
Best regards, Haramir.

The true blind is the one who refuses to see.

2016-06-23 05:14:55

Hi all,

Just a quick note to say that I found a problem with the underscore character where it did not translate the filename properly, causing the game to report a missing audio file. Please redownload the game again and the problem should go away. Sorry for the trouble!

Kind regards,

Philip Bennefall

2016-06-23 08:21:02

Hi Philip!
Nice job! Me and a friend had a funny first try last night!
I got two or three little things to mention:
First: Could you maybe add the keys 1 to 8 for selecting the animals? We were not completely sure who is stronger than another. For example:
1: rat
2: cat
3: dog
6: tiger
7: Lion
8: elefant
Oh, and a key for checking whos turn it is would also be very usefull.
Second: OK, this is realy realy nothing against you! But could you add an option to use the screenreaders-speech for the output? I am not a big fan of selfvoicing. But you did a nice job! Screenreaders are faster to use.
Let me say again. Realy nice little game and nice job!

2016-06-23 13:50:51

While I do like the game, I'm confused, why is the dog more powerful than the wolf? aren't wolves suppose to be stronger than dogs?

The rat is explained for the elephant, the dog thing confuses me.

I took a look on wikipedia, if you can call that thing accurate, they have the wolf listed before the dog.

It does make sense for the wolf to be more powerful than the dog.

Maybe I'm just confused.

I do like the game.

At the time of this post, I don't do too badly against the computer set to good.

I lose, but only just.

It'll be interesting to play online, not enough people have it yet for me to test that feature.

2016-06-23 14:06:29

I tried this last night and managed to win against the computer on beginner after some shenanigans.
I agree with Firefly that there needs to be a way to know animal weaknesses since it's not always clear which is weak to what, however I'd suggest myself simply having an option for the rank of the peace to be spoken when looking at it, eg "rat 1" or "elephant 8" making this a toggle a player could turn it off when she/he was used to the way things worked and it provided too much information.

I'm personally very happy with self voicing, indeed it's nice to not have to listen to realspeak daniel for once since I have him both as my sapi voice and on Ios, though i do wish there were a few more sounds in the game especially when peaces were taken or when you win or lose, though manifestly that's just an aesthetic touch.

When I looked the game up on wikipedia though, it did state an optional rule to allow the dog to enter the water to capture the rat.
That might be a nice edition since otherwise I don't actually see how one player could win by taking all of his/her opponent's pieces since the opponent could just park the rat in the water, and as wikipedia said it's reasonable that a dog would be able to swim (well about as reasonable as a rat eating an elephant's brain anyway).

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2016-06-23 14:26:15

Hi Philip I am glad that you are back to audiogame development.
I hope that you will aso finish a work on perilous heart.

2016-06-23 14:35:00

Hi,
this game seems really nice, I'll certainly try to get into it even though I'm not that good with strategy games in general.
I have a question though. In the games folder there is a whole folder with quite a lot of sounds, but I don't hear any sounds while playing except for the game voice. Is this as it should be or is something wrong with my installation?
If this is indeed the way it should be, I also think a few sounds for moving or capturing peaces would be nice. smile
Thanks and best regards
Tikki

2016-06-23 15:07:26

This is such a fun game. Especially the local mutiplayer so I can play it against my younger brother. He's no chessmaster but he could surely kick my ass.

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2016-06-23 15:50:49

Hi guys,

Regarding the dog and the wolf, I agree that it is a bit odd. Most of the rule set is from:
http://liacs.leidenuniv.nl/~visjk/doushouqi/about.html
Where the wolf is said to be weaker than the dog. Perhaps it's the hound of the Baskervilles?

Regarding the hotkeys, certainly I'll add them. I'll have a think about how best to indicate how strong the pieces are in relation to one another.

About the self voicing aspect, I thought about doing screen reader output but given that I am potentially going to make this available on other platforms, prerecorded speech was just easier to get up and running with. To be clear, this game is coded in C++ rather than BGT and it should build on pretty much any modern OS, but this also means that I don't want to tie myself too closely to the specific features of a given platform. It's not set in stone, but at the moment I think I will stick with the prerecorded speech files.

Regarding the sounds, the files in the sounds subdirectory are indeed all the sound files that are used in the game. As a matter of fact I did sit down and dig up sounds for all the individual animals as well as piece movement sounds, but I found them to be annoying so I left them out for now. However, that's not to say that they won't make an appearance if people think they would add to the game. But speaking for myself, I have to be incredibly focused if I want to avoid getting eaten so that any kind of interruptions just to play sound effects would be a distraction.

Thanks guys for all the comments; keep them coming!

Kind regards,

Philip Bennefall

2016-06-23 18:37:50

Philip,
Thanks for the new game!
One way the dog is better than a wolf could be in intelligence.
Neanderthals were stronger than us but we were smarter.

2016-06-23 18:41:59

Or maybe the dog is a husky and the wolf is a defenceless pup.
Btw, I'd love the sounds actually used in the game. You could include a mute switch for them.

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2016-06-23 19:25:02

@dark the objective isn't to capture the opponent's pieces, it's just to weaken the defenses of the den enough that you can get in there, so you basically have to force your oppoent to direct pieces away from the den and stuff.

I like to sleep, Sleep is good,
This is how I do it: Lie on a nice warm cozy bed, and dream dreams about how to rule the world!
Follow @TheGreatAthlon5 on twitter for humorous facts and game updates!
If you like my posts, thumb me up!

2016-06-23 20:07:58

how do you move the pieces? I have tried to hover over a piece and press enter, and the spacebar nothing happends.....I checked out the rules on wiki, and it sounds challenging which equals my type of game

can i get a peace double harmony burger? no chaos

2016-06-23 20:09:45

@smoothgunner - The accompanying manual gives you all the information, including keystrokes as well as the particular set of rules used by this incarnation of the game.

Kind regards,

Philip Bennefall

2016-06-23 21:42:38

yeah I figured it did, just one problem, when I click it, this stupid windows 10 redirects me to Microsoft edge which jaws doesn't read at all. would you happen to have the manual in a wordpad format?

can i get a peace double harmony burger? no chaos

2016-06-23 21:52:14

Hi Philip,

Great game, I really enjoy it. I would like there to be sound effects for the animals moving and stuff, but it's up to you if you want to add them.
Again, great work!

"I've learned that this life's not just a game, just a line, between the pleasures and the pain." - Aaron Lewis

2016-06-23 23:21:26

Hello,
smoothgunner, open internet explorer and press ctrl+o and then find the html file of the manual. That will open it in internet explorer.

I post sounds I record to freesound. Click here to visit my freesound page
I usually post game recordings to anyaudio. Click here to visit my anyaudio page

2016-06-23 23:46:18

Hi Philip. I got two other sugestions:
First, maybe you could add a little chatt window? It feels a little bit rude to play against someone without the posibility to say hello or maybe explain something.
Second: I think an option to observe games of other players would be nice!
It is realy a nice little game!

2016-06-24 00:04:09

thankyou, I was able to access the manual. love the game. as suggested above, more sound effects/music please with the feature to toggle them on and off. and a chat feature for playing online. other than that, good job

can i get a peace double harmony burger? no chaos

2016-06-24 06:37:57

@Keyisful, I'm quite  aware the objective of the game is to get one of your pieces into the opponent's den, however since the option does also exist to take all your opponent's pieces as a winning stratogy, it'd be nice if the dog rule was an optional extra to make this a little more of a possible outcome and also mean you needed to protect the rat a little more when in water.
It's not crytical, but it could provide a strategical difference.

On the matter of sounds, I'd suggest perhaps having a toggle option for them, say shift s, that way players could hear them or not as desired.

Btw, weerdly enough Wikipedia actually lists the wolf as outranking the dog, hence why the dog is the only one to enter the water.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Chess

It's also got the chinese names of the pieces and squares listed, which i'd be interested to hear pronounced, since it'd be nice to know a little of the game's history.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2016-06-24 07:08:37

This is really fun! I'd love to play online sometime. anyone who wants to play online is welcome to add me to skype.

skype name: techluver
Feel free to add me.

2016-06-24 11:35:14

Philip,
I've really enjoyed playing the Jungle game.
I found it sluggish with JAWS running so I took it out of memory and the
game then ran great.
I played against the computer and found it smart enough to block my rat
attacking the enemy elephant with the enemy cat.
I would like to at least hear the attacking animal sound such as a cat sound when it
captures a rat.

2016-06-24 17:00:42

I will be on all day if anyone wants to play. my skype email is [email protected] my skype name is neko smoov, look me up by email, because I think I have multiple accounts with the same name that I can't delete lol

can i get a peace double harmony burger? no chaos