Pawnslaught VR Chess

Pawnslaught is like a live chess match at a Renaissance Fair... if the players were armed with real weapons and had a knack for slapstick combat.

The gameplay itself feels as if you're in a tower, peering down at your live chess army through binoculars, and directing their actions with a laser pointer. Aim & focus on the piece you want to move, press & release the trigger or button, aim & focus on the space where you want to move it, press & release the trigger again, and watch the fun.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Pawnslaught requires a "Cardboard" type viewer, and supports several forms of input including capacitive triggers (second-generation viewers), magnetic triggers (first-generation viewers, see note below), most standard Bluetooth gamepads, and any normal USB gamepad that can be connected through an OTG adapter (tested with a Logitech F310). Mouse buttons should be usable for triggering as well.


Other notes:

* When you select a piece to move, squares that are legal moves for a piece of the selected type turn green. HOWEVER, when your King is in check, the chess engine will refuse to allow any move that doesn't get your King OUT of check. If you try, your piece will drop back to its original square, and the refused target square will no longer be selectable (or turn green) for the remainder of your turn.


Special notes about magnetic triggers:

* Magnetic trigger control is disabled by default.

* To ENABLE magnetic trigger control, look ahead & up (to see the preferences panel), aim at the "Enable magnetic trigger" checkbox, and trigger it with the magnetic trigger (yes, it's ALWAYS enabled for that checkbox, regardless of whether it's enabled for anything else, so there's no "catch-22").

* If you're unable to select the box using the magnetic trigger, try the steps below... but remember, magnetic triggering is ALWAYS slightly flaky at best.

* Google officially deprecated magnetic triggers a while ago, and officially eliminated support for them by the GoogleVR library last year. We wrote our own library to re-implement support for them because we're stubborn, but compatibility with specific phones & viewers is VERY hit or miss.

* Your phone MUST have a real gyroscope sensor. An emulated ("integrated") gyro sensor won't work.

* If you're having problems with magnetic triggering, try rotating the phone 180 degrees inside the viewer. Depending upon where the magnet is on your viewer and where the sensor is located in your phone, this might make a BIG difference.

* If the trigger works, but only intermittently, try facing in a different compass direction (ie, if you were facing north or south, try facing east or west). This is unlikely to make a difference if it's not working at all, but might make a difference if it's working POORLY.

* Try to keep the phone motionless while pressing and releasing the trigger, try to press the trigger fully, and complete the entire press-and-release sequence within one second. The best gesture we've found is to quickly and lightly depress the trigger, then allow it to snap back on its own.

* The game does NOT support "look at something until the timer runs out" gaze triggering. Timed gaze triggers might be OK for a "pass the headset around" casual demo you might look at once or twice, but in our experience, having to constantly be mindful about what you're looking at is simply INTOLERABLE in a game that requires distraction-free concentration.