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ChessV. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Alexander Krutikov wrote on Sun, Jan 4, 2009 05:33 PM UTC:
The site's down again.

none wrote on Tue, Feb 17, 2009 01:16 PM UTC:
Site is still down

Sam Trenholme wrote on Sat, Aug 29, 2009 05:38 PM UTC:

So this program can be downloaded again, I've taken the last full release of the program and made it available on my site:

http://www.samiam.org/chessv/

📝Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Sep 28, 2009 10:39 PM UTC:

Version 0.9.4 Released

This version fixes a nasty bug that was introduced a couple version ago that resulted in poor play and the computer moving pieces for the wrong side. A few other minor speed/evaluation ehancements have also been added, so this should be the strongest version to date.

Also, thanks to H. G. Muller, support for the WinBoard protocol has been added, making it much easier to pit ChessV against other engines.

There is no installation program; just unzip and run.

http://www.samiam.org/chessv/


Joe Joyce wrote on Mon, Sep 28, 2009 11:51 PM UTC:
Congratulations, and thank you! It's great to have you back. [yet again ;-)]

Nicholas Wolff wrote on Tue, Sep 29, 2009 04:49 AM UTC:
Is it supported on Mac? I don't have a window's machine anymore...

Sam Trenholme wrote on Tue, Sep 29, 2009 02:06 PM UTC:
Unfortunately, ChessV uses some C++ forms that GCC refuses to compile, so porting this to other architectures and systems would be quite difficult.

I believe his next chess engine (which can already play FIDE chess) does not have this issue.


📝Greg Strong wrote on Tue, Sep 29, 2009 10:48 PM UTC:
Sam's right, it would be difficult to recompile, but it uses only the most basic of Windows API functions, so if the Mac has any kind of windows binary emulation at all it should run; like WINE on Linux... Surely the Mac must have something similar. Or, if all else fails, you can always run Windows itself with VMWare Fusion :)

Vitya Makov wrote on Fri, Oct 2, 2009 03:01 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Hi Greg! How are you?

It's a very good program! 

I can help you with CWDA openings. 
Also I've invented new CWDA Army based on the king. It's called Mighty Men. If you like I'll tell you moves of pieces. Here you can see game playing: 
http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game=FIDE+vs.+Man&log=judgmentality-cetina.carlosr-2009-193-681

📝Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Oct 2, 2009 10:51 PM UTC:
Doing well, thanks!  How are you?

Sorry, been away for a while.  I bounce in and out ...

If you'd like to add lines to the CWDA opening book, I'd be happy to incorporate them in the next release.  I'd also be happy to incorporate your Mighty Men army if there's nothing that makes it technically difficult.  Can you describe the army?

Vitya Makov wrote on Sat, Oct 3, 2009 11:14 AM UTC:
I'm well. Invented two original chessvariants (Maorider Chess and Bungalow Shatranj) and some 'light' variants (not posted yet): Rookaba Shatranj, Rooks Chess.

Mighty Men:

Man (b,g lines) moves like a king (ferz + wazir).
Benz (c,f lines) moves like a bishop forward or like a
rook backward.
Pioneer (a,h lines) moves like a man or like a rook
forward or backward.
Cyborg (d line) moves like wazir, dabbaba, knight or alfil.
IT DOESN'T
MOVE LIKE FERZ.

Ok. I'll work on different openings for different armies. I'll post openings here.

Yu Ren Dong wrote on Sat, Oct 3, 2009 01:38 PM UTC:

H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Oct 4, 2009 07:32 PM UTC:
Sam, your idea of having WinBoard force moves into an engine that refuses them by loading the engine with the position after the move works really great. I implemented in WinBoard now, under control of the option -forceIllegalMoves. In combenation with -testLegality false, this now allows me to completely autmatically play a Schoolbook-Chess match between ChessV and Fairy-Max. Now and then (about 10% of the games ChessV plays a non-standard castling, which then shows up in the PGN as Kf1h1 or Kf1b1, and Fairy-Max is simply restarted. It was a bit of a pain to implement it, because initially the engine will still think the opposite side is to move, and the WinBoard-protocol edit command (which Fairy-Max uses) does not alter that, and the commands that do are deprecated, so the side-to-move has to be flipped by playng a dummy move. But that works smoothly now.

In reaction to some earlier remark you made: there was no reason for hacking WinBoard to suppress the popup after a match: there is a command-line option that controls it (-popupExitMessage false/true), which is remembered in the WinBoard settings file. I use PSWBTM to play the match, in stead of the scripts you use, and this uses that option automaticaly.

Sam Trenholme wrote on Mon, Oct 5, 2009 03:51 PM UTC:
H.G. Muller: I would be very interested in downloading a patch or tarball (.tar.bz2 or .tar.gz file) with your changes to Winboard allowing it to setup the pieces again should one side not recognize a legal move.

I could not find the download on your web page nor in the Winboard forum.

This will make Schoolbook 2010 a lot easier to implement.


Tony Quintanilla wrote on Tue, Oct 20, 2009 03:05 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I just uploaded and played the new version. Works great!

Garth Wallace wrote on Sun, Dec 20, 2009 03:58 AM UTC:
The link currently leads to a domain squatter.

Sam Trenholme wrote on Sun, Dec 20, 2009 09:09 AM UTC:
Someone is going to have to fix the link on this page. In the meantime, again, it’s here:

http://samiam.org/chessv


📝Greg Strong wrote on Sun, Nov 13, 2016 03:09 AM UTC:

ChessV 0.95 Released

After many years, I am releasing an updated version of ChessV.  The previous version, 0.94 introduced a problem that actually greatly weakened playing strength from version 0.93.  This version corrects that issue and adds other speed enhancements which should make this by far the strongest version.

ChessV can be downloaded from my new domain www.chessv.org. There is no installation program.  Just download the correct version (32-bit or 64-bit), unzip, and run ChessV.exe.

Please note that, as some of you know, there is a new ChessV, version 2.0, rewritten completely from scratch that is forthcoming.  Hopefully I'll be releasing that in the near future too, but that isn't what this is.  This is a new version of the "classic" ChessV.  I don't know if there will be any further releases of the classic version, but since version 0.94 had issues, it didn't seem right to leave that unfixed.

Changes from previous version:

  • Multiple bug fixes, including one that seriously impacted playing strength

  • Addition of Late Move Reductions (LMR), an engine feature that will further enhance playing strength

  • Added support for Enep by Aurelian Florea

  • Fixed a problem with Ralph Betza's Chess with Augmented Knights that I only discovered while trying to use it as a template for Enep.  This has probably been broken for many versions.  Actually, this Betza invention is so obscure, I had to dig pretty deeply to find the chessvariants.com page for it.

  • Updated the implementation of Joe Joyce's Modern Shatranj to reflect the new, simplified promotion rule.  Previous versions actually did support the complex rule, but it required a special class to implement it (I couldn't just use the standard class the other Shatranj variants use.)  This change allowed me to eliminate two files and over 100 lines of source code.  Thanks, Joe, for agreeing to simplify things :)

Please let me know if you have any questions or issues with this version.


H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Nov 13, 2016 09:31 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Great news, and congratulations. It is a really good thing that you took the trouble to fix the bugs that were inadvertantly introduced in 0.94, because that had some interesting new variants not supported by older versions (such as Spartan Chess, and, IIRC, even Xiangqi.) Now you can terminate this ground-breaking project with a polished product.


Joseph DiMuro wrote on Mon, Nov 14, 2016 04:33 AM UTC:

I clicked on the link for the 32-bit version, but I got the 64-bit version instead (which doesn't work on my computer). Am I doing something wrong?

Edit: never mind, I figured it out. Just had to change the URL manually. Got the right file.

📝Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Nov 14, 2016 02:42 PM UTC:

Oops, it was linked to the incorrect file.  Thank you for letting me know, Jospeh.  It's been fixed.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Wed, Nov 16, 2016 05:47 PM UTC:

Thanks, greg for adding Enep!


Aurelian Florea wrote on Wed, Nov 16, 2016 06:15 PM UTC:

Greg,

I just watched an Enep game where the Enep knight has captured with an wazir move, this is not supposed to happen, could you please check?


📝Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Nov 18, 2016 03:55 PM UTC:

You're right, something is definitely wrong with that.  Thanks for letting me know, I'll take a look when I get a chance.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Fri, Nov 18, 2016 04:25 PM UTC:

Thanks!


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