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ChessV
. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Unfortunately, ChessV doesn't work well on my computer. After my first move, the spaces and pieces all turn the same color, rendering them invisible. I have 256 MB of RAM and a Pentium III.
📝Greg Strong wrote on Tue, Oct 5, 2004 04:25 AM UTC:Roberto: I have found a couple of bugs in the function that decides when the King is in check (the problem responsible for the Kings being captured.) I will e-mail you a new program file shortly ... There could still be additional bugs with this, though ... Check-detection in Ultima is *really* ugly! But when these problems are solved, I bet it will immediately play a much smarter game. Fergus: Ick! I have heard a similar report from a Windows 98 user. I assume you are using Windows 95/98/ME ... Which is not to say that the problem is with your OS, and not with my program; it's just that this problem is extra-tricky for me to solve... The new versions of Microsoft Developer Studio do not run on Win 95/98/ME at all, which means that I cannot use the debugger to help me track this problem. Still, I need to come up with some way to find and fix this. And, if you are running Windows 2000/XP, then my problems are even worse than I thought :)
Yes, I did an mental exercise and I think you are right about the difficulties to write the code about when the King is in Check. One possible solution is changing the objective of the game to the capture-the-King rule, as in Zillions. Chess V is a relatively good player in open positions, because the program can calculate many tactical moves, it is not easy for a human do it in a good manner in this game, due the great mobility of pieces and combinations. The program is less abile in closed positions, because it does not understand well positional concepts, in fact, it is not designed using positional evaluation functions, but I agree with Greg, the program should be smarter if the Check condition detection is well solved, because part of the responsability of the bad play in some instances is the incorrect evaluation of the King vulnerability.
📝Greg Strong wrote on Tue, Oct 5, 2004 10:49 PM UTC:<p>Ok, I think I have got all the Ultima problems taken care of.</p>
<p>Roberto, (and anyone else who's interested,) you can download the updated program file <a href='http://gregstrong.com/ChessV.exe'>here</a>. Just save this file on top of the old copy, and all should be well. I expect it will play much better now.</p>
Uff!, what improvements!. Greg, I have played my first test game, and Chess V won, playing very, very well. I have not used a lot of thinking time for my part (computer: 10 sec. per move in Pentium IV 2.1 Ghz.), but I think I played well too. I can say you that Chess V is now a very good contendor, at least for me, the problems have been fixed, and ChessV has now much more power. At this moment, I´m playing the second test, I have used the 'take-back-last-move' trick three times, after clear blunders or weak moves made by my part (well, it is a test game, so taking back last move a few times is permissed), Chess V mantains slight material advantage, but positional advantage is mine (this was my strategy, playing a closed game and taking relative positional advantages). I´m going to play the end thinking carefully each move, because I think I can win, but it seems it is not going to be easy. Once finished (I suppose tomorrow, the game can be very extense), I´ll send to you the saved game.
With the help of my son and a friend, we finished the fever caused by the fifth test game with a victory over Chess V after 6 titanic hours of a very disputed game to complete near 85 moves (we played White, and Chess V used 10 sec. per move in Pentium IV, 2.1 GHz.). The program played really well, it attacked and defended strongly, but this game is very instructive, it puts on the carpet the way of taking positional advantages in this kind of closed positions, and shows why this is a game which sometimes favours defense over attack. See and enjoy it!: Ultima f2f4 g7g5 e1g3 a7a4 h2h5 b7b5 g3g4 c7c4 g1h2 h8c3 e2e3 d7a7 g4g3 d8d4 e3f3 f7f6 h2g1 d4e4 !c2 e4g6 c1c2 g6f7 d1c1 h7h3 g1h2 g8h8 g3h4 c8g4 h4h7 f8h6 h2g3 g4h3 g3h2 h6h4 f4e4 f7d5 h1g1 d5b7 g1e3 h3h1 e3d4 b8g3 f1d1 g3e3 d4b4 h4d4 a2a3 e8d8 b4b3 h1h4 g2g1 h8g7 b2a2 b7d5 c2c3 e3e6 a1b2 d5g2 c3g3 g7g8 b1c2 d4d6 g3g7 g8g3 d1f1 e6e5 a2a1 a8g2 c2h2 h4h1 b2h2 a4h4 f1h3 e5c3 c1d1 d6d5 d1e1 f6h6 e1f1 d8c8 f1g2 d5f3 g2h1 h4f4 b3d1 h6e6 d1f1 e6e4 h2g2 f4h4 h1h2 c3e5 g1h1 b5b4 h2g1 e4e2 g1f2 e5f4 h1h2 f4e4 f2g3 e2f2 g3f2 e4b1 f1d3 b1g6 g2a8 c8d8 h3e3 g6h6 e3e5 h4f4 h2h1 h6a6 f2f3 a6a5 e5g7 a5a2 f3g4 f4e4 g4h5 e7d7 h5g6 d7d6 g7f8 e4f4 g6f6 a2e6 f6g7 e6a2 g7g8 a2a3 f8f7 a3a2 a8b7 d6d7 b7c6 b4c4 g8f8 c4b4 f7e8 d8c8 c6b6 c8b8 e8d8 a2c2 f8e8 d7d5 e8d7 f4f8 d7e8 f8f3 b6b5 d5c5 b5d3 f3f4 d3b3 f4e4 a1a5 c5d5 d8b6 d5d1 e8d7 b8a8 d7c7 a7b7 a5a7 !c2 b6b7
Greg, I tried to load the 5th. test ULTIMA game, saved file, and I found an illegal move saved (the saved game couldn´t be loaded, by this reason), number 9, it shows !c2, and the same move is saved as the last move of the game. You can see it in the list of moves I sent as a comment on the game, or I can send you the saved file, as you prefer. I don´t remeber what move I made as 9th., but it was surely legal, and I can´t understand what !c2 means. As for the program, I finished the 6th. test game yesterday night, and I Chess V won. It is now strong enough, I think, I used the 'take-back' facility a lot of times, but the program beated me playing with great force. Would you tell me what changes have you made in the program?. Excellent improvements!
📝Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Oct 8, 2004 05:13 PM UTC:Yes, I see the bug you mention. The move !c2 is a suicide move (immobilized piece on c2 kills itself.) Apparently, it is not reading the sucide moves back in correctly. I will post a fix shortly. About your question, what changes I made ... I fixed several bugs ... Not just the check-testing bug, which allowed the King to get captured, but I also found a couple of others where things were not being evaluated correctly. The program now functions (hopefully) exactly acording to the evaluation function previously described. In other words, the bad play you experienced was entirely caused by bugs. Thank you for testing, and reporting these problems! Greg
📝Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Oct 9, 2004 06:19 PM UTC:<p>I have posted an update which corrects the load-game-with-suicide-move problem. This update also re-activates the Transposition Table, a feature which speeds things up considerably, which I disabled long ago due to a bug. I pretty sure I've got that fixed now, too, so it should now be about 25% faster at all games. On the other hand, if you have less than 128 Megs ram, it's not likely to function well at all. You can download the updated executable here:</p>
<p><a href='http://gregstrong.com/ChessV.exe'>http://gregstrong.com/ChessV.exe</a></p>
<p>I will post a full update to sourceforge soon, with the version number 0.71. The disappearing board problem on Win 95/98/ME won't be fixed in this version, though, but hopefully the next; still trying to get a handle on that one ...</p>
Good job! I used ChessV to produce nice pictures for Wikipedia article on Capablanca Chess, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capablanca_Chess. Wish List: * Would be nice if settings made in 'Options / Board and Pieces...' would be kept between program starts. * I use 800x600 screen resolution and games with 10x10 board, e.g. Grand Chess doesn't fit on my screen. Would be nice if the board is scaled automatically when window size changes, like in Arena. * Pieces are flashing when you make a move. This can be fixed e.g. by using double-buffering technique. * Can we have Three Checks Chess in ChessV (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Checks_Chess)? Zillions plays it quite pure. Thank you for development of this nice program!
📝Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Oct 15, 2004 09:51 PM UTC:<p>Thanks for the feedback! Regarding your requests:
<blockquote>Would be nice if settings made in 'Options / Board and Pieces...' would be kept between program starts.</blockquote>
Actually, it should do that already. Be aware that those settings are game-by-game; in other words, if you change settings in one game or variant it should be saved, but only for that variant. There is currently no way to change these settings for all games. If your settings are not even being stored for a specific game then I will need to look into that; if this is the case, please let me know what OS you are running.
<blockquote>I use 800x600 screen resolution and games with 10x10 board, e.g. Grand Chess doesn't fit on my screen. Would be nice if the board is scaled automatically when window size changes, like in Arena.</blockquote>
Yes, this is a problem. I have a partial solution underway that will be available in the next release. I am creating a 'small' piece set for use with larger games and/or smaller monitors. These new icons I am creating are derived from the Alfaerie set, but not by reduction - that leads to blurry or poor-looking images; I am tweaking these pixel-by-pixel. As for zooming the board, since the pieces are bitmaps, any scaling would probably look rather bad.
<blockquote>Pieces are flashing when you make a move. This can be fixed e.g. by using double-buffering technique.</blockquote>
Yes, this is a known problem, and your proposed solution is exactly what is needed. At present the problem isn't too bad with a fast video-card and modern video driver (on my computer it isn't even visible) but still needs to be fixed. Sadly, graphics program isn't something I know much about ... In the meantime, please make sure you have the latest video driver for your video card. This can make a big difference.
<blockquote>Can we have Three Checks Chess in ChessV?</blockquote>
Ok. This is simple, so it will be in the next version.</p>
Yes, now I noticed that color settings are stored per specific game type. I think, it would be nice to have possibility to apply the color changes to all game types (may be with an option to apply only to one game type as now). By the way are there any reason to restrict the number of available colors to 48? With more available colors it is easier to find a nicer color scheme. I also found a bug in Bird's Chess. ChessV castled out-of-check in position after: d2d4 f7f6 i1h3 g7g5 g2g3 g5g4 h3i1 h8g7 f2f3 i8h6 f3g4 h6g4 h1f3 e8g6 i1h3 d7d6 e2e4 c8d7 e1e2 e7e5 d4d5 f6f5 b1c3 h7h6 h3f2 g8j5 f3g2 j5i6 f2g4 i6g4 g2f3 g4f6 c1d2 g6f7 d1f2 j8g8 f1c1 f5e4 f3e4 j7j5 h2h3 b8a6 g1j4 a6c5 e4g2 i7i5 j4i3 f6i3 f2f7 d8f7 j2i3 g7f6 j1j5 g8g3 d1f1 c7c6 j5j8 ChessV played 0-0-0 here, despite King being in check by rook on j8.
📝Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Oct 16, 2004 02:58 PM UTC:There is no good reason for limiting the colors; I just haven't gotten around to adding the color-picker dialog yet. There are several reasons why it would be problematic to make global piece & color settings. For one thing, not all piece sets are supported by all games. Right now only the Standard set supports all, but the Abstract set is pretty close. Also, although right now all boards are 2-colors, the boards for some games will be 3 or 4 colors. Finally, I wanted to be able to provide default settings for games, like Chaturanga, for example, always appears for the first time on an uncheckered board with the Old World pieces. If you could provide global settings, then it wouldn't appear right by default - it would have checkered squares. Thanks for the bug report! Someone had reported this on sourceforge, but didn't provide me with an example, so I couldn't reproduce it. Now it should be easy to track down ...
📝Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Nov 8, 2004 02:53 AM UTC:<h3>ChessV 0.7.1 released</h3>
<p>This is mostly a maintenance release, and fixes numerous bugs. The castling-while-in-Check problem is solved. The Win 95/98/ME disappearing board problem should be dramatically improved, if not completely fixed (I don't have a machine with which to test this at the moment.) Also, another major bug was fixed that was slowing down performance substantially, probably 30-40%.</p>
<p>Added support for two new graphics sets: a 'small' set that I made from the Alfaerie set for use with large-board games on low-resolution monitors, and Fergus Duniho's <a href='/graphics.dir/motif/index.html'>motif set</a>.</p>
<p>Added support for <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Checks_Chess'>Three Checks Chess</a>.</p>
<p>To download, please visit the <a href='http://sourceforge.net/projects/chessv'>project's home on sourceforge.net</a>.</p>
I just tried it, and the board went blank after my second move of Fischer Random Chess. It turned black this time instead of white. I did not bother to change the piece set from Alfaerie.
📝Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Nov 8, 2004 09:53 PM UTC:Gee, that is really disappointing. Still disappearing after 2 moves... Oh well, thanks for testing it. I will have to take more radical action (as soon as I figure out what that might be.)
Inverted Rook is missing in the small pieces set
📝Greg Strong wrote on Tue, Nov 9, 2004 01:20 AM UTC:<p>Whoops! Thanks for pointing that out ...
To fix it, save the following two images into the 'ChessV/images/small' directory, and restart ChessV. It will be corrected in the next version, of course.<p>
<p><a href='http://gregstrong.com/WRookInv.bmp'>WRookInv.bmp</a><br>
<a href='http://gregstrong.com/BRookInv.bmp'>BRookInv.bmp</a></p>
Excellent program! Please do not keep it a secret. Share it with the world by making it available thru more than one hot spot. I certainly am not criticizing 'Source Forge' but the most popular download spot in the world for games by far is: WinSite http://www.winsite.com/ Establish an account and upload to the 'Fun & Games' category, 'Chess Games' sub-category. I predict that a free, fully-functional, incisive AI program (with a good selection of games) like yours will soon draw thousands of downloads. Rest assured, this is NOT spam- just a well-intentioned recommendation.
📝Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Dec 4, 2004 12:04 AM UTC:Thank you, Robert. I will surely take your advice, but I want to wait until I get to version 1.0 (which will happen when I get the last remaining bugs out.) At present, ChessV has serious problems under Windows 95/98/ME... I should have a new version out in January.
Threaded MS Windows operating systems are the problem, not your program. Whereas NT versions of MS Windows have been the default offerring for consumers since 2000, I think you are being overly-conscientious in this case. If someone complains about ChessV's installation or performance under MS Win 95, for instance, just tell them to get a decent, modern operating system.
📝Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Dec 4, 2004 06:55 PM UTC:Oh, no. It is definately a problem with ChessV. And even if it wasn't, I would not tell anyone to 'get a decent, modern operating system.'
GM Gregory Topov wrote on Wed, Dec 8, 2004 04:50 AM UTC:Sounds like great software...but the website gregstrong.com isn't working for me - is it down right now? I look forward to checking out this great sounding program.
Yes, it is a great software, I have tried it. To Gregory Topov: Chess V runs well in Windows XP, but it has some troubles under other Windows versions. The author (named Greg too) gives us this adress to download the program: http://sourceforge.net/projects/chessv
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