Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

This excellent program is growing fast, I have tested Grand Chess and Chess
with Ultima and Rococo pieces, 10 seconds of time for the computer
(Advancer Chess, Long Leaper Chess) yesterday night, and I enjoyed it a
lot. I have lost my two Chess-With-Ultima games, but I won in my
Grand-Chess game, in a very nice and difficult end of game.
Congratulations, Gregory!, this is a great program!. I want to see how it
plays Ultima, when ready, I expect soon!. For a while, it plays
Chess-with-Ultima and Rococo pieces very well, at least for me, perhaps
I´m not very strong playing these variants, the computer won without great
effort, regardless I used the 'take-back' trick a few times, after
clearly weak moves I made. This afternoon I am going to test some other
new variant added. I like ChessV !.

Thank you, Robert.  

Actually, there is something that you (and others) can do to help.  If you
beat it (as you did in Grand Chess), and if it's obvious how you did it,
that information could be helpful to me.  It should be possible to tweak
the evaluation function to fix strategical weaknesses, provided we can
identify those weaknesses.  A save-game file could be helpful to me, too.

Of course, I realise that often a win is achieved by staying slightly
ahead throughout the game, and not by exploiting some weakness, but if you
(or anyone else) does identify some specific weakness, I would like to
know about it!  In any event, if anyone beats ChessV in a game in which it
is able to calculate to a reasonable depth (depending on time and speed of
your computer), I would appreciate it if you could e-mail the save-game
file to me!

Thank you for your feedback, and I sincerely do appreciate it.  May I ask
which game you were playing?  ChessV is better at some games than others. 
It would also help me if you could tell me which operating system you use. 
I seem to have problems with Windows 98/ME that I don't have with 2000/XP.
 Also, save-game files of any game in which you win are helpful.

Thanks again!  If you are having problems with bugs, please wait for a
couple of new versions.  I am about to stop adding new games, and
concentrating on fixing all bugs.  When I feel it is a stable as possible,
I will release version 1.0

Sorry for the delay, Roberto, I've been distracted by a couple of things
...  I will have version 0.7, Ultima-enabled, posted either late this
evening, or tomorrow.  Of course, I'll make a post here when it's up.

Thanks for your continued interest!

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.

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!

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

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!

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.

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 ...