ChessV 2.1 Released

[Greg Strong]

I have released a significant update to my universal chess engine/GUI. Please see the ChessV website.

Per the request of Ferdinand Mosca, support for Makruk has been added, although the complex endgame counting rules are not yet implemented.

Per the request of Jon Fredrik Asvang, I have added support for a variant that is like Two Kings/Wild9 but fixes two of the critical problems with that game. It is called Relative Royalty Chess and differs from Wild9 in two ways: (1) in determining which king is royal, and both are on the same file, the royal king is the one closest to THAT PLAYER'S first rank, and (2) the king on e1/e8 can still castle even after the king on f1/f8 has moved so that king-side castling is possible.

The engine AI is now much stronger. It is now even stronger than the old C++ versions of ChessV.

A ton of bugs have been fixed. Thanks to Aurelian Florea for spending a significant amount of time testing and reporting issues! Hopefully all of the existing bugs have been fixed.

Several important new features have been added:

* Review Mode - it is now possible to enter Review Mode and step back and forth through any game whether finished or still in progress

* Edit Position FEN - it is now possible to view the FEN of the current position, as well as set up a new position by providing an FEN

* Multi-PV Analysis - it is now possible to analyze a position to find multiple best moves with their associated evaluations

* Crash Reporting - any program crash should now provide an option to save a log file which will help me to identify and fix the issue

Other new games implemented:

* Chess and a Half
* Modern Shatranj
* Roman Chess
* TenCubed Chess
* Hannibal Chess
* Compound Courier Custom Chess

Finally, the Windows installer now includes SjaakII in addition to Fairy-Max.

If you have version 2.0 installed, it is probably best you do an uninstall of that first. Download version 2.1 here. Please let me know if you encounter any problems.

[Graham Banks]

Hi Gregory,

is it possible to use the engine under other GUIs?

Graham.

[Greg Strong]

Hi Gregory,

is it possible to use the engine under other GUIs?

Graham.

Sorry, not at this time. It's something I plan to work on, though. Wasn't a priority for me before because the AI was weak, but now that the strength has been greatly improved there is more of a purpose. The AI logic is pretty well segregated so this should not be too hard to do. But for the moment the best you can do is use ChessV GUI to play it against other XBoard engines.

Thanks for your interest!

Greg

[Ferdy]

I have released a significant update to my universal chess engine/GUI. Please see the ChessV website.

Per the request of Ferdinand Mosca, support for Makruk has been added, although the complex endgame counting rules are not yet implemented.

Per the request of Jon Fredrik Asvang, I have added support for a variant that is like Two Kings/Wild9 but fixes two of the critical problems with that game. It is called Relative Royalty Chess and differs from Wild9 in two ways: (1) in determining which king is royal, and both are on the same file, the royal king is the one closest to THAT PLAYER'S first rank, and (2) the king on e1/e8 can still castle even after the king on f1/f8 has moved so that king-side castling is possible.

The engine AI is now much stronger. It is now even stronger than the old C++ versions of ChessV.

A ton of bugs have been fixed. Thanks to Aurelian Florea for spending a significant amount of time testing and reporting issues! Hopefully all of the existing bugs have been fixed.

Several important new features have been added:

* Review Mode - it is now possible to enter Review Mode and step back and forth through any game whether finished or still in progress

* Edit Position FEN - it is now possible to view the FEN of the current position, as well as set up a new position by providing an FEN

* Multi-PV Analysis - it is now possible to analyze a position to find multiple best moves with their associated evaluations

* Crash Reporting - any program crash should now provide an option to save a log file which will help me to identify and fix the issue

Other new games implemented:

* Chess and a Half
* Modern Shatranj
* Roman Chess
* TenCubed Chess
* Hannibal Chess
* Compound Courier Custom Chess

Finally, the Windows installer now includes SjaakII in addition to Fairy-Max.

If you have version 2.0 installed, it is probably best you do an uninstall of that first. Download version 2.1 here. Please let me know if you encounter any problems.

Thanks for the new release, will try this out later.