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Hey, Greg, thanks a lot! Nice program, and thanks for putting yet another shatranj variant in there; I appreciate it greatly.
After being unable to get ChessV to work on my computer with about 90 minutes of work between the two of us, my son said it could be machine-specific, so I asked him to try it on his machine, and it worked fine - lol! He hates chess.  I'm going to try again after I kick my box around the den a couple times.

Hea Joe!

What is the situation with your box?  What OS is it running?  What happens when you try to run ChessV?

Hi, Greg.

I'm running a genuine Piece O'Crap computer, with WinXP. It's been
giving me trouble for a while now. I booted and re-booted it; no joy.
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ 1.67 GHz 512 Meg RAM
XP Home Edition V2002 Service Pack 2
When it boots, it tells me A7V8X-X 

By the way, did you get my email? I think I sent it to an old address.

Enjoy,
Joe

Looking at the program very quickly, it looks like not too many new variants have been added to the game. What has been added, under the hood, is support for a lot more piece types, especially in the 8x10 and 8x12 boards.

For example, it is now possible to make a preset that plays the 'Crowned' pieces variant I proposed a couple of months ago. It is also possible to play with the 'Sage' (Camel + Bishop) and 'Tower' (Camel + Knight) pieces on the 8x10 and 8x12 board (As per the discussion in this thread). One thing ChessV doesn't have yet is these 'new' pieces on a 10x10 board (I feel the Sage makes more sense on a 10x10 board than on a 8x10 or 8x12 board, because otherwise there are problems with first-move smothered mate threats; perhaps a game with 'Sages' and possibly 'Towers' will make sense if we leave an empty square besides the king; I can see an 8x12 setup with the usual FIDE pieces, two sages, another faerie piece, and an empty square besides the king to stop smothered mate threats). However, to make these variants requires reading the extensibility document included with ChessV and making your own preset.

I plan on making ChessV presets for some of the ideas discussed in those threads, which I may be able to release next week (The only way I'm able to take time to post this is because I'm killing time while Cygwin downloads).

Anyway, Greg, this is really great work and I'm glad to see a new version of ChessV!

- Sam

- Sam

Yes, the Bowman is a Woody Rook (with a different name and icon.)  I do not normally make any alterations to anyone else's games, but I've made an exception in the case of CWDA.  When Ralph Betza named the pieces, they were all given names as close as possible to how the piece move is recorded in his piece-move-notation system.  Unfortunately, this produced completely terrible names, such as the Fibnif, the Furlrurlbakking, and the Forfnibakking.  The last two names you probably do not recognize because they have already been changed (and not by me) because they were just so bad.  So I am continuing the trend.  I would love to get Betza's ok, but after years of trying to contact him, I have not succeeded.  I hope that no one takes offense at this - it is just that CWDA is in my top three favorite variants of all time, and I hate to see development on it die.  Especially since Betza himself considered it very much a work-in-progress.

On a related note, I have been devoting a heck of a lot of computing resources into analysis of CWDA army matchups with ChessV to determine how well balanced the armies really are.  Although I already have a few years worth of high-powered CPU time into the project completed, I am still not ready to publish any results.  But I will say that initial results appear as though the four main armies are at least pretty close, and possibly very close, whereas the Meticulous Mashers are way, way, way too powerful - probably overpowered by a least 2 pawns!

Good, but is slightly bugged. Selecting Betza's Chess With Augmented
Knights causes the program to exit with an error message. Thanks anyway,
that is a great help for those of us that don't have Zillions.

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/

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/

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

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

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?

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.