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Greg Strong wrote on Tue, Jul 6, 2004 12:25 AM UTC:
<p>I have created a new free and <b>open-source</b> program for playing Chess variants. At present, it plays about ten variants, and supports opening book for variants, pawn structure evaluation, and other features of 'regular' Chess programs.</p> <p>To find out about ChessV, please see:<br> <a href='http://gregstrong.com/ChessV/index.html'>http://gregstrong.com/ChessV/index.html</a></p> <p>I would be very interested in any feedback, including bugs and requests for new features/variants!</p> <p>Thanks,<br> Greg Strong</p>

Tony Quintanilla wrote on Tue, Jul 6, 2004 04:31 AM UTC:
I have posted a link at:

http://www.chessvariants.com/link2.dir/chessv.html

Greg Strong wrote on Tue, Jul 6, 2004 02:39 PM UTC:
Thanks for the list of variants, that is what I was looking for.  Some of
these are quite easy; Berolina, Kinglet, and Extinction should be a
breeze.  I was already planning on doing Extinction Chess next.  I am
also
eager to do Cylindrical Chess, because it'll be fairly easy, and will be
a
proof-of-concept for supporting unusual boards.

As for the others:

Chessgi, like Shogi, it problematic for computers because of the drop
rule.  In Chess there are about 30-35 legal moves from most positions. 
In
Chessgi, if you have several pieces in hand, there could be a hundred
legal
moves.  This branching factor provents the computer from seeing very
deeply.  Professional Shogi programs do some very clever stuff; hopefully
some professional Shogi programmers will join the team :)

I have absolutely no idea about Refusal.  Fascinating game, but it is not
at all clear to me (at least at the moment) how it could be programmed. 
Even Zillions can't do this one.

Rettah doesn't look too hard, but I couldn't find the 100-square
version
you mentioned.

SuperChess and Centennial Chess have pieces that face in a specific
direction, and can be rotated.  Support for that shouldn't be toooo hard
to add, and I'm sure lots of Chess variants have pieces with facing.

Doublemove and Progressive: Hmmm... to be honest, I have no idea.  This
could be really, really simple, or really hard.  There are only a couple
of places in the code where the 'current player' is flipped, and it
wouldn't be hard to change that.  Problem is that I really can't fathom
what all the implications of that would be.  This will require some
experimentation and careful testing, so it's not real high on the list.

ABC Chess: at a quick glance, this doesn't look bad.  Similar to Chess
with Different Armies.

It is going to require some time to get more variants in, to say nothing
of all the general 'bells-and-whistles' kind of things ChessV needs. 
Fortunately, I am unemployed, and working on ChessV full-time.  And
hopefully other C++ programmers will help out.  I hope to release a new
version in about a week with more features.

Sam Trenholme wrote on Tue, Jul 6, 2004 06:49 PM UTC:
Greg, <p> I would like to congratulate you for making this program available. I currently am unable to download it on Sourceforge (for some reason, the files have not made it to Sourceforge's mirrors); if Sourceforge continues to be a problem, you may be interested in getting it hosted at <A href=http://savannah.gnu.org/>GNU Savannah</A> <p> This program is something I've been waiting for for a long time; I'm glad to see there is finally an open-source program that can play chess variants; it's annoying struggling to get Zillions to work under WINE in Linux, and Zillions' weakness with chess openings even annoys a patzer like myself. <p> - Sam

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