---- Economy Chess v2 TEST Forum ----

The beta version of Economy Chess v2 is out!

We need people to help Monkeytesting! The final bugreport will be sent to the programmer at the end of December. People can still help testing, send me a message!

How to open the game, sent by email?

The first thing you have to do is to rename the downloaded file. If you have Windows: right click -> rename -> change the file extension from .zip_rename to .zip -> confirm (the system will ask whether you really want to do it) -> extract

Things that need testing:

- Play around with the UNDO button.
Try to write down which moves you make in the bugreport. When do you get an error message? 

- Does the NOTATION work properly?
There are some exceptional situations in chess that require special notation: castling, multiple piece capture. Is the notation displayed correct? When you export the moves does it show notation correct?

- Saving and Loading seems buggy.
Try to save various positions in various ways: does it save promoted pawns? castling on/off? Does it save income etc correctly?

- Play around in the Chess960 using various settings
Do you get errors? Are things not working?

Always note down in a document which steps you made. Also try to give as much possible information about the bug. We have to reproduce the bug to be able to fix it.

Make screenshots (ctrl-print scrn and then ctrl-v in a document) to show us what you see

Thanks alot everyone already!! 

Greetings everyone!

Today I recieved a newer beta version of Economy Chess v2! Many new features have been added, which is great! However, this requires alot of testing too and I could use every little bit of help to find all the issues.

What do you have to do?

I am looking for Monkeytesters. A monkeytester just clicks around in the game and reports when things don't go as expected. Knowledge of computerprogramming is not nescessary.

Send me a message with your e-mail address and I'll send you the game + instructions. At the end of December I will send the bugreport to the programmer. 

How much time will it cost you?

That's up to you. Even 1 or 2 hours of clicking and reporting would be great! 

What's in it for you?

- The more we test, the better the game will be!
- You have a sneak preview to the game.
- You will be mentioned in the "special thanks to"-section of the game as a tester. 

A couple findings. I wont be ready to test before friday :( To prevent people from reporting and digging into the same bug, I advice to post your findings here. You can copy-paste from the bugreport template.

- there is no "flip board" option in the game

when you click the economy chess360 button and type in anything, it says

invalid placement, the about shows up blank, and there is no computer on the system.

@Superchessmasters,

did you enter a legal starting position? I have tried out quite a few and it worked fine. The problem is that it accepts even illegal ones, e.g. RRBQKBNN and RNBQBKNR. The invalid placement box popped up when I entered an illegal position with more pieces of a kind then it is allowed, e.g. RRBQKBNR (3 rooks, 1 knight). 

The starting position has to meet two more rules:

The bishops have to be placed on opposite-coloured squares. RNBQBKNR is illegal.

The king has to be placed somewhere between the rooks. RRBQKBNN is illegal.

Not sure if this is a bug on your part, but I happened to have my display resolution set at 125%. Once I opened the program, the window size was alright, but the boxes inside the window were zoomed in too far. I can only see roughly half of the chess board.

Also noticed the "about" section is empty.

And pieces on h4 have a green outline around them, hope this is helping rather than annoying.

Yes, Robobeer it's helpfull! About the resolution: do you use 125% always when you use the computer? When I put it on 125% things indeed look bad. On 100% a part of the settingsmenu and the game are hidden behind the windows taskbar. I can see it however by lowering it.

This is the list with things that should be fixed. The green issues seem solved (but are they? extra check is always good). Orange issues need adjustment and red issues have not been fixed yet.

Optionsmenu

1)The “production” option can be taken away entirely

2)The “promotion” option can be cut down to two options:

– (default) normal promotion
– gain bonus
If “gain bonus” is selected, player can input an amount. Default amount = 225. Please note: “gain bonus” is not stealing money from the opponent, the player just gets +225 to the savings.

---gain bonus also lets the pawn promote. It should just give coins and the pawn does not promote (is taken of the board)

3) Change the order of the options, with the default options on top:
To be clear: the (default) is just to show what is the default option, not text.

4) Change default prices for pieces: 

pawn = 25, knight = 75, bisshop = 78, rook = 125, Queen = 225

rook quantity = 3, pawn price = 25

5) Add another row of prices and quantities so players can set different prices and quantities for each colour.

It's up you what's a good way and easy to add.

6) Add a place where players can set startingmoney for each colour

startingmoney = savings, i.e. White gets 0 coins and black 100 coins at the start of the game

7) Add a place where players can calculate a handicap by entering their rating.

This would need a checkbox with “Handicap”. When you check it the user can input two ratings: X1 and X2 (X1 and 2 can be minimum 1 and max 10.000)

8) I'd like to make some images containing information about the optionsmenu

It would be nice if the user could skip through an X amount of pages. Each page can be an image, I'll make about 5 images in .jpg, .png .bmp, or any other format thats best for you to implement. What size do you want them to be?

9) a “load game” buttonnext OK, Help, Exit
Displays a list of the saved games.

10) Save settings
It can be a hassle to set each setting. Is it possible to save the settings and give them names? Just like a load/save game option basicly.

Ingame changes

1) a possibility to “flip the board”= display the board so that the black side is on the lower side.

This is a very important issue.. chessplayers cant play chess upside down.

2) a “save game” button that enables the player to save the current game under a name

Position is saved well, but when I load the game I see the very first version of Economy Chess. With weird prices and the production images.

3) an “undo” button
To me taking back 1 move is enough. If its just as easy to let the user take back as many moves as he/she wants untill the start of the game, then that is ok as well.

4) When a player buys pieces, he/she should ALWAYS enter the letter of the file (so not “left” or “right”, but: a-h)

This is still wanted especially when people have flipped the board.

5) The notation has a couple glitches
– castling is notated as O-O (kingside) or O-O-O (queenside), currently it says the kingsmove
– when a pawn captures the file where it comes from, it is also noted. For example: axb4 or dxc5, currently it says xb4 or xc5
– when a player buys multiple pieces, the software notates it as multiple turns. In this example I bought 3 pieces. It seems like the code places a movenumber every two notes.

Example where I made pawns very cheap: (1 coin/pawn) and bought 3 pawns with white in turn 4:
1. a4 a6 2. b4 b6 3. c4 c64.$a2 $b2 5. $c2 d4 ..black to move
It should be:
1. a4 a6 2. b4 b6 3. c4 c6 4.$a2 $b2 $c2 d4 ..black to move 5.

– when the last move is a mate a “#” is done behind the last move. i.e.: Qxb4#
– this is the most difficult issue with notation, I think: when two of the same pieces are able to capture the same piece then also the location is noted. For example when two white rooks are on rank 1 and black places his rook on rank 1 too. White captures with his rook, but you don't know which rook if you dont note which one, because there are two. Or when two knights can capture the same piece you also have to know the location it came from. Example: Rb1xb4 (Rook from b1 captures b4)

Lay out

1) The font of the ingame buttons is Comic Sans.
This is the most hated font in the world :D (google for funny stuff. If changing that is very difficult then never mind, but if possible... Please do!

2) The size of the notationbox
The notationbox is very big, to me it may be alot smaller. And perhaps just display the same thing that players see when they export their moves? That is the official way and takes up little space. But if you have an easier way that works better for you, then that is fine as well.

3) Display the pieces (where players click to buy) in the right order: pawn-knight-bisshop-rook-queen

4) Glitch: after some time the flags dont show properly,
some disappear. (the minimap does display ownership correct)
An example:
Around 6:00 you can see black is missing 'flags' that are displayed on the minimap.

5) a Facebook icon so people can share the game.

6) I'd like to make images for the helpsection with examples and rules
These will be different from to optionsmenu images, about 5-10. Same size and format as those in the optionsmenu, I assume?

7) The playboard may be a bit bigger (as big as the other things allows it to be)

8) Change the image of the 'captured squares' image
For black:

Bugs/rulechanges – high priority stuff :)

1) the option “produce and move”
A player may buy pieces and place them. But he may not move them that turn! He can only move 'old' pieces. (also notation is special for this option ) Once the player has moved his turn automatically ends. (buying is before moving)

2) A player with an unmoved king that has been in check may still castle.

I did not know the castlingrules good myself. In the current version one can no longer castle when he has been under check. That is how I learned it, but it's not correct. A player is still allowed to castle when he has been checked in the past. He may not castle in the turn when he is under check- that rule is programmed correct in the current version. Also correct in this version: king may not move through check when castling. So keep that as it is, works great:)

3) When a player buys pieces he should get income
In the current version the player doesnot get income when he buys. Income should be awarded every turn.

Hi, I liked the game "Chess economy".

But it would be really cool to play chess variants adding the rules of "Chess economy".

For example, a "chess omega economy" or "economy Capablanca Chess" and even a "four-handed chess economy" would be really fun.

Omega chess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Chess

Capablanca chess: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajedrez_de_Capablanca

Four-handed chess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-handed_chess

Hi Angel!

I would love to see that! And actually if you got such chesssets at home you can quite easily add the economy yourself. As software this will be very complicated to maken. Adding chess960 already was a big step, imagine this for odd sized boards with new pieces! Unfortunatly that will be a to big enterprise in both time and money for me.

It's cool to see that you understand the concept of the underlying economy and that it can basicly be added to ANY chessvariant!