Could someone make me a Chess game with no AI if I paid them?

Thank you. I like the board you made. I have all the pieces in GIF files. I didn't know that PNG did transparency. Here they all are.

I have a board made too. It don't look needed. Muller your Winboard looks great. I mean really sweet. It took me forever to make mine in microsoft paint. I don't quite understand how the winboard works. I'll look in to that more. So I can do as much of the work. That is needed, that I can do for this. Most likely when it comes to programing. I don't see me figuring out to much. Muller and Sqod thank you so much for your time with helping me with this. As well as everyone else. I honestly did not expect everyone to be so nice and helpful. It is really nice to see.

I wish I could open Idraw3 on my PC. Sadly I had to do this in excell and paint. If these pics don't work. I'll make them in whatever format is needed.

I also have them in 3d on sketchup if anyone is interested in seeing them. I have CAD files for them to 3-D print them as well. I'll post just for the fun of it. I still need to make the Jesters/Fools in 3-D.

https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model.html?id=u56afdeda-f480-4261-aa01-5b81a8456d55

So I played with the winboard a bit. That looks very promising. I started it in Game Viewer mode with the 'Additional options'

-pieceToCharTable "PNBRQJG.OW..U.....D..LKpnbrqjg.ow..u.....d..lk" -boardWidth 12 -boardHeight 14

To display a 12x14 board. I can't figure out the rest of what you did. I could not even add any pieces but the few it allowed. I don't quite get it. It does look like it is most likely the best way to make this. If the online works as good as the game courier. Sadly I still think I am in need of someone to do it for me. I can't figure out how you got the other pieces, or the black boarders. Let alone how you would change the moves for a piece. I think i get how to use it once sent up.

Sqod do you understand or find the Winboard easier? Also Muller, I know you did not ask or want any pay. Yet if you do help me achive this. I'll pay you something anyways. Just out of appreciation.

Also with winboard being how it is. Muller, would you be able to make the game with it and send it to me, or would I need to copy and put in the code on my copy of the program, of winboard? Also how would I go about giving copies of it to others so they can play?

I'd never even heard of WinBoard until this thread, so I would have to learn it from scratch the same as you. It sounds like Muller's you're best bet so far for helping you with it. I suppose you could pay me to learn it, but at that point you might as well just pay anybody else to learn it, including yourself.

I'm trying to learn it. Being program illiterate is not helping at all. If all else fails. I will hire you to do the chessvariant.org thing, Sqod. If you are still interested.

I do like the look of what Muller showed, from winboard, a lot. I just don't understand much of it at all. Mainly how the match making would work once made. That I am curious about. I'm registered at chessvariant & get how the matchmaking and hosting works there. So I guess it depends on how much Muller would like to help with doing the Winboard. I might even do the chessvariant.org thing with you too, Sqod. Depending on my finances at the moment. Just so I can try to get this game some popularity, if at all possible. As well as give people more option in the way they want to play. I'm mainly interested in Muller's winboard currently. Because it looks nice. Plus he looks like he can throw it together for the most part, rather easy. I could live with enforcing the rules of the jesters and P.Box in game, between players. So make the Pandora's box takeable by all pieces, and just I'd enforce it. As I would, like when playing my real set, I have made. If that would make it easier to make.

Wow, those 3D pieces look really snazzy!

Thank you very much!

Ace569er,

Yes, keep me in mind if you get stuck.

I agree that those 3D pieces look great--in an evil kind of way, like chess pieces from Hell. Have you considered using a 3D printer to make those pieces? The main cost in 3D printing, I hear, is creating the 3D description, not in the materials or the printing time. It sounds like you already have a 3D description in a format that is usable for such printers.

I will keep you in mind for sure. I really want to play this game with people. I never thought when I first set out to do this. It could ever be so hard to achive. I wish I come here first.

My Dad's friend's Daughter has a huge 3-d printer. With a 3 foot by 2 foot printing base. I was planing on having them all made a while back. She said she would do it for $50. for 1.5 inch diamiter bases. For a 2 inch sqaures board. I already made a board out of cherry wood and marble. Useing a gothic marble site for my new pieces. With a glass set for the normal chess pieces. I have had that for about two yeaars. I just don't have anyone to play with anymore. After my friend moved. So I have not had a reason to get the other one printed. Most the pices are made from several parts. Just to make them printable. With a injection printer.

So in Winboardl I pasted

*oul********/w****jj****w/*rgnbqkbngr*/*ppdppppdpp*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*PPDPPPPDPP*/*RGNBQKBNGR*/W****JJ****W/*OUL******** w KQkq - 0 1

in to wordpad and saved as a text doc. Then I went to file, then clicked "load postions..." It looked like thisThen I went to edit then "load game from clipboard" and it turned it to this.So that was impressive. How easy that was. Even though I have no real clue what i did....So what more needs to be done. To change the moves for a pieces? Because that is sweet. It even jumps the black boarder just like I want. Just the pieces don't move right. I really don't care if you use my icons, for the pieces. I would prefer it, but it is not a big deal. Just that they move right.

If I try to "use internet chess server". Instead of "Just view and edit game files" with;

-pieceToCharTable "PNBRQJG.OW..U.....D..LKpnbrqjg.ow..u.....d..lk" -boardWidth 12 -boardHeight 14

It will not ever load with one of the servers. I tried half the list so far.

Beware that only the most recent version of WinBoard (4.8.0) supports black squares.

Chess servers will not be of any use; for one the list in WInBoard is obsolete, and I think only freechess.org and chessclub.com are still in business. They only supports variants on 8x8 with normal pieces, like Suicide.

WinBoard is a graphical interface only, without AI, and relies for AI on plugins called 'engines'. These are responsible for thinking up moves. But there exists a peer-to-peer network adapter (p2p) masquerading as a WinBoard engine. If two people start WinBoard with p2p as 'engine', so that they are set up to play against p2p, the p2ps can actually connect to each other over the internet to pass the moves that person A plays to the other one, which then plays it like it thought them up by itself. WinBoard would never know that the moves are not coming from an AI. This is not ideal (there is for instance not a good chat channel next to the game, as AIs usually do not chat), but it can do the job for arbitrary variants, for which there exists no server. For info on p2p see

http://hgm.nubati.net/p2p.html

I am not sure if it is included in the WinBoard install; you might have to download it separately. It is also to be considered a bit experimental; I am not sure it has been heavily used. One of the p2p adapters will have to run as a server, so that the other can approach it to make a connection. This will require the usual hassle of port translation (NAPT) in your modems/routers to allow the outside world access to that server.

For a reasonably compact description of WinBoard, the XBoard on-line user guide would be a good place:

http://www.gnu.org/software/xboard/user_guide/UserGuide.html

(XBoard is the Linux version of WinBoard; it looks a bit different, but functionally should be almost identical.) There also is a 'WinBoard Tutorial' included with the WinBoard install as html pages.

Not sure why it wouldn't work when you use 'Load Position from File'', I would have to check that. WinBoard 4.8 in principle has the possibility for engines to configure the GUI's move generator, to make every piece move exactly as you want. Only the engine can do this, however, and in this case the engine must be p2p. So you will need a version of p2p that si slightly modified to print the required 'piece' commands to configure the desired piece moves. (It could then also be made to setup the initial position, and board size, so that you don't have to paste that externally.) It will not be smart enough to implement the rule that pieces of type X can only capture type Y and not Z, though. For such details it usually relies on the AI to reject moves that were illegal, but in this case the 'AI' would be your human opponent.

I will check if I can make a modified version of p2p that will print the required lines to WinBoard to configure it for this game. This should just be a few minutes work. (If I can find the p2p source.)

I will have a look tod

As to what you really did, some explanation might be in order, as this counts as 'advanced use', not addressed in the popular tutorials. (Not many people are interested in variants, 99.9% of all WinBoard users never use it for anything else than orthodox Chess.)

WinBoard has 22 built-in piece types (well, in v4.8 this was expanded to 44, but most of the new ones do not have an image defined for them, so these are pretty useless). As variants often use the same piece by a different name (e.g. the Seirawan Hawk is the Capablanca Archbishop), the letters that refer to those (in position or move notation) can be defined by the user through a 'pieceToCharTable'. This table also tells WinBoard which of the pieces actually participate in the variant (so that it won't offer you any pieces that don't belong there as a promotion choice, for instance). Non-participating pieces are assigned a '.' in the pieceToCharTable.

The pieceToCharTable can unfortunately not be modified through the menus; it must be defined at startup. Hence you had to paste the option to do so in the 'Additional options' field of the Startup Dialog. Each position in the pieceToCharTable corresponds to one of WinBoard's built-in pieces (moves and images), first the white, than the black pieces. The first 5 pieces are the orthodox P, N, B, R and Q; the last one of each color is always K. What (optionally) comes in between corresponds to XBoard's non-orthodox pieces. I more or less randomly selected a few of those to represent your pieces, and also assigned some random letters to them, as I was not sure of the names of all your pieces. (And for 'Pandora's Box it is hard to come up with a sensible abbreviation, as both P and B are already taken...)

As you had to paste something into 'Additional options' anyway, I figured you might as well paste the options to reformat the board there as well. That saves you going to the 'New Variant' dialog, and changing the number of ranks and files there.

Of course after changing the board size WinBoard has no idea anymore what the initial position could be, as the regular one doesn't fit anymore, so it gives you an empty board.

Then you have to setup the position, for which you use one of the ways WinBoard supports for doing this: pasting a FEN. I don't know if you are familiar with FENs; they are standard text encodings of Chess board positions, basically just a raster scan of the board, where the ranks are separated by slashes and stretches of empty squares compacted to numbers. This is followed by info on side-to-move, castling rights, e.p. rights, reversible-halfmove counter and move number. So the FIDE position after 1.e4 as FEN looks like rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/4P3/8/PPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR b KQkq e3 0 1 .

The novelties here are that the letters you defined for unorthodox pieces in the pieceToCharTable are also occurring, (and their position in it defines what image WinBoard will use for them), and that a '*' in stead of a piece ID means the square is not part of the board. (WinBoard implements this internally by placing a piece there that belongs neither to white nor black and cannot be captured, and displayes as a black square.)

OK, I put a slightly enhanced version of p2p.exe for download at

http://hgm.nubati.net/p2p.exe .

What I added is that when you ask it to play (through WinBoard) a variant xxx, it now checks for the presence of a file xxx.dat in its folder, and if it finds it, sends the content of that file to WinBoard. It now also says it plays a variant named 'custom' (which is not a standard variant for WinBoard).

The idea is that you should make a file custom.dat describing the peculiarities of your game, so that when you select 'custom' from the WinBoard New Variant dialog when playing with p2p, that file will be sent to WinBoard to specify pieceToCharTable, board size, initial position, piece moves and the lot. To this end the file custom.dat should contain the text:

setup (PNBRQJG.OW..U.....D..LKpnbrqjg.ow..u.....d..lk) 12x14+0_grand *oul********/w****jj****w/*rgnbqkbngr*/*ppdppppdpp*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*PPDPPPPDPP*/*RGNBQKBNGR*/W****JJ****W/*OUL******** w KQkq - 0 1

piece G& WAD

piece W& FC

piece O& FAD

piece U& FN

piece L& KGH

piece J& Q2

piece P& fmWfceFifmW3

piece D& mWceFifmW3

piece Q& QisO3

piece K& KisO3

The first (setup) line communicates the pieceToChar, board format and initial position to WinBoard. The other (piece) lines tell WinBoard how the pieces can move. (Hmm... Castling on the Queen might not work.)

This is what I got so far: http://jsfiddle.net/13ezk8kh/2/

Current total working time: approximately 2 hours.

Thanks for the GIF images. They worked fine, too.

So I downloaded http://hgm.nubati.net/p2p.exe . When I run it, it just open a comand promt looking window that say;

So I assume that is not what i do. So next I went to "Engine" and clicked "load first engine". Because I have no clue what I'm doing here. Then went to "Engine(.exeor .jar):" Then told it to load the P2P file on my desktop. Then went to "file" and clicked 'new variant..." I saw this new option in the menu.

Yet this did not seem to do much of anything.When I clicked custom. Maybe I didn't lokk hard enough. I'll double check.

Mind you if I put this the 'Additional options' for the board to be 12x14

-pieceToCharTable "PNBRQJG.OW..U.....D..LKpnbrqjg.ow..u.....d..lk" -boardWidth 12 -boardHeight 14  
it says;

then crashed. So I assume I don't mess with the 'Additional options'on that note.

So I don't quite get where to use

setup (PNBRQJG.OW..U.....D..LKpnbrqjg.ow..u.....d..lk) 12x14+0_grand *oul********/w****jj****w/*rgnbqkbngr*/*ppdppppdpp*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*PPDPPPPDPP*/*RGNBQKBNGR*/W****JJ****W/*OUL******** w KQkq - 0 1

piece G& WAD

piece W& FC

piece O& FAD

piece U& FN

piece L& KGH

piece J& Q2

piece P& fmWfceFifmW3

piece D& mWceFifmW3

piece Q& QisO3

piece K& KisO3

I used Snag-it to took the pics.

As for this one...I have no clue. I clicked the link. It brings me to a page full of code. What would I do with that? Sorry for being so program illiterate.

There's a "result" section... http://jsfiddle.net/13ezk8kh/2/embedded/result/

Unless it doesn't work, in your browser.

You shouldput the lines I described (one 'setup' line and 10 'piece' lines) in a file named 'custom.dat', and save that file in the same folder as p2p.exe. Otherwise you did everything exactly as you should, upto the point where you selected 'custom'. When the file exists clicking 'OK' should switch WinBoard to your variant. There is no need to set the Additional options by hand anymore. (Without the file custom.c WinBoard would not know what 'custom' means, though.)

Now that you have loaded p2p.exe once, it should appear in the combobox of the Satrtup Dialog of WinBoard, so you could just select it from there before you click OK. (Or you could open Load 1st Engine and double-click p2p in the listbox.) As soon as WinBoard starts p2p.exe, the latter should (with the aid of the custom.dat file) switch WinBoard to your variant.

Just to make sure you uderstand how it should work:

WinBoard 4.8 has this new feature where an engine can tell it the rules of the Chess variant it should play (board size, pieces, how they move, everything). In our case p2p will be the engine. But we have to tell p2p the rules of your variant; I did not hard-code those in there. p2p.exe reads them from the file custom.dat, which should contain the lines I posted here (which describe the rules of your game).

One more thing before I go to bed:

Trying this stuff exposed some flaws in WinBoard: the new move generator for engine-defined pieces (unlike the hard-coded one) was not written with the black squares in mind, and considered everything that was not a white or black piece an empty square. As a result the pieces that were redefined could be moved to the black squares.

The black squares also interfered with the code for generating castlings: it was looking for a Rook on the edge square, which for your board is a black square. And what was even worse, after I programmed it to look at the outermost non-black square, it allowed the castling, but moved the black square to the other side of the King!

I fixed all that, and put a new version of the WinBoard executable at

http://hgm.nubati.net/winboard.exe

Download it, to replace the winboard.exe in your C:\WinBoard-4.8.0\WinBoard folder.

There also is the issue of promotions. I don't really know the promotion rules of your variant.

So I'm not making the custom.dat folder right or something. It does not seem to load it. I did not know how to make it, on that note. So I made it the same way I made the file I named FEN. I copied what you wrote to word pad. Then saved as a text document. Everything is in the same folder. I do understand what you mean by I can select it in the beginning. Just it don't get how to make the file. Which if I understand right. Loads automatically upon selecting the P2P engine in the winboard startup.

Just when I select "OK" it load a normal board. All set up with pieces. I can go to "file" "new variant..." to make the board 12-14. If I select custom. Which I was not allow to do before the P2P engine, but you said I don't select it there. So could you tell me what I'm doing wrong. I'm confused. I assume my custom.dat file is made wrong.

Also I can't load the FEN. Even on the 12x14 I make. I assume it's because it don't know the pieces. Because it had no "additional options",or "custom.dat" file it can read.

Lastly, I downloaded the modified file. Which looks like what I had already. So I put it in it's own folder. Because the folder you mentioned is not on my computer. It is just an .exe file, that I got. Nothing more. It never instaled on my computer. I just doubleclick the horse icon in that pic above. Then hit run program. So I don't know were to put the modified one you gave me. Because what I had was nothing more than that file. I then put the new winboard you made. In the folder with the other 4 items, shown above. While removing the old one and placing it back on my desktop. Still nothing diferent happens. So I assume my custom.dat file is made wrong. Yet when I look it up it says that's how they are made. I'm doing something wrong...