First, a special "thank you" to Richard A. Fowell. He helped me with many new ideas, supplied PGN/EPD files for testing, and proofread my English text. He also drew the American piece-set and the green and buff squares.
Special thanks to Alastair Scott and Morten Larsen for testing MacChess 2.5 and to everyone that gave me support and advice by sending me postcards and email.
====== NEW FEATURES ======
1. The chess playing engine is stronger.
2. Sliding pieces (Click and Drag moves) are now a option.
3. The "Moves" window was enhanced with "VCR-style" buttons to review games, replacing "Monitor Mode,╙ and adding:
- double-clicking on a move takes you to the position before that move
- clicking on a single arrow VCR button animates the game in forward or reverse
- clicking on the center VCR button stops the animation (hold the button down until it stops)
4. Imports and exports positions and games in the standard EPD and PGN file formats. [See Note 1]
5. Short and long notation
6. Print and save as text output
7. Setup board now uses icons and buttons instead of pop-up menus
8. An Analysis mode for running a set of test positions in "batch" mode. (Even overnight!)
9. Display options are now collected in a single preferences dialog box.
10. "Undo move" and "Redo move" are new in the Edit menu.
11. Separate mate-finding logic is invoked when the level chosen is one of the "Mate in" choices. This finds forced mates quickly and correctly if the depth is correct. It doesn't always find mates faster than the regular search, however.
12. MacChess now remembers the level setting between games.
13. "Game Info" has added fields for the standard PGN tags.
====== FIXED PROBLEMS ======
1. Double clicking on a game file now loads the game into MacChess.
====== PIECES ======
Sliding pieces are now implemented but you can still choose the clickable ones.
There are only five piece sets, but you can now independently choose the square colors.
1. Classic
2. Modern
3. American (Richard A. Fowell)
4. Cheque (Heinrich E. Roescheisen)
5. Zuerich (Heinrich E. Roescheisen)
====== BOARD PATTERNS ======
You can now choose from eight different board patterns. They appear different in b/w as well as in color. The squares are stored as "cicn" resources, and can be changed in ResEdit (but please don't distribute modified copies of MacChess). The choices are:
Light Blue
Green and Buff
Light Brown
Light Red
Grey
Blue
Green
Brown
====== COLORS & B/W ======
There's still a choice between color and b/w. This is useful for PowerBook users and for b/w printing. The b/w icons provide a narrow white outline around the pieces for better viewing and diagrams. The "American" piece set with "Green and Buff" squares in b/w prints diagrams which are very similar to those in American chess books and magazines.
====== THE WINDOWS ======
The windows are all larger - support for the smaller classic screen is dropped. MacChess still fits on 640 x 400 pixel Powerbook screens.
1. The board window is slightly larger - row numbers are now on both sides of the board.
2. The moves window now has a scroll bar, and "VCR-style" control buttons at the bottom of the window. The moves window now shows more moves. The moves are now shown in long or short algebraic notation (your choice).
3. The time window was also enlarged to show which sides MacChess is playing:
MacChess - Player,
Player - MacChess,
Player - Player, or
MacChess - MacChess.
(You can't change "Player" to your name)
4. The Info window now shows the number of nodes and nodes per second examined instead of evaluations and evaluations per second. A separator line was added above the game phase.
5. The Principal Variation (PV) and book windows are also slightly enlarged and repositioned to make a closed rectangle again.
6. A "Windows" menu was added to control which windows are displayed, and to allow you to save the window positions.
====== MENUS ======
File
======
Import: PGN and EPD
Export: PGN and EPD
Save: Game Text as Column, Game Text as Rows, Board Graphic, Board as Text.
Print: Game text as rows, Board Graphic, Board as Text.
Print Game: prints the game as columns.
Edit
======
Undo [CMD-Z]
Redo [CMD-R]
Cut, Copy, Paste and Clear are disabled. In the future, these may allow cut & paste of EPD and PGN.
Preferences dialog box [CMD-;] lets you select:
Opening book [ on/off ]
Permanent Brain [ on/off ] [Note 2]
Sound [ on/off ]
Color [ Color or b/w ]
Piece movement [ click-click or click & drag ]
Notation [ Short algebraic or long Algebraic ]
Piece Set [ Classic / Modern / American / Cheque / Zuerich ]
Square Colors [ Light Blue / Green and Buff / Light Brown / Light Red / Grey / Blue / Green / Brown ]
Save Preferences.
Players
======
Play [CMD-G]: Switches colors so MacChess has the move - also starts MacChess thinking. Also used in the monitor mode as MacChess must be playing from a fixed position.
Level
======
Set Level [CMD-L]
Reset Time [CMD-=]
Save Level Settings: The level setting can be saved.
Options
======
Game Info [CMD - I] is extended for the standard PGN tags.
Setup Board [CMD - U] uses icons instead of pop-up menus and a different window.
Analyses
======
Analyze Positions
Stop Analyzing
This currently requires that the positions are stored in native MacChess format, and that the list of files to be examined is stored in an index text file (such as the file "Series BT2630").
Future plans for Analyses:
Analyzing all MacChess positions in a folder by choosing the folder, rather than an index text file.
Analyzing positions from EPD files.
Analyzing a game for white or black.
Analyzing while the level is set on player against player and showing the main line in the PV window.
Windows
======
Save Window Positions
====== TEST MODE ======
The test mode uses the new Analyses menu. This analyzes a series of positions and saves the results to disk.
After selecting 'Analyze Positions' you progress through four dialog boxes:
1 - Set the Time.
2 - Select the file that lists the position files (such as Series BT2630).
3 - Select the name of your output file.
4 - Confirm the information you have entered, and see how long the analysis will take.
BT2630 test.
1. Set the time on 15 minutes per move (This test takes almost 8 hours - best run overnight).
2. The resolve time is 15 minutes unless MacChess had the right move at the 15 minute mark. If MacChess had the right move at 15 minutes, the resolve time is the last time it switched to that move. For example, if MacChess found the right move at 5 minutes, switched to another move at 10 minutes, then back to the right move at 13 minutes, the resolve time is 13 minutes.
3. The total time (TT) is the sum of all the resolve times in seconds.
4. The estimated international (ELO) chess rating is 2630 - TT/30. (Estimated USCF rating = 2910 - TT/30.)
Wim van Beusekom.
Notes:
1) PGN is "Portable Game Notation,╙ and EPD is "Extended Position Notation.╙ These are standards respectively for storing games and positions so that other software can read them. Many chess-playing programs and chess database programs support this format. Large archives of PGN files can be found on AOL (go to keyword ╥Chess,╙ then click on "Chess Forum" and then "Chess Club Library "). On the Internet, there are over 250,000 games at ftp.pitt.edu under
group/student-activities/chess/Uploads (on the Web at <http://www.pitt.edu/~schach>). MacChess reads the first 500 games in a PGN file. If there are more, split the file into chunks with 500 games or less with a text editor like BBEdit Lite.
2) "Permanent Brain" means the computer thinks on your time, that its "Brain" is "Permanently" active. If MacChess beats you all the time, you may want to turn this off, and give MacChess a short time to think in the "Level" menu. Giving MacChess a small time without turning off Permanent Brain has much less effect, since it thinks on your move. If it still wins too often, use the "Setup" option so that it starts the game without one of its pieces - such as a Queen ("Queen odds") or Rook ("Rook odds"). As you improve, you can move from Queen odds to Rook odds to Knight odds to Pawn odds.
