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E d C h e s s Version 1.9b (C) Copyright 1988, 1989, 1990 by EdTech Associates Inc. All Rights Reserved Program written by David Hendricks and John T. Bell NOTICE: This product is copyrighted and is not Public Domain software. SHAREWARE: Permission is granted to copy and distribute this software in the US and Canada on a not-for-profit basis, provided that the copyright notices and the software are not modified in any manner. This product may not be sold either by itself or packaged with another product without the express written permission of EdTech Associates. This document file must also be included with any distributed copy of the program. If you would like to be included on our product update list and receive the latest improvements to EdChess please send $15 to: EdTech Associates Inc. PO Box 1665 College Park, MD 20740 (301) 937-5293 CompuServe 72775,353 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ....................... 2 STARTING THE PROGRAM ............... 2 USING MENUS ........................ 2 THE MAIN MENU ...................... 3 CONFIGURATION MENU ................. 4 NOTES ON PLAYING ................... 5 HISTORY ............................ 6 CHANGES IN THIS RELEASE ............ 7 REGISTERED VERSION 2.02 FEATURES ... 8 THE FUTURE OF EDCHESS .............. 8 NOTES ON REGISTRATION ............. 9 Page -1- INTRODUCTION What is Ed's Chess? Ed's Chess (or EdChess) is a computer program for the IBM-PC and close compatibles which plays the game of chess. The program has been written by David Hendricks and John T. Bell over a period of three years. Version 1.9b is our second ShareWare public release, and represents changes and improvements which are over a year in the making. We have added a number of features to EdChess since the first release. Although we have tried to keep things simple we feel that a little explanation of EdChess's features will be helpful. STARTING THE PROGRAM The files included with this program should be: File Size Date Description ------------------------------------------------------------ EDCV19B.EXE 51740 10-09-90 - the chess program. EDCHESS.LIB 45300 10-09-90 - the opening library. EDCV19B.DOC 23870 10-09-90 - this file. To invoke the EdChess program enter; EDCHESS at the DOS prompt. EdChess should work on any IBM PC compatible regardless of the video display card. Occasionally, a machine with a monochrome monitor, and a video card which appears to the software as a color card, (ie; Columbia, Corona, and Compaq) will not display the chessboard correctly. If this is the case with your computer then use the command; C>edchess -m The -m option tells the chess program that it is really working on a monochrome monitor. USING MENUS After the copyright notice has been displayed, EdChess will display the chessboard on the left hand side of the screen and a menu on the right hand side. Items are selected from the menus by using the up and down arrow keys on the cursor keypad and pressing <enter> when the appropriate selection has been highlighted. A menu item can also be selected by hitting the first letter of the menu item. Page -2- THE MAIN MENU The EdChess Version 1.9b Main Menu offers the following selections: Autoplay In Autoplay mode the computer plays against itself. Whenever a game has been completed the computer will stop and wait at the opponent menu for another menu selection. The game which the computer played may be saved at this point by using the Save game option of the files menu. A computer game may be stopped or paused at any time by hitting the <Escape> key. Backup Move This allows the player to move backwards through the moves which have been played. The player may then continue play from the new board position. This is very useful if you have made a mistake and want to find out what would have happened if you had played the game differently. Config The Configuration Menu allows the user to adjust the skill of the computer to that of the opponents. Forward This permits the player to move forward through positions which have already been played but have been backed up over. Forward and Backward allow the player to single step through an entire game to observe how it was played. Load Game This allows a previously saved game to be restored and continued. Move This lets the Human opponent enter a move. If the computer is the opponent (that is that verify only is OFF) then after the move is made the computer will immediately start to take its move. In order to play White the player should use this menu option to take the first move. To move a piece use the cursor keys to position the board cursor over the piece to be moved. Then hit the <Enter> key to mark that piece. Then move the board cursor to the square where the piece is to be moved and hit the <Enter> key once more. Moves may also be entered by algebraic notation. To do this, enter the letter which identifies the column of the piece followed by the digit for the row. Repeat this for the destination square and hit enter. To move the pawn from E2 to E4 one would key "E2E4<Enter>". Note; Do not enter the quotes. To Castle, either use the cursor keys to move the King to the square which he would appear on after the castling, or enter O-O for a King's side castle or O-O-O for a Queen's side castle. Either the letter O or the digit 0 (Zero) will work. Page -3- New Game This clears the current game from memory and sets the board up for a new game. Play This directs the computer to take the next move. If you want to play Black then use this command to have the computer take the first move. After it has taken the move use the Move command to move the Black piece. The computer will then automatically continue to play the White pieces. This can also be used to see what the computer would have played from a particular board position. Save Game This allows the current game, and all of the moves made in the game, to be saved to a disk file. This file can be listed or sent to the printer. A game must be saved using this option before it can be reloaded. A game may be saved at any time during game play. Verify Only This allows two human players to play the game. The computer acts as the board, game clock and referee, only verifying that the moves made are legal chess moves. Quit Quit, from the Main Menu allows you to exit the game and return to DOS. It does not automatically save the game currently in progress, but it does prompt you to insure that you don't quit accidentally. CONFIGURATION MENU The following items appear on the Configuration menu: Difficulty This allows the user to set the amount of time that the computer has to determine (or to think about) its next move. The computer will never take more than twice this amount of time before making a move. Over a period of forty moves the time used by the computer for each move will average out to this amount of time. The time may be set in seconds, or in hours minutes and seconds. Load Config This command restores the default configuration by reading the file "edchess.cfg". This file is created by a Save Config command. Page -4- Save Config This option saves the current configuration information into a default configuration file. This file is then read and automatically sets your configuration settings each time EdChess is started. The file created is "edchess.cfg". Think Ahead When this feature is on, the computer will attempt to use the time while it waiting for its opponent to move to calculate its next move. Window This allows you to observe the computers "thought process" while the computer is figuring its next move. If the window is on then the computer will display the moves that it is considering in a window to the right of the board (where the menus normally appear). Turning the window off slightly improves the computers performance. (But its much more interesting with the window on.) Quit Quit or hitting the Escape key will return the program to the previous menu. In this case it will return you to the Main menu. NOTES ON PLAYING Escape Key There are several things which may be helpful to point out. First, the <Escape> key will always back you out of whatever you are doing. If you hi-light the wrong piece while moving, or editing the board, then <Escape> will allow you to start over. Escape at a menu will move you to the next higher menu level (just like Quit). Games may be saved at any time by using <Escape> to return to the Main Menu and selecting Files and Save Game. If you want to stop the machine from thinking while it is making its move just hit any key (<Escape> will do fine). This should bring a menu which will allow you to continue or to perform other actions. Difficulty and Time The amount of time the computer spends determining its move is set from the Config Menu. The computer may find that it needs more time to solve for the current board position than it has allotted. In this case it will allow itself to go over its time limit by twice the time allocated. That is, if it had 15 seconds to make the move then it will occasionally allow up to 30 seconds. However it will average out to 15 seconds per move (or to whatever the Difficulty is set) over a period of 40 moves. So with EdChess unlike other chess games you always know the longest amount that you will have to wait for the computer to make its move. Page -5- En Passant The computer understands the rule of En Passant. This move which is rarely used, is sometimes mistaken for a bug. The rule as stated by the United States Chess Federation is: "En Passant: This French phrase is used for a special pawn capture. It means 'in passing,' and it occurs when one player moves a pawn two squares forward to try to avoid capture by the opponent's pawn. The capture is made exactly as if the player had moved the pawn only one square forward." Score Pad At the top right of the screen you should see something like the following: White 00:00:22 Black 00:00:01 Black to Move within 00:00:30 Ply 4 Rook A1 to B1 Score: -0.75 pts N: 8086 N/Sec 539 The first line is the game clock and shows how much time each side has used to make its moves. The second line shows how much time remains for the computer to make its move. The time on this line will start blinking if the computer is using time beyond the difficulty amount (see notes above). The third line shows how many moves ahead the computer looked to make its move and the move that the computer just made. The Score on the fourth line is a measure of how well the computer thinks it is doing. The larger and more positive the number for the computer side the better the computer is doing. (I usually give up if it gets more than four or five points ahead.) Finally the last line shows the number of nodes or board positions that the computer has evaluated to make its move and the rate of evaluation in nodes per second. The information on this line can be used to adjust the Difficulty setting to achieve the same levels of play on machines which operate at different speeds. HISTORY Ed's Chess was really Dave's idea, and mostly Dave's work. A few years ago (in 1986), after Dave and I had finished work on EdFile (a data base program for the C-64) Dave asked if he could work on a chess program. I said, "Sure, just keep in touch, and let me know how it goes.". A few month's later he showed me a demo of his chess program. The program wasn't fancy (it still isn't, but this was much less so) but it played better than anything I had from the public domain libraries. I gave him some pointers on C programming, helped him with the menu system, and designed a chessboard using the IBM special character set. As Dave worked on the project he started to play it against some of the Page -6- commercial products available on the market. As he started to see flaws in his algorithms he would improve his code until he was satisfied that it was superior to the previous version of the program. To test and make certain that his new code was superior to his old code, he would play the two programs against each other until it was very clear that an improvement had been made. The winner of these "chess wars" would then become the next version of the game, so that this game has really developed through survival of the fittest. We feel that EdChess plays a better game of chess than most commercial games, some which may cost you 50 dollars or more. However we thought that we would give you a chance to find out for yourself. Our testing method is easy. We take two similar computers, (same CPU, same speed) and run one chess program on one and EdChess on the other. Both programs are set to take approximately the same amount of time per move. Then we let the computers play chess. Usually we play at least 16 games at each level of difficulty. The computer with the most wins we then declare the winner. If you try this, we would enjoy hearing the details and results. Also if you save the games which EdChess loses and send them to us, it will help us improve future versions of EdChess. Many of the improvements made to this version are a direct result of games which people have sent us to show how we have lost. At this time the games we are most interested in are games which are played against a human player at a difficulty level of 60 seconds or greater. EdChess has been developed entirely with Aztec C Version 4.1d. The documentation was written using WordStar 5.5. We have used several different brands of IBM Clones, and a Commodore Amiga. CHANGES IN THIS RELEASE Version 1.99 of EdChess is a shareware update of our original program. We have added a larger opening library, and a better game playing algo- rithm. The game saving format has changed so that times are recorded with each move, and are remembered for stepping back and forth. Saved game files can be sent directly to the printer. Several items from the Main Menu were moved to a new Configuration Menu, and game configura- tions can be saved and are automatically recalled when starting EdChess again. Version 1.9b corrects the phone number and fixes several minor bugs which were found in version 1.99. Page -7- REGISTERED VERSION 2.02 FEATURES Besides the features added in version 1.9b, release 2.02 adds the following new features to EdChess: - Board and Game Editing - Chess Problem Solving - Ability to Save Game Configuration - Ability to Print Game Reports - Ability to Invert the Chess Board - Improved Playing Algorithms - Much Larger Opening Library. Everything on the above list was requested by people using the EdChess program. EdChess Version 2.02 and 1.9b both play a much better game than the first release. We now have over 1300 openings in the opening li- brary. We have also fixed several bugs in the old program. The old program did not correctly identify games which were drawn because of the three move rule ,the 50 move rule, or perpetual check. This (we hope) has been corrected in this release. THE FUTURE OF EDCHESS EdChess is an on going project for Dave and myself. We are constantly trying to improve the game both in terms of its game playing ability and its ease of use. The following are some of the plans that we have for EdChess in the future. - Graphic chess board for CGA, EGA, and Hercules adapters - Telephone chess - Improved endgame algorithm - Beginners chess tutorial - Standard chess notation (ie; P-K4 instead of E2E4) - Terminate and stay resident (POP-UP) mode - Opening library editor. We also have a version for the Amiga in the works, and as we can afford to we will to support other machines. If you have any suggestions for improvements or features, we will be glad to listen to them. Thanks for trying us out and enjoy. John T. Bell Page -8- NOTES ON REGISTRATION If you register your copy of EdChess, with a fifteen dollar ($15.00) donation, then you will receive a copy of EdChess version 2.02. Please allow 4 to 8 weeks for delivery. We encourage people who are using EdChess to register their product. We will provide registered users with upgrades and improvements as they become available. We are also trying to notify each person when we receive their registration. The registration may be mailed to: EdTech Associates Inc. PO Box 1665 College Park, MD 20740 Please include all of the following information when you register. Name:__________________________________________ Address:_______________________________________ Address:_______________________________________ City:______________________ State:_____ Zip: ___________ Day Phone:_________________________ Eve Phone:_________________________ Please tell us how you acquired your copy of EdChess: _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ Comments and Suggestions: _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ Page -9-