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1987-11-30
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Documentation for Turbo CHESS DOOR ver 1.41 - page 1
Turbo CHESS DOOR for PCBoard 11.8 & 12.0
Copywrite Andrew Roy, 1987
This program is released to the public domain. There are a few
stipulations:
1) The files MAY NOT be distributed in modified form.
2) All the files MUST be distributed in an ARC format.
You MAY use this program free of charge however, I expect one of
the following:
1) Send a monetary contribution to help offset the cost of
my time ($15 is suggested). All contributions should be
mailed to:
Andrew Roy
Rt. 1 Box 235
Blacksburg, Va 24060
OR
2) Call my BBS and leave me a comment about the program.
This comment may be a gripe, a bug report, a piece of
advice, or total flattery; but I would like feedback.
The BBS number is:
The MBT
2 nodes, 120 MEG on-line (703)-953-2443
3) If you are the author of a DOOR program for PCBoard,
please make it available to me as I have made mine to
you, without requiring payment.
Description of The Turbo CHESS DOOR
The Turbo CHESS DOOR allows board members to play chess with
one another. Some features include:
o Up to 99 games occurring at any time.
o The DOOR informs the participates of a CHECK, CHECKMATE,
or STALEMATE condition.
o The DOOR completely checks the legality of each move.
o The DOOR supports castling (with complete legality checks,
including castling while in check, castling over a
controlled square, and checking for the king or rook
having previously been moved.)
o The DOOR supports en passant captures.
o The DOOR supports pawn advancement allowing the player to
select any allowable piece.
o The screen displays a pictorial of the game including
information on the present move number, each player's last
Documentation for Turbo CHESS DOOR ver 1.41 - page 2
move, the date the last move was made, and the players'
names.
o DOOR users may view games being played by other users.
o DOOR users may view up to the last 100 moves in any game.
Including information on en passant and pawn advancement.
o The DOOR supports resignation.
o The DOOR has an undo feature that always a player to undo
his last move if his opponent has not yet moved. Players
could alternately undo moves all the way to the beginning
of the game if desired.
o The DOOR supports two optional initial welcome screens and
one optional final screen.
o The DOOR keeps a record of the number of wins, losses and
draws for each player.
o The DOOR has a built-in HELP feature.
o The DOOR is network/share compatible.
o The DOOR will operate without the use of GUARD, WATCHDOG,
or PCBTrap as it has it's own internal COM routines. It
will recycle properly on loss of carrier.
o The DOOR is fully compatible with Double DOS.
o The DOOR may be entered from the local terminal.
o The DOOR will handle Keyboard Timeout (set to 5 minutes),
or User Time Expired. The DOOR will allow a user to spend
all of his remaining time before returning him to PCBoard,
or the SYSOP may cause the DOOR to only allow a set time
limit.
o The DOOR allows for data entry from the user or the SYSOP.
o The DOOR supports ANSI graphics.
o The DOOR automatically terminates "dead" games. (Those in
which a move has not been made for over a month.)
o The DOOR prevents a normal user (non-SYSOP) from being
involved in more than 4 at a time.
o The DOOR has a local screen off and a logoff user control
at the local terminal.
o Tested and compatible with 19,200 BPS speeds.
Setting Up Turbo CHESS DOOR
This section is designed to help you set up the Turbo CHESS
DOOR. IT IS NOT DESIGNED TO TEACH YOU ABOUT DOOR SET UP. If
Documentation for Turbo CHESS DOOR ver 1.41 - page 3
you do not know how to set up a DOOR, you should refer to you
PCBoard Manual.
1) Place the program file (TCHESS.COM), the help file (HELP),
and the sample configuration file (TC.CFG) in your DOORS
subdirectory. For the sake of illustration, I will assume
this to be C:\DOORS.
2) Place the starting batch file (TCHESS), in the directory
where your PCBOARD.DAT file is located.
3) Edit the TC.CFG file to reflect your system setup, you may
use TC.CFG as a guide. The configuration file appears in
the following order:
Line 1 - C:\BBS <- The PCBoard directory
Line 2 - HELP <- The name of the HELP file (This should
only be changed if you decide to write
your own HELP file.)
Line 3 - INIT1 <- The name of the first welcome screen
for the Turbo CHESS DOOR. This is
optional, when Turbo CHESS DOOR runs,
it will look for this file. If it can
not find it, then it will simple not
display anything. This may be a
complete path name. It should NOT be
left blank.
Line 4 - INIT2 <- This is the name of a second welcome
screen for the Turbo CHESS DOOR. It
operates just like the first one.
Line 5 - FINAL1 <- This is the name of a final screen for
the Turbo CHESS DOOR. It will be
displayed when the user exits the DOOR.
Aside from this, it operates exactly as
the welcome screens.
Line 6 - BBS Name <- Enter your BBS name here, it will be
displayed on a title screen.
NOTE *** - If you are running a multinode PCBoard setup, then you
should have one configuration file for each node. For
example, assume you run a two node BBS where the
PCBoard directory for node 1 is C:\BBS and the PCBoard
directory for node 2 is C:\BBS2. Your two
configuration files would be:
TC1.CFG TC2.CFG
============================================================
C:\BBS C:\BBS2
HELP HELP
INIT1 INIT1
INIT2 INIT2
FINAL1 FINAL1
BBS Name BBS Name
4) Edit the TCHESS file to reflect how to start the Turbo
CHESS DOOR.
An example follows:
Line 1 - ECHO OFF <- Shut off ECHO for looks
Documentation for Turbo CHESS DOOR ver 1.41 - page 4
Line 2 - CD \DOORS <- Change directories to DOORS
Line 3 - TCHESS 1 TC.CFG <- Run TCHESS Com# Configfile [time
limit]
Line 4 - CD \BBS <- Change back to PCBoard directory
Line 5 - ECHO ON <- Reactivate ECHO
Line 6 - BOARD <- Restart PCBoard
NOTE *** - If you are running a multinode PCBoard setup, then the
starting batch files will be different for each node.
For example, assume you run a two node system where the
PCBoard directory for node 1 is C:\BBS, it uses COM1
and the configuration file is TC1.CFG. The PCBoard
directory for node 2 is C:\BBS2, it uses COM2 and the
configuration file is TC2.CFG. The batch files would
be:
TCHESS for Node 1 TCHESS for Node 2
(placed in directory C:\BBS) (placed in directory C:\BBS2)
============================================================
Line 1 - ECHO OFF ECHO OFF
Line 2 - CD \DOORS CD \DOORS
Line 3 - TCHESS 1 TC1.CFG TCHESS 2 TC2.CFG
Line 4 - CD \BBS CD \BBS2
Line 5 - ECHO ON ECHO ON
Line 6 - BOARD BOARD
5) Add an entry in the DOORS.DAT file in you MAIN
subdirectory for TCHESS.
That completes the installation of The Turbo CHESS DOOR.
Advanced Use of The Turbo CHESS DOOR
a) Typically, the Turbo CHESS DOOR is called by the
following:
TCHESS Com# Configfilename.
Optionally, the DOOR may be called as follows:
TCHESS Com# Configfilename Timelimit
where time limit is the maximum amount of time the user
will be allowed to stay in the DOOR before the DOOR ejects
him. This is optional and if not supplied, the user is
allowed to spend all of his remaining time in the DOOR.
b) If the DOOR is run from the local terminal, everything
will work properly. However, if you would like to run the
program WITHOUT USING PCBOARD, this can still be done. If
the program is called as follows:
TCHESS LOCAL Configfilename (LOCAL has been
substituted for Com#)
then the DOOR will not look for the PCBOARD.SYS file
(which would not be there) and assumes the user is the
SYSOP.
Documentation for Turbo CHESS DOOR ver 1.41 - page 5
c) F1 will cause the present user to be logged off Turbo
CHESS DOOR and returned to PCBoard. F2 will toggle the
local screen on and off.
Program Notes
1) It is MUCH easier to understand the graphics board than
the non-graphics board. The non-graphics board uses only
true ASC characters (no IBM extended characters) so non-
IBM computers can use the DOOR.
2) The program does not support the 50 move stalemate rule
although all of the necessary record keeping is being
done at present. A later version may support this. The
program does not support the thrice repeated sequence
rule and will probably never support this.
Appendix
CHREPORT.COM
CHREPORT.COM will create a list of the top scoring
players of The Turbo CHESS DOOR. CHREPORT.COM must be
in the same directory as TCHESS.COM. When it is run, it
will read the CHSCORE file that is created and
maintained by TCHESS.COM. It will sort the members,
ordering them according to their wins vs losses. It
will print the report to the screen, however, the output
is redirectable. This is useful for automatically
creating a bulletin that lists the top players. Assume
your PCBoard GEN directory is C:\GEN and the following
line is in your EVENT.SYS file:
CHREPORT > C:\GEN\BLT2
This would cause BLT2 (PCBoard Bulletin 2) to contain a
list of the best players.
CHREPORT.COM may optionally be called with a parameter
indicating how many players to list. If no parameter is
given, then the report contains all players who have
won, lost, or drawn in Turbo CHESS DOOR. If a parameter
is given, then that parameter is assumed to be the
number of players you wish to list.
An example:
CHREPORT 10 This would list the top 10 players.
Special Thanks :
I would like to thank Carl Evans, SYSOP of The WAR BOARD
for helping with the beta testing of Turbo CHESS DOOR.
His comments, and bug reports were tremendously helpful.
The WAR BOARD - (714) 989-7596
I would like to thank the users of my BBS, The MBT, for
their help in alpha and beta testing of Turbo CHESS
Documentation for Turbo CHESS DOOR ver 1.41 - page 6
DOOR. Their comments were helpful in all aspects of the
programs development.
Program History :
Version
1.00 - 1.30 Alpha and beta Versions
1.31 - First version released to public
1.32 - Fixed bug in initial creation of CHSCORE
file. Changed color of text on status line
from green to white for better visibility.
(Not released to public.)
1.40 - Added logic to allow no more that 4 games
per user. (Not released to public.)
1.41 - Added logic to kill off "dead" games.
Modified CHREPORT.COM to output a message
when no games had been completed. Changed
centering of BBS name on opening screen to
better handle odd character names. Fixed
bug that caused illegal game when user
entered illegal 1 character command at move
prompt. (Second version released to
public.)