Goals?

[imrul]

What are the goals of this game? I'm hoping it'd be something like ChessMaster where you can have all types of graphical chess boards and chess pieces and be able to play against different levels with different personalities. All the while being able to install different UCI engines. One of the problems however, is that Stockfish, even at its weakest level is too strong for average players. And certainly, it's virtually impossible for a human to win against it at its strongest. A suggestion that I might then add is that you may want a wrapper for the levels you set where there's a set percentage chance (according to the level set) that a blunder move is made.

[ChessiaTheGame]

Hello

Thanks for reaching us out.

We are reluctant about different styled chess boards because we found out two problems with it. The first, non-standard chess boards causes confusion among some players. The second, most chess players dread the idea of different chess boards. However we would like to note that, this is precisely one of the reasons why we made the game available as Early Access, to get valuable feedback from users.

One of the features of Chessia, which is already implemented, is that you can install any UCI chess engine. If you think that Stockfish is incapable of what you desire or you do not want to use it, you can easily install a chess engine of your choice. To do that;

0) Select a chess engine of your choice and download/buy it from the provider.
1) You should have been provided with either a compressed file, or a folder. If it is a compressed file, uncompress it.
2) Copy the folder to "Chessia/ChessGame/Content/ChessEngines" folder, which you can find under "[STEAM_DIRECTORY]/steamapps/common" folder. NOTE: If what you are provided with is not inside any folder, be sure to put it inside a folder!
3) If Chessia is running, restart it
4) Wait for the game to check existing chess engines. (You may have been provided with multiple executable files and some of them may be designed for special CPUs. These may crash, but you do not need to worry about that.)
5) Go to Single Player and click chess engine list to select the chess engine you installed.

If you can't see it in the list, you may have made a mistake in following these steps or your provider may have some issues from their end. Please take note that chess engine must support UCI.

About different personalities of chess engines. Currently you can do it under "Options" section and "Chess" tab.

Go to there, select Contempt and change it. Quoting from Stockfish site:
Contempt Integer, Default: 0, Min: -100, Max: 100
Roughly equivalent to "optimism." Positive values of contempt favor more "risky" play, while negative values will favor draws. Zero is neutral.

We are currently discussing the idea of putting it under Single Player section as an option.

To learn more about chess engine options, you can go to;
Stockfish Engine Parameters[support.stockfishchess.org]

[imrul]

Hi, thanks for replying. What I meant by different chessboards is differently themed chessboards with a standard layout. For example, you may have a wooden board or a marble board and have the option of choosing wooden, marble, or plastic chess pieces. I'd also be interested in different piece designs.