A Chess program written in Lua for World of Warcraft. Why? Because I could.
Usage
Type '/chess' to display a menu for starting chess games.
VS Computer Black
Start a game with the computer playing black.
VS Computer White
Start a game with the computer playing white.
VS Target
Start a game with your selected target. Be sure to ask them first, as the whispers sent to them will probably get you ignored or reported for spamming.
Find Opponent
Find another player in your realm and faction that is also looking for an opponent, and start a game with them.
Past Games
Lists your previously played games. Clicking on an item will display that game, and let you review the history of that game.
Multiplayer
When playing against another player, moves will be whispered with them using algebraic chess notation. Technically, the other player doesn't need to have this AddOn and can manually whisper their moves back to you, but who would want to bother?
The position of white is first come, first serve. As soon as one player moves a white piece, the other player is forced to play black.
Playing
Click on the piece you want to move, and then click where you want to move it.
You can also drag the piece where you want it. The piece won't move unless you release the mouse button on a valid square.
Title
The title contains the names of the players, with white on the left, and black on the right.
The background of the title is the colour of the player who is to move next. It will be light or dark grey when the the game is over, or not displaying the most recent move.
If one player appears to be better than the other, the better player has their chance of winning displayed beside their name.
Move History
There are two arrow buttons at the bottom of the game window. Pressing them will go backwards or forwards through the game history.
You can't move pieces if you aren't viewing the most recent move.
If your opponent moves while you're viewing an older point in the game, the game will be advanced forward to the most recent move.
Castling
To castle, move the king to where it would be after castling. The rook will be moved for you automatically. Moving the rook will only move the rook, and not castle.
En Passant Captures
These are performed by capturing the square a pawn passed through with your own pawn. The enemy pawn will be moved back to that square and captured.
When you try to move a pawn to the highest rank, a small window will appear under your cursor, allowing you to choose the what to promote that pawn to.
Resignation
If you click the resign button, you lose and the other player wins.
Closing the game window, reloading the user interface, or logging out have the same effect as clicking the resign button.
As a feature, if it is currently your turn and you're entitled to claim a draw, this will draw the game instead.
The computer will never resign.
Drawing
If it is your turn and either 50 moves have been made without a capture or a pawn move, or if the game has been in this same state (pieces in the same places, each with the exact same moves available) then you are entitled to claim a draw.
If it is your turn but those other conditions don't apply, then you can instead propose a draw. If the other player accepts, then the game ends. Note that the other player can't reject the proposal, they must either accept it or you must make a move for the game to continue.
The computer will never propose or claim a draw. It will however accept a proposed draw if 25 moves have been made without a capture or a pawn move.
Bugs
- All computer games share the same memory pool. If you have more than one at the same time, then as the AI in one game discards unplayed game paths, the AI in the other games will snatch it for themselves, leaving the first with no memory to explore. It will still be able to play, but will do so very badly.
- There needs to be a time limit for making moves, so that someone will eventually lose if they stop playing.
Incompatibilities
Versions before 1.3 are completely incompatible with later versions.
Version 1.3 won't accept non-queen pawn promotions from versions 1.4 and later.
Credits
The large chess piece images were drawn by Maurizio Monge and released under the LGPL2 license. The original files from which they were created are in the Fantasy directory.
The small chess figure images were generated from the freeware font FigurineSymbol created by Armando Hernández Marroquín.
Everything else was created by myself, Tyson Brown, and is covered under the GPL3 license.
tag 1.4
90b34bbbee66042de0c9e0ae667566024118b2a9
smariot <smariot@gmail.com>
2008-12-25 00:43:55 +0000
1.4 Release.
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--------------------
smariot (14):
38ff745: Begone, foul cartridge returns of doom.
33274c6: Made animations bi-directional, and added buttons to move through game history.
7e35cce: Record moves in algrbraic chess notation, so that the game doesn't need to be replayed when saving.
5df1261: createBoard can be passed one of strings in Chess_Games to load that game.
ccb3ff9: /chess <player> requests a game with that player.
af13edf: Pawns can now be promoted to rooks, knights, or bishops.
8bcafc3: Moved shared frame bits into their own file.
810c6d9: Added addText() to frame.lua
1a47d7d: Can now view past games.
aea4f57: Don't show chat button when viewing and old game.
73055de: Show relative chess ranking in game title.
de52ab3: List saved games with the most recent at the top.
a45fbec: Nevermind the rankings, just display the player's chance of winning.
d6c1b87: Updated README.
Installation Guide
- Exit "World of Warcraft" completely
- Download the mod you want to install
- Make a folder on your desktop called "My Mods"
- Save the .zip/.rar files to this folder.
- If, when you try to download the file, it automatically "opens" it... you need to RIGHT click on the link and "save as..." or "Save Target As".
- Extract the file - commonly known as 'unzipping'
Do this ONE FILE AT A TIME!
- Windows
- Windows XP has a built in ZIP extractor. Double click on the file to open it, inside should be the file or folders needed. Copy these outside to the "My Mods" folder.
- WinRAR: Right click the file, select "Extract Here"
- WinZip: You MUST make sure the option to "Use Folder Names" is CHECKED or it will just extract the files and not make the proper folders how the Authors designed
- Mac Users
- StuffitExpander: Double click the archive to extract it to a folder in the current directory.
- Verify your WoW Installation Path
That is where you are running WoW from and THAT is where you need to install your mods.
- Move to the Addon folder
- Open your World of Warcraft folder. (default is C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\)
- Go into the "Interface" folder.
- Go into the "AddOns" folder.
- In a new window, open the "My Mods" folder.
- The "My Mods" folder should have the "Addonname" folder in it.
- Move the "Addonname" folder into the "AddOns" folder
- Start World of Warcraft
- Make sure AddOns are installed
- Log in
- At the Character Select screen, look in lower left corner for the "addons" button.
- If button is there: make sure all the mods you installed are listed and make sure "load out of date addons" is checked.
- If the button is NOT there: means you did not install the addons properly. Look at the above screenshots. Try repeating the steps or getting someone who knows more about computers than you do to help.
Translations
When you download a mod, please be sure that the mod is compatible with your translation of wow. Some mods only work on the US versions, while some only work on some of the various European versions. These variations are called "Localizations".
TOC Numbers (Out of Date Mods)
When Blizzard patches WoW, they change the Interface number. This means that all mods will be "out of date" unless or until the author releases a new version for that interface. Some people go into the .toc files and update the numbers themselves, but this is STRONGLY advised against as it will cause problems locating possible incompatibilities addons. When you log into WoW after a patch, you DO NOT have to delete your interface directory. All you have to do is simply tell WoW to ignore the interface numbers and load all the mods anyway. All you have to do is, while at the "character select" screen, look in the lower left corner and click on the "addons" button. A window will pop up listing all your installed mods.
If you look in the upper left corner of that window there should be a box that says "Load Out of Date AddOns". You want to CHECK this box. Now simply go into WoW normally and all your mods should load. As of the 1.9 patch, you will have to do this after EVERY patch/update that Blizzard posts! If you encounter any problems with a mod after a patch, please be sure to let the author of the mod know so they can fix it.
See also: About "Out Of Date AddOns"
Mac Support
WoW addons are not platformed based. As such, they can be used on either Mac or PC. You can extract both .zip and .rar files on a Mac using StuffitExpander.
Directory Structure
World of Warcraft
|_ Interface
|_AddOns
|_*AddonName*
|_ *AddonName*.toc
|_ *AddonName*.xml
|_ *AddonName*.lua
|_ (possibly others as well)...
