Ñ fills a market gap, by being easily beaten at its lower levels and (as some unkind people have suggested) at its higher levels too
Ñ usually beats its programmer on level 4 and sometimes on level 3
Ñ is given away free, gratis, without charge, and for nothing. Nor are you required to pay for it.
Ñ examines 400-900 moves per second on LCIII; 1100-2400 per second on Quadra 650 [the natural awe with which naive people regard these numbers should be tempered by the fact that most of the moves examined are stupid ones that no human player would contemplate at all. Also, internationally acclaimed chess computers examine 300000+ moves per second]
Ñ most perceptive critical comment received so far: "It plays chess as though it was playing draughts"
Instructions:
Ñ Minimum memory requirement (as set in the Finder Get Info window) is about 577K. Memory allocated in excess of this is used for the transposition table to increase speed of searching. An allocation of at least 1.5 MB is recommended.
Ñ Move pieces either by clicking on the piece then on the destination, or by dragging the piece to its destination.
Ñ The menu item "Modify board position" in the Control menu permits rearrangement of pieces. After rearrangement, select "Continue play" to accept the new piece placings, or "Revert board position" to return to the original position.
Ñ The menu items "White to play and mate" and "Black to play and mate" in the Control menu put RChess into an efficient mate-problem-solving mode which will find a mate (if one exists in 10 moves or fewer). Exit from this mode by selecting "New game" from the File menu, or "Move now" from the mini-menu.
Angry bug reports (in English please) or extravagant praise (in any language) may be directed to:-
robert.purves@stonebow.otago.ac.nz
Robert Purves
Pharmacology Department
Medical School
PO Box 913
Dunedin
New Zealand
Version history:
Ñ ▓1.09 Various bug-ridden horrors
Ñ 1.10 Timer. Additional levels
Ñ 1.11 Underpromotion (P->N, P->B, P->R)
Ñ 1.12 Static capture-analysis module speeds up pre-sorting of moves
Ñ 1.13 En passant captures re-enabled (disabled by mistake in 1.10)
Ñ 1.14 Control menu allows change of sides and modification of position
Ñ 1.15 Fixed bug giving illegal P moves when in check. Fixed bug causing system error on checkmate at level 4. Added level 5 for those with a fast computer or lots of spare time.
Ñ 2.0 Move search routines re-written: transposition table; progressive deepening of search; "obvious" moves made quickly; deeper searching in endgame (usually able to mate with KBN vs K on level 3). Mini-menu with "Hint" and "Move now". Mate-seeking mode for problem solving.
Ñ 2.0.1 & 2.0.2 Tiny bugs fixed
Ñ 2.1 Changed to FutureBasic II compiler. New assembler routines for shorter, faster code. No longer runs on 68000 machines (Plus, SE, etc).
Ñ 2.1.1 Minor bugs removed, giving slightly less weak positional evaluation. Fixed bug affecting strength in KBN vs K.
Ñ 2.1.2 Minor bug fixes
Ñ 2.1.3 Fixed bug causing crash on Copy of Game window. Slightly faster mate-seeking mode.
