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Download and Play Mini Chess!

Name:	Chris Jorgensen
Date Posted:	Mar 10, 2008
Rating:	Not Rated
Public:	YES
Comments:	YES
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Blog post

Mini chess is here!

Features:
* Plays three different mini chess variants: western chess, makruk, and shatranj
* Challenging AI that has 5 difficulty settings
* Capacity to handle multiple themes/skins: beta has two
* Undo button
* Hint button
* Play as black, white, or two players
* How-To-Play Tutorial section
* Full screen toggle; music toggle
* Chess fact ticker

Download here: www.xenoclone.com/downloads/minichessbeta.zip

Please try it out and let me know what you think!

Some questions I'd like answered:
* Is the AI too hard? Too easy? Does it take too long to think?
* Do the art and music appeal to you?
* Is there a feature you think is missing? Or one that is there but you find useless?

Options if you don't want to post here:

* Email me: chris@xenoclone.com
* Yahoo Group: games.groups.yahoo.com/group/minichess/
* TGB Forum thread: www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=72926

Note: The beta will expire on the 16th of March, 2008. I will also pull the zip off the site (xenoclone.com) at that time.

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Submit your own resources!

Aun Arinyasak (Mar 13, 2008 at 07:59 GMT)

Just got a chance to play every mode of your game. I liked the game really much, here are some comments.

- The Ai are almost the same in every mode. All 5 modes of the Ais are almost the at the same difficulty.
- The Ai are predictable. Each turn they will response in the same move if you use the same move. So after playing it 3 - 4 times, I was able to predict what moves the Ai will make ahead 3 - 4 moves. Thus, I was able to beat the extra hard mode in 10 moves.

- network multi-player Please :D

Aun.

Chris Jorgensen (Mar 13, 2008 at 18:14 GMT)

Aun:

Cool! You are correct in that the AI is the same across all three rule modes and is almost the same across the difficulty settings. I can increase the difference between extra easy and extra hard. The difference lies in the number of moves it can see ahead. In extra hard, it's 7.

Predictability is a little trickier. If the AI controls white, it will open the game differently each time. I used to have some random tie-breakers -- that is, when it thinks two moves are even, it randomly decides between the two. I also used a bayesian classifier to break ties... but in the end, the AI seemed to play a little dumber!

As for networking.... I've toyed with it some. I'll can take another look. I'll keep your comments in mind.... I might be able to tweak it some here. :)
Edited on Mar 13, 2008 18:15 GMT

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