Curse

A Chess program written in Lua for World of Warcraft. Why? Because I could.

Installing

Completely exit World of Warcraft, and copy the Chess directory from the Chess.zip archive to the Interface/AddOns directory where World of Warcraft was installed.

In Windows, this will usually be:

C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns

In a Macintosh, this will usually be:

/Applications/World of Warcraft/Interface/AddOns

Usage

Menu

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. Your target requires version 1.4 of this AddOn to be able to play. Version 1.3 may also work; but won't accept non-queen promotions.

Find Opponent

Find another player in your realm and faction that is also looking for an opponent, and start a game with them. The odds of you actually finding someone are slim to none.

Past Games

Lists your previously played games. Clicking on an item will display that game, and let you review the history of that game. Clicking on the X will delete the game from the history.

Multiplayer

To be honest; I haven't tested multiplayer in like 2 years. It may be broken.

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. The chance is derived by chess rankings; which the game does actually calculate, but doesn't display anywhere.

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.

When transversing the game history, a window showing all the moves made will appear. You may click a specific move to view the board as it appeared after that move was made, or use the mouse wheel to scroll through the game history.

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.

In case castling doesn't work for you; beware that the rules of chess have some somewhat strict requirements on when it's allowed:

• The king must not have moved yet.
• The affected rook must not have moved yet.
• None of the squares the king passes through (i.e., the square where the rook is placed) can be accessible by the opponents pieces.

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.

Promotions

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 has the same effect as clicking the resign button.

Reloading the user interface, or logging out has the same effect as clicking the resign button when playing against another player. When playing against yourself or the computer; the game is saved and restored the next time the AddOn is loaded.

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.