@@@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@ @@ @@@ @@ @@ @@ @ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@@ @@@@@ @@ @@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@ @@@@@@@ @@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@ README.TXT for Windows version of Chenard, a chess program by Don Cross. NOTE: If you have web access, check in on the following URL every now and then to see if there are newer versions of Chenard. You can tell which version you have by looking in Chenard's menu Help|About. http://cosinekitty.com/chenard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What is Chenard? ================ Chenard is a chess program that I have been working on since April 1993. Chenard comes in different versions. This version (also known as WinChenard) runs under Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7. The Chenard program is freely distributable. You may give copies to anyone anywhere in the world, so long as you distribute both WINCHEN.EXE and README.TXT (this file) unmodified and in their entirety. The C++ source code for Chenard is available online at the web address at the beginning of this document. The source code is copyrighted, but I (Don Cross) allow anyone to use it freely for non-commercial uses, and especially for non-profit educational uses. If you wish to distribute versions of the Chenard program or its source code which have been modified in any way, you must obtain express written permission from me, Don Cross. Please contact me by email at: cosinekitty {at} hotmail {dot} com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Instructions for installing Chenard =================================== I recommend that you create a directory for Chenard, then unzip the file WINCHEN.ZIP into it. You will then have the following files: WINCHEN.EXE - The Chenard executable itself README.TXT - This file If you are running 64-bit Windows, you can try out WINCHEN64.ZIP instead, which contains WINCHEN64.EXE. This program has exactly the same features as the regular (32-bit) WINCHEN.EXE, but you will find that it is roughly 25% faster on the same hardware. However, WINCHEN64 will not work on 32-bit Windows, so if you aren't sure what you have, download the regular WINCHEN.ZIP, because it will work on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows. Note 1: These files are enough for Chenard to play chess, but you can also optionally download the file CHENWAV.ZIP from the Chenard web page to give Chenard the ability to speak the move notation through your sound card (see the View|Speak option later in this document). Put CHENWAV.ZIP in the same directory that you installed Chenard in, then unzip it to obtain the necessary *.WAV files. Note 2: There are also some endgame databases you can download in ENDGAME.ZIP. They help Chenard play much better in certain endgame positions. Download and unzip ENDGAME.ZIP in the same directory as WINCHEN.EXE (or WINCHEN64.EXE). This is a rather large zip file (about 4MB), and Chenard will work without them, so that is why I provide them as a separate download. After installing the Chenard files, you can create an icon in Windows to run the program. For example, to make a shortcut on your desktop, click the right mouse button once while holding the mouse over a blank space on the desktop. Then choose "New", then "Shortcut". Use the Browse button to locate the subdirectory where you just put all of the Chenard distribution files, and in it select the file WINCHEN.EXE with the mouse. Continue with the process by clicking the Next button, optionally giving the shortcut the name "Chenard". Once you are done, you will be able to double click on the shortcut icon and run Chenard. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ How to run Chenard ================== When you first run Chenard, a dialog box appears which asks who should play White and who should play Black. By default, Chenard randomly assigns one color to you (Human) and one to itself (Computer), with equal likelihood. However, you can play Chenard against itself if you like -- just set both White and Black to "Computer" and watch the fight begin! It's fun to set one side to think for a much larger amount of time than the other, virtually guaranteeing its overwhelming victory. The final possibility is to set both White and Black to "Human" and just use the program as a passive chess board which enforces legal moves. (In this case, the View|Rotate Board command may be useful). You can adjust Chenard's playing strength by modifying the amount of time it spends thinking about each move. The "think time" appears to the right of each radio button labeled "Computer" in the opening dialog box. You should enter a time expressed in seconds. I recommend starting out somewhere around 1 to 5 seconds. If this seems too easy for you to beat, then increase the time to your liking. Starting in version 1.030, the think time may be a fractional number of seconds, with the minimum allowed value being 0.1 seconds. Menu commands available in Chenard ================================== File|New - throw this game away and start a new one File|Open - load a game from a file File|Save - save the current state of the game to a file File|Save As - save to another filename File|Exit - quits out of the Chenard program Edit|Clear Board - removes all pieces from the board except the kings Edit|Edit Mode Toggles edit mode. When on, clicking on a square with the left mouse button will bring up a dialog box which lets you change the contents of the square to anything you like. When you choose "king", the specified color king is moved (not replicated!) to the given square. Clicking on a square with the right mouse button while in edit mode repeats this last edit action to the specified square. You must turn edit mode off to resume normal play. Edit|Copy Game Listing This command copies a text listing of the moves which have been played so far into the Windows clipboard. Then, you will be able to paste the game listing into Notepad, your favorite word processor, etc. Then you could print the game listing or save it as a text file. Edit|Undo Move Cancels the last whole move (pair of turns) in the game, so that you can try a different move. You can repeat this action as many times as you want to back up toward the beginning of the game. Edit|Redo Move Cancels one Undo action every time it is performed, moving forward in the game by a whole move (pair of turns). View|Freshen Try this command if it looks like Chenard has not rendered the whole display correctly. Theoretically, you should never have to do this. View|Rotate By default, when one player is human and the other is the computer, Chenard shows the human side toward the bottom of the screen and the computer's side toward the top of the screen. At any time, you can toggle the orientation of the view by selecting this menu command, or pressing Ctrl+R. This is especially useful if you are playing Chenard against another computer program, because you can then see the board from the same point of view in both programs. View|Speak moves through sound card (disabled by default) NOTE: The WAV files necessary for this command are now distributed separately from Chenard, simply because they are rather large. If you want to use View|Speak, you will need to visit the Chenard web page, download the file called "chenwav.zip" and unzip it into the same directory where you installed Chenard. This option requires a sound card in your computer which can handle 8-bit monaural PCM WAV files sampled at 11.025 kHz. Most any sound card these days should be able handle this. When this option is enabled, the computer will speak (using recordings of the author's voice) move notation through the sound card after each move is played. View|Board Size Has three different choices allowed: Small(default), Medium, and Large. Small will always make the graphics look crispest and nicest, but Medium and Large are provided in case you want to make the board display more legible from a distance. View|Piece Style Allows you to choose from one of three different styles for the graphics of the chess pieces on the board: Original by Don Cross Tilburg by Eric Schiller & William Cone Skak by Egon Madsen If you are interested in the topic of computer chess fonts, visit Alastair Scott's web page at: http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~amscott/home.htm Alastair was the one who contacted me and supplied me with the Tilburg and Skak chess fonts, and Chenard has looked much better ever since! Game|Force Move Use this command whenever it is Chenard's turn to move and you are losing your patience. This command will force the computer to immediately make whatever move it currently thinks is best. Game|Edit Think Times Allows you to edit the maximum amount of time that the computer player(s) spend thinking about each move they make. Note that editing the think time of a computer player while it is thinking about a move will have no effect on the current move, but will kick in immediately after that. See also: Game|Force Move. Game|Allow Computer to Resign When enabled (checked), this option allows the computer to resign when it decides that it will inevitably lose. Turn this option off (unchecked) if you want the computer to play to the "bloody end" no matter how badly it is losing. Game|Tactical Benchmark This command is probably not of much interest to most users. It runs a series of pre-programmed tests to determine how efficient my chess engine is on the current computer. You can compare your computer's efficiency to that of the author's 100 MHz Pentium machine. This test can take a long time (6 minutes on my machine), and once started, the only way you can stop it is to close the whole Chenard program. Help|About Tells you the version of Chenard, my email address, and Chenard's address on the World Wide Web. Please feel free to send me any questions or comments relating to Chenard. Even though it is a free program, I do try to support it as much as possible because I want people to enjoy using it. Again, here's how to contact me: email: cosinekitty {at} hotmail {dot} com web: http://cosinekitty.com/chenard Help|visit Chenard web page Launches the Chenard web page in your default browser: http://cosinekitty.com/chenard/ Why did I write Chenard? ======================== The short answer to this question is: for fun! Chenard is actually the second chess program I have written. The first one (called Chester) was a success in that it could play a reasonable game of chess, but I knew that the code was never going to run on anything but MS-DOS due to a lot of machine dependencies (including hand-optimized assembly code). I decided that I wanted to pursue chess programming as a long-term hobby, and that meant that I should design a chess engine to be portable to different operating systems from the ground up. This way, no matter what direction the computer industry took in the years to come, I would have an easy way to keep Chenard "alive". So I had a real ball designing, implementing, and refining Chenard into the program it is today. But then I ran into a problem: I had worked so hard creating this thing, but very few people I knew seemed interested in actually *using* it. Kind of a letdown... But then the World Wide Web happened! I realized that instead of bugging my friends to play my program, I could just cast a larger net; surely *someone* out there in the world would get some use out of it. Chenard was one of the first things I put on my web site. Now (February 1997) the Chenard page is getting an average of 40 hits a day, and I get lots of positive feedback from around the world. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I hope you enjoy using Chenard! ----------------------------- end of readme.txt ------------------------------