Perigee Chess v3.1

by Jeremy Stanley and David Palmer

License

Perigee Chess may be distributed freely, provided this documentation file is included. It may not be sold.

This program is provided "as is" and bears no warranty of any kind, not even the implied warranties of merchantibility or fitness for a particular purpose. In no event shall the authors be held liable for any damages resulting from the use of this program.

All trademarks referred to in this document are the property of their respective owners and are used for identification purposes only.

Download

Perigee Chess 3.1 Installer for Win32

In-Game Controls

Press Esc, or click the right mouse button, to bring up the in-game menu.
Use the arrow keys, or move the mouse while holding the middle button, to rotate the board.
Use the +/- keys on the keypad, or move the mouse while holding Shift and the left button, to zoom in and out.
Press the space bar to rotate the board 180 degrees at once.

Command Line Options

-w XXX	Set window width to XXX
-h YYY	Set window height to YYY
-F	Run in full screen (change screen resolution to window size specified by -w and -h; Win32 only)
-b BB	Set color depth to BB bits per pixel (effective only with -F)
-s XX	Set animation speed (in squares per second) to XX (default = 8.0; <= 0 disables animation)
-m XX game	Benchmark mode. Using AI index XX and the specified game file, time how long the AI takes to respond
-c dir	Load chessmen models in directory dir (default is models/hi)
-t XXX	Do timed game with XXX total seconds per player

System Requirements

Perigee Chess requires at least a P6-class CPU and a decent hardware OpenGL implementation (nVidia GeForce or ATI Radeon class). If you experience problems (such as choppy motion or bad textures), check the following:

Some video cards are incapable of OpenGL accelerated rendering in a window or in 32-bit color. Try launching the "fast full screen" version from the Start Menu, or use these command-line options:
pchess.exe -w 640 -h 480 -b 16 -F
Some video drivers bundled with Windows do not provide accelerated OpenGL support. Try downloading updated drivers from your video card manufacturer's web site.

So who did what?

Jeremy wrote the general framework and GUI code. He also wrote the StupidAI in about half an hour, and is embarrassed by the fact that he loses to it more often than not.
David did the chess engine, so if the game lets you do something illegal, it's his fault. He also did the Tactician and the experimental Statistician AIs, the latter of which did not appear in the final release, because they sucked. (Dave's own words.)

New in Version 3.1

Fixed choppy video problems.
StupidAI no longer plays to lose as black (Some testing code was never removed. He wasn't supposed to be that stupid. And no, I didn't lose to him more often than not in that configuration.)

Prior Versions

v1.0 (1994) BASIC program with 2D graphics, keyboard only interface, allowed loading and saving games, actually enforced chess rules, but had no AI.
v2.0 (1997) DOS-based program compiled with Borland Turbo C++ 3.0. VGA graphics with pseudo 3D look. (I thought it looked really neat at the time.) This one never even got as far as enforcing the rules.

Contact At Least One Of The Authors

You can email Jeremy from a web form here

The latest version of this document can be found here.