Category : BBS Programs+Doors
Archive   : TCHSS301.ZIP
Filename : TCHESS.DOC

Documentation for Turbo CHESS DOOR ver 3.01 - page 1


Turbo CHESS DOOR for PCBoard 14.0

Copyright Andrew Roy, 1987, 1988, 1989

The Facts of Life:

Turbo Chess (and several of its companion programs) took a
long time to write. In my home in Virginia, I spent many
hours talking to beta boards in California, Connecticut, and
Florida. There were also many hours of long distance
discussion with other sysops concerning what they wanted from
the Turbo line of games. As simple as it may seem, the user
interface for the Turbo line of games has 'caught on' and I
have seen several games copy its style. In all, I think it
is a good program and I have spent a lot of time on it.

Turbo CHESS is NOT free software. Turbo CHESS 3.00 is
distributed UNCRIPPLED; however, if you decide to use the
program you MUST register it. Registration is $20 and all
the registration information is included in a separate
document. If everyone (or even the majority or the sysops)
uses Turbo CHESS without registering it then I will be forced
to:

a) Cripple future versions of Turbo CHESS
OR
b) Stop working on it altogether.

In my opinion, the majority of Sysops are thoughtful people
with good intentions. Please do not do anything to make me
feel otherwise. I would hate to find I am living in a dream
world.

NOTE: Those Sysops who sent in money for previous versions of
Turbo CHESS are considered registered. Thanks for giving me
the incentive to continue development on the product.

Description of The Turbo CHESS DOOR

The Turbo CHESS DOOR allows board members to play chess with
one another. Some features include:

o Allows the SYSOP to establish the maximum number of games,
up to 99 games occurring at any time.

o The DOOR informs the participates of a CHECK, CHECKMATE,
or STALEMATE condition.

o The DOOR completely checks the legality of each move.

o The DOOR supports castling (with complete legality checks,
including castling while in check, castling over a
controlled square, and checking for the king or rook
having previously been moved.)

o The DOOR supports en passant captures.

o The DOOR supports pawn advancement allowing the player to
select any allowable piece.




Documentation for Turbo CHESS DOOR ver 3.01 - page 2


o The screen displays a pictorial of the game including
information on the present move number, each player's last
move, the date the last move was made, and the players'
names.

o DOOR users may view games being played by other users.

o DOOR users may view up to the last 100 moves in any game,
including information on en passant and pawn advancement.

o The DOOR supports resignation.

o The DOOR supports the multi-lingual standard of PCBoard
allowing the user prompts to be externally defined.

o The DOOR has an undo feature that always a player to undo
his last move if his opponent has not yet moved. Players
could alternately undo moves all the way to the beginning
of the game if desired.

o The DOOR supports two optional initial welcome screens and
one optional final screen.

o The DOOR keeps a record of the number of wins, losses and
draws for each player.

o The DOOR has a built-in HELP feature.

o The DOOR is network/share compatible.

o The DOOR will operate without the use of GUARD, WATCHDOG,
or PCBTrap as it has it's own internal COM routines. It
will recycle properly on loss of carrier.

o The DOOR is fully compatible with Double DOS.

o The DOOR may be entered from the local terminal.

o The DOOR will handle Keyboard Timeout (set to 5 minutes),
or User Time Expired. The DOOR will allow a user to spend
all of his remaining time before returning him to PCBoard,
or the SYSOP may cause the DOOR to only allow a set time
limit.

o The DOOR allows for data entry from the user or the SYSOP.

o The DOOR allows the player to select between ANSI
graphics, IBM Extended Character Set, and plain ASCII
diagrams.

o The DOOR automatically terminates "dead" games. (Those in
which a move has not been made for over a month.)

o The DOOR prevents a normal user (non-SYSOP) from being
involved in more than a definable number of games at a
time.

o The DOOR has a local screen off and a logoff user control
at the local terminal.




Documentation for Turbo CHESS DOOR ver 3.01 - page 3


o Tested and compatible with 19,200 BPS speeds.


Setting Up Turbo CHESS DOOR

This section is designed to help you set up the Turbo CHESS
DOOR. IT IS NOT DESIGNED TO TEACH YOU ABOUT DOOR SET UP. If
you do not know how to set up a DOOR, you should refer to you
PCBoard Manual.

1) Place the program file (TCHESS.COM), the help file
(TCHHELP), the sample configuration file (TCH.CFG), and
the prompt file (TCHTEXT) in your DOORS subdirectory. For
the sake of illustration, this will be assume to be
C:\DOORS.

2) If you wish to support multiple languages, place the
TCHTEXT files and the TCHHELP extension> in the DOORS directory.

An example follows:

If you support French and the extension you use for
French files is .FRE, then you should rename the FRENCH
versions of TCHTEXT and TCHHELP to TCHTEXT.FRE and
TCHHELP.FRE and place them in C:\DOORS.

3) Place the starting batch file (TCHESS), in the directory
where your PCBOARD.DAT file is located.

4) Edit the TCH.CFG file to reflect your system setup, you
may use TCH.CFG as a guide. The configuration file
appears in the following order:

Line 1 - C:\BBS <- The PCBoard directory
Line 2 - TCHHELP <- The name of the HELP file (This should
only be changed if you decide to write
your own HELP file.)
Line 3 - INIT1 <- The name of the first welcome screen
for the Turbo CHESS DOOR. This is
optional, when Turbo CHESS DOOR runs,
it will look for this file. If it can
not find it, then it will simple not
display anything. This may be a
complete path name. It should NOT be
left blank.
Line 4 - INIT2 <- This is the name of a second welcome
screen for the Turbo CHESS DOOR. It
operates just like the first one.
Line 5 - FINAL1 <- This is the name of a final screen for
the Turbo CHESS DOOR. It will be
displayed when the user exits the DOOR.
Aside from this, it operates exactly as
the welcome screens.
Line 6 - BBS Name <- Enter your BBS name here, it will be
displayed on a title screen.
Line 7 - <- Enter the path in which you wish to
keep the game files. This line may be
left blank if they are to reside in the
same directory as TCHESS. This is



Documentation for Turbo CHESS DOOR ver 3.01 - page 4


added for support of Sysops who like to
use RAMDisks. NOTE: If you do not
specify an alternate directory, you
MUST have a blank line here. The path
may end in a \ but it is not required.
Line 8 - 30 <- Enter the maximum number of games you
which to occur simultaneously. If you
enter a blank line, the system will
default to 30. NOTE: If you do not
specify an alternate maximum game
number, you MUST have a blank line
here.
Line 9 - 4 <- Enter the maximum number of games a
player may be involved in at any one
time. If you enter a blank line, the
system will default to 4. NOTE: If you
do not specify a maximum individual
game number, you MUST have a blank line
here.

NOTE 1 *** - If you are running a multinode PCBoard setup, then
you should have one configuration file for each node.
For example, assume you run a two node BBS where the
PCBoard directory for node 1 is C:\BBS and the
PCBoard directory for node 2 is C:\BBS2. You want to
store the game files in C:\TCHESS. Your two
configuration files would be:

TCH1.CFG TCH2.CFG
============================================================
C:\BBS C:\BBS2
TCHHELP TCHHELP
INIT1 INIT1
INIT2 INIT2
FINAL1 FINAL1
BBS Name BBS Name
C:\TCHESS C:\TCHESS
30 30
4 4

NOTE 2 *** - If you are running in a multi-lingual environment,
TCHESS trys to find the initial welcome screens and
the final screen with the appropriate language
extension. If they are not available, it will try to
display the default screens and if they are not
available, it will not display anything.

5) Edit the TCHESS file to reflect how to start the Turbo
CHESS DOOR.

An example follows:

Line 1 - ECHO OFF <- Shut off ECHO for looks
Line 2 - CD \DOORS <- Change directories to DOORS
Line 3 - TCHESS TCH.CFG <- Run TCHESS Configfile [time limit]
Line 4 - CD \BBS <- Change back to PCBoard directory
Line 5 - ECHO ON <- Reactivate ECHO
Line 6 - BOARD <- Restart PCBoard





Documentation for Turbo CHESS DOOR ver 3.01 - page 5


NOTE *** - If you are running a multinode PCBoard setup, then the
starting batch files will be different for each node.
For example, assume you run a two node system where the
PCBoard directory for node 1 is C:\BBS and the
configuration file is TCH1.CFG. The PCBoard directory
for node 2 is C:\BBS2 and the configuration file is
TCH2.CFG. The batch files would be:

TCHESS for Node 1 TCHESS for Node 2
(placed in directory C:\BBS) (placed in directory C:\BBS2)
============================================================
Line 1 - ECHO OFF ECHO OFF
Line 2 - CD \DOORS CD \DOORS
Line 3 - TCHESS TCH1.CFG TCHESS TCH2.CFG
Line 4 - CD \BBS CD \BBS2
Line 5 - ECHO ON ECHO ON
Line 6 - BOARD BOARD

6) Add an entry in the DOORS.DAT file in you MAIN
subdirectory for TCHESS.

That completes the installation of The Turbo CHESS DOOR.


Advanced Use of The Turbo CHESS DOOR

a) Typically, the Turbo CHESS DOOR is called by the
following:

TCHESS Configfilename.

Optionally, the DOOR may be called as follows:

TCHESS Configfilename Timelimit


where time limit is the maximum amount of time (in
minutes) the user will be allowed to stay in the DOOR
before the DOOR ejects him. This is optional and if not
supplied, the user is allowed to spend all of his
remaining time in the DOOR.

b) F1 will cause the present user to be logged off Turbo
CHESS DOOR and returned to PCBoard. F2 will toggle the
local screen on and off.

Program Notes

1) It is MUCH easier to understand the graphics board than
the non-graphics board. The non-graphics board uses only
true ASC characters (no IBM extended characters) so non-
IBM computers can use the DOOR.

2) The program does not support the 50 move stalemate rule
although all of the necessary record keeping is being
done at present. A later version may support this. The
program does not support the thrice repeated sequence
rule and will probably never support this.






Documentation for Turbo CHESS DOOR ver 3.01 - page 6


Appendix

CHREPORT.COM

CHREPORT.COM will create a list of the top scoring
players of The Turbo CHESS DOOR. CHREPORT.COM must be
in the same directory as TCHESS.COM. When it is run, it
will read the CHSCORE file that is created and
maintained by TCHESS.COM. It will sort the members,
ordering them according to their wins vs losses. It
will print the report to the screen, however, the output
is redirectable. This is useful for automatically
creating a bulletin that lists the top players. Assume
your PCBoard GEN directory is C:\GEN and the following
line is in your EVENT.SYS file:

CHREPORT > C:\GEN\BLT2

This would cause BLT2 (PCBoard Bulletin 2) to contain a
list of the best players.

CHREPORT.COM may optionally be called with a parameter
indicating how many players to list. If no parameter is
given, then the report contains all players who have
won, lost, or drawn in Turbo CHESS DOOR. If a parameter
is given, then that parameter is assumed to be the
number of players you wish to list.

An example:

CHREPORT 10 This would list the top 10 players.

CHREPORT.COM will also unLOCK all games and is useful if
one of the games becomes locked accidentally.


Special Thanks :

I would like to thank Carl Evans, SYSOP of The WAR
BOARD, for helping with the alpha and beta testing of
Turbo CHESS DOOR. Throughout the entire development
cycle, Carl and his board's users have been an
invaluable asset to this project. His comments, and bug
reports were tremendously helpful.

The WAR BOARD - (714) 989-7596

I would like to thank Jerry Sturdevant, SYSOP of Asgard,
for helping to debug the 9600/19200 communication
routines.

Asgard - (904) 771-6466

I would like to thank Oriane Druet for her creation of
the French files for multi-lingual support.








Documentation for Turbo CHESS DOOR ver 3.01 - page 7


Program History :

Version

1.00 - 1.30 Alpha and beta Versions

1.31 - First version released to public

1.32 - Fixed bug in initial creation of CHSCORE
file. Changed color of text on status line
from green to white for better visibility.
(Not released to public.)

1.40 - Added logic to allow no more that 4 games
per user. (Not released to public.)

1.41 - Added logic to kill off "dead" games.
Modified CHREPORT.COM to output a message
when no games had been completed. Changed
centering of BBS name on opening screen to
better handle odd character names. Fixed
bug that caused illegal game when user
entered illegal 1 character command at move
prompt. (Second version released to
public.)

2.00 - Added the IBM Extended Character Set view in
response to requests from SYSOPs.

2.10 - Rewrote some parts of the code because of
SHARE difficulties. Added game number to
screen display. Added [L]ist, and [S]tatus
feature to user interface. Corrected bug
that would cause a pawn to momentarily
appear at H8 at random times. Modified
CHREPORT.COM to unLOCK games that had been
LOCKed either by power outage, machine
lockups or bug in code. Added "Exiting from
Turbo CHESS Door" message when user exits
door. Added game number to board display.

2.11 - Modified serial routines to support some
internal modems which previously did not
like to be initialized by Turbo CHESS.

2.20 - Found and corrected the error that was
causing the SHARE violations. For those
interested, I was deleting an open file.
Some DOS versions do not care, others do.
This is why it only occurred on some
systems.

2.30 - Fixed problem that caused lose of
communications on a 19,200 system when
caller logged in at 2400 BPS or less.
Problem caused by improper CTS/RTS handling
and the COM routines not being fast enough.
Fixed problem with Local User Logon always
being SYSOP, now properly reads user name
from PCBOARD.SYS even in local user logon.



Documentation for Turbo CHESS DOOR ver 3.01 - page 8


Prevented Ctrl-G (BEEP) from going to local
terminal on illegal character entry when
user is logged in from remote (for the
SYSOPs who were being awakened by poor
typists.) Fixed a problem with the optional
time allotment (parameter 3 on the command
line.)

3.00 - Added support for the PCBoard 14.0 file
formats. Added multi-lingual option. Added
definable directory for game files. Added
definable maximum number of games. Added
definable maximum number of games per
individual. Modified clear screen routine
to support certain communications programs.
Removed COM number from command line as it
is now available in the PCBOARD.SYS file.
Modified CHREPORT to support enlarged number
of games. Removed support for Non-PCBoard
(local com). Renamed the HELP file to
TCHHELP and TC.CFG file to TCH.CFG for
compatibility reasons. Turbo CHESS is now a
commercial product (no longer free.)

3.01 - Fixed error that caused the Alternate Path for
game files (line 7 of configuration file) to
be ignored. Fixed unusual error with Pawn
Advance to last rank. If Player A had a pawn
that was about to be promoted, and Player B
put Player A in check, Turbo CHESS would try
to determine if Player A was in mate by
trying all legal moves for Player A. When it
tried the pawn advance, it when then ask
Player B what piece should be created. It was
all hypothetical as Turbo CHESS would then
discard the temporary board. The error has
been in all version, but had never been
reported.




The Future of Turbo CHESS

The following is a list of other planned features:


o An editor for the CHSCORE File
o Automatic creation of a bulletin listing whose turn
it is in each game.
o Definable tournament tables.
o Intergame message facility so players may comment to
one another.
o 'Network Mode' where players may stay in the DOOR and
play a game by making moves, saving the game and then
waiting while their opponent does the same. This, of
course, will work at the present; however, there is
no simple method for determining when the opponent
has made his move. 'Network Mode' will alert the
player to a change in the state of games.