Volunteering to pay for anyone who makes a working Chess add on - Page 2

Vlad · 11-25-12, 06:04 AM

Can't scale be applied on top of the font size, i.e. bypassing the limit?

Phanx · 11-26-12, 01:06 AM

Nope. If your fontstring is already at the limit, and you apply a scale of 2, 10, or even 1000 to its parent frame, any other visible regions on the frame will scale, but you will see absolutely no visible difference in the size of the fontstring.

Rythal · 11-27-12, 10:01 AM

glad to see someone is working on it, I was just thinking last week ... WoW could really use some fun multiplayer games, wonder how hard it would be to add chess, checkers, snakes & ladders, monopoly etc...

SDPhantom · 11-27-12, 02:03 PM

I actually thought about Checkers at one time too, the game engine would definitely be a lot easier to code than Chess. Anyway, I've already decided to use image sprites instead of fonts. The idea of using fonts was just for the move log and not the pieces themselves. It was just a random "This would be cool if it worked" idea.

Right now, I have the design set out and some of the engine coded already. Internally, the engine uses 2 methods of storing and manipulating the pieces. The main method is how the pieces would be stored and transmitted. This would be position data associated with 16 entity IDs. The position data for each piece is designed to be exactly one byte for ease of transmission through an addon comm channel. This would be comprised of 6 bits for board position, 64 squares on an 8x8 board. A "has moved" bit for some game rules, and a captured bit. The captured bit makes the rest of the bits inconsequential, as a captured piece no longer needs to be tracked and is removed from the game. Pawn promotions are still internally tracked as the original pawn entities with a promotion ID stored elsewhere overwriting the piece ID derived from the entity ID. This main method also allows the game engine to quickly look up where a piece is located instead of scanning the internal board. The second method uses data generated from the first to create a board layout. This a single byte array of 64 spaces, one for each space on the 8x8 board. Each byte stores the entity ID of a piece on that space. A default byte value of zero is used to indicate an empty space. The board data is only used internally to calculate a piece's possible moves, captures, and is also used for the GUI. The game engine is also to be coded in which there is support for an undetermined number of games to be run at once. To do so, the game engine is implemented as a metatable to apply to the main table created for a game. When a game is completed, it should be released to the Garbage Collector.

Btw, if anyone would like to code their own version of Chess and any other of these games, be my guest. I'm only working on this as a personal project and am not claiming any form of payment.

felvinn · 02-17-13, 08:01 AM

Any news so far?

felvinn · 02-28-13, 02:03 PM

I guess nothing is going on :'( I thought it wouldn't take much time.

Phanx · 02-28-13, 03:35 PM

The problem isn't that it takes too much time. The problem is that nobody who has the time *and* the ability to write this addon actually wants this addon, so there's just no motivation for them to spend their time using their ability to write it, and -- assuming other addon programmers around here are anything like me -- they aren't going to motivated by the $20 or $50 you're probably willing to offer.

Personally, you'd have to be offering at least $500 to even get me interested in thinking about writing an addon of this complexity that I have absolutely no interest in ever using, and I'd probably still decide I'd rather spend my free time doing pretty much anything else.

If you want this to happen so badly, why don't you try to fix one of the existing chess addons yourself? Post the error message(s) you're getting, and ask questions, and actually make an effort to learn.

felvinn · 02-28-13, 03:38 PM

Originally Posted by Phanx

The problem isn't that it takes too much time. The problem is that nobody who has the time *and* the ability to write this addon actually wants this addon, so there's just no motivation for them to spend their time using their ability to write it, and -- assuming other addon programmers around here are anything like me -- they aren't going to motivated by the $20 or $50 you're probably willing to offer.

Personally, you'd have to be offering at least $500 to even get me interested in thinking about writing an addon of this complexity that I have absolutely no interest in ever using, and I'd probably still decide I'd rather spend my free time doing pretty much anything else.

If you want this to happen so badly, why don't you try to fix one of the existing chess addons yourself? Post the error message(s) you're getting, and ask questions, and actually make an effort to learn.

I actually gave a friend of mine the add on (who's playing wow and studying computer engineering) however he has no experience with LUA and such. And i myself as well, don't know anything about add ons but chess itself.

Phanx · 02-28-13, 03:47 PM

There are tons of resources to help you learn Lua syntax (which is extremely simply) and WoW addon programming. If you are willing to learn, go check out those resources (there's a sticky thread with many links here) and try to figure out some simple addon first. Then once you can look at addon code without seeing a wall of indecipherable hieroglyphics, look at the chess addon or something more complicated.

Then, if you can't figure it out yourself, post the error messages and tell us what doesn't work, and we can offer pointers.

However, if all you're willing to do is say "it doesn't work" and "I don't know anything" then there's not really anything anyone can do to help you.

Rilgamon · 02-28-13, 05:05 PM

Loaded the addon from curse, an played a game of chess against the computer.
That works without problems except that the computer is braindead

felvinn · 03-01-13, 04:26 AM

Originally Posted by Rilgamon

Loaded the addon from curse, an played a game of chess against the computer.
That works without problems except that the computer is braindead

The multiplayer option is the necessary one. :-)

felvinn · 03-01-13, 04:27 AM

Originally Posted by Phanx

There are tons of resources to help you learn Lua syntax (which is extremely simply) and WoW addon programming. If you are willing to learn, go check out those resources (there's a sticky thread with many links here) and try to figure out some simple addon first. Then once you can look at addon code without seeing a wall of indecipherable hieroglyphics, look at the chess addon or something more complicated.

Then, if you can't figure it out yourself, post the error messages and tell us what doesn't work, and we can offer pointers.

However, if all you're willing to do is say "it doesn't work" and "I don't know anything" then there's not really anything anyone can do to help you.

Will do, thanks.

Dridzt · 03-01-13, 11:28 AM

I took a stab at fixing the immediate problem (addon communication) since that was rather trivial.

Give the mop clone a try: Chess (MoP)

I purposely set the cloned repository to open access so other authors can commit any further fixes / changes.
(if needed, brief testing on the PTR shows it works afaik)

Needless to say if trying to play vs a player opponent both need to have the 1.6.2 version (or later)

felvinn · 03-01-13, 04:13 PM

Originally Posted by Dridzt

I took a stab at fixing the immediate problem (addon communication) since that was rather trivial.

Give the mop clone a try: Chess (MoP)

I purposely set the cloned repository to open access so other authors can commit any further fixes / changes.
(if needed, brief testing on the PTR shows it works afaik)

Needless to say if trying to play vs a player opponent both need to have the 1.6.2 version (or later)

OMG! Trying asap!

felvinn · 03-01-13, 05:33 PM

Originally Posted by Dridzt

I took a stab at fixing the immediate problem (addon communication) since that was rather trivial.

Give the mop clone a try: Chess (MoP)

I purposely set the cloned repository to open access so other authors can commit any further fixes / changes.
(if needed, brief testing on the PTR shows it works afaik)

Needless to say if trying to play vs a player opponent both need to have the 1.6.2 version (or later)

Its working! Thank you a lot!

SDPhantom · 03-07-13, 11:17 AM

Sorry I couldn't finish up with this as I had planned. I had a bunch of RL issues piled up and with the complexity of the addon taking its toll on me, I had to step back and take a break. Unfortunately, it just kept getting pushed back to the point where development halted indefinitely. Most of the complexity was move validation and draw/check/stalemate/checkmate detection.