1Introduction 2============ 3 4This is Brutal Chess Alpha, version 0.5. Brutal Chess is a cross-platform GPL 5chess game with 3D graphics powered by OpenGL and SDL. This release is an alpha 6version and is by no means feature complete. The major focus of the release was 7a complete rewrite of the entire code base. There have also been improvements 8to the user interface. Future versions should focus on more features for the 9users and happen at a much quicker pace. 10 11New In This Release 12=================== 13 14* Completely new code base 15* Menu system to replace console 16* Select pawn promotion piece through new interface 17* Variable AI difficulty 18* New loading screen 19* Shadows and other graphical tweaks 20* Full rotation of the camera 21* History arrows displaying previous move 22* MD3 (Quake 2) model support 23 24Bug Fixes (0.5.1): 25* Fixed colors of the board squares 26* Fixed bug that allowed castling when it shouldn't have been legal 27* Added proper Linux install scripts 28 29Bug Fixes (0.5.2): 30* Fixed bug that allowed white pawns to move backwards 31* Fixed minor bug where a few moves weren't generated in one case 32* Small optimizations of the AI when evaluating the board 33* Modified installer to work on pre Windows XP systems 34 35 36Building.Linux 37============== 38 39To build Brutal Chess on Linux, you will need recent version of SDL, SDL_Image, 40and FreeType. SDL 1.2.7 and FreeType 2.1.9 are known to work. The first thing 41to do is run ./configure. This should autogenerate a Makefile if you have all 42the necassary dependencies installed. If this failed for some reason look at 43the output and install any missing libraries. This can sometimes be difficult 44to figure out so if you have problems please provide us with feedback so that 45we can provide more complete documentation. After you have a Makefile simply 46type make and that will build the binary in the src directory. Finally you can 47run 'make install' as root user to install Brutal Chess for all users on the 48system. You can delete the build directory after install if you choose to do so. 49 50Note to Debian Users: 51Make sure that you have development versions of Xmu and Xi libraries installed 52or the autogeneration of the Makefile will fail when trying to verify that you 53have SDL installed. On Ubuntu the needed packages are libxmu-dev and libxi-dev. 54 55Building.Win32 56============== 57 58To build Brutal Chess on Windows, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2005 is 59recommended. Building under other compilers may be possible, but hasn't been 60tested. In addition, the FreeType, SDL, and SDL_Image development libraries 61must be installed. Open brutalchess.sln and build Brutal Chess to make the 62executable. 63 64Building.OSX 65============ 66 67For this release we do not have a Mac OSX build due to lack of a development 68machine. It should still be possible build from source provided you have the 69SDL framework and other required libraries (Freetype2, SDL_Image) installed. We 70would still like to provide a Mac build so if anyone out there can help with 71this please contact us. 72 73Running 74======= 75 76Run Brutal Chess from the source directory by running ./brutalchess on Linux or 77by opening brutalchess.exe on Windows. 78 79Gameplay Notes 80============== 81 82All standard chess moves should be supported. To move, simply click on a piece, 83then click on the destination square. To deselect a piece, click on it again or 84click the right mouse button. To castle, move the king to his destination 85square and the rook will be moved appropriately. Pawn promotion is no longer 86limited to only queens. When a move results in pawn promotion simply click the 87piece you would like to promote to. 88 89In this version it is possible to rotate the camera angle with the right mouse 90button. When you don't already have a piece selected, press and hold the right 91mouse button and move the camera to rotate the view and then release it. 92 93Added for this release is a new menuing interface. Various graphical and 94gameplay options can be modified using this. Simply pressing the ESC key will 95bring up the main menu. From here you can set different options, start a new 96game or exit the application. To navigate back from submenus and return to the 97game just use ESC. As a note, when playing against the Hard player he can take 98over 30 seconds to decide on his move. 99 100When the match ends, either with checkmate or stalemate, the menu screen will 101be displayed with the option to repeat the game with the same settings as the 102previous one, start a new game with different settings or exit the application. 103 104Graphics Notes 105============== 106 107The piece reflections and shadows, new for this release, effectively triple the 108number of polygons drawn on the screen. If you experience slow gameplay, one 109possible solution is to disable them. Running Brutal Chess with the -r flag 110will disable reflections and -s will disable shadows. Alternatively, you can 111turn them off using the menu screen under the graphics section. 112 113Reporting Bugs 114============== 115 116When you notice a bug, please take a screenshot of the application (if 117applicable) and then quit the program. Copy the log.txt file to a different 118location and submit it with your bug report. The log.txt file can be found in 119the directory of the executable. 120 121Please submit bug reports via the sourceforge.net tracker at: 122 123 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=add&group_id=139550&atid=743808 124 125In order to help speed the bug fixing process, please provide as much 126information a possible when submitting the bug. 127 128For additional bug information as well as code discussion, send an email to: 129 130 brutalchess-devel@lists.sourceforge.net 131