FAQ

I found a bug. How do I report it?

Thanks! Please let me know by sending me an email. Make sure to answer each of these questions, otherwise I won’t be able to fix it!

1. Your version of ChessCraft, found in the "about" page from the main menu.
2. Just after starting the app, the "detailed" but "minimum" steps I should take to see your bug.
3. What you expected to happen.
4. What actually happened.
5. List relevant share codes for boards or pieces, if any.

You can also click this debug button in the "Options" menu to include detailed logs in your email:

How does your AI work?

I've written a page describing the computer science of the ChessCraft AI.

I have an awesome idea! How do I tell you about it?

Great! Send me an email, or mention it in the Discord chat channel for feature ideas. Then sign up for the Frame of Mind newsletter to stay up to date on ChessCraft updates and releases.

ChessCraft will probably always be a 2D, two player, turn based, perfect information, deterministic game. Features that violate that are less likely to be implemented. It's also important that the AI can play all designs reasonably well, so that rules out features with heavy impacts on combinatorics like:

• pieces that teleport or cast spells anywhere
• pieces that create new pieces anywhere
• pieces that move multiple times in one turn

Is there a newsletter archive?

Yes. See my blog under the ChessCraft category.

Can you fix the translations?

Please help improve ChessCraft translations by emailing me any corrections, or mention it in the Discord chat channel for translation corrections.

The low cost ChessCraft translation system uses a combination of Google Translate and community-led translation help.

I tried to reach as many people as possible by supporting many languages, but with no budget. Quantity over quality. Hopefully it’s good enough to be useful! It's also worth noting that you can choose your language in the options menu.

Can you add this translation language?

Maybe! Here's the big factors when I consider adding a language:

1. Popularity. The total number of speakers for your language should be high.
2. Google Translate. Your language must be available on Google Translate. That's because I'm constantly adding more pieces of text, and I need a way to do that without asking you for more translations every week, for years.
3. Platform. The Google Play and Steam distribution platforms should be popular in countries that tend to speak that language.
4. Unilingual. I want to make it easy for everyone to play ChessCraft. However if a culture tends to know many languages, they may not need a translation as much.

What is the translation spreadsheet?

So you want to help? Thanks! If you want to add a new language or proofread an existing language, I may share a "translation spreadsheet" with you. Here's how that works:

• ChessCraft has a surprising amount of text. Over 500 different words or sentences! You don't need to review everything to be helpful. Every little bit helps.
• Each row is a different piece of text, translated into all languages.
• You may see special tokens like {0} or '{2}'. ChessCraft inserts text into these places as you play the game. You can change the order of the tokens, but every language in one row must have the exact same tokens.
• You may see a special character \n. ChessCraft replaces this with a newline, or "enter" character. You should try to use similar newlines in any translations. On a keyboard, the \ character is usually found next to your "enter" key.
• If you're not sure about the context of some text, you can look at the "key", "sort", or "en" (English) columns for context.
• I must receive your changes as a spreadsheet in the same ods spreadsheet file format. You can open this with typical office software, though I highly recommend the free and open source LibreOffice Calc.
• If you see fr in the "verified" column, it means that a human "may" have already proofread it ("fr" is French). If you don't, a human definitely has not seen it before. So a great place to start is looking at the rows where your language has never been proofread.

My apologies if this seems like a lot, but I do not have the time to accept random help unless it's structured.

Can you add nightriders?

This is a popular request.

A nightrider is a popular chess variant piece that can move any number of steps as a knight in the same direction.

The biggest reason I've not added nightriders yet is because I don't know how to fit it into the GUI of the piece editor, unless it's "just" exactly a nightrider and nothing slightly different. There are 8 directions a nightrider moves, maybe people just want some of those, or three steps instead of unlimited, etc. If you can doodle a nice looking GUI and email it to me, I will consider it!

How do I get in the credits?

I want to show my appreciation for everyone who helps make ChessCraft better. If you help, just ask, and I can include your name or username in the credits! But what kind of help qualifies?

1. You are the first to find a bug that I confirm and fix.
2. You help me fix my translations.
3. You share new piece images that I include in the game, which exactly match the size, format, and style of the other ChessCraft files.
4. Any other help of equal significance.

Beta testing?

If you want to be an open beta tester on Google Play, you can join on the store page.

There is currently no beta testing on Steam, but that may change once I get more experience with Steam releases.

Can you add my art?

Maybe! Lots of people from the ChessCraft community have added their piece images to the game. See the #fan-art chat channel. However not all art makes it into the game. Here's some hard rules and soft guidelines:

• Style. The main style reference is the classic chess pieces from lichess. Your pieces should match that style. Black should not simply be an inverted white.
• Format. They must be 512 by 512 pixels, PNG, with an alpha/transparent background. Both white and black. I can (but won't) fix your images.
• Genre. The concept should be fantasy, or medieval and earlier. Generally, no modern era or science fiction.
• Zen. Avoid aggressive concepts like bombs, torture, poison, or guns.
• Easy. Make it easy for me to examine and import your images. Use a zip, and name the files like w-bishop.png and b-bishop.png.
• Worldly. The concept should appeal to many cultures. Avoid too much imagery of one religion, or one nation.

Does your idea not fit these rules? Share it anyway on #fan-art!

I recommend the free GIMP editor to make your images.

If your art is added to the game, send me your name or username and I'll add you to the game credits!

Finally, all art in the game is shared here under a Creative Commons license. For your art to be added to the game, you must agree to the same free and open license.

Is ChessCraft open source?

No. I would like to share the code but here are two concerns of mine:

1. A quote from @cra: Running a successful open source project is just Good Will Hunting in reverse, where you start out as a respected genius and end up being a janitor who gets into fights.
2. Knock-offs. Even with a non-commercial open source license, a low-effort app factory could reskin ChessCraft with ads and probably do fairly well with it. A non-commercial license doesn't stop people from commercial activity, it just means I can get a lawyer and win. But the money I'd win back after a year of pain probably won't even cover what I paid the lawyer.

ChessCraft started as a fun hobby project and I want to mostly keep it that way. I'm already doing more paperwork than I want keeping up with Google Play and Steam.

May I use your art?

Yep! I've released the art for ChessCraft under a Creative Commons license. If you see art in ChessCraft that is not in that repository, let me know and I'll add it.

Do you have a Patreon?

Nope! There is no official ChessCraft Patreon. Instead, when you support the ongoing development of ChessCraft by becoming a "patron", it's simply a badge of honor in game that turns off the interruptions.

What future features are you going to add?

I prefer not to talk about my future dreams for a project. What happens is I get enjoyment out of talking about what I "will" do, but without actually doing it. Then if I ever finish the work, I get less enjoyment because I already talked about it. In this way I'd be stealing enjoyment from my future self!

I do have a system to track all my bugs and features on GitLab. If you’d like, you can send an email and I’ll invite you to see all my GitLab issues.

Can you add an "undo" button?

Lots of people have asked for this! I understand that a lot of chess apps have this feature, and sometimes you genuinely make a mistake tapping the wrong move. This has happened to me too and it's always a bummer.

However, my intuition also tells me this spoils the game. The emotion and intensity you feel when you tap the wrong move swings the other way - you also feel great and accomplished when you lock in a great move. The reason you want an undo button is because you care about the state of the game. You care because it is real, locked in, and must be earned.

I'm not sure if I'll ever make an undo button. Maybe the button visibility could be optional and cannot be turned on during gameplay. I'm thinking about it. For now the answer is a soft no.

Will there be an iPhone (iOS) or Mac release?

I'm interested in making a release for iPhone and Mac desktop. Unfortunately, I do not own an iPhone or Mac. I think these are my only options:

• Buy an iPhone, buy a Mac, and setup my development environment on them. I've never used a Mac.
• Pay something like 25$/month to build my releases in the cloud.

In addition to that, I will need to pay Apple 100 USD annually to be a developer, run through their long checklist of user interface requirements, and integrate their IAP rules into ChessCraft.

I'm also a big fan of FOSS and Linux, so I'm unlikely to jump through too many hoops or spend much money on Apple anytime soon.

Remember that ChessCraft started as a hobby project, not a business! My apologies if this is inconvenient. If I could push a magic button and release for iPhone and Mac, I would. Ironically, I have successfully created Mac builds for ChessCraft, I just cannot easily share them with you on any Apple platform.

Why is there a maximum of 26 piece types on one board?

Internally the game saves its boards in a format called ChessCraft Notation (CCN). You can see an example here, or if you click "CCN" on any board page. Each piece is assigned a letter of the alphabet, where white is uppercase, and there are 26 letters. There are many ways I might increase this maximum but it is low on my list of feature ideas. 26 is a lot!

How much time did you put into this?

It’s hard to say. I spent a lot of time just thinking about AI, reading AI code, and thinking about design before I started actually creating the game in January 2018.

If we don’t count that: the design, art, marketing, and programming up to version 1.10 has taken maybe 2000 hours.

Do you expect to make lots of money selling this game?

No. I made this game because I wanted to play it! If making money was my top goal, I would have released a crippled demo, and I certainly wouldn't have promised to never have ads. In fact, if making money was my goal I don't think I would have started ChessCraft at all. The market for chess apps is hugely oversaturated.

What is Patronware?

Patronware is software that is free, complete, and ad-free. People feel good about donating money to the project. The project is not supported by dark patterns and harmful psychology.

ChessCraft tries to be patronware. I hope you agree. You can read more about this here.

This also gives me a good excuse to make bad business decisions, like avoiding the Apple App Store because of a combination of laziness and ideology.

Will there ever be ads?

I have strong feelings about this. ChessCraft will never have ads.

Why are some boards hard, and some boards easy?

The difficulty of a board is a combination of two factors:

1. AI complexity. This is a measure of how hard it is for the computer to think about a board. The computer has a hard time thinking about boards with lots of tiles, with many powerful pieces, and turns with many possibilities.
2. Human complexity. This is a measure of how hard it is for a human to think about a board. Humans have a hard time thinking about strangely shaped boards, with many different types of custom pieces, pieces that move asymmetrically, and especially pieces that move unlike any classic chess piece.

So the hardest boards for a human to play are tiny boards, with weak, all custom pieces. As of version 1.3, the board and piece editors give you a preview of the estimated AI complexity and human complexity:

How good is your AI?

This varies a lot depending on the board size, pieces rules, and phone speed. I'm still considering how to measure and standardize the computer difficulties. The AI is also not tuned to play classic chess, so it's at a big disadvantage compared to other classic chess AI engines. ChessCraft sees classic chess just like any other chess variant.

There is no ELO system for ChessCraft variants, so here's three pieces of information that should help you triangulate an answer.

1. I have a rating of 2100 on lichess puzzles and if I had an ELO it might be somewhere around 1400. If I play fast, my AI sometimes beats me. If I play a smaller board like a 6x6 I often lose.
2. In 2023 a community member (Popo) played ChessCraft moves against the chess.com AI at different ELOs. They estimate ChessCraft is 1300 ELO.
3. With a couple seconds of thinking on an average smartphone, the AI will correctly answer 24 of the 76 chess IQ puzzles on elometer.net.

There are still a lot of improvements I could make to the AI. Read about the latest improvements in the newsletter!

What inspired you to make ChessCraft?

In 2018 I had a ludicrously bad commute to work and was looking for stuff to do. I tried lots of chess apps, and some variant apps, and I was generally disappointed by what was out there. I found some fun apps that did horde chess but I wanted to also play similar variants of it.

Chesscraft seemed like a pretty obvious game design to me and I was surprised that apparently nobody had made a game like this yet. I also dislike almost all mobile games and the mobile games industry, IAP, ads... so I really didn't feel like I had a lot of mobile game options.

Once I started thinking about the unique challenges of making an AI for this I got excited, because I like computer science. I knew before I started that I could make a decent AI, but I wanted to know how good it could become.