Battle Chess
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
> An apocryphal story of the development was the invention of "The Duck" (an example of Parkinson's law of triviality): The producers of the game were known to demand changes to the game, presumably to make their mark on the finished product. To this end, one animator added a small duck around the queen piece, but made sure that the sprite would be easily removable. Come review, the producers, predictably, okayed everything but asked for the duck to be removed.
I’ve heard (do not recall where) that this might not be true to reality, but it is amusing nonetheless.
"(of a story or statement) of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true."
There are plenty of jobs. Once we run into another recession, maybe I’ll put on a suit.
In the contract for a Van Halen concert, there was a line telling organizers that there should be a bowl of M&Ms, with all the brown candies removed. Otherwise the show would be cancelled at full price.
Even though it sounds just like another eccentricity from celebrities, the idea was that if brown M&Ms are present, it meant that organizers didn't read the papers, which also contained safety-critical points.
I would consider the possibility that your water-based memory is flawed, and you were already primed to think of a duck by the time you tried to recall the details of the queen's design.
Edit: or this could be an example of the Mandela Effect, and you just switched from a universe where the designer was shocked by their bosses okaying a superfluous duck!
> So the story goes that probably a long while ago - probably in the '30s or '40s - they had a lead animators, but they also had creative directors. And when the lead animators would make concept designs, meaning, like, character development, they'd be so proud of these characters. And they would go to their art directors, and their art directors would change something constantly even though they thought it was their best work.
> So what they realized after working with these art directors - that what they hated the most was anything added to the character, especially hair on the arms 'cause this is, you know, '30s and '40s. Things had to look very slick. So what they did was to distract the art directors from making other changes, they would automatically put hair on the arms of each character.
https://www.npr.org/2014/11/17/364760847/whats-with-all-of-t...
Though both stories could be true, it's also possible that somebody familiar with the Disney story created another narrative based on it. I'm not even sure that the Disney version is real, but I'd give it a higher likelihood.
It sounds ethically dubious but if you think about it, it also makes some sense -- reviewers are engaged specifically to find problems in your work -- so if they don't find problems, they feel like they are not doing their job. So it's not in their interests to ever say, "this is fine, nothing to change." A shit magnet thus is not just to distract, but to legitimately give reviewers an "out" while saving face.
I would add an obviously hideous element in order to get feedback and for a higher-up to make a decision, with the element being a temporary, WIP.
Instead, it is happily included in production.
Present the client with 3 options. Two of them were terrible. The third was the one I wanted them to choose.
It usually worked. Usually.
That was on a 386 computer without sound card, but BC4000 could play digitized sound through the PC speaker! Amazing stuff.
EDIT: Damn it, I found it! Enjoy: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ACvnjrThPNVQAOteI0okg5kSoTG...
Any time the green square is on a slide, I am currently telling accurate history.
So, a few years ago I looked for it online - found an exe that I tried to run with WIne on my Mac, but could not get it to run.
Would love it if there was some way to still play!
The Clipper database program ran a check on startup to see how fast the CPU was (it ran some code and timed how long it took). "Modern" CPUs are fast enough that the runtime of the function is effectively zero, so when it gets used as the denominator of a division a bit later on in the startup the program crashes on a divide by zero.
http://computer-programming-forum.com/19-clipper/2cd478f1fcf...
> So, a few years ago I looked for it online - found an exe that I tried to run with WIne on my Mac, but could not get it to run.
Well, Wine is for Windows software; this is MSDOS software. It probably works fine in a DOS emulator such as DOSemu, or a VM which runs say FreeDOS.
I played this game as a kid, and I loved the sounds and especially the visuals. It taught me chess, and it enforced me to explore how to beat the computer with different moves (because I wanted to see all the moves, or a specific move). So it was fun to explore.
The battle animations made chess a lot more interesting - one of the favorites: the knight v. knight homage to Monty Python, taking one limb off at a time. Merely a flesh wound!
In a following year they had removed it "for being too bloody//violent". I'm sure many parents at the time were happy about that. I'm sure some of those children who remember that are now parents, and I wonder what they think.
IIRC they grab the crown with their pike and it somehow ends up on their head.
Place the enemy king in middle. Use four rooks at the edges of the board (two on the left, two on the top) to ensure the king can't move off his square. Give him a pawn to move to avoid a stalemate ending. Then place your desired checkmating piece where it can take one move and threaten the enemy king.
I remember this for Battle Chess. But also for Teletext. And Windows 1.0 ( or was 2.0 ? ).
So... the second?
All death animations (Amiga): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iSnAiXKU7h8
I find that most chess programs on the lowest difficulty settings seem to play in a way that’s bad but unrealistic — like they’re playing their normal good chess but randomly making a deliberately terrible move every now and then.
Let me know if you find an easy way to play "human" level LCZero AIs.
Edit: Main project website: https://lczero.org/
Otherwise, you can play online quite easily. For a game I only wait for a few seconds on lichess.org
To be fair though, that is kind of how I end up playing chess. I'll do pretty well and pay attention, then I end up losing track, making a stupid mistake and doing something that should have been obviously bad and losing.
Modern chess engines usually have a notion of "contempt". I've found that if you turn contempt way up and limit the number of concurrent lines, in combination with adjusting the target rating, you can get a reasonably good approximation of real play. At casual (< 2100 maybe?) levels of play, this simulates the human tendency to make blunders while fixating on a plan.
I scooped up a handful of Knightmare Chess decks when I saw 'em really cheap. Still haven't tried, but the idea of a chess variant with physical cards that Do Things to the game, sounded very interesting
Implied Chess:
Rule 1: Chess
Rule 2: You can't capture normally
Rule 3: Any piece threatened by two enemy pieces is captured (except kings)
Rule 4: The player who just moved captures first
Rule 5: No En Passant (it just doesn't make sense)
Rule 6: Check and checkmate are normal
Check and checkmate are normal because it's just way too hard to checkmate the king with dual threats.
I can't beat Alpha Beta 3 yet either. If anyone starts beating 4 I'll put some effort into optimizing the search so it can go deeper. Going 10 ply deep is pretty standard for a chess engine, so it's pretty embarrassing for humanity that nobody is beating the 3-ply setting. I think this game actually favors computers over humans more than regular chess does.