Talk:ChessRogue

Known issues

Regarding the known issues...

• the minor one of pieces getting generated in a place where they can't move due to terrain is a feature not a bug (if you play at Master difficulty, it never happens) and usually makes the game easier (a bishop stuck in a passage makes it easier to cope with rooks). The only time - as far as I know - this can be combined with a piece being generated somewhere it can't be captured either is with a pawn and a checkboard part of the level, before the player has the bishop power. In this case it either serves as a mini-mantrap covering an accessible square, which I think is tactically interesting, or it's out of the game entirely (and so harmless)
• mantraps guarding treasure are not necessarily possible to beat to get the treasure without advanced powers not yet available to the player. This is a feature (although, the promotion power can *usually* break their formation enough)
• the major one of pieces getting stuck in a formation where they can't move, can't be captured and can't be bypassed is very rare indeed. I've never seen it happen during testing (except with mantraps in the early versions, which doesn't happen anymore) though it's theoretically possible for something like this to happen where all the pieces can move but are waiting for another piece to do so first.

=====
=.B.=
.B=B.
=.B.=
=====

Or these, where the piece(s) can move but can't necessarily be bypassed or captured (in the first one, a pawn or rook might come in and force the bishop to move into danger, in the second you might have haste or swimming or be able to pick one off with a trap)

====== ======
====B. ..====
===.== ==B===
==.=== ===B==
..==== ====..
====== ======

These examples can't as far as I know come up on a real map, but others could.

The map generator does not have a sufficiently advanced AI (and given how much computing power it takes to solve Chess, not enough time either) to guarantee that all levels are solvable. I don't like this situation but it's not as easily fixable as the page suggests.

If there's a particular class of situations that commonly leads to unsolvable levels (as mantraps did in 0.1.x) then report it as a bug and I'll modify things to make it less likely. If it's just extreme bad luck then I don't think that's ever going to be entirely eliminated (but then, I don't think Rogue ever came with a guarantee that all games started were potentially winnable either)

Future versions will also include more items like the sceptre to give more flexibility with these situations, but I don't think it'll ever be possible to guarantee that all levels will be possible. - Cim 15:01, 14 November 2007 (CET)