Description

This is a console-based game to quiz players on chess notation. This project is also meant to be an exercise in applying best practices of software development such as: test driven development, static analyzer for style, PEP-8 standard, unit tests, and measure code coverage.

Project Status: Version 1.0.0 is available. This project is now in maintenance.

Features

• Timed trials of identifying squares on a chess board
• Algebraic or descriptive notation
• Saves average time
• Configurable

Getting Started

• To get started, just run main.py. Make sure you have Python 3 installed:

$ python src/main.py

• The game will then start, which will begin like so:

       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||
   R   |||||||       |||||||   R   |||||||   K   |||||||
       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||
|||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       
|||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||   P   
|||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       
       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||
       |||||||   P   || B ||       |||||||   P   |||||||
       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||
|||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       
|| P ||       || P ||   P   || Q ||   P   |||||||       
|||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       
       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||
   n   |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||
       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||
|||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       
|||||||   p   |||||||   p   || p ||   r   || p ||       
|||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       
       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||
   p   |||||||   p   || @ ||       |||||||       || p ||
       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||
|||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       
|||||||       |||||||       || r ||       || k ||       
|||||||       |||||||       |||||||       |||||||       

No record file found.
Creating a new one after this trial: trial_record.txt
Enter highlighted square, or 'quit': 

• Play will proceed from there. Simply identify the square that the '@' symbol is in. In this example, the square is e7. White pieces are capital letters and black pieces are lowercase letters, so the board here is from black's perspective.

Configuring the game

The game can be modified in a number of ways. To do this edit the src/settings.py file. Just change any of the following values to suit your play style. Restart the game to use the updating settings.

• NOTATION can be "alg" (algebraic) or "desc" (descriptive)
• NUMBER_OF_TRIALS determines the trials the player will play before the program exits
• ORIENTATION determines which player that appears on bottom. Can be "white" or "black" or "random"
• PLAYER_COLOR = "white" or "black" or "random". Player plays this color This setting only matters if you have NOTATION set to descriptive, otherwise it is ignored.
• RECORD_FILE is where the player's average trial times are stored
• SAVE_PROGRESS is whether to save trial times or not. Can be True or False
• STANDARD_POSITION is the layout of chess pieces. This can be True (regular starting chess position) or False (a random game)

Troubleshooting

• If you try to run src/main.py and you get a FileNotFound error (like below) this probably means you are running Python 2. Chess_notation requires Python 3.5 or later.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "src/main.py", line 173, in <module>
    if game_trial.main():
  File "src/main.py", line 102, in main
    self.display_status_information()
  File "src/main.py", line 154, in display_status_information
    except FileNotFoundError:
NameError: global name 'FileNotFoundError' is not defined

Requirements

To use:

• Python 3.5

For developers:

• Virtualenv
• Make
• Pylint
• Coverage

Todo

• See: https://github.com/blairck/chess_notation/issues

Version History

• 1.0.0: Initial release