Log In  



Cart #mate123v1-0 | 2025-01-24 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
4

Mate in 1-2-3 vol.1

each level is a mate in 1, a mate in 2, and a mate in 3.
50 levels for a total of 150 puzzles.

progress saves with each puzzle.

about the puzzles and the code


These puzzles were collected from the lichess api. This is easier than manually pulling them from books, but unfortunately lichess only provides the pgn, not the fen. So there is still a tedious step. But I should be able to make more chess puzzlers a lot faster than before. @toadofsky had talked about getting live lichess puzzle updates and playing in real time. I'm not sure if that is possible, and I see my carts as useful to people with handhelds and no internet. However, the lichess api idea was a good one and so I'm grateful for his suggestion.

The only problem is that lichess rates it's puzzles by the ratings of people that play. So if a strong player screws up on a puzzle, it's rating goes up... It makes sense but the puzzle strengths don't seem consistent. I called 10 puzzles for each of the five difficulty settings, easiest to hardest. But honestly they all seem too easy. That is the good thing about getting puzzles from books, because those are designed to be tricky and are explicitly puzzles instead of real games.

I finally have move generation and so I think the interface is much more pleasant than any of my previous mate in 2 games. But I still really want some kind of animation when the pieces move.

4

Hi. I am probably not the target audience for this cart, but I thought I'd give it a go. Note: I am not very good at chess, but do know how the pieces move. I also am not familiar with chess puzzles, so some of my criticisms might be invalid.

I was initially confused by the piece shapes and thought that the Queen was the King! Once I'd got over that, the first few levels got a lot easier :)

What I didn't like was the way that as soon as the level ended, the cart went straight onto the next level. I would have preferred to look at the board and move on at my own pace. perhaps prompting the user to press a key to continue?

Was there a reason that the levels switch between black and white? Wouldn't it help if the player was always white or black?

I found I could brute force the levels. This is a real shame. I'd rather be allowed to make my 3 moves and see if I could get a mate. Also, is there a point to the score?

This all sounds a bit negative, but I did really enjoy playing the cart! The presentation of the pieces and movement was good but most of all it made me think about the pieces and the consequences of moving a particular piece. Looking at your profile I see that you've made many chess carts for Pico-8. I'll definitely check them out and it may be that I start to get into chess!



[Please log in to post a comment]