QL Chess

ZX Computing

Brian Beckett

CHECKMATE Brian Beckett assesses the leading chess programs currently available for the Spectrum and QL. The late Norbert Wiener, founder of cybernetics, predicted a day when playing chess would be about as intellectually stimulating as a game of noughts and crosses. Both are zero-sum games of perfect information and (if neither side makes a mistake) ideal play will end in a draw. The reason noughts and crosses is boring and chess is still seen as a great mental challenge is simply that even the ablest grandmaster is incapable of sorting through the seemingly endless possibilities opened up in any one game. Computers, however, might some day be capable of playing error-free chess and Wiener foresaw fallible human opponents' interest in the game declining as a result. Wiener, who worked in the pioneering days of mainframe computers did not however imagine the speed with which chess playing micros would become commonplace. The capabilities of your piece of Sinclair gadgetry would have cost a small fortune only a few years ago but (if you are a chess player) it fortunately still fulls far short of Wiener's super intelligent beast. But, if you don't happen to be a budding grandmaster, a game against your QL or Spectrum can still be pretty damaging to the ego. Sir Clive's little black boxes play passingly good games at even the lower skill levels and can mimic a logical intelligence quite capable of beating an unwary master at the higher one. It's worth having a look at some of the better Sinclair chess programs available both as a guide to buying one and - by highlighting some of their weaker lines of play - avert Wiener's nightmare of the faultless chess computer. Someone is bound to bring out a chess program for the 128K Spectrum pretty soon but all we have now is several packages for the 48K Spectrum and one for the QL. It's not a case of finding the "best" program - the Spectrum packages share similar features, comparative prices and roughly the same skills while Psion's QL chess has the advantage of being both an excellent product and the only one available - but rather a case of choosing the one or more that you happen to like more than the others. CHALLENGE Assuming that you're buying a chess program to play it yourself, you want one that offers you a challenge as well as being able to defeat your neighbour's computer. QL Chess, for example, came first in a microcomputer knockout championship which included some dedicated chess computers but, against certain Queen's Gambit play, is marginally easier to beat than Psion's Spectrum program. The programs looked at here are QL Chess (marketed by Sinclair at £19.95 and developed by Psion) and the three leading packages for the 48K Spectrum: Sinclair's Masterchess (again written by Psion), Artic Computing's Spechess II and OCP's Chess: The Turk. For the historically curious, The Turk takes its name from an eighteenth century, chess-playing automaton dressed in Turkish costume that was the wonder of Europe and - as many believe - probably contained a legless Russian soldier who selected the plays and moved the gears. The Turk costs a reasonable £5.95 making it the cheapest of the Spectrum programs but a watchful eye can usually get the other two at a bargain. The Sinclair/Psion program, for example, is often found in specially priced game packs and many Spectrum owners probably already have one. All chess programs have several levels of play that are a function of the amount of time that the computer is allowed to consider its move. They range from a few seconds at the lower levels to several hours at the higher ones. For a skilled chess player, this can be a problem as the lower levels don't offer a challenge and the higher ones can take forever. Here QL Chess wins hands down as its top "tournament" level (Number 11) occupies the computer for an average of only four minutes a move. If you want, you can set the QL to match your average move time or (if you have a great deal of time on your hands) play at infinite time where the computer will consider its move until you force it to play with a keyboard command. QL Chess has the additional feature of considering its possibilities while waiting for you to move. Shutting off this feature with the "Easy" command in effect doubles the number of levels. For the Spectrum, Artic's program is probably the best for selecting a level of play - you simply type in the move-time you want. This makes level selection a continuous function of time rather than a choice of quantum leaps which might not match what you want. The Turk is the worst in this respect as it increases the Spectrum's move time from 90 seconds at Level-3 to 10 minutes at Level-4 and one hour at Level-5. The jump from 90 to 600 seconds is a bit too large as it's in this sort of time range that a player of medium skill finds himself with a challenge. The Turk, however, will often move in far less time than the maximum allowed at say Level-4. MAKING MOVES As far as graphics go, there is little real difference between the Spectrum programs: the screen shows a top view of the board with the pieces in profile. Personally speaking, Spechess is marginally poorer and The Turk a bit better. The Turk has the added clever feature of toppling over the King upon checkmate or. If you quit the game, your King upon what it always and cheerfully considers your resignation. QL Chess offers a choice of the traditional image or a superb 3D view that is a credit to the programmer's skill. The pieces are moved with a cursor in QL Chess but, in the Spectrum programs, you type in moves using an algebraic notation that replaces the traditional chess codings. Unlike the others, the Psion program does not require you to ENTER your move - the computer does it automatically when you type the last code number - which is nice for speed but unfortunate if you make a mistake. All the programs allow you to quit and start another game (only The Turk gloats about it) and QL Chess enables the player to change sides at any time. I suppose there is a reason for this feature but its only obvious purpose would seem to be a consolation prize to poor players. If you can't win any other way, you can always allow the QL to push you to the brink of defeat and then switch colours at the last minute. The Turk and QL Chess allow you to take moves back and, while this is handy if you make a silly mistake, it also encourages sloppy chess thinking. All the programs allow you to play from a pre-set position after placing the pieces as you wish. They all use the cursor to set-up the pieces except for Spechess where the piece, colour and square are typed in. The QL cursor is quite easy to use but the others can be a bit cumbersome which is why I prefer Artic's method for the Spectrum. Levels of skill can be selected for set-up as well as normal play in each program and QL Chess has the additional feature of eight problem solving levels. As with traditional problems, the idea is to ask the QL to find a mate in say five moves. Each program will recommend a move to the player if asked. This is a useful feature for beginners or those who wish to examine the computer's chess reasoning in some detail. Otherwise if you have to ask the computer for its opinion on your best move, you're playing at too high a level. After all. the object of the exercise is to win and not to do what you're electronic opposition thinks you ought to do. COUNTDOWN All the programs allow you to save the game to tape or to a printer. The Turk has an option for playing blitz chess which is a nice feature. The on-screen clock starts counting down from five minutes and the first side to run out of time loses if (as is likely) no checkmate has occurred. On-screen chess clocks are standard save with Spechess. QL Chess has the very useful feature of declaring a stalemate if a sequence of moves is repeated for three consecutive plays. Otherwise it's pretty much up to you to declare a draw by perpetual check or repeated moves - against any of the programs - by simply quitting the game. All the programs recognise checkmate immediately except for Spechess which, when it's defeated, uses up most of its allotted time before declaring your victory. While there is absolutely no harm in this, I personally find it a bit annoying. Both The Turk and QL Chess have demonstration modes where the computer will play itself, replay options where the computer re-displays a game on screen move by move and the capability to "referee" a game between two players. In the latter mode, the computer simply asks for move inputs from both sides, displays the moves on the screen after ENTER and keeps track of the times. Of the Spectrum programs, The Turk has the largest reservoir of extra features while the Psion package has been honed down to the bare essentials but it does play a good, aggressive game. Next month I'll be setting some classic chess problems for your Spectrums and QL's and showing how even the best chess software is vulnerable to the shrewd sacrifice.

QL Chess.

Your Sinclair

Overall 9/10

Graham Rydout 9/10

THE COMPLETE QL SOFTWARE BUYERS GUIDE At under £200, the QL has started to look a real bargain. If you've splashed out on one already or you're considering taking the plunge this Christmas, you'll want to know just how much software is available for the machine. The answer is still not much but things are starting to look up. Graham Rydout surveys the field. THE LANGUAGE BARRIER Very soon after its launch eighteen months ago, the QL was blessed with a wide range of languages and a couple of 68000 assemblers from Metacomco and Computer One. Now that range has been further complemented. Title: Assembler Development Kit Publisher: Metacomco Price: £39.95 Rating: 6/10 Title: QL Pascal Publisher: Metacomco Price: £89.95 Rating: 9/10 Title: BCPL Development Kit Publisher: Metacomco Price: £59.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Lisp Development Kit Publisher: Metacomco Price: £59.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: QL C Publisher: Metacomco Price: £99.95 Rating: 9/10 All of these come supplied with the Metacomco full screen editor that has now become the QL standard. So much so, in fact, that Metacomco have licensed it out to other companies for inclusion in their packages. Title: Assembler Publisher: Computer One Price: £29.95 Rating: 7/10 Title: Forth Publisher: Computer One Price: £39.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Pascal Publisher: Computer One Price: £39.95 Rating: 6/10 Title: Assembler Publisher: GST (via Sinclair) Price: £39.95 Rating: 9/10 Title: Editor Assembler Publisher: Adder Price: £34.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Publisher: Hisoft Coming Soon This list will give you an idea of the range of Assemblers and language packages available from companies other than Metacomco Title: Mon QL (Microdrive) Publisher: HiSoft Price: £14.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Mon QL (EPROM) Publisher: HiSoft Price: £39.95 Rating: 10/10 Title: QL Monitor Publisher: Computer One Price: £24.95 Rating: 9/10 Title: QL Monitor Publisher: QJump Price: £24.95 Rating: 7/10 With only three disassemblers/debuggers on the market, HiSoft comes out tops with MonQL on EPROM but the others are expected to follow suit shortly. Title: QL Monitor Publisher: Digital Precision Price: £18.05 Rating: 2/10 This is a very simple package and suffers greatly from a sever lack of features - not one I'd recommend. Title: C Compiler Publisher: GST Price: £59.95 Rating: 7/10 This isn't a complete implementation of the language but it's well suited to the beginner. Title: Supercharge (compiler) Publisher: Digital Precision Price: £59.95 I haven't yet seen the finished version or this compiler out it promises to be a product that everyone can make use of. It's written by Simon Goodwin oi Zip compiler fame (take a look at Your Spectrum 3) and it claims to convert almost every SuperBasic program into fully multi-tasking 68008 code. Title: SuperBasic extension Publisher: QJump (via Sinclair) Price: £24.95 Rating: 9/10 Title: SEE (EPROM) Publisher: Hisoft Price: £39.95 Rating: 9/10 Of these two SuperBasic extensions, QJump's leads the way but HiSoft's SEE has some very useful facilities. It gives the QL true windowing capabilities and as it's on ROM you don't have to keep loading it in. Title: Microdrive Toolkit Publisher: Compware Price: £9.99 Rating: 5/10 Title: Microdrive Toolkit (with source code) Publisher: Compware Price: £34.99 Rating: 5/10 The toolkits change the QL#s microdrive commands into functions so that values can be returned and errors such as 'drive full' trapped. Title: Keydefine Publisher: Psientific Software Price: £9.95 Rating: 10/10 This is a complete key redefinition package that'll let you use the redefined keys in almost every QL package. You could, for example, define the P key so that when you press it with the Caps Lock held down, the current document from within Quill could be saved and then printed. Freebie programs provided are a fast copier (a multi-tasking directory lister that lists directories from within other programs) and a printer spooler. Title: ICE (EPROM) Publisher: Eidersoft Price: £49.95 Rating: 9/10 ICE (Icon Controlled Environment) gives the QL a full Icon based Desktop Manager and Frton End to QDOS. It removes most mundane file handling tasks and I can thoroughly recommend it. Title: WD Utilities Publisher: WD Software Price: Microdrive £7.50, 5.25" £10.00, 3.5" £12.00 Rating: 6/10 WD Utilities are a complete set of SuperBasic procedures providing a menu driven system to manoeuvre files. Title: Cartridge Doctor Publisher: Talent Price: £14.95 Rating: 9/10 If you're frequently visited by the 'Bad or Changed Medium' error message, you'll welcome this program. It's a fully automatic set of routines to recover corrupted and deleted files. Title: Q Doctor Publisher: Talent Price: £14.95 Rating: 5/10 If you prefer doing things the hard way, Q Doctor only allows you to load and edit sectors from the microdrive. Unfortunately, there are no similar products available for disk users. Title: GraphiQL Price: £34.95 Rating: 6/10 Title: M-Paint Publisher: Medic Price: £49.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Paint Master Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £14.95 Rating: 7/10 Title: Tascopy Publisher: Tasman Price: £12.90 Rating: 8/10 Title: Sprite Generator Publisher: Digital Precision Price: £24.95 Rating: 6/10 Graphic printers are a personal choice. GraphiQL suits highly detailed work but is extremely difficult to use. For dedicated artists only! M-Paint is a coloured clone of Apple's MacPaint. Simpler to use but a shade less accurate on detailed work. Least sophisticated at all, PaintMaster is none the less the most appropriate tor your average QL user. Its ability to compile a drawing into a SuperBasic program that then copies it makes it practical if you want simple illustrations within your program. All have simple screen dump programs but Tascopy copies all or part of the screen in a variety of shades. Sprite Generator does just that but it's a complex to use package that isn't worth the asking price. DOWN TO BUSINESS The high reputation of Archive, Abacus, Quill and Easel is based on their quality - it's not just that they come with the QL. Other companies haven't released similar packages because most people are happy with what they've got. Doubtless improvements could be made but I expect these'll come from Psion rather than an independent house. Title: Q-Spell Publisher: Eidersoft Price: £19.95 Rating: 8/10 Pore spillars will welcome Q-Spell - a full-spec spelling checker to Quill. But be warned! Extra mamory's needed to check your document with Quill still in memory. Title: Home Finance Publisher: Buzzz (via Sinclair) Price: £24.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Self Employed and Cash Trader Publisher: Quest Price: £69.95 Rating: 7/10 Title: Small Business and Accounts Publisher: Sagesoft Price: £89.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Payroll Publisher: TR Rating: 8/10 Of the accounting packages aimed at home users Smallbusiness is the most professional. It has integrated Purchase, Sales, and Nominal Ledgers. Transferred from the IBM PC it just goes to show that the QL can compete in the business world. Payroll provides a perfect complement and deals with data for up to 75 employees. Title: Decision Maker Publisher: Triptych Price: £39.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Entrepreneur Publisher: Triptych Price: £39.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Project Planner Publisher: Triptych Price: £39.95 Rating: 8/10 The Triptych products help solve various problems and educate you in the process. Title: Equate (Microdrive and disk) Publisher: Flite Price: £39.95 Rating: 7/10 For mathematicians, Equate can solve most problems - polynomial, linear, simultaneous equations, differentiation, integration, curve fitting and various graphical problems. Title: QL Gardener Publisher: Gordian Computing Services Price: £24.95 QL Gardener is a database with information on over 1100 plants. Just a shame that the package won't dig or even weed your garden for you! QL ADVENTURES When you consider the QL's large memory and excellent graphics you'd expect plenty of adventures. But only three quality games exist, and they're all text only. Title: Lost Kingdom Of Zkul Publisher: Talent Price: £19.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: West Publisher: Talent Price: £19.95 Rating: 6/10 Title: The Pawn Publisher: Magnetic Scrolls (coming soon) Rating: 10/10 The Talents were released early on in the QL's history and they're still looking good. Zkul is based on the popular Dungeons and Dragons format and plays very well. West is set in the desert wilds - complete with menacing Indians. Few reservations about this one! The Pawn is extremely high quality, similar to that of the Level 9 adventures. It's set in the magical world of Kerovnia during a period at social upheaval and includes a very complex command interpreter that can understand commands as complex as "Get all except the cases but not the violin case then kill the man eating shrew with the contents of the violin case. Remove the shrew's tail and use it to tie the pole and the noose together!" See what I mean? This game's by far the QL's best adventure yet. A WINNING STRATEGY If you compare this list of strategy games for the QL with the selection for the Speccy, it looks pretty paltry. Still, there are some good 'uns here. Title: Chess Publisher: Psion Price: £19.95 Rating: 9/10 Computer chess takes on a new dimension with a full 3D board display that makes impressive use of the QL's graphics. Title: Match Point Publisher: Psion Price: £14.95 Rating: 9/10 Match Point is converted from the Spectrum and improved graphics make the game more playable. Title: Area Radar Controller Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £14.95 Rating: 2/10 This is a very poor aircraft control simulation written in SuperBasic. Title: Bridge Player Publisher: CP Software Price: £14.95 Rating: 5/10 Title: Backgammon Publisher: Digital Precision Price: £12.95 Rating: 5/10 Title: Reversi Publisher: Games of Skill Price: £12.95 (Coming Soon) Aimed at novices, Bridge Player and Backgammon are of little value to the experienced. Coming soon is Reversi - a full version of Othello. Title: Comos Publisher: Talent Price: £14.95 Rating: 7/10 Patrick Moores, stand by your QLs. This is an astronomy package that allows you to display star and solar patterns as seen from any place on Earth at any point in time. From the star map you can choose any star with the cursor to find out extra data. ARCADE ACTION This list of arcade games for the QL may produce a snigger from Speccy owners - it doesn't exactly rival the selection on offer to them. Still, it's growing all the time! Title: QL Cavern Publisher: JMF (via Sinclair) Price: £12.95 Rating: 7/10 A massive 50 screen Jet Set Willy clone with 395 gems to collect. Good value, with a good many improvements over the standard platform game. Title: Meteor Storm Publisher: Arrakia (via Sinclair) Price: £12.95 Rating: 4/10 A bog standard version of Asteroids. Title: Booty Publisher: Firebird Price: £9.95 (Coming Soon) A locks and doors classic on the Speccy that sells for £2.50. Microdrive problems push up the price on the QL. Looks impressive! Title: EVA Publisher: Westway Price: £12.95 Rating: 9/10 A Jetpack-style game with very large sprite graphics. The most annoying feature is the almost continuous sound. Title: Star Guard Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £14.95 Rating: 5/10 Title: Galactic Invaders Publisher: Shadow Games Rating: 5/10 Shadow Games range from the reasonable to the pathetic. This pair come on the one cartridge and are just copies of Arcadia/Invaders. Title: Night Nurse Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £12.95 Rating: 3/10 This uses Digital Precision's Sprite Package (see The Language Barrier) and it just goes to show that commercial games cannot be produced with it. Shame. Title: Quazimodo Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £12.95 Rating: 7/10 Reasonable I suppose, very colourful and should satisfy if this is your thing. I'd back it! Title: Space Paranoids Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £12.95 Rating: 4/10 Another Arcadia style game - hardly worth loading up. Title: Zapper Publisher: Eidersoft Price: £10.95 Rating: 6/10 Similar them to Paranoids but slightly better value. Title: Master Blaster Publisher: Compugem Price: £9.95 Rating: 8/10 Excellent shoot 'em up that puts the rest to shame. Very smooth animated graphics and a wide range of aliens. Title: Cuthbert In Space Publisher: Microdeal Price: £14.95 Rating: 7/10 Microdeal has a very varied quality range. Cuthbert's aimed at the younger game's player and the hidden strategic elements make it more than a quick shoot out. Title: Lands of Havoc Publisher: Microdeal Price: £19.95 Rating: 8/10 A well packaged 2,000 screen arcade that players very well but could've made better use of colour. Title: Crazy Painter Publisher: Microdeal Price: £12.95 Rating: 8/10 You can hardly call this an Arcade copy - it's so different. Crazeee! Title: QL FLight Publisher: Microdeal Price: £19.95 (Coming Soon) A flight simulator that's due for release soon. Title: Hyperdrive Publisher: English Software Price: £14.95 Rating: 8/10 The QL's official Pole Position - rather disappointing considering what could've been achieved. It's on a par with the Spectrum version. LET US KNOW... We've tried to make this guide as comprehensive as possible but a list like this can never truly be complete. If you own a piece of software, or if you produce one, that's not included here, tell us about it and we'll pass the info on to Your Sinclair's software hungry QL readers. The address to write to is Your Sinclair, [redacted].

Sinclair User

The first non-business non-utility program for the QL and still a masterpiece. Very fast - 14 moves in the first second at the lowest level - and very strong, winning the European micro chess championships. All the usual features and well implemented - hints, problem solving mode, and a facility to watch the QL considering various lines of play. Best of all is an alternative 3D display of the board, occupying the whole screen and showing off the power of QL processing very effectively. Currently the finest chess program for any home computer; essential for any QL owner whose machine doesn't sit in an office all day.

Big K

Graphics 3/3

Playability 3/3

Addictiveness 2/3

Overall 3/3

Tony Tyler 3/3

CHESS EXPANDER FROM: Psion Sinclair FORMAT: Microdrive cartridge PRICE: £19.95 A quite superb chess program from Psion for the QL. Psion, of course, are the folks who designed the bundled-in QL software - Abacus, Quill and the like - and who should know this strange beast's operating system better than they? The results are magnificently visual: underneath that naff keyboard lurks might potential for colour and hi-res, as well as high memory and real computing power. Nowhere are these qualities more in demand than in computerisations of the Oldest Game in the World, and nowhere - yet - have I seen a better job done. You get two views: a conventional look-down on the chessboard, and a magnificent 3D three-quarter perspective, in which animation of the pieces is slick and smooth - the QL's lack of hardware sprites isn't disastrous, it seems, when you can simulate sprites using memory. There are 28 levels of play (I'm still on the easiest and still getting trashed, but then I never was that much of a chess-player), and the QL's five function keys have been designated for Help, switching between views, and so on. You can play the computer, or against a friend (though here I'd use a non-volatile chessboard - i.e. one made of wood). I presume the computer's progressive handicapping is achieved by gradually restricting it's time-to-computer and/or look-ahead parameters. Moving the pieces is done by a sensible designation of the cursor keys; illegal moves are not enterable. If you're a real fanatic (and not too worried about your ego) you can get Hints, Command Takeback (i.e. Undo the machine's last move). Finally, if you just want to watch, the beast will lay on an exhibition match. Considering that chess remains the ultimate game (someone once told me that the number of possible moves in a game of chess corresponds to the number of hydrogen molecules in the Known Universe, or some such Gigaconcept) and that International Grand Masters can still beat the Cray-XMP, Psion have done a first-class, up-market job on their version. It makes the most of the QL, and indeed is by far the best piece of software for this computer yet to fall into our hands.

Micro Adventurer

Sally Glover

CLASSIC GAMES FOR YOUR MICRO The silicon chip squares off against the traditional board game - Sally Glover reports. This month I've been given a good selection of 'classic' boardgames, available for several home micros. To begin with we'll look at the three versions of chess that I have played. CHESS First, from Psion Chess for the 48K Spectrum. The game loads to display a 2D board and a menu of options which allows a player to set up the board for problem solving or to load a saved game if you desire. Opting to 'play' then allows you to choose a level of play (0-9) and a choice of black or white pieces. The game is played by using the standard algebraic notation to enter moves. The display is rather small and I found it a little tricky to differentiate between the King and Queen particularly. As a comparison for all three chess programs I used the Fidelity Sensory 9 chess computer with a proven ELO rating of about 1500 as a standard. I played three games, Fidelity versus Psion's Chess with the chess machine on level one (instant response) and the program on level five (response two to five minutes). The chess machine won every time although one session produced an entertaining end game. The result was not surprising though, and indicates that Chess is a sound basic program which is a good introduction for the beginner but rather too limited to appeal to the more experienced player. Beyond's MyChess II for the Commodore 64 is a better product altogether and boasts many features not seen in the program above. The first of these is a very good manual, rather than the brief information sheet of the previous game. Perhaps the most attractive feature is the option to produce a 3D view of the game. This involves loading the reverse of the cassette. This program also uses algebraic notation, which is clearly explained with examples to help the newcomer. The function key toggles between a view of the board and a list of the moves that have been made. Disc drive owners also have the option to toggle between 2D and 3D views of the board. The variety of options for 'set up' is impressive. The regular mode is computer versus human. Other modes include Demo, Players (human versus human), Solvemate (search for mate in a given number of moves) and Automatic where the program plays itself. There are too many other features, including hint, take back and so on, to cover fully in this brief review but it is clear that disc drive owners have many options not open to cassette users, particularly the 128 historic games which can be loaded and replayed from the B side of the disc. The nine level game program itself is much stronger than the Psion Chess game for the Spectrum and was able to force the Fidelity to a draw on two occasions. Personally, I found the 2D option easiest for play since the pieces in 3D are very difficult to tell apart, even if you use the 'turn board' facility and view from the side. Overall, though, MyChess iI is a good, solid program with many features (also found on the more expensive dedicated chess computers) that will be a boon to the developing player and quite challenging to the more experienced. The package is very good value for money - especially for disc drive owners! Finally, Psions QL-Chess which shows most of the features of MyChess II but has a brief 'handbook' similar to the Spectrum version. This time, though, this is not a disadvantage as everything is laid out clearly and in logical order. The game has an 'easy' mode where the computer cannot 'think' while you are considering your move. There is also the facility to have the program dump a hard copy of the game to printer. The game itself has both 2D and 3D options but, unlike the MyChess program, the 3D version is very, very smooth, a real joy to behold as the pieces, clearly shown, seem to glide around the board. The real strength of QL-Chess is in the program itself, the winner of the World Microcomputer Championship. It boasts no less than 14 levels of play ranging from novice, where the program plays more weakly if it is winning, to Championship with infinite response time. Playing the game at Tournament level (equivalent to level 10 of QL-Chess) resulted in five games against the Fidelity being drawn. QL-Chess then, is an excellent program that should suit all players from the novice upwards. The serious chess player might even consider buying the QL rather than a dedicated chess computer. OTHELLO Now a classic from more recent times, Reversi - or Othello. Two players use an eight by eight grid (like a chess board) and twin sided counters one side black, one side white. The object is to dominate as many squares as possible with your own colour by 'capturing' your opponent's pieces, causing them to be turned over to show your colour. The game continues until neither player can make a move. If it sounds a little complicated when written down, just watch the sample game in the pack before you buy to help you make up your mind. The graphics with the game are rather poor consisting of red circles depicting white counters and red discs for black, but the game it plays is very strong - I was totally unable to beat it even after reading the note on hints and strategy in the instruction leaflet. Othello is one of those games it takes a few minutes to learn and a lifetime to master. To help in this, though, the program has the facility to set up games at any stage like the problem solving modes in chess. Reversi is a very strong program badly let down by poor graphics that would probably soon lose your interest. The next classic of this month is Backgammon, another program from Psion for the Spectrum. BACKGAMMON The game is about 3000 years old and involves men (rather like draught pieces) on a board consisting of 24 'points' arranged in four 'tables' of six each. The number of spaces moved each turn is decided by a dice throw. The first player to move all his pieces off the board is the winner. This sounds pretty simple with a high chance element but there is one snag... Two dice are thrown and you can use the throw to move two pieces or the same piece twice - throwing a double gives you four moves. You cannot move a piece onto a point occupied by two or more enemy pieces (a block). If you land on a single enemy this piece is 'hit' and removed from the board. Your opponent must use his next throw to bring the piece back into play on your home table. If he cannot do this because he is blocked, the move is forfeit. So you can see the game has very strong tactical elements too. The Spectrum version of the game offers four levels of play and the option to throw your own dice if you think the machine is cheating - perhaps it was coincidence but it always seemed to throw a double when it was in trouble! The display is very clear and, as the program is written in machine code, the responses are almost instant. Backgammon, or at least this version, is very addictive and I was soon carried away, building blocks and cursing the machine's good fortune. Most enjoyable and available on both cassette and ROM cartridge. SCRABBLE I'm sure that Scrabble is a game that doesn't need much introduction from me as it is seen in toyshops worldwide and has spawned countless TV quizzes. For any that haven't played though, the object is to use the seven letter tiles at your disposal each turn to join with the letter tiles already laid to form a new word for which points are scored. The words laid down must appear in the chosen reference dictionary. Play continues until all times have been laid or the players decide to call a halt - usually when they are left with a handful of unusable letters. Certain squares improve the value of various words and letters. When play stops, the value of a player's unplayed tiles is subtracted from the total they have accumulated throughout the game. The player with the most points is the winner. Up to four players can try Sinclair's Scrabble on any of its four levels and games can be saved for later reloading. As far as I can see there are no options denied the computer Scrabbler that the conventional player might use. You can shuffle the tiles about on your rack, change them all or note the value and distribution of the pieces. The 11,000 word plus 'dictionary' in the program allows many words to be checked and accepted by the computer but the more outlandish suggestions will be challenged. The machine is quite happy to believe you if you tell it the word is valid don't be tempted to cheat though! Playing the game is very easy. Just use the cursor keys to choose the position for the first letter of your word, and type A or D depending on whether the word is to run across or down the board. Then just type it in. The computer won't let you use letters you don't have or position words incorrectly. The only difficulty I experienced was in making out the premium letter and word squares - they seem tiny even by Spectrum standards. In summary, I had a lot of fun with Scrabble and, if you're keen on this sort of game, it is good value for money. A nice, well programmed game. Next month I shall be looking at the ancient games of Go and Kalah and computer versions of Monopoly, Cluedo, Kensington and Bridge (not Tony, although he's a classic too).

Sinclair User

Gilbert Factor 9/10

John Gilbert 9/10

PSION CHESS: QUEEN OF THE CHEQUERED BOARD Format: Microdrive Price: £19.95 (QLUB, £14.95) QL Chess is the most powerful game available for the QL and, not surprisingly, is produced for Sinclair Research by Psion. The most remarkable attribute of the package, according to Psion, is its three-dimensional representation of board and pieces. Although, on first sight, those graphics seem complex the 3D representation has been created with the minimal amount of effort by putting the board into 3D perspective. When one piece takes another it moves in front of it but when the knight, for instance, advances over a piece it moves behind. The display is effective and watching the computer play through a demonstration will show you what can be achieved by a programmer who is more than competent on the QL. QL Chess also has the attraction of being one of the fastest computer chess programs on the market. In Level Zero Novice Mode, for instance, it can make more than seven moves in less than a second. The program supports a normal, birds-eye view, representation of the chess board. Psion has made the format of the display similar to the one used in its suite of business programs for the QL. The options and commands are shown at the top of the screen, the conventional view of the board at middle-right and a list of moves which are scrolled up middle-left. The list of moves can be output to a printer which will then keep a hard copy of the game as it progresses. In that way you will be able to see where you went wrong in a game or, in demo mode, how to improve your standard of play. As our copy of the program was a preview version there were bound to be some disappointments. The major one involved the 3D screen display where the commands and options were not listed. A good memory is required if you do not want to keep moving back to the overhead 'flat' representation. Psion could have made the board smaller and incorporated a command/option panel at the bottom of the screen which would have made switching between options easier. There are 12 levels of play which can be interchanged at any time during a game, except when the computer is thinking about a move. The first level is Zero and has been designated for the novice by the authors. It produces a simple but robust game and makes its opening move in a fraction of a second. Any beginner will be more than flustered by the speed at which moves are made. Psion has come close to the precipice of unplayability. We are sure that the game could hold a record as one of the fastest chess games around. The other levels range from one to 11. Level One plays at two minutes a move and Level 11 at a maximum time limit of four minutes. Above those levels Equal Time makes the computer move within the time last made by the human player and infinite Time lifts all the restrictions of the clock. There is also a Wait option available to the human player which suspends the game. That will be useful if cheating on the clock is required. Once you have set up the display and level to your satisfaction you can start a new game by pressing $. All the pieces are put into their initial positions and the clock starts ticking away. Movement on the normal and 3D boards is accomplished in different ways. During 'flat' representation a cursor is moved, using the cursor keys, to a chosen piece and the ENTER key is pressed. The cursor is then moved to the new position of the piece which is then deposited on the square. The 3D representation provides a cross-hair which is shifted using the cursor keys and which acts in the same way as the 'flat' cursor. Movement could not be easier and the list of moves is tabulated in algebraic notation. No need to enter those long formulae when you want to make a move. If you make a move of which you are not proud you can take back the piece before the computer makes fun of your folly. There are other ways of cheating. The first, and simplest, is to use Hint which will tell you the move the computer would make in your place. It is also possible to make the QL take back the best move it can make and substitute the next best. In that way the QL can be forced to play a second-rate game and you could come out on top. Psion has also built an option into the game which allows you to see the strategy the' QL is taking. The Analysis option displays the moves which the computer considers before making its final choice and it will give you some idea of the patterns being created in the game. QL Chess is likely to take a well-deserved place in the history of computer chess. It could rank with such names as Sargon and Sci-Sys which, undoubtedly, it could outplay if only in terms of speed. The QL is an ideal chess machine and the software which Psion authors have written to maximise its powers is state of the art. The game's prowess has already been demonstrated at the European Chess Championships in Scotland and its usefulness to someone seriously interested in chess is undeniable. It can beat the masters. Psion has also thought of the beginner. There is a full set of Help routines within the program. These should answer most queries of a technical or general nature. If you own a QL then QL chess should certainly occupy a place in your software library, even if it keeps giving you a sound thrashing. The style and quality of the product would make it attractive at double the outlay. It is also the first program which QLUB members will get at a discount price. The discount alone makes membership worthwhile.

Personal Computer News

Tony Harrington

CHECKMATE The Chess column is a new feature of Output for all you dedicated pawn movers. Once a month we shall tune to the latest moves in the chess world. Our expert Tony Harrington begins with an exclusive review of Psion's 3-D chess microdrive cartridge for the QL. For some time now we've all grown used to see even the best home computer chess programs trailing helplessly behind dedicated machines in competitions. But now Psion has produced a chess program for the QL that looks as though it could close the gap. The Psion Chess program (running on' an 8MHZ Sage computer) shared joint first place with three dedicated chess computers at this year's World Microcomputer Championship, in Glasgow, in September. But how could a program designed for a home computer compete with the best of the dedicated chess machines? Dedicated machine manufacturers like Fidelity, Hegener and Glazer not only have the advantage of being able to build their hardware specifically to suit their programs, they also have the financial muscle to spend on research and development. Richard Lang, the author of Psion Chess, has several programs for both the Spectrum and the Dragon to his credit, but it was still a puzzle how he managed to produce a program that was so much stronger than Bryant's colossus. The answer became obvious when I stepped inside Psion's workshop and saw Lang sitting in front of three screens and an open QL with an interface card to a VAX 11780 coming out one end of it. The old amateurish approach to program development where the programmer spends weeks hunched over his home computer patiently hunting down bugs in his algorithms are over. 3-D APPROACH The 3-D approach to the board takes a while to get used to but the effect is great. The Psion design team reckon that they spent hours at a chess board checking it out. Replaying a completed game on Psion Chess is a treat. You can replay a game as often as you please without worrying about misreading a move off the scoresheet. PERFORMANCE Because they don't have a purpose-built piece of hardware at their disposal, Lang and Psion have to fit in with the QL's usual way of doing things, and there is a price to be paid for this. Although it has the same clock speed as the Sage, Lang's program is slower by a factor of three on the QL. So just how good is Psion Chess as marketed? Someone of a cynical turn of mind might point out that while running on the Sage at Glasgow, the program had extremely lucky escapes from lost positions: one notable instance being when it was hopelessly down against the Fidelity Elegance. On the other hand, Psion scored a very good victory over the Conchess machine Princhess, which didn't lose to any of its rival dedicated machines in the tournament and ended up with five points, a share of first place and the title of World Champion commercial machine. Beating the 1984 World Champion DCM can't be bad. Our review copy was a pre-release version and testing is still going on but the results so far are encouraging. I tend to believe that people who buy chess programs don't want to sit around for long periods waiting for the program to move. So competition performances at two minutes a move are not really the key issue. Up until the last month or so, during which Conchess, SciSys, Fidelity, Hegener and Glazer all revealed new, more powerful machines, the machine which played the best lightning chess was undoubtedly the Novag Super Constellation. This machine has taken the scalps of several players of International Master standard during blitz competitions, and the other DCMs still have to prove themselves against it. So it seemed logical to pit Psion against the Novag machine. The first point to make is that the Super G has very little difficulty whipping Psion at the blitz level (Psion's level three, which at six seconds a move is actually four seconds a move too fast for blitz chess). The Super C won five games in a row quite convincingly and looked like it would keep doing so for ever. So I experimented by taking Psion up through some of the other levels while still keeping the Super C on its blitz level. If that sounds unfair, remember that very few casual chess players can beat the Novag machine at this level, no matter how long they ponder. You have to be at least a strong club player to have a chance. On level seven, which is theoretically a move a minute, but in practice seems to be a bit faster than that, Psion began to achieve drawn positions against the Super C, a fact which speaks very well for its playing strength. As to its features, it has almost all the standard facilities that one expects from a chess program. There are fourteen 'levels' going from novice to infinite time, and eight problems solving levels, with mate in eight being the absolute upper limit. The QL printer can be used to dump board positions or to print out a running (or complete) game score, and there are the usual analysis, hint, takeback and replay facilities. The expected market price will be £19.95, and the program comes with a good well written manual. The North American Computer Chess Championship has produced an astonishing result. Fidelity achieved second place with a souped up version of its Elegance program, behind the Cray Blitz. This is the best result ever by a microcomputer based program. David Levy's game this month comes from this event.

Psion's chess program in action. It stood up well against its competitors.