VersionHistory

2.10

• Dropped support for old GNU/Linux distributions.
• All processor architectures are supported again.
• Added detection for all draw conditions:
  • threefold repetition
  • insufficient material
  • fifty-move rule
  • stalemate was already detected
• Added undo and redo.
• Added options to change piece colors.
• Added an option to make knights face sideways.
• Added support for the XBoard protocol commands "?", "undo" and "remove".
• Now changed settings are applied instantly even when the engine is thinking.
• Now the status labels indicate if the game has ended and the reason, if any.
• Now the engine can use results from partial searches.
• Significantly improved engine performance.
• Improved exit time when the engine is thinking.
• Added repaints to fix some cases where nothing seems to happen until you move the mouse.
• In XBoard mode, now Project Invincible stops thinking when it receives the command "new", "force", "white", "black" or "result".
• Improved responsiveness in XBoard mode when a process with higher priority has high CPU usage.
• When the engine finds that it can be mated no matter what, now it makes the move that leads to the slowest mate. Previously it made a random legal move.
• Improved startup time in XBoard mode.
• In XBoard mode, now Project Invincible rejects clearly invalid positions.
• Fixed a deadlock when changing the number of threads when the engine is thinking.
• Fixed: the process didn't terminate if you attempted to exit the game when the game showed a dialog that asked something.
• Fixed an use-after-free on exit if a dialog that asks something has been shown.
• Fixed theoretical race conditions.
• Fixed minor memory leaks.
• Windows: fixed crash on exit with QeffectsGL.
• Unix: fixed an error message on exit with the closed source "fglrx" AMD graphics drivers.
• Unix: improved performance by enabling more compiler optimizations.
• Unix: made the binary smaller by stripping information that you don't need to run Project Invincible.
• Unix: when Project Invincible is installed, now it stores its settings in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME or $HOME/.config as required by the XDG Base Directory Specification.
• Minor changes.

2.04a

Unix only: fixed build on distributions where so-called implicit DSO linking is disabled by default such as Ubuntu 13.04.

2.04

• New icon. Thanks to the Oxygen project and John T. Haller.
• Fixed a deadlock when promoting a pawn.
• Fixed crash in positions with a lot of moves.
• Minor changes.

2.03

• Fixed a random crash when making a move.
• Fixed: the evaluation function didn't take passed pawns of black into account.
• Fixed bugs which reduced engine performance.
• Fixed crash in XBoard mode when told to move in a position without legal moves.
• Minor changes.

2.02

• Improved performance by enabling more compiler optimizations.
• Fixed: the focused square was often off by one.
• Windows: upgraded the compiler to MSVC 2012. The main advantage is that I can use some C++11 features which improve my productivity.

2.01

• New reflection implementation. The old implementation required an optional OpenGL feature called stencil buffer that, to my surprise, is not implemented in many graphics drivers.
• Fixed: sometimes a piece was selected when you opened a dialog.

2.00

• From now on, the only supported processor architectures are IA-32 and x86-64.
• Huge AI performance improvements:
  • removed mobility evaluation
  • removed capture extension
  • dramatically reduced memory allocations
  • dramatically reduced memory copying
  • dramatically reduced object initializations
  • moved some work from a function that the move generator calls all the time into the move generator itself
  • multithreading
  • a new technique which I call Aggressive Futility Pruning (AFP)
• Added XBoard support.
• Implemented animations.
• Implemented reflections. In order to not distract, reflections are rather subtle by default, but they can be made more visible in settings.
• Added mouse controls.
• Implemented Iterative Deepening which causes the AI to repeat the search with ever-increasing depths until the time is up.
• Implemented Static Exchange Evaluation (SEE) which makes the AI much stronger. As weak players probably don't want SEE, it can be disabled in settings.
• Implemented Tapered Eval which makes the AI stronger during the endgame.
• Changed colors: now the background is black, text is white and the link hover effect is transcludent white.
• Moved AI settings into a separate tab.
• Settings are now saved.
• The AI no longer blocks the user interface.
• Controls are now disabled when a dialog is shown.
• Upgraded the included Liberation Sans font to version 2.00.0.
• Enabled font smoothing because Liberation Sans 2.00.0 looks bad without it.
• You can no longer move the camera below the chessboard.
• Now the AI considers material more important than before.
• Fixed: the move generator didn't generate promotions (the most visible symptom was that the AI was unable to promote its pawns)
• Fixed: the move generator sometimes generated moves where a pawn moved diagonally out of the board.
• Fixed: in the endgame, the AI considered passed pawns way too valuable (for example, it was ready to sacrifice a queen to gain one).
• Fixed a bug that reduced AI performance.
• Windows: the stdout.txt and stderr.txt files are no longer created.
• Windows: updated the SDL library to version 1.2.15.
• Unix: improved installing (most importantly, icon cache is now updated on install).
• Refactored move generator source code.
• Rewrote most of internal text rendering code.
• Minor changes.

1.02

• Slightly improved AI performance.
• Fixed crash when the AI castles.
• Fixed: the AI used one more ply than the player wanted.
• Fixed: the AI didn't protect its king (it calculated a king safety score but didn't use it).
• Fixed some compiler warnings.
• Unix: added a desktop entry that enables desktop environment integration (such as being present in the application menu) when the game is installed.
• Unix: now cleanup.sh removes the makefile as well (it depends on some files which cleanup.sh already removed).
• Unix: fixed installing.
• Minor changes.

1.01

• Added a hover effect to links to make it more clear that they are clickable.
• Dramatically reduced CPU usage.
• Fixed: the AI didn't attempt to mate the player. (duh.)
• Fixed a memory leak.
• Fixed a rare deadlock on startup.
• Windows: added an icon.
• Unix: added a cleanup.sh script which allows you to free disk space by removing files which you don't need to run Project Invincible.
• Unix: made the binary around 30 megabytes smaller by stripping debug information by default.
• Unix: improved performance by enabling more compiler optimizations.
• Unix: you no longer need to have zlib installed.
• The GNU/Linux package is now built automatically. It means that releasing new versions is easier for us than before.
• Minor changes.

1.00b

Windows only: in the previous version, bundled msvcr100.dll and msvcp100.dll were 64-bit versions. They are now replaced with 32-bit versions. NOW the game will work without Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable.

1.00a

Windows only: bundled msvcr100.dll and msvcp100.dll, so that the game no longer requires Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable.

1.00

Initial release.