Game Options
Progression Balancing
A system that can move progression earlier, to try and prevent the player from getting stuck and bored early.
A lower setting means more getting stuck. A higher setting means less getting stuck.
This is a range option.
Accepted values:
Normal range: 0 - 99
The following values have special meanings, and may fall outside the normal range.
- 0: Disabled
- 50: Normal
- 99: Extreme
Accessibility
Set rules for reachability of your items/locations.
**Full:** ensure everything can be reached and acquired.
**Minimal:** ensure what is needed to reach your goal can be acquired.
Goal
How victory is defined.
Single: Your opponent starts with an army of 7 pieces and 8 pawns. You have a king. Finding checkmate is your goal.
To get there, find checks, mate!
Ordered Progressive: When you deliver checkmate, you instead graduate to a Super-Sized board. Your goal is to
checkmate again, on that board!
Progressive: As Ordered Progressive, but the board grows larger when someone sends you your Super-Sized board.
Super: You skip the 8x8 board immediately. Nearly equivalent to adding Super-Size Me to your Start Inventory.
Difficulty
Which kinds of checks to expect of the player. In general, this mostly affects later checks (like Checkmate Maxima,
the victory condition).
Grandmaster: All checks are baseline. You will generally hope for equal material, and may find yourself struggling.
You will have about the same material as the AI for Checkmate Maxima to be considered in logic.
Daily: The player may expect some difficulty with early checks, but complex game states will be relaxed. You will
have about an extra Bishop and an extra Pawn for Checkmate Maxima to be considered in logic.
Bullet: All checks are relaxed. Material expectations are raised, so the player will have more material earlier. You
will have about an extra Rook and an extra Bishop for Checkmate Maxima to be considered in logic.
Relaxed: Most checks require almost twice as much material, so the player will have overwhelming forces. You will
have about an extra Queen and an extra Rook and an extra Pawn for Checkmate Maxima to be considered in logic.
Enable Tactics
All: Adds the "Fork" and "Play Turns" locations to the pool. (This adds 10 locations and items.)
Turns: Adds the "Play Turns" locations to the pool. (This adds 4 locations and items.)
None: Neither "Fork" nor "Play Turns" locations will be in the pool.
Piece Locations
When you start a new match, chooses how to distribute player pieces.
Chaos: Puts pieces on the first rank until it's full, and pawns on second rank until it's full.
Changes every match - your games won't preserve starting position. Plays more like Chess960.
Stable: As Chaos, but doesn't change between matches.
Piece Types
When you start a new match, chooses the player's piece types (such as whether a minor piece is a Knight or Bishop).
Chaos: Chooses random valid options.
Stable: As Chaos, but doesn't change between matches. You'll only ever add or upgrade pieces.
Early Material
Guarantees that a King move directly onto the second rank within the first few moves will provide a piece or pawn
(chessman). When this option is set, this location (Move King E2/E7 Early) overrides any exclusion.
Four other Bongcloud moves also involve the King, but are not altered by this option. (A File: Move to the leftmost
File; Capture: Any capturing move; Center: Move to any of the center 4 squares; Promotion: Move to enemy back rank)
Pawn, Minor, Major: You will get an early chessman of the specified type (i.e. a pawn, minor piece, or major piece).
Piece: You will get an early minor or major piece.
Jack: You will get an early advanced piece, worth about 7 material.
Any: You will get an early chessman.
Maximum Engine Penalties
The number of times the engine will receive a reduction to their skill level. These reductions are currently named
"Progressive ELO Engine Lobotomy," and each level reduces the AI's access to both analysis and information.
This is a range option.
Accepted values:
Normal range: 0 - 5
Maximum Pocket
The number of Progressive Pocket Pieces the game is allowed to add to the multiworld.
Each Progressive Pocket Piece will improve your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd pocket slot up to 4 times, from Nothing to Pawn, to
Minor Piece (like a pocket Knight), to Major Piece (like a pocket Rook), to Queen.
This option does not alter filler item distribution. (Even if you have 0 Progressive Pockets, the item pool may
contain Progressive Pocket Gems and Progressive Pocket Range.)
Pocket Pieces are inspired by the Dutch game of paard in de zak (pocket knight).
This is a range option.
Accepted values:
Normal range: 0 - 12
Maximum Kings
How many Royal pieces (Kings) to place, which must all be captured before one experiences defeat.
The player always starts with 1 King, but may find Progressive Consuls if this is set higher than 1. Progressive
Consuls add additional Kings to the player's starting board.
This is a range option.
Accepted values:
Normal range: 1 - 3
Fairy Kings
Whether to use fairy king upgrades, such as the Knight's moves. Adding multiple upgrades to the pool will allow your
King to become a hyper-powerful invented piece if all upgrades are collected.
This is a range option.
Accepted values:
Normal range: 0 - 2
Fairy Chess Pieces
Which collection of fairy pieces to allow, if any. Choose FIDE to disable fairy chess pieces. Choose Configure to
disable this option in favor of the more precise "Fairy Chess Pieces Configure" option.
FIDE: The default, which only allows the standard pieces defined by FIDE (Queen, Rook, Knight, Bishop).
Betza: Adds the pieces from Ralph Betza's "Chess With Different Armies", being the Remarkable Rookies, Colorbound
Clobberers, and Nutty Knights.
Full: Adds every implemented army, including Eurasian and custom pieces. The Cannon and Vao capture by jumping over
an intervening chessman.
Configure: Allows you to specify your own pieces using the "Fairy Chess Pieces Configure" option.
Fairy Chess Pieces Configure
THIS OPTION IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH "Fairy Chess Pieces". Set that option to "Configure" to use this option.
Whether to use fairy chess pieces. Most pieces below are from Ralph Betza's Chess with Different Armies. If omitted,
the default allows for all following fairy chess pieces, as well as the standard pieces defined by FIDE.
FIDE: Contains the standard chess pieces, consisting of the Bishop, Knight, Rook, and Queen.
Rookies: Adds the CwDA army inspired by Rooks, the Remarkable Rookies. The Half-Duck castles rather than the Short
Rook.
Clobberers: Adds the CwDA army inspired by Bishops, the Colorbound Clobberers. Fad and Bede may both castle.
Nutty: Adds the CwDA army inspired by Knights, the Nutty Knights.
Cannon: Adds the Rook-like Cannon, which captures a distal chessman by leaping over an intervening chessman, and the
Vao, a Bishop-like Cannon, in that it moves and captures diagonally. Also adds the Queennon, which moves as a King,
a Cannon, and a Vao.
Camel: Adds a custom army themed after 3,x leapers like the Camel (3,1) and Tribbabah (3,0). (The Knight is a 2,1
leaper.)
Petal: Adds a custom army themed after pieces that move down angled paths. The Gardener is a 2,2 leaper with
additional pacifist moves. The Ribbon moves 1 space as a Bishop before rotating to move 2 more spaces. The Petal
moves 3 spaces as a Rook before rotating 3 more spaces. The Miracle moves as a Ribbon and as a Petal.
Fairy Chess Army
Whether to mix pieces between the Different Armies. Does not affect pawns. Note that the Cannon pieces, which
replace the Bishop and Knight with a Vao and Cannon, constitute a very powerful yet flawed Different Army.
Chaos: Chooses random enabled options. (You can disable armies by setting "Fairy Chess Pieces Configure".)
Stable: Chooses within one army. (If you want at most 2 Bishops, 2 Knights, 2 Rooks, and 1 Queen, add Piece Type
Limits below: 2 Minor, 2 Major, and 1 Queen.)
Fairy Chess Pawns
Whether to use fairy chess pawns.
Vanilla: Only use the standard pawn.
Mixed: Adds all implemented fairy chess pawns to the pool. You may receive a mix of different types of pawns.
Berolina: Only use the Berolina pawn (may appear to be a Ferz), which moves diagonally and captures forward.
Checkers: Only borrow Checkers, which move diagonally and capture by skipping over the intervening piece. Can capture many times.
Reserved: Crashes your game. (Not implemented.)
Any Pawn: A mix of Vanilla and Berolina - anything referred to as a Pawn by the source text.
Any Fairy: A mix of Berolina and Checkers - anything except ordinary Pawns.
Any Classical: A mix of Vanilla and Checkers - anything a player would recognise from their childhood.
Minor Piece Limit by Type
How many of any given type of minor piece you might play with. If set to 1, you will never start with more than 1
Knight, nor 1 Bishop, but you may have both 1 Knight and 1 Bishop. If set to 0, this setting is disabled.
This is a range option.
Accepted values:
Normal range: 1 - 15
The following values have special meanings, and may fall outside the normal range.
Major Piece Limit by Type
How many of any given type of major piece you might play with. If set to 1, you will never start with more than 1
Rook. If set to 0, this setting is disabled.
This is a range option.
Accepted values:
Normal range: 1 - 11
The following values have special meanings, and may fall outside the normal range.
Queen Piece Limit by Type
How many of any given type of Queen-equivalent piece you might play with. If set to 1, you will never start with
more than 1 Queen. You may have both 1 Queen and 1 Amazon. If set to 0, this setting is disabled.
This is a range option.
Accepted values:
Normal range: 1 - 9
The following values have special meanings, and may fall outside the normal range.
Queen Piece Limit
How many Queen-equivalent pieces you might play with. If set to 1, you will never have more than 1 piece upgraded to
a Queen. (This does nothing when greater than 'Queen Piece Limit by Type'.) You may still promote pawns during a
game. If set to 0, this setting is disabled.
This is a range option.
Accepted values:
Normal range: 1 - 9
The following values have special meanings, and may fall outside the normal range.
Pocket Limit by Pocket
How many Progressive Pocket items might be allocated to any given pocket. If this is set to 1, any given Pocket will
never hold anything more substantial than a Pawn. If this is set to 3, any given Pocket will never hold a Queen.
The default of 4 allows each of the 3 spaces to hold between 0-4 progressive items.
Disabling this option will remove Pocket items from the item pool.
This is a range option.
Accepted values:
Normal range: 1 - 4
The following values have special meanings, and may fall outside the normal range.
Locked Items
Guarantees that these progression and filler items will be unlockable.
Implementation note: Currently forces this many items into the item pool before distribution begins. This behaviour
is not guaranteed - a future version may simply validate the pool contains these items.
Death Link
Whenever you are checkmated or resign (close the game window), everyone who is also on Death Link dies. Whenever
you receive a Death Link event, your game window closes. (You cannot undo or review.)
Asymmetric Trades
Whether to add custom pieces to the pool of an unusual material type, enabling trades of asymmetric material values.
Disabled: Use the standard set of Pawn (1), Minor (3), Major (5), and Queen (9) pieces.
Jacks: As Disabled, but also add the custom Jack family of pieces, which are worth 7 material each. They may castle.
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