Quantum Chess
Australian Pricing
Still Here and Developing. Join Our Discord!
Our most active community members hang out in our discord channel which can be found here
The currently available game features the "double" quantum move, a buggy networked play experience, and an AI that doesn't understand quantum moves. But it is playable and in my opinion quite fun. Some people have no problem establishing networked games, others can't seem to get a stable game going no matter what they try. The best way to get a networked game going is to ask in the discord.
The next version of the game is under heavy development. It will feature a much stronger AI that will be able to make quantum moves. It will also use a different rule set. Instead of the "double" quantum move it will be a "split" move. The piece will always move, and it will split to occupy two different positions that are one classical move away. A new networking infrastructure is being investigated as well.
To keep up with the latest in ongoing development, and add your input as the game evolves, please join the Discord community. I will try and keep updates here a bit more consistently.
Thanks For The Interest And Support!
Update
Split Moves allow you to split a piece to occupy a superposition of two squares that are reachable in a single standard move. There is no more probability that you did not move at all.
Merge Moves allow you to select two squares partially occupied by the same piece type, and try to merge them together into a single square that is reachable by both in a single standard move.
These descriptions are accurate on an otherwise empty board, but as with the previous quantum rules the exact state of the board and interference effects can lead to some unexpected behavior.
This is a pretty big change, but it is for the better. The previous double move variant had some major issues that were hindering the development of a fast engine. The new move rules also make it easier to consider the possibility of going truly quantum on a quantum computer some day.
We're trying to get this new version out as soon as we can. Thanks for the patience and support.
-QC Team
Progress Report
Just a quick update. Some developments in the past few months, and the desire to optimize for performance, have led to nearly a complete redesign of the game. The next release version will have a different rule set, with the quantum move being changed from its current form. Instead of a double move, it will be more like a split move. The piece will always move, but the player will chose two target locations to then occupy in superposition. A lot of work is being done under the hood, and this change may still take a bit before it sees the light of day. We're keeping at it.
Thanks for the support and for playing!
Making Progress
There is still a good amount to be done though. The representation and basic move functionality are there. Quantum move path calculation and execution is in the works. Next step will be measurement, and then we have to tie the engine into the existing interface, among other things.
Thank you again for the continued support.
-QC Team
A Very Long Overdue Update
First off, I'm extremely sorry for the lack of communication here. We're decently active in the discord channel with updates, but I sometimes forget that not everyone is there. So here is an update.
A while back we posted an update that the AI was able to make quantum moves and that it would be seen in the next patch. This is still true. The AI has been able to make quantum moves for a while now in internal test versions, but it is incredibly slow. At the time it was thought that just some performance optimizations would fix this and we would be able to release the update after a couple of weeks of profiling.
Profiling and optimization did help, but not nearly enough (think 30 seconds to 1 minute per move for complex positions). After a few months of going round and round with optimizing and rethinking and rewriting large parts of the engine structure it has come to a critical point. What the engine really needs is ground up overhaul. Everything from how the board state is represented internally to how move outcomes are calculated needs to be redone and optimized.
To that end I've started a ground up rewrite of the engine side of things in C++. This will give us access to some of the language's innate better performance, and allow us to use a lot of the optimization techniques already developed for other fast Chess engines written in C++. As a nice side effect this will also open the door for running the engine as a standalone which could make a future mobile version easier to implement.
Going forward I'll try to be more diligent about posting updates here.
Thank you everyone for your continued support,
-Chris
Disconnect Issues
Giving The AI Some Mental Stimulation.
We wanted to drop an update so you know what is going on. We've made progress on the AI, but it is being stubborn. It makes quantum moves now, but it is slow. We're working on optimizing it before we launch the next patch. Thanks for your patience!
-QC Team
New Patch Soon
Troubleshooting Connection Issues
- Select a different region to play (top right corner in the lobby there is a selection box for regions). We have noticed some countries fair better with other servers outside their default region.
- We know that some firewalls are preventing "unknown" connections from within Quantum Chess. Those connections are made when a game is created. Giving permissions to Quantum Chess from the firewall might help.
- Sometimes the connection can timeout because another streaming service is running (such as a voice communication program or twitch streaming service). We usually hear this complaint with Skype. Try closing any other streaming services.