PLUS ONEUpdates
A running, honest log of what's changed in ChessPlusOne and what's actively being worked on — no marketing copy, just what shipped. The project is built iteratively, a feature or a fix at a time, together with Claude (Anthropic's AI); this page is where that work becomes visible.
October 28, 2026 — AI overhaul across all nine levels
The AI opponent got a real engine upgrade rather than just a difficulty-slider tweak. It now evaluates the board with piece-square tables instead of a flat center bonus, so pieces are rewarded for standing on squares that actually matter for their type — knights and pawns pushing toward the center, rooks finding open files, the king favoring safety early and activity once the board empties out. On top of that, a quiescence search stops the AI from stopping its calculation mid-exchange and misjudging a position that looks safe one move too early, and a transposition table lets it reuse work from positions it's already analyzed, reaching further ahead in the same amount of thinking time. Level 9, "Ctrl+Alt+Defeat," is now the strongest the engine can offer — a genuine depth-13 search given up to 30 seconds per move — with levels 3 through 8 recalibrated beneath it so the climb in strength from one level to the next stays logical.
Alongside the engine change, the status bar now tells you up front, in seconds, how long the AI you've selected is expected to take to respond — so picking the strongest level is an informed choice, not a surprise once the game is already underway.
October 28, 2026 — Status bar redesign
The status bar across the top of the board was split into two independent halves on desktop, so the live game status on the left never visually runs into the "people playing right now" counter on the right. The AI response-time estimate also got its own small badge with a brief, three-pulse highlight when it first appears or when you change the selected level — enough to catch your eye once, without pulsing forever.
Earlier milestones
Before this devlog started, the core of the game came together: the full ruleset on the 9-row board (including castling, en passant, promotion, and proper draw detection for threefold repetition, the 50-move rule, insufficient material, and stalemate); Two Players, Player vs AI, and AI vs AI modes; the Binary Timer and Game Time clocks; Save/Load Game as a portable file; a move-history "time machine" for reviewing any finished game; real peer-to-peer online multiplayer with reconnect support; and the live world map that lets anyone watch an ongoing public game. The site was also made installable as a Progressive Web App, so Two Players and Player vs AI keep working completely offline once it's been loaded once.
In progress — ChessPlusOne Telepathy
The current focus is a 2-vs-2 team mode: two teammates share a single army, moving in a strict, fixed order, with no chat or signal between them during the game. The only way to coordinate is by reading what your teammate's last move seems to be saying about their plan. No release date yet — it'll show up here, and on the About page, once it's ready to play.
Have a bug to report or an idea for what should come after Telepathy? See Contact.