April 2025: Version 2024.7
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- Improved component focus management in the main window.
- Corrected user interface behavior in some non-standard situations.
- Copyediting of dialog texts and status bar messages.
- Updated third-party components.
December 2024: Version 2024.6
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- When making a move, the hand cursor is displayed instead of the previously displayed miniature of the piece being moved. This aims to improve the look when Windows Scale is set to more than 100%, avoiding the cursor getting distorted.
- When a piece is selected, turning the Edit mode on/off now clears/restores the highlighting of target squares.
- Optimized user interface texts.
- Updated third-party components.
October 2024: Version 2024.5
- New feature: Level statistics. Go to the Level menu and select Statistics or press Shift+S on the keyboard. The stats cover completed single-player games against the internal engine. For each level, the provided data include: success rate, wins, draws, losses, and the total score. Please note that only games played in this or later software version are included in the statistical data.
- New feature: Go to move number. On the keyboard, press / and type a move number.
- Improved Adaptive level feature. Level adaptation will now happen when playing from any balanced position. A position is considered balanced if it gives a fair chance of winning to both sides. This should cover most custom setups, e.g., when practicing an opening after using the Edit mode or after loading a position from a file.
- Improved PGN and FEN support — added input checks to prevent loading of invalid data.
- Improved component-focus management in the main window.
- Pressing Page up or Page down key while in the main window will always move the record by 10 moves at a time. Previously, the step was 5 moves or 10 moves depending on the presence of the Main variation panel.
- Enabled text scrolling via keyboard (up/down arrows) in dialog windows.
- Refined ordering of dialog windows when multiple dialogs appear on startup.
- Added a short delay between opening a dialog window and allowing it to be closed by clicking outside the dialog. This is intended to prevent accidental closing of a window that has just popped up.
- Improved handling of file dialogs, including their effect on the status bar.
- Smoother fade-in & fade-out transitions for dialog windows.
- Optimized dialog texts for brevity and typographical correctness.
- Improved error recovery when a problem occurs in a dialog window.
- Unified highlighting of target squares across board styles. This change improves target highlighting for the following styles: Blue, Dark brown, Yellow.
- Updated font settings: more prominent headlines, improved aesthetics of texts, clean, modern look with great readability.
- Fixed several minor visual defects.
- In English, the View menu item Taken pieces has been renamed to Captured pieces.
- Improved status bar messages.
- Performance improvements.
- Improved installation of updates, facilitating consistent user experience even in atypical scenarios.
- Added digital signature to ensure software installation security and authenticity.
- Updated third-party components.
July 2024: Version 2024.4
- Compatibility improvement: Loading of PGN files with legacy character encoding.
- Improved handling of errors that may occur when opening a file.
- Improved status bar messages.
May 2024: Version 2024.3
- Improvements in graphics, better scaling support and window refresh.
- Fix for freezing file dialogs, especially critical for UCI engine selection.
April 2024: Version 2024.2
- New background style: Brass in motion. Users can choose between the originally released style Metallic chess and the new one. See the main menu: View > Background.
- Overhaul of the 3D projections style aiming at a better distinction between different pieces and improved look.
- Improved handling of dialog windows and transitions between them.
- Updated dialog layout to optimize text legibility and overall aesthetics.
- Underlined hyperlinks in dialogs.
- Re-calibrated result-predicting mechanism so that the AI is a bit less eager to declare an expected outcome of the game.
- Optimized Adaptive level mechanism.
- Changed default time control from 30|0 to 20|0.
- Improved integration to the Windows taskbar. The icon is now properly sized for every combination of screen resolution and scale. If the shortcut to Chess 2024 is pinned to the taskbar, the app icon will not be duplicated upon launching Chess 2024. Users who have pinned the Chess 2024 icon to the taskbar before installing this update are advised to unpin the icon and pin it again (otherwise the icon will work the old way duplicating itself).
- Improved installer — more compact, faster installation, faster updating. When installing an update, the desktop shortcut will not be re-created if the user has removed it. The installer will assume the user prefers not to have the shortcut on the desktop. To re-create the shortcut at any time, go to Windows Start > All and drag&drop the shortcut from the Windows Start menu to the desktop.
- Improved uninstaller to keep the Windows taskbar and registry clean.
- Improved GUI performance through more efficient synchronization of parallel threads.
- Removed brief display of the wait cursor where unnecessary.
- Optimized app startup and shutdown routines.
- Improved Evaluation and Main variation panel behavior: Both panels are now properly cleared once their content becomes irrelevant to the current game record.
- Improved status bar content.
- The Help > How to shop menu item has been replaced by Help > Reviews.
- Corrected English, French, and German texts.
- Tweaked typography (longer dashes in English, Czech, and French).
- When sounds are on, the startup sound is played a bit earlier so that it's better synchronized with the GUI popping up.
- Updated third-party components.
January 2024: Version 2024.1
- Improved Adaptive level mechanism.
- More even differences between game levels, narrowed the gap between Hobby player and Chess enthusiast.
- Performance improvements, including faster startup.
- Updated icon image, making it a bit darker.
- Rephrased Czech texts related to the Adaptive level feature.
- Updated third-party components.
November 2023: Initial release
Chess 2024 has been introduced as a new product in the Filip Höfer Chess software line. Main new features include:
- Adaptive game level — Play chess and progress smoothly between levels.
- Contextual button to streamline the game flow — Accept/offer a draw or resignation, continue to the next game.
- Less borders, more chessboard — Enjoy graphics with dynamic scaling: up to 20% larger chessboard, depending on the window size.
- UCI engine options — Utilize the full power of your PC, including multi-core configuration.
- New visuals — Try new sets of chess pieces, including 3D projections.
