Voice Chess 2.0

Voice Chess 2.0 is a chess game with accessibility in mind. It is controlled through voice recognition, and has got text to speech capabilities.

The chess engine lc0 is used for the other player's moves.
Voice recognition and output gets processed through the Windows Speech SDK.

The english version uses the nato alphabet for naming columns, the german one uses "anton", "berta" etc. and  the term "zwo" for the number two.

Please install the redistributional files from "VoiceChess 2.0 prerequisites.zip" before running the program.

To change the language to german, edit "language.txt" and replace "en" with "de".

Requirements:
Windows 10/11
Windows speech recognition with english language has got to be activated
Windows text to speech with english language has got to be activated
The redistributional files from "VoiceChess 2.0 prerequisites.zip" have got to be installed

The following versions are available:

VoiceChess Geforce RTX for newer NVidia cards
VoiceChess Geforce GTX for older NVidia cards
VoiceChess ATI Radeon for AMD cards
VoiceChess CPU for CPU processing (older PCs without 3D graphics)

There are five difficulty levels:

beginner game:  elo 200
easy game: elo 700
medium game: elo 1100
hard game: elo 1600
expert game: elo 2200

Please note that the elo score is the maximum score, and that the real score may be different, dependent on the thinking time at a given processor speed.

Camera controls:
ASWD to move the camera, right click and drag to rotate.

For support, please visit the forum at https://voicechess.io

Devlog:
We have reached beta state! All features necessary for operation of the program have been implemented. Nevertheless, there may still be flaws, and aditional updates
will be released in the future.

Devlog VoiceChess 2.0 20.02.2024
-Fixed a bug where the game did stop when moving a rook
-Fixed clicking of pieces

Devlog VoiceChess 2.0 19.02.2024
-Improved communication flow

Devlog VoiceChess 2.0 19.02.2024
-Replace speech engine with Microsoft Speech SDK
-Replaced TTS with Microsoft Speach SDK
-Some other fixes

Devlog VoiceChess 2.0 11.03.2022
Releaaaase Partyyyyyyyy :D
-Fixed a crash during voice recognition

Devlog VoiceChess 2.0 14.02.2022
Beta 1
-added voice commands
-added promotion
-added position output
-some bugfixes

Devlog VoiceChess 2.0 13.02.2022
Quick fixes:
-fixed random crash
-fixed german "moves" message
-added wait when telling moves

Devlog VoiceChess 2.0 12.02.2022-13.12.2022
-fixed move not allowed message
-fixed validity check
-fixed a bug where white pieces weren't being replaced when taken
-moved lc0 to user dir

Devlog VoiceChess 2.0 11.02.2022
-check check x) should be fully working now
-added flexible elo levels
-compiled for english and german translatio

Devlog VoiceChess 2.0 07.02.2022-10.02.2022
-added noise level activation of speech recognition
-fixed check check x)
-added mouse controls
-replaced TTS with wav files, thus saving a bazillion gigabytes of space
-added castling
-started adding localization

ToDo:
-disabling/enabling voice activation through the keyboard
-more languages
-add PGN import
-compile for more operating systems