File Formats

The paper format
The very first ChessAdventures levels were written on paper, using letter combinations to represent diffrent tokens, tiles and entities. This format was continued to be used far in to the *.cb2 era, because it didn't require a computer to make a level on the paper format. It was even possible to play a level on the paper format but it required som training and the risk of accidantally cheating was high. Sometimes level makers invented new features to make their levels work, and then say somthing like, "P stands for pole tokens can walk through poles but arrows can't be fired passed them". A lot of ChessAdventues features comes from this, examples are ice, teleporters.

*.cb
The cb format was used in classic versions of ChessAdventures, it was space efficient but didn't support things like advanced options.

Fun fact: cb is short for chessboard

*.cb1
The cb1 format was used in early verisions of mordern ChessAdventures (up to pr 52). cb1 was a big improvment from cb, it supported almost anything, but wasn't very space efficient and had some compatibility issues.

*.cb2
Essentially the same as cb1, but with some minor changes (still broke all the old levels).

*.cbt
An entierly new format which is even better than cb2. It's the one that is currently in use. But this format weren't perfect either, some modifications have been made since its original release, one of those changes broke all levels.

Fun fact: cbt is short for chessboard tree (it exist a reason in the code so don't worry about it)

"And I hated that the levels broke!" - Jonathan 2016