Support

Troubleshooting, how to report a problem, what the game and this site keep about you, and who made what.

Troubleshooting #

The game does not start. CHECKFIRE is a Windows build. Run it from its own folder, with the Checkfire_Data folder beside the executable; moving the executable alone breaks it. If the window opens black, try windowed mode from Settings once it is up, or delete the resolution setting as described under saves.

Saves. Settings and the operation in progress are stored under %LOCALAPPDATA%\..\LocalLow\Manic Trash Panda Games Lab\Checkfire\. Deleting crawler-run-v1.json abandons the current operation; the game keeps a .bak beside it. Cosmetic settings live in the registry under HKCU\Software\Manic Trash Panda Games Lab\Checkfire.

Controller. Press any button to wake the pad; moving the mouse hands control back. Two pads on one machine take turns by seat in local two-player. If the pad does nothing, check that no other application has claimed it exclusively. Mapping: Controls.

Grand Marshal is missing. The Stockfish tier only appears when Stockfish is enabled in Settings and its licence has been accepted, and only in builds that ship the engine folder (Checkfire_Data/StreamingAssets/Stockfish). It cannot run on platforms that cannot launch a separate process.

Online room will not connect. Both players need a working internet connection; the room is a relay, not a peer-to-peer link, so no port forwarding is involved. Codes are six letters and expire when the room empties. If the boards ever disagree, the game says so and offers a resync or a rematch; take the resync.

Daily board unavailable. The in-game board and this site read the same service. If it is down, your result is still filed once the connection returns, as long as you finished the run in the game. One attempt per day stands regardless.

Army Wizard. Sheets must be a whole number of square cells (4 columns × 5 rows), at most 4096 px a side and 32 MB. If a pack shows the stock figure for a class, that class's sheet failed to load and the pack list names the file. The file dialogs need a desktop session; in Steam Deck Gaming Mode use the import and _inbox folders instead. See Army Wizard.

Reporting a problem #

Send: what you did, what you expected, what happened, the build number from the bottom-right of the main menu, and, for a crash, Player.log from the save folder above. For an operation bug, the run's seed from the operation map is worth more than a screenshot. Write to [email protected] (Israel Mayén, Manic Trash Panda Games Lab). Press enquiries go to the same address.

Privacy #

CHECKFIRE has no accounts. It does use a network service for two features, and this is what that service handles:

• Daily Operation. When you file a daily result the game sends an installation identifier it generated on first launch, your chosen callsign, the score and the run's summary figures. The identifier is a random value, not tied to your name or hardware; it exists so one installation gets one attempt per day and so a result can later be re-keyed to a store account if you sign in through one. Callsigns and scores are public on the board, in the game and on this site. Results are kept indefinitely unless you ask for them to be removed.
• Online Match. Rooms are relays that hold the two seats and the moves in flight. Nothing is written to a database; the room forgets both players when it empties. Opponents see each other's callsign.
• This site is static pages served by Cloudflare, which keeps ordinary request logs (IP address, user agent, time) for a short period as part of serving and protecting the site. The leaderboard page fetches the board through this site's own address; it never sends anything about you. No analytics, no advertising, no tracking cookies, no accounts.

Nothing in the game or on the site sells or shares personal data. To have a daily result removed, write to [email protected] with the callsign and the date.

Credits #

CHECKFIRE is a Manic Trash Panda Games Lab game. Built with Unity. Coded with Claude and ChatGPT.

• Design, code, art, audio: Manic Trash Panda Games Lab. Unit sheets, terrain, props, UI and the logo are in-house.
• Minimap chess glyphs: Ben Rosen (github.com/benrosen).
• Stockfish: the Stockfish developers, GNU GPL v3 (stockfishchess.org). Ships as a separate binary with its licence and complete source in the game's StreamingAssets/Stockfish folder; used only for the optional Grand Marshal tier.
• PeSTO evaluation tables: Ronald Friederich's public tuning of the Rofchade piece-square tables, used by the built-in chess engine.
• UnityStandaloneFileBrowser: Gökhan Gökçe, MIT licence, used by the Army Wizard for its file dialogs.
• Newtonsoft.Json, Unity 6.
• Oxanium typeface on this site: Google Fonts, SIL Open Font License.

Claude and ChatGPT are trademarks of Anthropic and OpenAI respectively, named to credit the tools used.