Zens Chessboard

What Is This?

This mod adds a craftable and fully functional chess board to the game.

Craft a chessboard by using a saw on a wooden plank.

Craft black pieces by using a knife on dark oak bark.

Craft white pieces by using a knife on light birch bark.

You play chess by moving the pieces on attachment slots, but there's nothing to stop you from cheating. So don't leave your opponent unobserved if you don't trust them not to cheat!

Server admins can place the Zen_ChessBoard_Static item to create a static chessboard that cannot be moved or taken by players. This board also spawns in all of its parts and will not allow players to remove pieces from the board. The idea behind this board is to be placed in communal areas like trader zones etc so that players can hang out and have a game at any time.

To place this static board use DayZ Editor or other admin tools (don't forget to add the types.xml entry if you want persistence so that games don't reset on server restarts).

Credit to Mass for his MassManyItemOverhaul which is where I first saw a functional chessboard in DayZ. I stumbled across a chess 3D model on Sketchfab and wanted to make my own standalone chess mod for my server, but the inspiration to know it was possible came from Mass's work. Go check out his mod if you want a lot more than just a chess set.

Installation Instructions:

Install this mod like any other mod - copy it into your server folder and add it to your mods list. Make sure to copy the .bikey into your server keys if you're not using a server management tool like OmegaManager which does that automatically.

Make sure to merge the types.xml into your server types and adjust the item's lifetime, or the racks will despawn on server restart and/or if no players are around. The types.xml file is in the mod folder and listed below.

This mod must be installed on both the server & client.

3D Model Credits:

The chess model was free on Sketchfab under the CC Attribution license. The only modification I made was to separate all of the pieces.

Original Model: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/wooden-chess-set-90151fb0fb294e56b45e52b001a884db

Repack & Source Code:

Unfortunately due to lack of time I can't maintain all of my mods all of the time. I do my best, but these mods are offered as-is. If there's a problem, you have the source code and my permission to fix it yourself and upload a fixed version to the workshop without any credit necessary. It's all free.

You can repack this mod if you like, and do anything else you want with it for that matter. The source code is on my GitHub at www.zenarchist.com

Learn Modding

Want to learn how to make your own mods? Check out my guides on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Zenarchist

Buy Me A Coffee / Contact Me:

All my mods are free and open source, but it takes an enormous amount of time to put some of these mods together. If I've helped you out, please consider helping me buy my next coffee! I don't expect it, but I very much appreciate it.

To contact me you can send me a message there too - I get an insane amount of messages so it's the best way for me to filter out the noise and focus on people who are willing to support my work with a coffee first:

https://buymeacoffee.com/zenarchist

Enjoy!