scidb-users Mailing List for Scidb

Revision #599 is available. New features:

---------------------------------------------------------------

1. Stockfish now is analyzing variant Three-Check Chess. This
version might not play/analyze perfectly, it requires experience
to evaluate/estimate positions. And unfortunately I cannot find
Three-Check games in the Internet, the current evaluation
algorithm for Three-Check is a first try based on intuition. It
will help if anyone can send me games.

I've attached a small PGN file with two little (artificial)
Three-Check games which will give an impression what Three-Check
is.

About the performance of Stockfish: in my tests it seems that
there is no significant performance loss, although Three-Check
is added.

Furthermore: The evaluation of normal chess positions is
unaffected.

A technical note: removing "-DTHREECHECK" in
engine/stockfish/Makefile will compile the engine without
Three-Check.

By the way: previously I've announced that I will prepare engine
Crafty for Three-Check Chess, but I changed my decision. Probably
I will remove Crafty from the main distribution, Stockfish is
much more stronger engine.

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2. Scidb provides an engine dictionary (use Main Menu->Tools->
Open Engine Dictionary). A player dictionary will follow.

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Greetings from Frankfurt,
Gregor

With revision #574 another broken linker issue happened.
This is fixed now with revision #586. I decided to make
the broken linker hack persistent, because all newer GNU
linker versions are affected. This means it is not required
anymore to configure explicitly with this hack. The normal
configuration with "./configure" is sufficing.

Thanks to Lars who did the test.

Due to a feature request the analysis window now
provides "Add move" functionality.

Click into the wanted line: append first move to
current game if the game position is at the end
of the game, otherwise insert the whole line as
a variation at current game position.

If you want some other "Add" operation, please use
the context-sensitive menu.

Note that it is ensured that the line currently
displayed will be inserted - the engine is locked
while the menu is open (but still thinking).

I've released revision #574.

-------------------------------------------------------
Highlights
-------------------------------------------------------

- Scidb is now supporting chess variants: Crazyhouse,
  Three-Check, and Antichess (Suicide, Giveaway, and
  Losers).

  Please note:

  - Only Scidb's format .sci is supporting chess variants.
 
  - It is not possible to mix variants in one database
    (the Clipbase and PGN files are exceptions).

  - If you need some games for testing you may download
    <http://scidb.sourceforge.net/misc/FICS-variants-2012-01.pgn.gz>.
    Alternatively download games from <http://www.ficsgames.org>.

  - The opening tree is not yet working with variants, this
    is in planning stage.

  - The variant Bughouse is in preparation. In fact Bughouse
    is the main reason why I've implemented chess variants.

  - Use engine Sjeng for analyzing chess variants (except
    Three-Check).

- Tournament table: print table to HTML file.

- New piece sets: "Free Staunton" and "Virtual". Peter Wong
  kindly gave me the permission to use Virtual Pieces graphics
  from <http://www.virtualpieces.net>.

- New board themes: "Blue theme", "Staunton" and "Virtual".

-------------------------------------------------------
Currently in development
-------------------------------------------------------

- Faster start-up of Scidb. I will change the player info file,
  currently in ASCII, to a (pseudo) memory dump.

- Adding "Add move" and "Add variation" to analysis window.

- The opening tree should work with chess variants. This will
  take a while, the preparation of opening tables is time
  consuming (help is welcome).

- Implementing the support of Bughouse games.

- Download/upload/update databases via the internet.

- Tiled window layout: see
  <http://scidb.sourceforge.net/misc/twm-board.png>
  for a simple example.

- Implementing chess variant Three-Check in Crafty.

- Supporting attachments of documents to a database. The
  main reason is that Chessbase databases have attached
  documents.
-- 
Gregor Cramer
email: <gc...@gm...>

I've released revision #551 which contains some important fixes
for the XBoard/Winboard engine support:

- update problem with scores
- raise condition while analyzing new position
- catch of exceptions while parsing engine output
-- 
Gregor Cramer
email: <gc...@gm...>