Scid Vs PC is a
usability and bug-fix fork of Scid. With it you can play chess online or
against the computer, browse tournaments downloaded in pgn format, and create
huge chess databases
Chess is a very technical thing. A single game can be analysed through and
through, openings can fill volumes, and tournaments are full of statistics
about winners, losers and openings played. Scid is a program whose original
purpose was to combine all this information into databases of various sorts;
hence it's name "Shane's Chess Information Database". As it turns out,
computers are very good at playing chess too. This is the focus of Scid Vs
PC.
Scid Vs PC requires Tcl/Tk-8.5 to be installed (though 8.4 will work in a pinch, and 8.6 is still in development).
Linux and FreeBSD should have
Tcl/Tk
installed by default.
To verify this, look for a command named wish or wish8.5.
To enable support for extra chess pieces (such as Berlin), you may need to install
TkImg.
Linux , FreeBSD
Recently i simplified the installation process a little:
tar -xzf scid_vs_pc-3.6.26.8.tgz
cd scid_vs_pc-3.6.26.8
configure
make install
scid
If you encounter any problems, please drop me a line.
Windows
First you must install Wish8.5. I recommend the excellent
Active State Tcl.
Then unzip
Scid Vs PC, browse to the bin directory and double click Scid.exe.
Mac OSX
There's now an App package for Scid Vs PC in the
downloads section.
Of course you'll have to install Tcl/Tk first... There are many different
Tcl/Tk packages available for the Mac. I recommend trying
http://www.categorifiedcoder.info/tcltk/
Compiling from source, people have reported mixed success. Once you
have the developer tools installed from your OSX disk, following the Linux
installation instructions should work.
Two of Scid Vs PC's main features are Tactical Game, and playing online with Fics.
Playing against the Computer
The main Computer vs Player feature is accessed from Play->Tactical
Game. Here you'll find the option to start a new game (or Fischer
Chess game), against a flexible computer opponent whose skill you can
select. Skill levels vary between 1200 (a bright teenager with some
experience), to 2200 (a National Master).
Playing on the Internet
Playing on the Internet is done via the the
Play->Internet menu item. I recommend visiting the
Fics website to create a user
account, but it is also possible to play anonymously. To start a game,
press the Login as Guest button, then watch the available games as they are
announced in the console. Enter play [game number] to accept a
game challenge.
There is more information
about the Fics and Tactical Game features in the Scid help menus.
Scid is an amazing project, but for several reasons I've decided to start a new project.
The focus of Scid is Databases. Scid Vs PC is about improving the
computer vs player experience.
Many widgets are rough, ugly and poorly designed, and need refinement
or rewriting.
I have strong aversions to two recently added Scid features, both of
which involve large scale code changes.
The new ad-hoc windowing system just doesn't cut it.
While Scid does have issues with window management, Tk just
isn't sophisticated enough to make this new feature work. Even
the Chessx project (which uses the amazing Qt-4 library)
fairly struggles to fix this issue.
Wish 8.5 includes a basic implementation of themes, and
there has been widespread changes to Scid to use them.
Unfortunately, the changes are not justified
for some dubious eye candy.
Despite some work together, the current Scid project manager and I don't get on.
Free software is like that ;->
Finalised 3.6.26.8 ;> Just lots of help menu nice-ities i've added at the last minute.
Thanks to Dorothy for making me a Mac DMG package.
December 04, 2009
Working on the Fics widget and playing Blitz chess; it's been interesting,
laugh. I'm fairly hopeless at Blitz! Anyway, major changes this release
(3.6.26.8) include overhauling the material and FICs widgets,
new help menus, as well as some code to fix the recent files menu
items. Lots of other stuff too.
November 14, 2009
I've discovered the great
WatchBot
web page. It automatically records (some) Fics games, and allows for playback
via your web browser. Here is a recent match between mukidi and stevenaaus.
October 25, 2009
This is just a maintenance release really, with a new Windows binary too :-) [3.6.26.7]
FICs was kind-of broken, but have fixed it up. I had a good look at cleaning up some
crappy code (the main board and material widgets are redrawn twice), but experienced issues, and have put it off for another day.
August 16, 2009
3.6.26.6 - Phalanx's illegal castling is no more. Changes to the Setup board and Toolbar configuration widgets, and heaps of other stuff. Whew!
At the chess club... I'm not playing too badly. Mike plays a very solid,
measured game, but maybe I've found his measure now. Gunnar still amazes me
with his attacking chess though. Last week he was back after a two week hospital stay,
but still managed a fairly effortless simultaneous against Mike and myself.
July 17, 2009
3.6.26.5 - Great new Gamelist and Game Info widgets. Quite a few correctness features
, and redid the main buttons... Project's looking quite solid :->
June 23, 2009
A new release today :-> I've had some holidays, and the monkey on my back has really been having a good time.
Widgets getting major updates are: Gameinfo, Comment Editor, and the Board Style widget. There's also some great new chess pieces (requiring Tkimg), colour schemes, and tiles. Thanks to Michal and Alex for feedback.
June 4, 2009
Well, the html is up, and i've hopefully got a couple of
files in the downloads section. My project is fairly modest
... just rewriting Tk widgets when i get the urge.
Unfortunately i have no plans to maintain Scid Vs PC against
the mainstream Scid project, but anyone is welcome to
do so.
I love this project, so check out my changes and please contact me if you have
requests, or know of important changes to Scid that i should
incorporate.
The Fics widgets have been redone, including buttons, the graph and labels, config windows, and console tweaks
Made a few friendly help menus, as well as adding a "Forward" button to the help interface
Fixed up the "Show Material" widget. It can now be flipped and resized, and draws pieces either side of halfway according to colour
The main board area has a modest new right click menu for configuring a few Game Info items
Configure Informant Values widget reniced
Tacgame now has a stalemate dialog
Fics now show a warning when game board is out of sync
A few fixes from Scid; not duplicating variations unnecessarily; Fics socket fixes; Uci responsiveness at game end
The analysis engines now support RobboLito, and an unlimited number of engines
The File::Open menus have had quite a bit of debugging
Some ne tile themes
The pause mechanism for tacgame has be restructured to allow for use with Fics too
Some optimisations to the oft used tcl in htext.tcl
The piece and size menus in the Options widget have been replaced by text buttons
Bugfixes:
A hack to fix wayward comments (Scid)
Don't let fischer chess (try to) castle
Don't raise all windows with double click... (Very bad for Fics blitz)
Minor PGN window/comment strip fix
Some widget reparenting
Scid Vs PC 3.6.26.7
Include a mac configuration patch
Back out broken Fics autoflag code
Fix sometime-issue with material widget outline
Small change to Tacgame about getMyPlayerName
Scid Vs PC 3.6.26.6
The Setup Board widget now shows tiles (when the main board uses tiles) and has improved functionality. It also properly inits the move number, enpassant + castling combos, and side to move radiobuttons.
Fixed phalanx's illegal castling, and sorted out issues with it's opening book and the analysis window
Replaced the hardly used side-to-move and coords buttons with toggle-menu, toggle-gameinfo buttons (Removing the redundant gameinfo right-click menu)
Fixed up the toolbar cofniguration widget, and re-did a few little images
Variation pop-ups now center over the main window, and enable KeyPress-1, KeyPress-2, etc bindings
Added a changelog (help) widget
Allow up to five analysis engines to run simultaneously
Fix the MyPlayerNames widget. (No autoscrollframe, no grab (interfered with Help))
Add MyPlayerName info to Tacgame
Tacgame show a modest checkmate widget when game is over (for the first time)
A few menu/hint fixes in menu.tcl, and a new tile theme
Help window maintenance, including proper positioning, and removing the awful yellow highlighting
Speed optimisations for updating main board
Bug fix for sometime issue with gamelist widget initialisation (thanks Alex)
De-stupidify Save Game dialog (::game::ConfirmDiscard2)
Fix up Paste Clipboard widget a little
Reorder the Options->Chessboard menus a little, giving MyPlayerNames its own entry
Several configuration windows appear centered over main window
Add Control-m binding for toggling the menubar
Scid Vs PC 3.6.26.5
Revamped the main button bar, making it a little larger too.
Fixed installation issues with tacgame/toga/phalanx on unix systems
Restructured workings of the Analysis widget, - the F2 and F3 key bindings can now be set specifically
More functionality added to the gamelist widget.
Re-sampled the Alpha bitmaps (thanks to Chessdb), and added support for 75 pixel bitmaps
Quick fixes for the repetitive nature of the "Draw" and "I Resign" messages from tacgame.
Other minor changes: Control-WheelMouse == Sizeup/Sizedown, Variation buttons swap position, Spellcheck installation fix.
Scid Vs PC 3.6.26.4
New Gamelist widget. It's much more powerful than the old one, but is not quite yet feature complete.
Many changes to the Gameinfo widget,
, including a new "Set Game Information" widget.
Stop game from crashing with languages other than English.
Window placement is now relative the main window, rather than absolute +x+y
The Options->Chessboard menu now also includes the pieces menus
The 3 line PGN header is now colour
Home directory is now $HOME/.scidvspc (instead of $HOME/.scid).
Pawn promotion dialog size now corresponds to board size, and overlays promoted pawn.
Stevenaaus is a uni graduate in math and computer science,
who programs as a hobby in tcl/tk, bash and C. I live and
work in rural australia, and spend some saturday mornings
playing chess against an ancient guy from Iceland.
