Scid vs. PC

Chess Database and Toolkit


1. introduction

2. features

3. download

4. installation

5. news

6. miscellaneous

7. changes

8. contact

9. links


1. introduction

Shane's Chess Information Database is a powerful Chess Toolkit, with which one can create huge databases, run chess engines, and play casual games against the computer or online with the Free Internet Chess Server. It was originally written by Shane Hudson , and has received strong contribution from Pascal Georges and others.

Scid vs. PC began with bug-fixes for the computer-versus-player features of Scid (hence the name), but has evolved into a solid alternative with many new features and interfaces. The project is authored by Stevenaaus and numerous contributors (thanks).

2. features

See changes for a comprehensive changelog, or the gallery for some screenshots..

New and Improved features

3. download

Source scid_vs_pc-4.25.tgz

Windows Scid vs PC-4.25.exe

Windows 64 bit Scid vs PC-4.25.x64.exe

Mac ScidvsMac-4.25.dmg

Mac 64bit (beta) ScidvsMac-4.25.x64.dmg

Other resources

The latest code is available from subversion https://sourceforge.net/p/scidvspc/code/HEAD/tree/

Other project files, including german / deutsch versions.

4. installation

Linux , Unix

Installing from source is reccommended, though there exists deb packages of some versions (from third parties) in the linux packages

Scid vs. PC requires Wish (Tcl/Tk) 8.5 or later and a C++ compiler. Example packages required include "tcl, tk, tcl-devel, tk-devel" and "gcc-c++ , libstdc++"; but of course will vary with your distribution.

The default installation directory is /usr/local, which is generally empty, but any version of Scid here will be overwritten. To install into /usr (for eg) use ./configure BINDIR=/usr/bin/ SHAREDIR=/usr/share/scid/

Installing from source:


tar -xzf scid_vs_pc-4.25.tgz
cd scid_vs_pc-4.25
./configure
make
sudo make install
scid

Extra chess pieces (such as Berlin) are now enabled by default for Wish 8.6, but 8.5 requires installing TkImg. Sound support requires Snack.
If your distro does not provide these packages ("tkimg", "tcl-snack"), you can install from source using these links (both of which have fixes applied).
TkImg, Snack.

Note Wish 8.5.10 has severe bugs, and many versions of Tk-8.6.x have *severe* memory leaks. To avoid many of these leaks, or simply for a performance boost, compile with Gregor's tk::text (patches/gregors_tktext_inline.patch).

Windows

Windows installation simply requires downloading the executable, and following the prompts.

The configuration files, including the chess engine list, are stored in the Scid-vs-PC\bin\config directory, and may be copied over from old versions to make upgrading easier. If the app is installed in "Program Files" On Windows 7, the config files are mirrored in C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Scid vs PC

Our main windows build system is MinGW and Makefile.mingw. We also have a Makefile.vc for visual studio, but it does not get updated too often.

Mac OS X

The ScidvsMac-4.25 app should include everything you need. Simply drag and drop the App into /Applications (or similar). It cannot be run from the dmg disk image.

Due to complicated build reasons, only Yosemite (OS X 10.10) and later are now supported. Additionally, Catalina has removed 32-bit app support, and it is only supported by our beta ScidvsMac-x64 app, as 64-bit Wish is not as robust as the old version.

To compile from source - once you have XCode installed - please read ScidvsMac-HowTo.rtfd in the source tarball for some older information.

Users upgrading may have to remove (or edit) $HOME/.scidvspc/config/engines.dat to properly configure the chess engines.

5. news

July 2017

Thanks to (our best bug reporter) Ileano for finding a bug in the new Best-Games/Browser feature. I've made a 4.18.1 point release to include the fix. This version also includes a minor PGN import fix.

October 2016

4.17 has a bit of a tough life, and is being re-released with a bug fix 28th October. Otherwise, it is an exciting release for hackers, with patches for chess960 and Gregors speedy tkText rewrite.

April 2015

Exciting to have some usability fixes for the Tree Mask. Hopefully this feature will start to get some real use.

December 2013

4.11 is out, with large board sizes, and a fix for the annoying filter/tree issue.

April 2013

Finally have a docked windows feature. It's a damn complicated thing, but i am fond of it. Scid vs PC 4.9 is coming :)

March 2012

Big effort by Gregor to write Drag and Drop support for Scidb and ScidvsPC. Thanks. FICS is looking great too.

September 29, 2011

Jiri Pavlovsky has made a windows installer. It's a nice piece of software :) Big thank-you. And we now have undo and redo features.

July 8, 2011

Thanks to Gilles for the web page restructure and OSX testing. Gregor Cramer http://scidb.sf.net has contributed a PGN figurine feature.

April 19, 2011

A belated thanks to Lee from Sourceforge for this article.

December 10, 2010

Scid vs. PC 4.2 includes support for Scid's si4 db format.

July 3, 2010

For the tenth release I've adopted verison number 4.0 . It includes a new Computer Tournament feature (thanks to some UCI snippets from Fulvio) and the Gamelist Widget is finally up-to-speed for large databases.

April 19, 2010

Release 3.6.26.9 includes a Fics accept/decline offers widget.

December 20, 2009

Thanks to Dorothy for making me a Mac DMG package with this release , 3.6.26.8.

August 16, 2009

With 3.6.26.6 I've fixed Phalanx's illegal castling. There is also changes to the Setup board and Toolbar configuration widgets.

July 17, 2009

3.6.26.5 - New Gamelist widget, and re-fashioned main buttons. Project's looking quite solid :->

June 23, 2009

The monkey on my back has really been having a good time. This release includes changes to the Gameinfo, Comment Editor, and Board Style widgets, some new chess pieces, colour schemes and tiles. Thanks to Michal and Alex for feedback.

June 4, 2009

Well, the html is up, and i've got a couple of files in the downloads section. My project is fairly modest fork of Scid ... just rewriting Tk widgets when i get the urge.

6. miscellaneous

6.1 docked windows

This powerful feature is maturing. See the Docked Windows help item for more info.

Make sure to check out the new Theme Options, which affect how the Docked Windows (and Gamelist) look and feel.

6.2 how to play

Playing against the Computer

The main Computer vs. Player feature is accessed from Play->Computer. Here you'll find options to play against Phalanx (a flexible computer opponent whose skill you can select), or any installed UCI engine.

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.

6.3 todo

6.4 known issues

6.5 bugs

6.6 thanks

Thanks to Shane Hudson and the authors of Tcl/Tk. To Gregor Cramer for new features and technical support. Ozkan for his Win64 builds and knowledgable help. Christian Opitz for his comprehensive German translation. Sourceforge.net for their great hosting, Jiri Pavlovsky for the windows installer. Thanks to Pascal Georges for his many technical contributions to mainline Scid, and also Fulvio, Gerd and the language translators. To Gilles, Dorothy and Steve for OS X support, to Michal Rudolf for early encouragement, and H.G.Muller for technical feedback.

6.7 scid's history

Scid is a huge project, with an interesting history. Originally authored by Shane Hudson from New Zealand, it combined the power of Tk's GUI and the speed of C, to produce a free Chess Database application with Opening Reports, Tree Analysis, and Tablebase support. It gained quite some attention, as it was arguably the first project of it's kind; but after writing over a hundred thousand lines of code, in 2004 development stopped and Shane never contributed to Scid again.

Two new versions of Scid appeared around 2006. The first was ChessDB authored by Dr. David Kirby. With some good documentation and the ability to automatically download games from several web portals, it became popular. But at the same time Pascal Georges from France was making strong technical improvements to Scid. Frustrated with Scid's dormancy, and because of disagreements with ChessDB's author, Pascal released his own tree, Scid-pg, which included UCI support and numerous Player versus Computer features.

But subtley, and with some controversy, he began to adopt the name Scid as his own. Some people objected, especially Dr. Kirby, with whom a flame war began, but Pascal's efforts to gain ownership of the Sourceforge Scid project eventually succeeded.

Under Pascal, and with the help of numerous contributors, Scid again strode forward. Pascal wrote a Tree Mask feature, and in 2009 he upgraded the database format to si4, all the time making speed and technical improvements to the neglect of the interface. In 2010, Pascal ceased contributing at all, and shortly after Scid 4.3 was released. Since then, Scid has had widespread technical changes by Fulvio Benini, who is a long-standing contributor.

Currently there exist several Scid related projects.

Chessx was originally by Michal Rudolf (a longtime Scid contributor from Germany) and named Newscid. Now led by Jens Nissen, with a 1.0 release, it is an attractive Chess GUI but with a small feature set and without si4 support.

Scid vs. PC was started in 2009 by Steven Atkinson from Australia. Forked from Scid-3.6.26, it began as an effort to consolidate many of Pascal's new features, and has since matured into a capable Scid successor.

The Android app, Scid on the Go, supports the si4 database format, and is the only mobile Scid related project.

Another huge project, now without a maintainer, is Scidb by Gregor Cramer from Germany. It is an ambitious chess database program inspired by Scid, with heavy utilization of C++ classes and customized Tk widgets. It also supports Chessbase databases and many chess variants.

7. changes

Scid vs. PC 4.25

Scid vs. PC 4.24

Scid vs. PC 4.23

Scid vs. PC 4.22

Scid vs. PC 4.21

Scid vs. PC 4.20

Scid vs. PC 4.19

Scid vs. PC 4.18

Scid vs. PC 4.17

Scid vs. PC 4.16

Scid vs. PC 4.15

Scid vs. PC 4.14

Scid vs. PC 4.13

Scid vs. PC 4.12

Scid vs. PC 4.11

Scid vs. PC 4.10

Scid vs. PC 4.9.2

Scid vs. PC 4.9.1

Scid vs. PC 4.9

Scid vs. PC 4.8

Scid vs. PC 4.7

Scid vs. PC 4.6

Scid vs. PC 4.5

PGN Window:

Computer Tournament: General: MS Windows tweaks: OSX: Bug fixes:

Scid vs. PC 4.4.1

Scid vs. PC 4.4

Bug-fixes

Scid vs. PC 4.3

Scid vs. PC 4.2

Scid vs. PC 4.1

Scid vs. PC 4.0

Scid vs. PC 3.6.26.1

8. contact

Scid vs. PC mailing list

Stevenaaus is a uni graduate in math and computer science, who programs as a hobby in tcl/tk, bash and C. He lives and works in rural australia.

9. links

Get Scid Vs PC at SourceForge.net. Fast, secure and Free Open Source software downloads