SCID Custom Pieces, updated Database and other stuff

[styx]

Shane's Chess information Database Thread

In this thread I collect a bit of useful stuff for SCID (NOT "Scid for PC") for people who use this wonderful piece of software and like to add a bit of functionality:

Download SCID: http://scid.sourceforge.net/

My Custom Pieces (Support for Ultra-HD Monitors):
- Download: Alpha, Merida, Good Companion, CBurnett
(For installation, extract into /img/pieces/ (Linux) OR \bin\img\pieces\ (Windows) folder and restart SCID)

Custom Pieces from Gorgonian's Chess Site:
- Download: Fritz, Zurich
(For installation, extract into /img/pieces/ (Linux) OR \bin\img\pieces\ (Windows) folder and restart SCID)

Add-on Chess Board Color (tested for v4.6.2):
- Download: Lichess brown and chess.com green
(For installation, copy "board.tcl" to /tcl/ (Linux) OR \bin\tcl\ (Windows) folder and restart SCID)

Million Base* (2.62 Million Games up to March 14, 2016):
- Download: MillionBase (240,7 MB) (Choose "Download via Browser")

Misc Files (Player Ratings, Fotos, Files for spellchecking, Sample Databases):
- Download: https://sourceforge.net/projects/scid/f ... st%20data/


*Initial Base from http://www.top-5000.nl/pgn.htm - most games provided by The Week In Chess - Database cleanup by me

[Marek Soszynski]

Excellent! I even have 3 wins in the database.

Many thanks.

[styx]

As I am not allowed to edit my initial post, here is the link to a mega-folder, containing a more- or less up-to-date database version using the latest TWIC database files.

I'll try to keep it updated on a monthly basis (roughly).

>> LATEST DATABASE DOWNLOAD <<

.

[Eelco de Groot]

Thanks for the database! I am more a Scid vs PC user and not very adept with that either, but so far it seems to work fine with your TWIC data as a standard SCID database. Now I would like some of the custom piece sets, but I cannot find an obvious directory under Scid vs PC and the directory mentioned in the helpfile is also not easy to find. But the database is nice!

[styx]

Unfortunately the piece sets are not compatible with "SCID vs PC"

Maybe you find what you need at gorgonians website:

http://gorgonian.weebly.com/scid-vs-pc.html

Can you tell me the reasons why do you prefer "SCID vs PC" over SCID? I took a quick glance and I failed to spot any advantages. But I am sure there are some.

[Eelco de Groot]

Hello Andreas,

No, I have not actually studied the differences between the SCID variants. I ony know two but maybe there are more. But Steven Atkinson was always very reponsive to any questions here on the forum and I don't really know any of the other programmers. I am sure if I were playing correspondence chess, or wanted to study openings for instance, it would matter to me more but I also think they are probably both good, each may have specific points in its favor but for that you would need to be a heavy user, probably.

Thanks for the link, it says I have to create the \bin\pieces subdirectory myself, if that is the case I am not surprised anymore I could not find it anywhere... I hope that I can just do that. The piece sets look very nice on Gorgonian's webpage anyway! I am a bit spoiled with the nice sets of Shredder, or even Rebel's old pieces in DOS. But these look very fine too.

Thanks, Eelco

[styx]

Added/Changed the SCID Add-on Piece Sets:

The newest version of SCID (4.6.4) already contains some of the pieces (Merida, Alpha, Cburnett, Good Companion) I made available for SCID.

Now I made some additional piece sets and also changed some:

Improved:
- Alpha Outline
- Merida Outline
- Good Companion Outline

Added:
- Cburnett Outline
- "Leipzig" and "Leipzig Outline"
- Chessicons (© 2008-2015 by Peter Wong)
- Fantasy (by Maurizio Monge)

The outline versions are quite useful when using a dark colored chess board.

To download, use the link below "My Custom Pieces" in the first post in this thread.

Maybe some of them will be added to the SCID repository in the future (or maybe not). Let me know if there are any quality issues or if I missed a beautiful piece set, which would look good in SCID.

[royb]

Andreas,

Thanks very much for this! I was a long time SCID user then switched to SCID-vs-PC because it was actively maintained. One feature that SCID-vs-PC has that is unique is the ability to conduct engine-engine matches. However I use Arena for that (much more full featured implementation of engine-engine matches there).

So, I'm back to SCID with the 4.6.4 release and loving the improvements that were made. Your work to spruce up the data files will make SCID that much better for everyday use.

Thanks!