Bored with orthodox Chess?

[Roger Brown]

WinBoard does not support arbitrary images for pieces. Only true-type fonts. XBoard does support arbitrary pixmaps, though.

My ChessLive! viewer page is on-line again, with Spartan Chess. This was not trvial, since the disk of my Chess PC on which all this software was, croaked a few months ago... It seemsI am back in business, though.

The first attempt of a Spartan-Chess viewer is now at:

http://80.100.28.169/spartan/spartan.html

It is not completely finished yet, and for the time being it is playing Fairy-Max against itself.

Hello H.G.

Thanks for the clarification. On another note....

Ahhhh!

Sorry, seeing a king being taken and disappearing from the board was too much for my conservative palate. It was fun to watch though!



It looks like an interesting game.

Tell me something, are these variants people friendly - meaning are the rules playable by humans against engines or is it biased towards engine-engine play? Are the rules about as complex as orthodox chess or more so?

I hope the questions make sense. It might help to know that I am a complete chess novice.

Later.

[hgm]

This is one of the nice features of this variant: because white plays with the orthodox FIDE army, and the game is balanced, it must be of the same complexity as normal Chess. Some other variants have much more complex tactics, due to the presence of many super-powerful pieces. Like Superchess, where you replace 4 pieces from the FIDE setup by 3 pieces as strong as a Queen (R+N,B+N abd K+N compounds) and one even stronger piece (the Amazon, Q+N). This is a tactical nightmare, much to the advantage of a computer. (Yet this game as Human OTB championships here in the Netherlands...) Gothic Chess is also very tactical due to the presence of 3 super-pieces. However, the wider board (10x8) enhaces some strategic aspects as well, in particular good distribuion of pieces over the board, which most engines do not understand, making it possiblefor George Tsavdiris to beat them.

Of course the top engines in these variants are not nearly as advanced as those for normal Chess. They are often derived from 2200-2400 Elo normal Chess engines. This also helps the Human opponent!

[George Tsavdaris]

OK thanks i've understood everything now and i agree, the current scheme is very flexible and you can play every normal Chess variant easily.

Can you say when approximately you will release the source code of the current Winboard or of the final release anyway?

Also all is perfect with this latest release except one thing that heavily gets on my nerves.
The Winboard's.ini new placement in the Appdata folder. This folder is hidden by default in Windows 7 and the option to keep hidden files hidden is ON by default and i don't want to make it OFF(since i want hidden files to be hidden).
So when i want to modify the Winboard.ini i have to go and disable the hide files and folders parameter in Windows, and then go to the C:\Documents and settings then to user and finally to appdata to find the mighty Winboard.ini! Ugh.

What was wrong with the good old way of winboard.ini inside the Winboard folder? Anyway if i disable the /save setting lines from the "Permanent" winboard.ini, would i succeed returning to the old way completely? Because i suspect that this is not enough by itself. (because i guess when Winboard loads searches there for the WInboard.ini. If this is true is there a way to change this and make it look in the folder it currently is, like the old times?)

Here is the deal:
•If i want for example to play normal Chess or Gothic Chess etc , i have to load to Winboard the WinboardF font and enter(actually i don't have to enter anything as the above lines are there by default all the time) in winboard.ini:
/renderPiecesWithFont="WinboardF"
/fontPieceToCharTable="PNBRQFEACWMOHIJGDVLSUKpnbrqfeacwmohijgdvlsuk"

•If on the other hand i want to play Spartan Chess i have to load to Winboard a new font i created for Spartan called WinboardSpartan so i have to load to Winboard the WinboardSpartan font and enter in winboard.ini:
/renderPiecesWithFont="WinboardSpartan"
/fontPieceToCharTable="PNBRQFEACWMOHIJGDVLSUKlnbcqfmarwejhiogdkpsuv"

In the old days i had multiple folders with different instances of Winboard and each one with its own Winboard.ini. One folder for Gothic Chess, one for losing Chess etc. So each time i opened the WinboardGothic folder open the winboard.exe and i would play the specific game normally.
I intended to do such a thing with Spartan to differentiate it from Chess. I would create a folder e.g WinboardSpartan put all Winboard files there and in the Winboard.ini i would put the appropriate renderPiecesWithFont and fontPieceToCharTable strings.

But now it saves them in the same place in Appdata folder so the whole deal has become confusing!

Do you know any easy way i can do that and change configurations (for example to have multiple renderPiecesWithFont and fontPieceToCharTable string combinations)?

A way with shortcuts would be nice but i don't know how to do it.
Example create a shortcut WinboardSpartan that it will load the appropriate renderPiecesWithFont and fontPieceToCharTable strings.

Thanks again for all the help and infos.

[George Tsavdaris]

Forgot to note a most probably minor bug in this latest Winboard(i'm quite sure i have reported this in the past, you corrected it in a release, but now i see that this is re-introduced), which is not annoying or anything significant but anyway:

Step-1)When i open Winboard with Fairy-Max for example(the fact that i load it with Fairy-Max is irrelevant and the same behavior holds with "Just view or edit files" option) it loads a game of Chess and a Chess board.
All normal until now.

Step-2)When i try to choose now the Spartan Variant from the "new variant" menu the variant loads but the graphics are crap. Picture:


Step-3)When i load another variant with the "new variant" option, it doesn't matter which variant i will choose, it correctly displays this new variant and then if i choose again with the "new variant" option the Spartan Chess, then spartan graphics load correctly. Picture:



The following behavior also is true:
Do step-1. Everything are normal.
Load any variant except Spartan Chess. Everything are normal.
Load Spartan Chess variant. Everything are normal.

So in order to play Spartan Chess i have first to load another variant and then choose the Spartan variant in order the graphics to be normal.

Any explanation? I don't care much since it takes 2 seconds to load another variant and load the Spartan one again, but still i'm curious....

[hgm]

OK, I see your problem, and I must say that I am also not very happy with the ini file in a hidden folder. The whole thing was driven by the problem that modern Windows systems often forbid ordinary users to write in the Program Files tree, so that only the system administrator could save his settings.

Like you already figured out, it is really only a matter of configuring.When you remove the /saveSettingsFile and /settingsFile options from the master winboard.ini file, WinBoard will behave exactly as it always did. It is only these options that make it store/read the settings anywhere else.

Note that there is an alternative over locating the ini file in %APPDATA%: you could also write

/setttingsFile=%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEFOLDER%\winboard.ini

to make it appear in your home folder, which presumably would not be hidden. This does not solve the problem of multiple standard settings, however.

The best solution to your problem seems to be the use of shortcuts. If you would create a file "gothic.ini" in the WinBoard folder, containing something like:

Code: Select all

/firstChessProgramNames={"smirfoglot /H64" /fd=..\SMIRF
Joker80 /fd=..\Joker
fmax /fd=..\Fairy-Max
}
/secondChessProgramNames={"smirfoglot /H64" /sd=..\SMIRF
Joker80 /sd=..\Joker
fmax /sd=..\Fairy-Max
}
/variant=gothic
/renderPiecesWithFont="WinboardF" 
/fontPieceToCharTable="PNBRQFEACWMOHIJGDVLSUKpnbrqfeacwmohijgdvlsuk" 

then you could start WinBoard through the startup dialog, and type as extra options @gothic, all the options defined in the file will be loaded. They will also later be saved, however, and if you don't want that, you could also include /safeStingsOnExit=false in the gothic.ini file.

To make a shortcut you simply right-click winboard.exe, and select "create shortcut". Then you click the shortcut and select "properties". Then you add the "@gothic" behind the "target" winboard.exe, and press "OK". That's all.

[George Tsavdaris]

The best solution to your problem seems to be the use of shortcuts. If you would create a file "gothic.ini" in the WinBoard folder, containing something like:

Code: Select all

/variant=gothic
/renderPiecesWithFont="WinboardF" 
/fontPieceToCharTable="PNBRQFEACWMOHIJGDVLSUKpnbrqfeacwmohijgdvlsuk" 

then you could start WinBoard through the startup dialog, and type as extra options @gothic, all the options defined in the file will be loaded.

To make a shortcut you simply right-click winboard.exe, and select "create shortcut". Then you click the shortcut and select "properties". Then you add the "@gothic" behind the "target" winboard.exe, and press "OK". That's all.

Thanks that works perfectly!!
Writing @gothic.ini works too of course.

They will also later be saved, however, and if you don't want that, you could also include /safeStingsOnExit=false in the gothic.ini file.

What do you mean be saved?
You mean to become written in the Winboard.ini and then always open the specific variant?
But even by not putting this /safeStingsOnExit=false when i open the shortcut with Gothic Chess it of course opens correctly the Gothic Chess board and when i close it and open the normal Winboard, the normal Chess board appears and not the Gothic Chess 10x8 board.

So nothing is saved anyway, without having to put this safeStingsOnExit to false.
Why? (not that i wanted to be saved but just curious if that's the intended behavior)

To make a shortcut you simply right-click winboard.exe, and select "create shortcut". Then you click the shortcut and select "properties". Then you add the "@gothic" behind the "target" winboard.exe, and press "OK". That's all.

Hmm another problem not about Winboard this time, but something like a puzzle for strong Windows solvers.

OK i created the shortcut, opened its properties and i had in the target line of the shortcut the following:
"C:\Program Files\Chess-Folder\WinBoard-4.5.0\WinBoard\winboard.exe"

and i had put after it the @gothic.ini so it said:
"C:\Program Files\Chess......blabla......\winboard.exe" @gothic.ini

I pressed OK saving the shortcut.
The behavior of it is as you described. When i open the shortcut it opens the Gothic Chess board. And it does this all the time. PERFECT!

BUT ( ) : when i then go later to see(for no apparent reason, by just being curious) in the properties of the shortcut again, in the target line of the shortcut the @gothic.ini parameter is vanished!!!

But when i run the shortcut, it correctly opens the Gothic Chess board.
Yet the target line is this:
"C:\Program Files\Chess-Folder\WinBoard-4.5.0\WinBoard\winboard.exe"

So how in the hell Windows knows about the parameters this shortcut has????

I have created 2 shortcuts, one with @gothic and one with @crazyhouse options and yes again Windows erased these option from my sight, i can't find them anywhere in the properties of the shortcuts, and yet, when i open the gothic shortcut it opens the right Gothic Chess configuration and when i open the crazyhouse shortcut, it opens correctly the crazyhouse starting position and board.

How the hell this happens? Does windows store in the registry for example the information???? Too strange....

[hgm]

Indeed, I noticed that too. The more recent Windows versions (I think it started with XP) do cutoff the command line in the target field of the shortcut properties dialog at the first '@' sign. But it is still there. But be careful: when you would "OK" the properties dialog, the @... would indeed have disappeared. Only when you leave it with "cancel" it stays.

This seems like a Windows bug to me. A very inconvenient one, because you can nolonger reliably see what is inside shortcuts. I even considered having WinBoard recognize another character as alias for '@'.

[George Tsavdaris]

Indeed, I noticed that too. The more recent Windows versions (I think it started with XP) do cutoff the command line in the target field of the shortcut properties dialog at the first '@' sign. But it is still there. But be careful: when you would "OK" the properties dialog, the @... would indeed have disappeared. Only when you leave it with "cancel" it stays.

This seems like a Windows bug to me. A very inconvenient one, because you can nolonger reliably see what is inside shortcuts. I even considered having WinBoard recognize another character as alias for '@'.

I see. Yes this problem is very annoying.
But since it works who cares?

then you could start WinBoard through the startup dialog, and type as extra options @gothic, all the options defined in the file will be loaded. They will also later be saved, however, and if you don't want that, you could also include /safeStingsOnExit=false in the gothic.ini file.

Are you sure the correct string/parameter is safeStingsOnExit ????
Because when i put it in the .ini file the shortcut doesn't even open!

So it has to be a mistake. I tried SaveStringsOnExit but didn't work either.
Are names case sensitive BTW?

Oh and can you have a look at this BTW?


Thanks for the valuable help anyway. Current Winboard is awesome and its graphics are too, so i wonder how people whine/complain about bad Winboard graphics etc etc.

For example i wouldn't trade my current Winboard grahics for Gothic Chess for nothing:








BTW you don't have to still make the annoying patent popup window for Gothic Chess to appear. The patent has expired:

The patent:
Gothic Chess patent link. US patent number: 6,481,716

The expiration notice:
PATENTS WHICH EXPIRED ON November 22, 2006, DUE TO FAILURE TO PAY MAINTENANCE FEES

[hgm]

Are you sure the correct string/parameter is safeStingsOnExit ????
Because when i put it in the .ini file the shortcut doesn't even open!

So sorry! You are victim of my faltering laptop keyboard and my poor spelling... What I intended to write was

/saveSettingsOnExit=false

And yes, all WB options are case sensitive.

And I will have a look at this strange behavior, to see if I can reproduce it. I don't use font-based rendering too often, so I would have to configure WB for it, and I was still too busy settng up my live Spartan games. This has been done now, though, and currently ChessV is playing Fairy-Max at

http://80.100.28.169/spartan/spartan.html

[Roger Brown]

Hello H.G.,

As the topic has now been changed to Some questions to H.G.Muller about Winboard, I can now tell you that the wooden board is now my board of choice!

Now if only those pieces could be upgraded to wooden or even hard plastic textures....but really, I like the new board.

Just thought I would comment on it.

Later.