Testers wanted, for Winboard_F

[hgm]

I made quite extensive modifications to the Winboard GUI (starting from Allessandro Scotti's Winboard_x release).

The new features are described here.

But even if you are not interested in any of the new features, your testing would still be much appreciated, to verify that all old features still work undamaged!

If you want to volunteer for testing, please send me a PM.

[hgm]

Note that most of the changes that have to be tested are actually in normal 8x8 FIDE Chess, in particular all kind of adjudications and claim verification in engine-engine play, and proper handling of castling rights, e.p. rights and 50-move counter in FENs.

So do not be put off by the fact that Winboard_F can also handle non-FIDE pieces and other board sizes, such as occur in e.g. Capablance Chess:



or



(Note that Fairy-Max would actually be able to play these games!)

[George Tsavdaris]

I have created the font you have asked for supporting most fairy pieces.
It's fairly good if you consider the zero experience i had with fonts before 2 days

The 2 pieces i'm not satisfied it the Commoner and Grasshopper, if you consider the fact that the icon for the Grasshopper is a giraffe

Here i give:

-The font download. LINK. PRESS TO DOWNLOAD the .ttf font file.
After you download it copy and paste it on Windows\Fonts folder. It will install itself if you are using Windows XP like me. The name of the font will be WinboardF.
( Note that the name of the file of the font is WinboardF.ttf too but this is irrelevant since even if you rename it, the font will install itself as WinboardF.)

-The letter you have to press inside Winboard.INI for the piece to appear as also the piece's figure.
Note that black's letter is the corresponding lower case i give for white. If for example G is for the white Grasshopper then g is for the black one.
I tested them on 2 computers and it workds perfect in both. When i press A for example(having chosen first the WinboardF font of course) in an advanced text editor(Word) a white Archbishop apperars. If i press b a black bishop, if i press H a white Nightrider, etc...




-An example of a board configuration(random example):


I remind to those who don't know about the new Winboard_F that in order to use these fonts in the Winboard(assuming you have the new winboard of course ) you have to enter the line:
/renderPiecesWithFont="WinboardF"

and also to enter
/fontPieceToCharTable="????"

And in the place of ???? you have to enter 22 letters. The first 11 for white and the other 11 for black.
The letter is the one you want the corresponding piece to have.
The pieces go as you defined, as follows :
Pawn,Knight,Bishop,Rook,Queen,King,Nightrider,Archbishop,Chancellor,Ferz,Commoner.

So for example the following is the default one should use: /fontPieceToCharTable="PNBRQKHACFMpnbrqkhacfm"
If one wants instead of the normal figure of the Pawn, the figure of the Cannon(letter=O) to appear then he should enter: /fontPieceToCharTable="ONBRQKHACFMonbrqkhacfm"


If you don't like a piece's figure just tell me and give your recommendation in order to change it.....

[George Tsavdaris]

(Note that Fairy-Max would actually be able to play these games!)

What commands do i have to put in the Winboard.INI in order to have this mini-variant?

[George Tsavdaris]

I tried gothic command to play Gothic Chess, but FMax doesn't let me to use the "horse-power" of my Archbishops and Chancellors.
As i saw it does not recognize the Knight power of Archbishops and Chancellors for both sides....
Except this, everything else seems to be normal....

[hgm]

What commands do i have to put in the Winboard.INI in order to have this mini-variant?

/boardWidth=6
/boardHeight=6
/fcp="c:/engines/umax/fmax4_8w.exe"
/fd="c:/engines/umax"

and then, before you start playing, paste the following FEN into Winboard:

rbqkbn/pppppp/6/6/PPPPPP/NBKQBR w Kq - 0 0

To have Fairy-Max actually play it, you would have to replace the first 3 lines of fmax.ini into

6,6
4 5 3 7 5 6
6 5 7 3 5 4

(This specifies board size and initial back-rank setup of white and black. The setup actually doesn't matter, as you start from a FEN, but if it is not the same number of pieces as the board width, Fairy-Max gets confused. This is something I definitely should address, that excess pieces on the line should be ignored, and that missing plces should be left empty. The fmax.ini format is currently not very user friendly, as it is an exact image of what Fairy-Max holds in memory. I hope to improve that in the future.)

The piece descriptions can stay the same as they are, as the game does not use any fairy pieces.

Not sure if castling would actually work, though... It would be safer to play this game with a King that cannot castle. (Remove the two castling moves from the King line in fmax.ini) Castling does not seem useful anyway.

[hgm]

I tried gothic command to play Gothic Chess, but FMax doesn't let me to use the "horse-power" of my Archbishops and Chancellors.
As i saw it does not recognize the Knight power of Archbishops and Chancellors for both sides....
Except this, everything else seems to be normal....

Fairy-Max does not recognize the variant command, the variant it plays is purely decided by what is in the fmax.ini file. So it is really playing Capablanca Chess although Winboard displays the Gothic array.

As Gothic is Capablanca with another initial position, and the fmax.ini on my website was configured for Capablanca Chess, the easiest solution again is to paste the Gothic opening FEN into Winboard. This then loads the setup into Fairy-Max through the edit command, so that you play Capablanca Chess from a loaded position, which is in fact Gothic.

There is only need to change fmax.ini if you want to play with non-standard pieces (or a different board size). Perhaps I should have Winboard pass the board-size settings to the engine, through an extension of the Winboard protocol. Perhaps I could use the 'variant' command for that, as usually the variant implies the board size. For unnamed variants, I could make a generic name indicating the board size:

/variant="6x6board"

The opening position for such variants could simply be an empty board, so that you always would have to start from a FEN. Of course Winboard already supports the option of starting from a FEN in a file. It could even deduce the board size from such a FEN, (if not from the variant), then the boardWidth and boardHeight command would not be needed at all.

I will give the matter some thought.

[hgm]

The WinboardF font is great. I also learned how to put bitmaps into Winboard, and I included the bitmaps I already had for two selected sizes (middling and bulky). It is a lot of work, and I don't feel like doing it for all sizes. Especially since it is not nearly as versatile as the font-based rendering, where you can choose the symbols based on the game that you are going to play.


Nevertheless, some impressions:

Courier Chess:



Capablanca Chess:

[Alessandro Scotti]

The WinboardF font is great. I also learned how to put bitmaps into Winboard, and I included the bitmaps I already had for two selected sizes (middling and bulky). It is a lot of work, and I don't feel like doing it for all sizes. Especially since it is not nearly as versatile as the font-based rendering, where you can choose the symbols based on the game that you are going to play.

Wow I missed this post in the past days, it's a wonderful work!

Re: the bitmap pieces maybe you could just add two or three sizes and use a rescaling algorithm for the rest, should be fine!

[hgm]

And how about these?

Xiangqi (Chinese Chess):



Shogi (Japanese Chess):



(Just to avoid any misunderstanding: Fairy-Max can NOT play these two!)