Author Topic: Shane's Chess Information Database VS PC is a fork of Scid Chess Toolkit  (Read 5307 times)

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Shane's Chess Information Database vs. PC (SCID vs PC) is a powerful Chess Toolkit



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Introduction

Shane's Chess Information Database is a powerful Chess Toolkit, with which one can create huge chess databases, run engine analysis, or 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 is a usability and bug-fix fork of Scid. The project is maintained by Stevenaaus, and has been tested with the four million game ICOfY database.

New and Improved Features
include

    Computer Tournaments.
    Rewritten Gamelist widget, with the Database Switcher incorporated.
    Improved Computer Game , FICs, and Annotation features.
    Drag and Drop file opens.
    Large Board Sizes.
    Clickable Variation Arrows, and Paste Variation feature.
    Improved Undo and Redo.
    Tri-coloured Tree Bar-Graphs alongside statistics.
    PGN Window can display small chess pieces.
    Player Information window has useful new buttons.
    Numerous Chess Engine improvements, including depth-based annotation, and easily viewable engine logs.
    The Chessboard/Pieces options have been totally overhauled. There are some new colour and tile themes, and great piece sets.
    Ratings Graph can show multiple players.
    Book tuning Remove Move feature.
    Move Search feature (eg h3 Bh5 g4 Bxg4).
    Separate board sections are hideable via right-click.
    Redone Buttons and Toolbar icons.
    Clickable Tablebase moves.
    The Setup Start Board has many fixes and improvements.
    The Help index is now meaningful to new users, with links to the game's main features.
    Many big-fixes and interface refinements.

Missing Features

    Mainline SCID has a powerful filter sorting capability, but it is not terribly useful.
    Some language translations need volunteers and updating.

    Installation

Linux , FreeBSD

Scid vs. PC requires Wish (Tcl/Tk) 8.5 or later (though 8.5.10 has nasty bugs and should be avoided), 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.

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.

Then, installing from source:

tar -xzf scid_vs_pc-4.13.tgz
cd scid_vs_pc-4.13
./configure
sudo make install
scid

It is also possible to install Scid vs. PC into /usr, instead of the normal /usr/local. This allows for parallel installation with mainline Scid, and is done by: ./configure BINDIR=/usr/bin/ SHAREDIR=/usr/share/scid/

Debian / Mint / Ubuntu users may be interested in this link.

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. On Windows 7, these files are mirrored in C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Scid vs PC
Mac OS X

The ScidvsMac-4.13 app in the downloads section should include everything you need. Simply drag and drop the App into /Applications (or similar).

Note: Users upgrading may have to remove (or edit) $HOME/.scidvspc/config/engines.dat

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

OS X's Cocoa port of Wish is broken, with little chance of repair. Scid vs PC ships with a custom 32bit Carbon build of Wish.


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.

http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/
« Last Edit: December 06, 2014, 07:56:39 PM by Software Santa »

 

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