S-chess program

If somebody is interested in an S-chess program, I have released my Zillions S-chess program here:

http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/seirawanchess.htm

/Mats

Note that Fairy-Max, the default demo engine that comes with WinBoard, now also offers Seirawan Chess  (since WinBoard 4.5.0). Other variantssupported by Fairy-Max are

Makruk (Thai Chess)

Shatranj (Ancient Arabic Chess)

Courier Chess (Medieval precursor of the current FIDE game)

Berolina Chess

Cylinder Chess

Gothic Chess

Capablanca Chess

Knightmate

Spartan Chess

Chess with Different Armies (FIDE, Clobberers and Nutters armies selectable)

Note that there's been an update to my Seirawan Chess program. Earlier it too often weakened the wings by moving the a- or h pawn two steps. I also added an alternative variant where  the external pieces are introduced automatically at the first and second piece moves. This is a simplified form of S-chess.

http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/seirawanchess.htm

/Mats

hello, 
how do you set a variant to run when you click fairy max exe? I want to run a specific variant instead of normal chess in a single click. Thanks

Well, for one you usually do not click fmax.exe (the engine, which is just a plugin AI, communicating through awkward text messages), but winboard.exe (the graphical user interface). To make it start up by merely double-clicking something you would have to make a shortcut that executes the command

winboard.exe -cp -fcp fmax.exe -fd FMAXFOLDER -scp fmax.exe -sd FMAXFOLDER -variant seirawan

The -variant option would then makes you start in the desired variant; the other options are needed to make it that Fairy-Max is used as engine.

If you have done the official install of WinBoard 4.8, there is an alternative, as the installer associates the .xop filename extension with WinBoard. The latter will then interpret the content of the file as if they were options given on its command line. So you could create a file schess.xop, and fill it with

-cp

- fcp fmax.exe

-fd ../Fairy-Max

-scp fmax.exe

-sd ../Fairy-Max

-variant seirawan

and possibly many other option settings, to effectively act as a shortcut for starting WinBoard in a desired mode.

BTW, since I posted that message the capabilities of Fairy-Max were greatly extended, and many new variants were added. It is no longer limited to boards of 8 ranks, So Grant Acedrex (12x12), a close approximation to Wildebeest Chess (11x10) and various 10x10 variants were also added. For CwDA the Rookies army is now also supported.

got it! more thanks