SCID vs PC

Anyone interested in exchanging / trading / swapping engine photos?

Is anyone else even using these, in Scid vs PC?

For example, when I play a sparing game against Houdini, or other engines, or when I play over a game that Houdini has played, I see Houdini's photo underneath the chessboard.  I have several engine photos like this, all in portrait mode.  Below is a screenshot:



If you have any, I'd be interested in swapping.

Thanks for your advices and sorry my poor english. I had some little problems in linux (i had edite tabs away from usfc font and scid.gui file was only named 'scid'). But thank you very much, here is my result:

Looks good!

Is it possible in Scid vs PC to draw arrows and highlight squares without using the comment editor window?

I'll check but I don't think so.  I don't recall reading anything like this in the help files.

You can highlight a single square just by clicking on it, of course.  But it doesn't appear as if one is able to highlight more than one square at a time.  It might be nice to be able to do this.  I recall watching chess videos and the commentator, often while making a point, highlights several squares, one after the other.

That was exactly the use case I had in mind.

I got my favorite board loaded, so I'm content.   I'll probably stay with the Merida font, but I decided to load the USCF font for the pic.

Hey!  Thanks for sharing! 

That's a handsome board.  I like the contract between the white pieces and the white squares, and the black pieces and the black squares.  (Meaning, there IS contrast.  If one uses white pieces, for example, on white squares, the pieces tend to "lose themselves" in the squares.  Ideally, you need some contrast betwen the two.  This is true with actual, 3d chess sets too.  Likewise, Black pieces with dark or black squares just isn't ideal.)

I hope you switch back and use this USCF font from time to time, instead of always using Merida.  I think the USCF font is a good font as well.  (I'm content with Merida half the time and USCF the other half of the time.)

Are those squares one of the board choices that comes with Fritz?  It looks familiar.

I just now downloaded Scid vs PC and so am new to it. I would like to search a database I have downloaded from the internet--this site in fact--of Morphy's games. I want to pick out a group of games in which he played a specific opening--say the King's Gambit for instance. How would I do this? Is there a good manual or instruction booklit or how to website or something like that available for Scid or Scid vs Pc? 

I think I borrowed them from two different sources, but I don't think either one was Fritz. I've been using this board in another GUI for a few years. I'd have to do a little detective work to remember where they came from. But I do remember trying to get a look similar to the Fritz look.

I might try using the USCF fonts some to see if they grow on me.

@MrEdCollins

This is a lot of great information about Scid vs PC.  Thanks !!

Frank,

There are a few different ways to do what you want to do.

Load the database.  (FILE - OPEN, and then find your file.  Note that if you've already converted the database to the Scid format, you can load a database with 4.8 million games in about six seconds!)

Click on SEARCH - GENERAL SEARCH.

EDIT:  Whoops... left something out...

Enter MORPHY, PAUL in the WHITE field.  If you are just looking for his games as White, then check NO in the IGNORE COLORS box. Enter the ECO code for the King's Gambit.  (Click on CHOOSE and select it from the list.)

That's it.  Click the SEARCH button.

You GAME LIST window (that you should display now, if it's not already) should now list all of Mrorphy's games in your database where he was White in the King's Gambit.  I found 45 such games in the database that I used to test these steps.

If you are utiliting the player photos, you will see Morphy's face at the bottom of your screen!

Once the Game List Window is open, you may wish to drag the main base to the clipbase .  This way you can then save all of these specific games from the clipbase, for example.  (TOOLS - EXPORT ALL FILTER GAMES - EXPORT FILTER TO PGN)  If you save these games to a separate file, you won't have to do these steps again.  Call it morphy-k-gambit.pgn or something.

(Note: There are OTHER ways to do all of this.  This isn't necessarily the fastest or best way.  And I apologize if I've left out a step or if something is not clear.)

Scid vs PC's search capbilites are amazing.  That's one of the strengths of the program.

Attached is a screenshot of what my screen looks like after I did these steps.  (EDIT.  Actually, that's not correct.  I initially pulled up all of Morphy's games as White, not his King's Gambit games.)  Note that I loaded Stockfish and he (it?) is analzying the game I loaded.  As always, if chess.com resizes the image too much, simply right-click and then VIEW IMAGE to view it.

qixel, no problem.  Glad I could help.

Frank,

Depending up what you are doing, you can also achieve your goal by doing a search twice. 

For example, after loading a database, click GAME and then NEW GAME.  Assume you are just interested in Morphy's games where he played the following line:  1.e4 e5  2.f4 exf4  3.Bc4.  Make these moves on the board and then click SEARCH - CURRENT BOARD.  Click the Search button. 

Depending upon the size of your database, this will give you a bunch of games, including ones Morphy didn't play. 

So now drag these games to the clipbase, click the clipbase and THEN do ANOTHER search and this time just enter Morphy's name.  SEARCH - GENERAL and enter Morphy in the WHITE field.)

I found just four such games, where he played this early 3.Bc4 line, after Black took the f4 pawn.

What I think is neat is that you can search a database for specific patterns or endings or middlegame positions, etc.  For example, in Scid vs PC (and probably other database programs) you can search for games...

...where a queen was up against two rooks.
...with two bishops against two knights.
...with a large material difference, that you can specify
...that have queen vs queen endings
...with endings where one rook + one pawn is up against one rook
...where Black has an isolated queen pawn
...where one side castled kingside and the other queenside.
...with opposite colored bishops.

and many, many more interesting combinations!

There's one odd effect I noticed when creating gif (or png) files for custom textures. If the graphic file is too large, the Scid vs. PC GUI will only use a small section of the gif file, and you might get more of a "grainier" effect than intended. When the gif file was significantly larger than about 5 KB, I'd open a graphics program (I used XnView, but I guess this is only one of many that could be used) and resize the file down to around 5 KB. At this file size, Scid vs. PC will display most or all of the graphic file.

One other odd but probably unimportant effect is that when you change the size of the Scid vs. PC board, the amount of the gif file that's displayed changes a little bit.

I've noticed that SvPC uses the same png for every square... meaning every square is identical.  I wish it would do what WinBoard does.  With WinBoard, if the bmp is larger than the size of the square, the program will grab and cut out a random section of the bmp, and use that for each square.  The end result is that not every square is exactly the same!  This overall look is nicer.  And of course any wood board, that has grains in it, has no two squares exactly the same so it more resembles what a wood board might look like in real life.

Here's an example of what I mean.  You should be able to tell that each square is not the same.