SCID vs PC

I figured it out

on mac under [username]/.scidvspc you add the folders /pieces and /textures , drop the files in there and restart scid

Hi all, 

I'm a Mac user and big fan of the SCID platform. I'm wondering if anyone here knows how to make the "Selected" square color transparent (as opposed to a specific color) in the Chessboard/Pieces menu. See screenshot 1 below.

I tried modifying the code in SCID's options.dat file, changing set highcolor {#b0d0e0} to set highcolor {}. Although this successfully removes the "Selected" color, it messes up the menu (see screenshot 2 below).

If anyone knows of an easy way to do this, I'd appreciate your help!

Thanks,

Bill

Scid vs PC-4.20 release candidates are in the file repo

https://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/files/

In this version, you can replace the Selected Square colour with a rectangle by unselecting Options->Moves->ColorSelectedSquare.

Hey guys

I started using Scid vs PC recently because I am starting playing chess again and I am still getting used to its features.

Today I was trying to use lczero in Scid but everytime I run the engine the missing vcruntime140.dll error message comes up. I already installed Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 but it did not solve the issue.

Do you have any advice? Thanks

Hi friends,

what a great scid forum this is - thank you all for helping so much with getting things right in Scid vs PC.

I have quite recently started to use it, as chessbase and MEGA kept crashing for reasons I did not get. Now it all works very very neatly and reliable - I am very happy! A friend divided the new MEGA into four loads of pgn games (1.5 m each), which I could then shift into the si4 format at scid. Now the MEGA is scid-workable, and all looks fine! :-)

Maybe one of you could give me an idea about a little problem? I have roamed websites and forums, but could not find the problem discussed anywhere so far. Maybe it is only a little thing? When I create a game list for a certain variation or a player x, then all the games are displayed, but - SCID does not show the actual variations played. Everything else is there, name, rating, tournament, year, Black and White ELO, but no variations. SCID will allow to sort games by variations, and it resorts everything wonderfully - however, the variations are not on display.

Maybe I am just missing a button, or an entry somewhere? Your help will be very appreciated. Thank you!!

Tiger-Oli

No, ScidvsPC does not currently have this feature.

You can ECO classify all games from the maintenance window, then sort by ECO.

To display the ECO , and/or "Opening" in the gamelist, right click one of the column headings and select Add->ECO/Opening

The "tktext" builds remove the performance bottleneck for big games... but they may still be a tiny bit buggy. https://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/files/

Hi Stevenaaus,

thank you for your answer - although it is not what I had hoped for, and it is a real pity that there is no such variation listing, at least I can now stop wondering what to do to acticate and set such a feature up.

It would be a magnificent improvement indeed, however, the way SCID vs PC is now is already a stunning chess software.

Best wishes!

Tiger-Oli

I'm using version 4.18, but I'm assuming 4.20 isn't any different.

1) You can add the database name as a command-line parameter, and it will be loaded when the program starts. You might have to add a path before the database name, for example,

<path to scid>scid.exe ./bases/MyGames

2) For any UCI engine, if you go into the settings for the engine of interest and set the number of variations to 4 (and save the setting change), when you start that engine, it will always start with 4 lines.

You can now open DBs automatically. Use

  Options->Save Bases as Default

Your currently open bases will now automatically open *if* there are no other command line DBs to open. (eg, you double click on a PGN file)

Is there an option to use numeric annotation glyphs instead of just plain ASCII in the comment editor? Obviously when using SCID to view SCID authored comments there's no issue, but other programs expect PGN standard compliance and will not do implicit translation (this happens for the very popular AnalyzeYourChess). As I'm a chess instructor this issue has become quite annoying. SCID is a fabulous program, but this issue is threatening to push me to ChessBase for annotating games. Not sure why just the basic numeric glyphs aren't supported in SCID.

So I just ran an interesting experiment. Using the ChessBase GUI I opened a SCID commented game. ChessBase does indeed recognize the plain ASCII instead of numeric glyphs. Better yet if one replaces a game using the ChessBase GUI the plain ASCII is replaced with the numeric glyph codes ($1, $2, etc.). So this yields a mechanism for correcting the PGN output by SCID. So then I used SCID to view this corrected PGN. To my amazement it correctly recognizes the numeric glyph codes!

Why is this so startling? It was unexpected because it makes no sense. If SCID understands the codes then why aren't they used in the comment editor?? Seems like an oversight.

Numeric glyphs are fairly well supported.

You can select this option in PGN->Options->SymbolicAnnotations,

and, moreover, when exporting to PGN,  in the export config dialogs.

In the comment editor, enter (for eg) $10 , for equality

I can't find any of the options you refer to. I just realized that in my previous post I abbreviated "SCID vs PC" as "SCID". Hope that's not causing the confusion. Regarding your last statement - what's the point of entering $ based values when there are buttons that should be doing this for the annotator? It shouldn't be necessary for the annotator to know the $ based representations - the software should handle this automatically.

@ Tiger-Oli - I have added the feature i think you are after. In subversion, The 'Opening' column has been renamed 'Moves', and if the tree is open and adjusting games, subsequent moves are displayed in the gamelist and in the best-games window. I think it's working, but please test it out. PS - right-click the gamelist and bestgames title row to add 'Moves' if it is missing.

Tiger-Oli wrote:

> When I create a game list for a certain variation or a player x, then all the games are displayed, but - SCID does not show the actual variations played. Everything else is there, name, rating, tournament, year, Black and White ELO, but no variations.

hi, i have a slightly different question -- is there a batch option to add custom player pictures? if yes, how can i use it?

having to manually encode images into base64 beyond small numbers would be a waste of time. i would like to build up a high quality image database for players.

thanks in advance!

Please read the help infos.

Player Photos : Custom gifs can be placed into a "photos" directory beneath the user dir. They should preferably be 100x100, with the file name being the same as the player it portrays. Eg - a photo for Magnus should be placed in 'photos/Carlsen, Magnus.gif'. These photos will override any found in the .spf files. 

i read that info.
that still means that i would have to keep the file with the default encoded images in addition to custom photos and i'm not sure how batch renaming would work when every player name is unique.

One of the nicest features of CB15 is the replay trainer.  Is there any way to duplicate that functionality with SCIDvPC, as I can see the usefulness of this function for improving game play, learning tactics & strategy, and understanding positional play of GM games.

Specifically, here are some of the key features of replay training (ie. guessing the next move for one side):

* works similar to covering up the next move in a chess book with an index card
* the program scores based on how well you guessed the next move
* key to the program is the Hints feature, where it would state things like "move a pawn" or "attach a pawn" to hint at the next move if you get stuck.  it can give progressively more Hints for each move if needed
* a smaller mini-board also can optionally display the position 3 moves ahead of the current position (I'm not sure how useful this is though)

You can see a repay of the functions at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bm1hjalLF4

I might have found what I'm looking for with Find Best Move (Play>Training).  Not quite giving hints, but half way there with special tactical databases.  I'll have to spend a little bit more time with this.

Mainline Scid has a Play->Training->Review Game feature. If someone is interested in coding/porting this to ScidvsPC, send me an email.

Someone else emailed me about this, but changed their mind i guess. I doubt i'll ever port it myself as we have enough convoluted training features already  imho.