NewBoard
An open source (GPL) chess graphical interface.
Version 1.2. New! July 2005
(Added another pieces set, fixed a stupid bug in castelling and added a better voice)
Author: José Lauro Strapasson, Brazil.
NewBoard is a GUI program for a PC chess engine. It is written in Ada 95 language with JEWL and was created using Gnat compiler.
Engines
There is only one engine available for newboard yet, this engine is PreChess (included in distribution).
How can I make my own engine play with NB?
NewBoard has a protocol like WinBoard but simpler. It doesn't use WinBoard's pipes methold but uses simple text files. There are two files. One sends moves to the engine and the othere recieves the moves. You can set the file's names in NewBoard setup but it is normaly 'input.txt' and 'output.txt'. The moves are sent using long algebraic notation. Ex: d2d4 and not d4. Every move is written in one single line. The castelling is done using king's move. Ex: e1g1 and not O-O. The pawn promotion is done putting a character after the move. q -queen (defaut), b-bishop, n-knight, r- rook. Ex: a7a8n. To make a new game the engine must recieve "new" (without '"') and "go" makes the engine to play and the engine must exit with "quit".. NewBoard won't test the legality of engine's moves. If the person makes one illegal move the engine must send "Illegal move". Yet about the communication files there are still three important things to say: a) Engine must save (flush) the imput file AFTER it changes the line. So first use "\n" (in C language) and then save the file. b) There can not be spaces, numbers or other caracters before the moves. Ex: use a2a4 and not (space) a2a4. All caracters must be in lower case, ex: h7h5 and not H7H5. c) If your engine is written in Pascal please consider to use Virtual Pascal www.vpascal.com because FreePascal and GNU Pascal, for example, seem to not allow file sharing!!
Download
Playing under Linux/Unix
As JEWL is available only for Windows I couldn't create a version for XWindow yet. But you can play using Wine. Just open a terminal and in the program's directory type wine newboard.exe, then in dialogue that appears clean the engine name "prechess.exe" give OK and then start engine by hand using wineconsole prechess.exe. Of course if you have another engine use its name instead of "prechess.exe" and "wineconsole" won't be needed in the case of a native Linux NB engine.
To do
Put clocks and time controls, open PGN, create another program to interface NB with UCI and WinBoard engines (but I will keep the file methold in the main program), create a native version for Linux/Unix, etc.
Screen Shots (Version 1.2)
Links
Other free multi-engine chess GUIs
Winboard/XBoard The first multi engine and maybe the most important chess GUI.
Arena In my opinion the best free chess GUI for Windows.
Jose A 2D/3D chess GUI for Windows with Java.
Scid: A Free Chess Database App A GUI and chess Database for Windows and Unix.
Knights Chess Interface For Linux under KDE.
eboard A chess interface for Unix-like systems based on the GTK+. It provides a chess board interface to ICS and to chess engines.
Other computer chess links
stanspage Page of my cyber friend from Holand with some of the best chess programs I ever saw!:)