======================================== Announcement for PyChess Staunton 0.10 ========================================
We have had a lot of last minute fixes since the release candidate. A few of them for bugs that have been around a long time. In particular there has been a lot of stabilization of CECP and UCI, so they should now work with an even wider set of engines. You can even run windows engines through wine. Another important addition to our project is our new website at pychess.org. The website has a good introduction to the client and the community, and in the future it will hopefully be filled with chess related functionality. Sharing your games online could be a great such future. The main new features of the release are still: * Support for chess variants, PyChess now allows you to play Fischer Random with your majors huffled, to play Losers chess with being mated as your goal, or simply playing odds chess as an additional way of giving a player a handicap. * On-line play which has been enhanced with chat support. Besides chatting with your opponent, the FICS community has several channels, in which you can discuss chess and varies of other topics. * The FICS support has also been improved with built-in Timeseal support. This helps to terminate lag, and is especially helpful in very fast games, like bullet chess. * If you prefer to play off-line, PyChess now lets you choose from eight different play-strengths. The built in PyChess engine has as well been extended 'in both extremes' now making many more human like mistakes in the easy mode, and playing at more than double strength in the hard mode, utilizing end game tables. * UI-wise, PyChess takes use of a new pure-python docking widget, which lets you rearrange the sidepanels by wish. I would really like to thank everyone who have helped to move Staunton forward to a release, and I hope our next release - PyChess Anderssen 1.0 - will be out on a slightly shorter cycle. Please help spread the news of the release to users around the world, And if you notice that the translation for your language isn't fully updated, head to Rosetta now, and we'll fix it in the 0.10.1 release. Changelog list in http://code.google.com/p/pychess/wiki/StauntonRelease ======================================== About PyChess ======================================== PyChess is a swift chess client originally developed for Gnome, but running well under any other linux desktops. As far as we know of. PyChess is pure, delicious Python code, from the top of the UI to the bottom of the chess engine, and all under GNU General Public License for you to hack and enjoy. The goal of PyChess is to provide an advanced chess client for Linux, and do that with a nice and efficient user interface in line with the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines. The client should be fun and exciting to those new to chess - who just want to play a short games to procrastinate their work - as well as those who want to utilize their computer for further enhancing their play. Very briefly, the following gives a picture of how far we have come. Rest assured that there is much more to come. * PyChess lets you play against lots of chess engines in the CECP and UCI formats in many different difficulties. The easiest one being actually easy and making many human like mistakes. * If you like to play against others of the human species, PyChess supports online play on the FICS servers. It's a whole big chess community with options to chat, challenge and observe games of great players. * You can easily save and open games from the standard PGN, EPD and FEN chess file formats for later continuation or analysis. You can even export a large set of games to a sheet of chess diagrams in the Chess Alpha font. * If tend to make mistakes while playing, you'll be happy to know, that PyChess lets you undo in a click. If you need to go for lunch, you can pause the game at any time. * When you are in lack of inspiration, PyChess offers an opening book and so called hint and spy modes, which shows you what the computer would do in your place, and what it would do if you opponent could move just now. * Further, PyChess offers a rich and while simple interface, with sound, animation and Human Interface as first class citizens. Happy playing, PyChess team Homepage: http://pychess.org Downloads: http://pychess.org/downloads Screenshots: http://pychess.org/about Project page: http://code.google.com/p/pychess Bug list: http://code.google.com/p/pychess/issues/list Mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/pychess-people -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-announce-list Support the Python Software Foundation: http://www.python.org/psf/donations/