ArcBoard is a program which allows the user to play against a port of GNU Chess on the RiscOS desktop. It is loosely styled on XBoard, but is NOT a port of thatprogram. ArcBoard 0.04 was the first public release, and as such the program is
still very crude at the moment, it was developed to demonstrate the potential
of such a program, and as such has been sucessful in that GNU Chess is very
little changed for the port to RiscOS. GNU Chess runs in a 'child' TaskWindow
under RiscOS 3.1 or later, and currently does not think on your time. The
TaskWindow currently requires 704Kb of memory to run GNU Chess Version 4
PatchLevel 75.
As later versions of GNU Chess are released, they will be incorporated, hence
hopefully providing the Arcimedes and RiscPC with a very strong evolving
chess program. As 'Pilling Chess' is based on GNU Chess version 3, this
program SHOULD be stronger, possibly the strongest program avalable for
RiscOS. However this has not been proved conclusively, and I would welcome
any feedback on its playing strength, especially against other Arc/RiscOS
programs and/or its strength on the faster hardware (RiscPC 710) - I'm still
developing on an A5000 for now.
GNU Chess is released under the GNU Public Licence, please refer to the file
doc/COPYING inside !GnuChessX.
Fixes and enhancements for Version 0.05
---------------------------------------
A few minor Wimp changes have been implmented to conform more closely to the
style guide.
Support of chess clocks and time controls.
Managed to get GnuChess to now play from its opening book where possible!
Future Enhancements:
--------------------
Incorporate XBoard code for loading of PGN games etc
The author of ArcBoard is Steve Dicks (steve@starswan.demon.co.uk)
Thanks to Richard Sargeant (Sargeant@arcade.demon.co.uk) for early bug-finding
