RELEASE NOTES ========================================================================== Please read the release notes before asking for help. ========================================================================== March 2000 - version 2.6t - experimental, 32-bit only This version fixes bugs in the previous version. There was a parsing bug in uploads and error messages. Setting the text colors will work again. The Game List dialog has been renamed as the Observe dialog. You can specify different colors for different channel numbers in the colors.dat color profiles. For example, "chan1=5 0" specifies that channel 1 tells shall be 5 foreground, 0 background. Unspecified channels still get the default "chantell=" color. The Game History dialog has been been further simplified. It will now automatically clear the list and fetch the history when a new user is loaded. The help file is somewhat improved, although it still has a lot of problems. Dialogs are managed differently at the start of a game. In previous versions, dialogs such as the Seek Graph, the Who dialog, etc, were automatically hidden when a game would begin. In this version, they are hidden only if they overlap the main board window. The upshot is that you can control whether they will be hidden, by placing them over the main board window, or not. The installer script has been simplified a little. ========================================================================== February 2000 - version 2.6r (16 bit version 2.5y) This version fixes bugs in the previous version. Layouts should now be saved and restored properly. NOTE, i slightly changed the format in which they are saved. Unf you cannot just import your old layouts file from an old version. You have to re-create them and re-save. The Wnd menu contains a new feature, "Align". The Align command looks at the size and location of all visible sub-windows, and if one edge is within a few pixels of being aligned with another, one of the edges will be moved so that they line up cleanly. This is intended to make it easier to create clean layouts. The Opponent dialog has been updated and renamed the Opponent Profile dialog. It has been made dynamically resizeable. It will now remember its old position, instead of popping up at the mouse pointer. Also in the Opponent Profile, you can now update your notes on an opponent by typing in the edit control that displays your notes, and pressing the "SaveNotes" button. NOTE: the notes are stored in a file whose name is given by the option variable "icsusersfile". By default, it is "icsusers.dat", independent of which server you're logged into. This can create problems because the same handle may be assigned to different users on different servers. If you want, you can specify a different filename for each server by setting the variable "icsusersfile" in the server's login profile entry (in "icsprofs.dat"). NOTE 2: in old versions of SLICS, the variable icsusersfile was set to null for FICS entries in "icsprofs.dat". If you want to use this feature AND you are importing an "icsprofs.dat" from an old version, then you have to delete (or modify) the line 'icsusersfile=" in "icsprofs.dat" . The Game History dialog has been made resizeable, and simplified. Instead of separate buttons for Journal, Stored, and History, a single button fetches all three (in that order). Also, in this version the Do sub-menu retains the last few seeks or match requests that you issued from the Seek or Match dialogs, so you can re-issue them from the Do sub-menu. ========================================================================== January 2000 - version 2.6q (16 bit version 2.5x) This version incorporates several improvements, in several new dialogs. The dialogs are invoked thru the Wnd menu (for example, Wnd|Seek Graph). The ICS connection sub-menu (connect to a server) has moved to the Connect sub-menu of the ICS Telnet window. The ICS Telnet window's prefix by age/alpha button has moved into the Prefixes sub-menu. The ICS Arena has been redesigned and replaced by several new dialogs: the ICS Control Panel (CPanel), the ICS Who dialog, and the ICS Seek Graph dialog. The new ICS Control Panel dialog eliminates the who listing and the challenge listing, and instead has more programmable buttons. The who listing has migrated to the ICS Who dialog, which can be called up by pressing the Who button in the Control Panel dialog. The challenge listbox can be called up by pressing the Seekgr button. When the Seek Graph dialog is displayed, seeks will not be shown in the telnet window, to reduce clutter. The challenge listbox is much like it was before i moved it out of the old Arena. The Seek Graph works in a similar fashion, except that you click on an ad's icon instead of clicking on the listbox entry. The new ICS Telnet dialog has a menu bar that duplicates the functions of the Control Panel, so the control panel can normally be made invisible to save screen space. In the Telnet menu bar, the Autoflag, Autoqueen, flags, etc, are in the Flags sub-menu. The user-programmable buttons are in the Cpanel sub-menu. The "dual" layout is an example layout that makes the Control Panel invisible. The "sidebyside" layout is a similar layout with the Control Panel visible. There is also a new ICS finger note editor dialog (Fnotes button in the Control Panel dialog). To edit your finger notes, just type them in as you want them to appear. Press the refresh button to see your current finger notes, then edit them by typing in the edit window. When you're satisfied, press the Submit button. This feature is not completely developed yet, so feel free to send me your suggestions for improvement. There is a new ICS Game List dialog. (Games button in the Control Panel dialog.) Press the refresh button to get the list of currently active games. Double-click on an entry to observe a game. The User menu has been replaced by two menus: Say and Do. You can modify either menu by selecting the *change* menu item. SLICS will now automatically save the current layout when you exit the program, and restore the layout next time you run it. If you don't want to save the current layout, or if you somehow get a messed-up layout initially, just restore from the "standard" layout (Wnd|RestoreLayout|*standard). ========================================================================== October 1999 - version 2.6q (16 bit version 2.5x) The flashing of legal moves has been disabled by default. If you want it, you can turn it on by setting flashmoves=1. ========================================================================== September 1999 - version 2.6p (16 bit version 2.5w) This version fixes a bug that sometimes caused a crash when observing bughouse games. You can now create a desktop shortcut that will automatically login to your favorite server without having to click the ICS menu. Just create a SLICS shortcut and add the command line argument autoprof=XXXX where XXXX is the name of the ICS profile you want to use, for example autoprof=A-FICS-TMSEAL . The distribution contains one such shortcut (for A-FICS-TMSEAL) whose properties you can look at as an example, or modify to taste. Fixed bug that caused the user's choice of piece set to sometimes not be honored. When create a viewer for a downloaded game using the gamedlg feature, the stored move times are now displayed in the textport as you play thru the game. ========================================================================== August 1999 - version 2.6o - (16-bit version 2.5v) In this version, CHESSBD has been split into two separate programs: the game viewer CHESSBD, and the internet chess client SLICS. As of this verison, it is no longer necessary to register in order to use the bitmap pieces. (The bitmap art is still copyright by the respective artists, and may not be used outside of CHESSBD/SLICS without express permission.) Registering is still required to eliminate the initial nag screen. Unrated challenges will make a different sound than rated challenges. Fixed bugs in telnet window user input line wrapping. Fixed bug in setting telnet window user input color. If you observe a series of games involving one player (for example with the "follow" command), the same observation window will be re-used for the whole series instead of a new board for each game. Changed layout of board to make more room for bigger clock font. The default placement algorithm for observation boards has been changed, to make more effective use of the screen real estate. Scrolling keys (PageUp, PageDn, etc) now work in telnet window. A newly added accelerator Ctrl+tab will cycle thru the various SLICS windows, including the telnet, arena, and observation boards. Support added for FICS "follow" command. In the who-listbox buttons, you can "follow" as well as "observe". ========================================================================== May 1999 - version 2.6m - (16-bit version 2.5s) Fixed a bug that could cause a GPF when pasting in the textport. Fixed a bug in unobserving examined games. The dynamic "arena buttons" are now forced to be on-screen. Changed default line wrap width to 79 on the server side (was 80). Received moves will be displayed faster. New feature: under the Wnd submenu, you can Restore all observation boards, Close all observation boards, or Minimize all observation boards. New feature: when you observe a game (using the who buttons), the observation board will by default be oriented with the named player on the bottom side. If you flip an observation board (alt-B), the program will remember your preference for having the bottom side player on the bottom side in later observed games. ========================================================================== April 1999 - version 2.6k - Several files had the wrong name in the 32-bit distribution. This has been fixed. The default "lnext" character has been changed to ^A so as not to conflict with the (old) windows ^V paste accelerator. ========================================================================== March 1999 - version 2.5q (32-bit version 2.6j) Please note that my web page is now http://www.dfong.com/ . Bug fixes... ========================================================================== February 1999 - version 2.5o (32-bit version 2.6g) Now takes advantage of the new FICS gameinfo feature to display gametype in observed games. Also by default, shows both boards when you observe or play a bughouse game. (If you don't like this, set the option variable icsautobug to 0.) Bug fix: the ptell sound should work now. ========================================================================== February 1999 - version 2.5m (32-bit version 2.6e) Style change - use colored text instead of separate chat window. Each server message type can have a specified foreground and background color. See the file "colors.dat" . You can change the colors by selecting Opt|text colors... and clicking Advanced. bug fixes: Speed up sounds. Eliminated a memory leak. Draw on move feature fixed. ========================================================================== January 1999 - version 2.5i (32-bit version 2.6c) Bug fix, should now handle "crazyhouse" seeks. Bug fix, dragging from holdings area during a bughouse game. More sounds have been added. See sounds.dat . ========================================================================== August 1998 - version 2.5h Miscellaneous bug fixes since 2.5a. mousebug=1 is now the default under win95. The "icscenscomp" variable has been fixed to censor i-tells (with --> ). ========================================================================== June 1998 - version 2.5a Compressed move, startpos. The FICS server features compressmove and startpos are now set by default in the ics.rc script. ICS Arena buttons. Fixed a bug in button setting dialog in the arena. ICS Seek dialog. The "seek history" box is now initialized from a file. You can save the current "seek history" to a file with the "save" button. ICS Match dialog. Simplified it a bit. Removed the "Accept" and "Decline" buttons since the same function can be accessed more simply via the challenge-buttons. The "match history" is also saved, like "seek history". ========================================================================== May 1998 - version 2.4w Login script. The default login script ics.rc has been improved to handle all the common cases, including ICC, FICS, unreg login, etc. The "easy profile creation" feature now works also. Option menu. I added a few of the most common options to the option submenu. You can now easily set the piece set, the sound profile, the and dragmove feature, directly from the option submenu, eg Option|Dragmove. You can even add your favorite options to the Options menu, by editing the "buttons/opt.dat" file (or "buttons/icsopts.dat" to change the ICS options menu). Buttons directory. The .dat files for user-definable menus and buttons have been moved to a separate sub-directory. FICS address. The default address for FICS has changed. I updated the icsprofs files. Win95 taskbar. CHESSBD will show up in the task bar even when you are in ICS mode. When you are in ICS mode, you can start another ICS session by right-clicking on the CHESSBD icon, and the ICS menu. FICS ad removal option. This version will support the "ads removed" notification, when and if the server enables it. Watch the FICS news for further info. ========================================================================== April 1998 - version 2.4s Server help. Added a menu item "Help|www FICS help" that links to the URL of the FICS help page. Mouse bug. Some users reported a GPF when moving the mouse the first time. This is caused by a bug in your Windows display driver. I implemented a workaround. put "mousebug=1" in your chessbd.ini file. TMSEAL. The new TMSEAL is more robust. ========================================================================== February 1998 - version 2.4q Installer. The installation procedure has been simplified by the addition of a professional install package. Things will be simpler if you do a clean install. If you have an older version of CHESSBD, please install to a NEW directory and merge in your customizations if any. If you're a registered user, remember to save your registration key. You can install the new key by moving the regmsg.txt mail message to the new directory, and re-running register.exe . Register.exe is now a windows program, not DOS. Match dialog. Slight improvements to the ICS Match dialog and the ICS Seek dialog. Sounds. The sound feature has changed. New sound events have been added, and sounds are now selectable from "sound profiles" in the file "sounds.dat", which is like icsprofs.dat . You can select a sound profile thru the User|sounddlg menu item. The old sound variables are no longer supported. There are now 2 new sound events for bughouse: when a dropmove is played, and when a piece is passed. See "sounds.dat" in the distribution. Suggestion: you can find some fun sound files in the "pinball" game distributed as part of the microsoft plus! package. Look in the subdirectory plus!/pinball/sounds/ . There are now different sounds for game start/end on the main board; and for observation boards. Sounds will no longer be played for boards that are minimized. By popular request, there are now optional sounds that will be played when a seek, tell, kibitz/whisper, channel tell, or shout comes in. By default, these sounds are set to soft DTMF tones. To disable these sounds, use the "gameonly" sound profile. The .wav files have been moved into a subdirectory, sounds/ . If a sound event occurs while another sound is already playing, then the second sound will be queued. In the past, i used to just abort the first sound. Piece set files. The piece set files have been moved into a subdirectory, pieces/ . Seeks. When you press the "play" button to respond to a seek ad, SLICS will automatically minimize observation boards in preparation for the start of your game. It does this in advance, to reduce the amount of work that needs to be done when the game actually starts. But if there is a slight problem if the seek ad turns out to be stale, because the games you were observing are now minimized even though your game didn't start. To address this problem, SLICS will now detect when the ad is stale ("Bad index") and automatically restore any boards that it minimized. TMSEAL. If you are using TMSEAL.EXE under win95, SLICS will now use LSOCK.DLL to connect to TMSEAL, instead of using WINSOCK. In the past, LSOCK.DLL could only be used under win3.1 . Compilation. This version is compiled with Borland C++ 4.52 . It should load slightly faster. Login scripts. I simplified the script language for login scripts. If you are using the ICS login scripts unchanged from the distribution, then you can ignore this change. If you wrote your own login scripts, you may wish to modify them to take advantage of this change. Formerly, all ICS login scripts were simply run thru the game reader/interpreter, necessitating special escape commands to do simple things like comments and variable expansion. Now, ICS login scripts will instead be run thru the new %cmdfile command (instead of %. ), which does %eval on every line, and does not require commands to begin with a % character. In addition, any line beginning with the # character will be ignored as a comment. See the file _ics.rc for example. New script commands have been added - %if and %icswhen . These new commands allow the use of a single unified script for logging in to either ICC or FICS. Another new command - %using will simplify setting up your login profiles. Command buttons. User defined command buttons and menu items now run thru the command %teval . This is a new command that does uses a tcl-like syntax. This means that you can "quote" strings using curly brace chars "{}", and you can execute multiple commands by separating them by semicolon ';' . If you need to embed a literal semicolon within a command, enclose it in curly braces ( ie, {;} ) . It is no longer necessary to begin each command with a % character. Variable expansion still uses the %NAME% syntax, though. Chat window wrapping. The ICS chat window now tries to recognize ascii art in multi-line shouts, and not do linewrapping on such shouts. The ICS chat window does not have a horizontal scrollbar, though, so if you want to see the whole thing you have to use the "autoscroll" feature: click within the window and drag the mouse cursor past the right border. Computer kibitzes and whispers. I added an option variable "icscenscomp" that can be set to filter out kibitzes and whispers from computer players. The default is 0. (I added this option because i don't like getting the automated whispers when observing computer games. I used to just put the computers on my censor list, but i ran into the FICS censor limit of 50.) Winhelp. The winhelp file now contains a description of every user-settable variable. If you are setting a variable within Options|Browse, just click the "info" button. Scrambling passwords. You can now optionally "scramble" your ICS passwords in icsprofs.dat . The level of protection here is weak, but perhaps better than nothing. Layouts. I changed the format of ICS layouts (again). Layouts are now saved in their own profile file "layouts.dat" , and you can define as many or few different named layouts as you want. The old layout variables are no longer supported. Arena buttons. I changed the way arena buttons work. In previous versions, the way to observe a game (for example), was to click a user in the who listing, then click the "obs" button. The new way is to click the user. This will pop up a new bank of user-definable buttons, then you click the "obs" button here instead of in the arena. Essentially this new bank of buttons is an "object oriented" menu for the who listing. The advantage of the new way is that it frees up arena buttons for other uses. The "who buttons" are defined in the file "whobtns.dat". There is a similar set of buttons for the "challenge listing", defined in "chalbtns.dat" The old arena buttons are defined in the file "abtns.dat". ========================================================================== September 1997 - version 2.4m Speed improvements to bitmaps. Slightly improved bitmap format for faster loading. Other speed improvements. (The difference may not be noticeable on a fast machine, however.) The binding for the "accept" and "play" buttons has been changed. They will minimize observation boards and prepare the main board for play, *before* the server sends the game start notification. There is a very nice new polygon piece set, "kbirk.ini", contributed by Kurt Birkefeldt. (NOTE if you are using an alternate bitmap set from my web site, please download and install it again, to get the speedup. If you have your own bitmap set, please see the qanda.txt file for further information about the changes.) Removed the control-move feature for making illegal moves. Instead, check the "Variant" checkbox in the ICS arena if you want to make an illegal move. ========================================================================== August 1997 - version 2.4k This version adds an "ICS Game History" dialog so you can easily check out the playing style of potential opponents. Select "gamedlg" from the ICS User menu. Bugfixes for the "ICS Seek" and "ICS Match" dialogs. ========================================================================== August 1997 - version 2.4i This version automatically iconizes observed boards when you start a game on the main board. It also has an "ICS Opponent" dialog for getting info on potential opponents. ========================================================================== July 1997 - version 2.4h More variable saving bug fixes. ========================================================================== July 1997 - version 2.4g You can now do different types of "who" in the who listbox, e.g., the "terse" and "win/loss/draw" formats work. The default is verbose. You can change it by clicking the "who ref" button while holding the control button down. You can specify polygons pieces with multiple polygons now. See qanda.txt for details. Bug fix: the arena button-setting dialog is fixed. ========================================================================== July 1997 - version 2.4f Updated help file. Experimental CRAFTY support in win3.1 . See my web page http://www.dfong.com/chessbd/ ========================================================================== June 1997 - version 2.4e My new URL is http://www.dfong.com/ . Improved button setting dialog. From the main viewer menu, you can select Options|Buttons, or if you want to set an ICS arena button, click on the button while holding down the control key. Bug fix - promotion to King now uses =K instead of =Ki . ========================================================================== May 1997 - version 2.4d New features: Improved option dialogs for type-specific interactive variable setting. Disable legality checking with the "variant" checkbox in the arena dialog. Set options using the "proginifiles" variable, instead of having to change the command line. ========================================================================== February 1997 - version 2.4a New features: ICS Telnet window now erases redundant server prompts, thus conserving space in the scrollback buffer. (For those of you who are connecting thru a firewall, this behavior is disabled when in RAW mode.) ICS Chat window will now concatenate chat continuation lines (lines that start with a backslash). Better handling of incoming seeks. ========================================================================== August 1996 - version 2.3f NOTE: Bitnova has terminated their author direct support program. My new URL is http://www.got.net/~dfong/ Sorry, i can no longer accept credit card orders. New features: Localsock option for TMSEAL - if you could not use TMSEAL before because of NETCOM or AOL winsock incompatibilities, this should fix it (win3.1 only). To enable the localsock feature, edit "icsprofs.dat" : find the [A-FICS-TMSEAL] entry and change the line "icstmstampflag=1" to "icstmstampflag=2". NOTE, this fix only applies to FICS TMSEAL, not ICS TMSTAMP. Automatic motion speedup for fast play. CHESSBD will automatically speed up piece animation (the rate at which pieces slide) at "bullet" time controls, or when time gets low. Log replay - you can capture an online session with the "File|Logging" feature, then replay the session using "File|Replay". Chat shortlist - you can optionally select a "shortlist" of prefixes in the chat dialog. The shortlist (as opposed to the "full list") contains only the prefixes you actually used, or prefixes for users who have telled you. (The full list also contains prefixes for users who have shouted or whispered, or told something to a channel.) Game loading (Alt+<). Version 2.3c had some bugs in this feature. I think it is fixed now. Game uploading - you can upload games to your personal library on ICC, using the "Board|Upload" (Alt+>) feature. This only works with ICC, not FICS. Match/seek features - seeks now go to the challenge list. You can reply to a seeking ad by clicking on it and pressing the "play" button. You can also issue seeks with the "seekdlg" button. You can issue "seeks" with the (new) seek dialog. This only works with ICC. I finally fixed the "unkillable observed game" problem. When you kill an observation window, it will stay killed. Kriegspiel - formerly there was a problem with playing kriegspiel, in that SLICS would not allow you to make "illegal-looking" moves with the mouse. The only way to submit such moves was to type them in. In the new version, this local legality check will be suppressed if you hold down the control key as you make the move. Word wrap - there was a bug in setting the word wrap feature in previous versions. It's fixed now. Viewer scan feature - you can automatically scan thru a game in the viewer, by *holding down the right mouse button* in the navigation dialog's scrollbar. This is equivalent to clicking the scrollbar at regular timed intervals. The interval, and the direction of scanning, depend on the horizontal position of the mouse cursor within the scrollbar. To scan forward, move the mouse cursor to the right half of the scrollbar. To scan backward, move to the left half of the scrollbar. To scan forward fast, move the mouse near the extreme right end of the scrollbar, etc. ========================================================================== April 5, 1996 - version 2.3c Same as version 2.3b but with minor bug fixes and changes. I made 2 new sound events: icsobsmovesound=FILE.wav icsobscapturesound=FILE.wav to be used on observation boards. By default they are set to the same sounds as the icsmovesound and icscapturesound (which now apply only to your main playing board). The complete list of sound events is now: incoming challenges - icschallengesound=FILE.wav end of observed game - icsresultsound=FILE.wav you win - icswinsound=FILE.wav you lose - icslosesound=FILE.wav you draw - icsdrawsound=FILE.wav capturing move - icscapturesound=FILE.wav capturing move (obs) - icsobscapturesound=FILE.wav non capturing move - icsmovesound=FILE.wav non capturing move (obs)- icsobsmovesound=FILE.wav misc notifications - icsalertsound=FILE.wav ========================================================================== March 25, 1996 - version 2.3b Same as version 2.3a but with minor bug fixes and changes. Setting the clock colors did not work in 2.3a. There was a problem with tabbing between controls in 2.3a. Loading an observed game did not automatically bring up viewer controls. ========================================================================== March 23, 1996 - version 2.3a The latest version of SLICS is 2.3a . The program has improved a lot since its first release, so i am raising my asking price to $12. (However, if you already sent in $5 for an earlier version, you do not need to send more $$.) There are a lot of new features. GAME TREE MEMORY PIECE BITMAPS (registered users only) SOUND MULTIPLE ICS SESSIONS GRAPHICAL DRAG & DROP IN BUGHOUSE WINDOW MENU AND LAYOUTS PLAYER TITLES AND LISTS TEXTPORT SCROLLING CENSOR ROBOADMIN ANNOUNCEMENTS MOVE BLINKING and more The layout variables have changed. Please do a clean install of the new version of CHESSBD. If you were using a previous version of CHESSBD, copy your custom button and menu assignments into the new "chessbd.ini" . If you were a registered user, also *copy your registration key (regname and regdata) into the new "chessbd.ini" . Discard other settings. GAME TREE MEMORY * You can now review ICS games locally without using the server. See the winhelp file for Board|Viewer and Board|LoadGame. THIS FEATURE IS EXPERIMENTAL AND INCOMPLETE. Type Alt+3 (or select Board|Viewer) to add viewer controls to the main ICS window or any observation board. The navigator dialog will let your step back and forward thru the game, while you wait for the next move update from the server. The navigation dialog works like the navigation dialog in the main CHESSBD viewer window. * If you have problems with this feature, you can disable it by setting icsgametree=0 in "chessbd.ini" . The default value is 1 (enabled). * Type Alt+3 (Board|Viewer) again to hide the viewer controls. * While the viewer controls are visible, you can be in one of 2 modes: (1) either real time observation mode; or (2) review mode. If the navigation scrollbar is at the extreme right end of its range, you are in real time observation mode: incoming moves from the server are displayed as soon as they are received. Otherwise, you are in review mode: incoming moves from the server are held until you return to real time mode. Notwithstanding, if you reviewing a game that you are currently *playing* (not just observing), incoming moves will automatically revert you to real time mode. * While you are in review mode, the board diagram and the TOMOVE information reflect the position you are reviewing. But other information, such as the clocks and game title, reflect the server's official latest position. Also, if you review a bughouse game, the holdings information is NOT displayed accurately. * You can also type moves in via the viewer textport. * You can load a list of moves from the server into an observation board. Type Alt+< (alt-less-than, or select Board|LoadGame) load a game into the viewer. You will be prompted to enter a server command. The output of the command is expected to supply the move list. Typically the command is "moves N" where N is the game number, but there are other variants. This feature is still under development. The board is temporarily deactivated while the move list is being loaded. * When loading a move list, the program assumes the game started out with the standard initial position. Therefore loading a wild game will not work correctly. Loading an adjourned game may not work correctly. * You can only load a move list into an observation board. (You cannot load a move list into the main ICS board. You cannot load a move list into a plain "variation" board.) * You can save the game score to a file by typing Alt+/ . (This feature is incomplete. The game header may be lacking some of the information. There may be problems if the game had takebacks or was adjourned, etc.) PIECE BITMAPS * This version offers support for piece bitmaps, in addition to the polygon based pieces of previous versions. YOU MUST BE A REGISTERED USER in order to use this feature. Piece bitmaps are -not- enabled by default. To enable piece bitmaps, add the file "bitmaps.ini" to the CHESSBD command line. For example: Command Line: chessbd bitmaps.ini * The distribution includes just one family of bitmap pieces (one style in a variety of sizes). This design is copyright (c) 1996 by Don Fong, all rights reserved. I think these pieces are pretty good. However, i created them on a system using 16 color mode. They may not look so good in mono or 8 color mode. I don't know. * See the file bitmap.ini for instructions on how to use piece bitmaps. * If you don't like my piece bitmaps, you can create your own. (But again, you must be a registered user.) The file qanda.txt contains all the information you need. Please do not ask me for help creating or using bitmaps. * If for any reason the program fails reading in the bitmaps, it will use the old polygon based pieces instead. Failure could occur if the bitmap file is not found, or is of the wrong format, or if the requested square size is not one of the supported sizes. * Piece bitmaps are not scalable. So if you enable the bitmap feature, the board(s) will only be sizeable to one of the supported sizes. If you request a board size that is too large or too small, the program will use the old polygon based pieces. SOUND * You can optionally have SLICS play a sound when various events occur. THIS IS AN EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Please do not ask me for help using sounds. To enable sounds, add the file "sounds.ini" to the CHESSBD command line. For example, Command Line: chessbd sounds.ini To enable both sounds and bitmaps: Command Line: chessbd bitmaps.ini sounds.ini * Each event type can be configured to a different sound file by setting the corresponding variable in "chessbd.ini" . incoming challenges - icschallengesound=FILE.wav end of observed game - icsresultsound=FILE.wav you win - icswinsound=FILE.wav you lose - icslosesound=FILE.wav you draw - icsdrawsound=FILE.wav capturing move - icscapturesound=FILE.wav non capturing move - icsmovesound=FILE.wav misc notifications - icsalertsound=FILE.wav GRAPHICAL BUGHOUSE SUPPORT * This version implements graphical support for dropping pieces. Type alt+2 to change the board diagram layout to (or from) the bughouse style. The bughouse style has a blank "holding" area to the right of the normal board. This area is used to display holdings. For each piece held, the holding area displays the piece type, and, if more than one of that type is held, a count. You can drop pieces by dragging them from the holding area. Or if you'd rather, you can still use the old "drop" dialog by clicking the right mouse button. * You can control whether the program uses the bughouse style board diagram, by setting the option variable "icsbuglayout". If icsbuglayout=0, the program will not use the bughouse style unless you type alt+2. If icsbuglayout=1, the program will automatically switch to bughouse style when you start a bughouse game, but not for observed bughouse games. This is the default. If icsbuglayout=2, the program will automatically switch to bughouse style when you start a bughouse game, AND for observed bughouse games. MULTIPLE ICS SESSIONS * In this version you can login to multiple chess servers simultaneously. Beware though, if you login twice to a single server, the server generally will not let you use the same handle for both logins. * Also, be aware that the login procedure uses global option variables. Therefore, it is advisable to wait for the login procedure to complete before trying to open another session. * If you are going to use multiple TMSEAL or TMSTAMP sessions, you must assign each session a unique local port (instead of the default 5000). Use the icstmstampport= option in the "icsprofs.dat" file. Note that the default icsprofs.dat now assigns icstmstampport=5000 for ICC and 5001 for A-FICS . You can just assign a different number for each entry, and make "clone" entries for multiple logins to the same server. * A few changes were required for multiple logins. Each session gets its own copy of the ICS Main window, telnet window, and arena dialog. The windows associated with the first session behave as before. But the windows associated with the second and subsequent sessions are tagged with a sequence number, [2] and up, to help keep things straight. * The games of the first session are saved in "icsgames.pgn", as before. The games of the second and subsequent sessions are saved in "icsgame2.pgn", "icsgame3.pgn", etc. * I merged the Telnet window and the Chat dialog into a single Telnet dialog. This was to simplify the window layout, which can get very cluttered if you are doing multiple sessions. You can make the Telnet dialog bigger simply by resizing it, as before. The Telnet dialog contains a "telnet textport" and a "chat textport". You can change the relative sizes of the 2 textports by dragging the gray "splitter bar" up or down. MOVE BLINKING * The most recently moved piece will blink after each move update. The option variable "moveblinks" controls how many times the piece (outline) blinks on and off. To disable this feature, set moveblinks=0 in "chessbd.ini" . WINDOW MENU AND LAYOUTS * You can switch between different ICS sessions with the window menu, which shows all active ICS windows and their associated dialogs. * I changed the way the sub-dialogs work, back to the way it worked in version 2.0 and earlier. This means that there are no mini-dialogs. When you minimize the telnet or arena dialog, it simply becomes invisible instead of turning into a mini-dialog. When you want it to become visible again, go to the Window menu and select it. * The File|SaveLayout function has migrated to the new Window menu. * You can now define and switch between 5 different layouts. The position, size, and visibility of the ICS main window, the telnet dialog, and the arena dialog, and the position of the first observation window, are all part of the layout. You may wish to use one layout for observing games, and a different layout for playing bughouse, etc. To define a layout, simply use the mouse to move all the windows where you want them. If you want the arena or telnet dialog to be invisible in this layout, then click its close button. Then select Window|SaveLayout to define the default layout (which is used upon startup). Or select Window|Save1 to save to layout 1. Once you have layout 1, you can restore all windows to that layout by selecting Window|Use1. * By default, the main viewer window now becomes invisible when you start an ICS session, and becomes visible again when the ICS session ends. If you want to have the main viewer window back again, just click on the CHESSBD icon. To hide it again, select Window|Hide . * The layouts are named "initial", and #1-4. The "initial" layout is the one that SLICS will use every time you start ICS mode. The other layouts will be used whenever you request one of them from the Window|Layout menu. There is another layout "default" that you can use but not set. This default layout is an internally computed layout based on the size of your monitor. It is a compromise layout that probably is OK in any situation but not optimal. TEXTPORT SCROLLING * You can now temporarily freeze the Telnet textport and the chat window, so you can scroll up without being disturbed when new text comes in. Just use the scroll bar thumb. The textport (or chat window) will be frozen until you scroll it back to the bottom. NOTE, you could miss important information if you leave the textport frozen. So as a reminder, SLICS paints a red stripe next to the right margin of the textport when it is frozen. This is experimental. ARENA CHANGES * In the arena dialog, there is no horizontal scrollbar for the challenge listbox. I removed it to save space. But if you need to scroll the challenge listbox, you can now just use the horizontal scrollbar of the who listbox, and it will scroll both boxes. * SLICS now tries to keep track of which challenges are active, and will mark inactive challenges with XXX. This is experimental. * You can now search the who listing: click on the who listbox and type control+S. This is experimental. * You can now interactively specify options to the "who refresh" command. Move the mouse to the "who refresh" button, then press control-leftmouse. This will popup a dialog that asks what who parameters you want. For example, to show a listing of who is available for challenges, ("who av") specify an argument of "a". * You can now interactively program the arena buttons. Move the mouse to an arena button, then press control-leftmouse. This will popup a dialog to re-assign the corresponding option variable. You must enter the value of the variable, as described in the online help. That is, the value of the variable must be a label string and a command string separated by a vertical bar ("|") character. * I removed the "autofocus" checkbox from the arena dialog. If you want still want to use "autofocus", you can use the command "%%toggle autofocusflag". I added a menu item for this in the default "chessbd.ini" . OPTIONS DIALOG CHANGES * The options dialog has been simplified. In addition, many ICS options have been renamed, simplified, or eliminated. Don't worry about it unless you have been using *un* documented option variables. CAPTURE WINDOW CHANGES * The ICS Capture window has been enhanced. Alt+T now brings up a dialog that lets you select from previously executed capture commands. In the capture window itself, you can use the system menu (left of titlebar) to re-execute the same command or save the output to a file. Saving to a file will append the existing output to the file "icssnap.log". CENSOR ROBOADMIN ANNOUNCEMENTS * SLICS now tries to recognize and discard the annoying **ANNOUNCEMENT from ROBOadmin** broadcasts. If you want to see them, set icsnoannounce=0 in "chessbd.ini". The default is 1. * This feature is like a local censor list for announcements. The list of censored users (for announcements only) is "icscensorlist". See the online help under Options|icscensorlist . CLOCK STYLES * The clock times are displayed in a different font and color. You can set these using the Options dialog. ICS clock font, ICS active clock color, ICS active clock background color, ICS inactive clock color, and ICS inactive clock background color. * You must set these options BEFORE entering ICS mode. LOGIN SCRIPTS * To simplify things for new users, i have created different login scripts for ICC and FICS. These scripts should work with NO changes. To use these scripts, just fill in the correct information in icsprofs.dat . CUT AND PASTE * Previous versions of SLICS had partial support for mouse based cut and paste operations. Some users found this feature rather accident prone, so i have made it an option which is OFF by default. You can enable it again if you want: noxcutpaste=1 in "chessbd.ini" . STATISTICS * SLICS now tries to maintain various statistics. THIS IS EXPERIMENTAL AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Use the "%icsstats" command, available via the "stats" item in the user-defined menu. SLICS will dump to the textport an set of internal statistics. Most users will only be interested in the lag statistics, which appear at the end of the dump. The numbers are in milliseconds. Remember these are only estimates. Lag is time between your move and the receipt of the server's acknowledgment. The lag numbers apply only to your moves in your own game. Rtt is the round trip time, from when SLICS sent something, to the time when the server response comes back. This could apply to any command or request, not just moves in your game. But for now, it is essentially the same as the lag estimate. Losttime is the difference in time used for a move as reported by the server, vs the observed time counted by SLICS. Losttime applies to your moves and your opponent's moves, and all moves in observed games. The value gametime is the elapsed time since the start of your current game (if any). PLAYER TITLES AND LISTS * You can now define your own private list of user titles which will be automatically appended to the "who refresh" listing. My motivation for adding this feature was essentially to duplicate on ICC the FICS feature that tags computers with a (C) in the listing. You can also use this feature to tag GM's, IM's, or players on any list you want to make up. THIS IS AN EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Please do not ask me for help creating player lists. SLICS will look up the information from a user-specified database file. The default is "icstitle.dat" . The file has a very simple format. It consists of a series of lists, each of which is identical in form to the output of the command =computer (or =gm, =im, etc) on ICC. You can maintain this file by capturing the output of =computer into a file, then copying the data into "icstitle.dat". The XXX list: name name name name ... name name name ... The YYY list: name name name name ... name ... Each list starts at the left margin, and starts with a line saying "The ZZZ list" where ZZZ is a "title", like C or GM or IM, etc. the players on that list appear on subsequent indented lines. Obviously this information is server-dependent. By default i have enabled it only on ICC. If you wish to use this feature on a FICS server, you must create a titles file for and set the variable icstitlesfile to the name of that file in "icsprofs.dat". * Also, you can now setup a list of "private finger information" about selected players. My motivation for adding this feature was to provide better access to information like ICC's "gm-bio" command. The private finger information is arbitrary text that you supply, possibly just the player's real name, or more if you wish. SLICS will look up and display this information when you call up a match dialog for any player. The format is very simple handle info line 1 line 2 line 3 ... handle2 info line 1 ... Each entry corresponds to one player. Entries start at the left margin. The first line of player info follows the player name. Continuation lines are indented. Again, this information is server-dependent. You must supply the data. Set the variable icsusersfile in the profile entry. ========================================================================== December, 1995 - version 2.2f The latest version of SLICS is 2.2f, i.e., slics22f.exe . Versions 2.2b-e, had bugs in the bughouse code! TMSTAMP/TMSEAL CHANGE * I changed the way the timestamp/timeseal variables work, in order to make it easier to setup. You can ignore this if you do not use TMSTAMP/TMSEAL, or if you only use the manual launch method of starting TMSTAMP/TMSEAL. If you are upgrading from a previous version of SLICS, and you use the automatic launch method of starting TMSTAMP/TMSEAL, you may have to change your "icsprofs.dat" file. In the old versions of SLICS (version 2.1e and earlier), the usage of the automatic launch method required you to set icshost=localhost or 127.0.0.1 , and tell TMSTAMP/TMSEAL the real server name thru the variable "icstmstampcmd" or "icsficstmstampcmd". Similarly, the meaning of the icsport variable was the local port, and you had to use the "icstmstampcmd" or "icsficstmstampcmd" variable to use a different server portnumber. In the new version, you do NOT need to do this. Simply set the icstmstampflag=1 (as in old versions) and let icshost= the real server name. SLICS will now "do the right thing" by passing the icshost value to TMSTAMP/TMSEAL . Similarly for icsport= . - The variables icstmstampcmd and icsficstmstampcmd are obsolete. delete them from your "icsprofs.dat" file. - In any entries that have icstmstampflag=1, change the setting of icshost= from localhost or 127.0.0.1 (which used to be required) back to the name of the real server. - If you were using the icstmstampcmd option to connect to a non-default client port (eg, -p 5001), add the port number as the value of the variable icstmstampport (eg, icstmstampport=5001). - If you were using the icstmstampcmd option to connect to a non-default server port (eg, tmseal eics.daimi.aau.dkk 5002), use this number as the value of icsport (eg, icsport=5002). old: [E-FICS-TMSTAMP] icstmstampflag=1 icsport=5001 icsficstmstampcmd=-m . tmseal -p 5001 eics.daimi.aau.dk 5000 icshost=127.0.0.1 ... new: [E-FICS-TMSTAMP] icstmstampflag=1 icshost=eics.daimi.aau.dk icsport=5000 icstmstampport=5001 ... BUGHOUSE CHESS SUPPORT * I have added preliminary support for bughouse chess on FICS. Each side's "holdings" are shown in ascii next to the clock times. To drop a piece, click the right mouse button on the destination square. This will popup a piece selection dialog. I will add graphical support and other bughouse related features in a later release. ICSPROFS.DAT CHANGE * There is a new special variable you can use in your profiles file "icsprofs.dat". If you specify a variable "defaults" in a profile entry, the settings in that entry are used in addition to any settings specified directly in the current entry. Settings in the current entry take precedence over the defaults. I added this feature because many entries tend to differ from each other by only 1 or 2 values. Example: In this example, the B-FICS profile entry gets default values from the A-FICS entry. If you select the B-FICS entry, the program will load the values from the A-FICS entry, and then override "icshost" and "icstmstampflag". [B-FICS] defaults=A-FICS icshost=crocus.csv.warwick.co.uk icstmstampflag=0 [A-FICS] icsnoslip=0 icshost=fics.onenet.net icshandle=dfong icsport=5000 icsrcfile=_ics.rc icsficsmode=1 icstmstampflag=1 REGISTRATION DATA Future versions of CHESSBD/SLICS will have a "nag message" for unregistered users. To circumvent this message, you must have a valid registration key in your chessbd.ini file. If you have already registered an earlier version, please send email to dfong@dfong.com in order to receive your free registration key. ==========================================================================