''PyChess'' is a

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, n ...

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

client developed for

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...

. It allows users to play offline or online via the

Free Internet Chess Server The Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) is a volunteer-run Internet chess server. It was organised as a free alternative to the Internet Chess Club (ICC), after that site began charging for membership. History The first Internet chess server, ...

(FICS). PyChess also incorporates a built-in

chess engine In computer chess, a chess engine is a computer program that analyzes chess or chess variant positions, and generates a move or list of moves that it regards as strongest. A chess engine is usually a back end with a command-line interface wit ...

, which in contrast to most other chess AIs is written in the Python language and focuses more on fun of play than raw strength. For more advanced users, PyChess allows for virtually any other external chess engine to be used with it.

History

Development on PyChess was started by Thomas Dybdahl Ahle in 2006, and the first public release was sent out later that year. The release contained the bare minimum of features to play a game of chess, and was backed only by the

GNU Chess GNU Chess is a free software chess engine and command-line interface chessboard. The goal of GNU Chess is to serve as a basis for research, and as such it has been used in numerous contexts. GNU Chess is free software, licensed under the terms ...

engine. In the end of 2006, PyChess was close to become a part of GNOME Games, which were holding a usage survey of aspiring new games to include in the suite. Being nearly just started at the time, it lost to the more established glChess, which managed to fix its hardware accelerating dependency before the end of the trial. glChess is still developed as a part of GNOME today. Afterwards there were talks of the two programs merging, but the developers decided they were targeting different user segments, with PyChess aiming towards more advanced users. In 2009 PyChess won

Les Trophées du Libre The ''Les Trophées du Libre'' contest was a free software contest whose goal was to promote innovative software projects by giving those projects recognition and media coverage as well as rewarding participating students and academic institutions ...

in Paris in the category of hobby computing. PyChess has grown steadily since then, with increasing year-to-year development activity, and would cost more than $500,000 to develop today in terms of the man-hours required to develop such a codebase. By 2011 it was among the seven most frequently used chess clients to access the

, which in turn is the only non-web-based chess server available for Linux. Version 0.12 of PyChess uses

PyGObject PyGTK is a set of Python wrappers for the GTK graphical user interface library. PyGTK is free software and licensed under the LGPL. It is analogous to PyQt/ PySide and wxPython, the Python wrappers for Qt and wxWidgets, respectively. Its ori ...

and GTK+ 3, prior versions used the obsoleted PyGTK.

Logo

The current PyChess logo was contributed by Karol Kreński in 2007. Karol's original design was very cartoonish, but was modified into a slightly calmer expression.

Aims

According to the PyChess website: The PyChess project puts heavy emphasis on simplicity, trying to avoid the complicated user interfaces of

XBoard XBoard is a graphical user interface chessboard for chess engines under the X Window System. It is developed and maintained as free software by the GNU project. WinBoard is a port of XBoard to run natively on Microsoft Windows. Overview Orig ...

and BabasChess. This implies adding new features slowly, so they can be integrated in the overall usage scheme, and make things "just work". At the same time the project strives to contain most of the features known from major Windows chess clients such as Chessbase and ''Aquarium'' by ChessOK.

References

External links

* * {{GNOME Free chess software Free software programmed in Python PC games that use GTK Software that uses PyGTK Software that uses PyGObject 2006 software

History

Logo

Aims

See also

References

External links