Eschecs, a simple GUI written in Pascal

[Roland Chastain]

Hello! I would like to present my simple chess GUI, written in Pascal for the Free Pascal Compiler. It is named Eschecs, the french word for chess, but written in the old fashion. It's a very simple chess GUI using (a part of) the UCI protocol.

Eschecs is an open source project. You are free to use it if you develop a chess engine and want to make a package with a GUI. To install a new engine, you have to edit manually the engines.json file.

Currently, Eschecs is a Windows application. It was tested under Windows 10. It is available in several languages: dutch, english french, german and spanish.

I hope you will help me to improve it. I wrote a help file in french and translated it to pseudo english: it would be nice if some english native speaker could retranslate it.

It's a project I developed for pleasure. My inspirations were Fritz 1, Arasan and Tarrasch Chess GUI.

To download the application or its source code, please visit this page:

Eschecs Home

Thank you.

[Roland Chastain]

I forgot to provide a screenshot.

eschecs311.png

[mar]

Looks simple and nice, thanks.
However (most likely false positives), still https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/9909e ... /detection
Funny thing is the detections (read false positives) were critter and bass.dll
note: AVs don't like compressed executables/dynamic libraries

oh and I'm pretty sure french for chess is echecs, not eschecs? (just wondering because your name seems French to me)

[Roland Chastain]

Looks simple and nice, thanks.

Thank you.

However (most likely false positives), still https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/9909e ... /detection
Funny thing is the detections (read false positives) were critter and bass.dll
note: AVs don't like compressed executables/dynamic libraries

Thank for the information. I don't know if there is a way to solve that.

oh and I'm pretty sure french for chess is echecs, not eschecs? (just wondering because your name seems French to me)

Yes, it's échecs, but in the old time it was written eschecs. And yes, I am French.

[mar]

Thank for the information. I don't know if there is a way to solve that.

Hmm, maybe there is. Could you drop bass and use something else? Assuming you use bass for sounds.
And perhaps use another version of Critter? There should be plenty.
Those are FPs, but some people may hesitate to try your GUI, which would be a pity.

Yes, it's échecs, but in the old time it was written eschecs. And yes, I am French.

Ah, I didn't know that Thanks for explaining.

[Aldus]

But it's not finished, right? Cause I don't see where to set time controls, for one.

I like the marble board. Except it's so small and I can't resize it.

Pressed ESC by mistake, GUI vanished. Good thing it saved the current position.

[Roland Chastain]

But it's not finished, right? Cause I don't see where to set time controls, for one.

I like the marble board. Except it's so small and I can't resize it.

Pressed ESC by mistake, GUI vanished. Good thing it saved the current position.

Thank you for your feedback. It's true, it isn't finished. Many things need to be done. But it works (I hope).

I was thinking of giving to the user the ability to change the time allowed for the computer move. This is on the top of my "to do" list.

I also think of giving the ability to resize the board but it isn't a little modification, because all the code was written for a constant square size.

[Roland Chastain]

Here is a new version of the game, without Critter and without sound.

Download Page

I corrected an unsightly detail in the display. If you compare carefully with the screenshot of the previous version, maybe you will see it.

eschecs312b.png

[Roland Chastain]

Hello! Here is a little better version.

Eschecs 3.1.3

I forgot to say that Eschecs includes an experimental UCI chess engine with its Pascal source code. The name of the engine is Moustique. Moustique is based upon Schach, a Turbo Pascal program by Jürgen Schlottke that I had rewritten in Pascal Object, and upon Mater by Valentin Albillo, that I also retouched to make of it a Pascal unit. Moustique uses the ProDeo book by Jeroen Noomen and Ed Schröder.

I say experimental because Moustique only understands a part of the UCI protocol. He ignores the parameters of the "go" command and plays always as he likes (very fast and not very strong). But it is functional. I tried it in several chess GUI without problem.

The other thing I forgot to say is relative to the installation of a new engine. To do that, you have to edit engines.json, or create another JSON file and start Eschecs with the file name as first parameter. The file could look like this:

Code: Select all

[
  {
    "command" : "myengine1.exe",
    "name" : "Engine 1",
    "protocol" : "uci",
    "workingDirectory" : "\\extra\\engines\\engine1\\"
  },
  {
    "command" : "myengine2.exe",
    "name" : "Engine 2",
    "protocol" : "uci",
    "workingDirectory" : "C:\\MyUciEngines\\engine2\\"
  }
]

Please don't hesitate to include Eschecs in the package of your engine if you like. You don't have to ask permission.

If there are features that you particularly miss, please let me know. I will try to make it, if it isn't too complicated for me.

I only included two engines in the distribution, so the package isn't too heavy.

Best regards.

Roland

[Daniel Anulliero]

Hello Roland !
Welcome in the CCC forum !
Iyrc , we've talk a little in the "développez. Net" forum about chess programming .
Nice to see you're always in the hobby !
Hope you'll have a competitive engine very soon
All the best
Dany / Isa