WinBoard / XBoard 4.4
A Graphical User Interface for Chess and its Variants
I have upgraded the popular Winboard GUI to be able to handle more different piece types, and larger board sizes. I also improved the support for variants with piece drops, such as Crazyhouse and Bughouse.
In addition, I included various adjudication possibilities for engine-engine games. WinBoard can now adjudicate theoretical draws, award 50-move and repetition draws (after an adjustable number of moves or repetitions), adjudicate trivial draws such as KBKB. It can also test draw and win claims by the engines for validity. The move legality testing is improved to the point where it should be 100% reliable, as WinBoard now also keeps track of castling rights and en-passant status.
WinBoard is now also aware of pieces occurring in Capablanca Chess (ArchBishop and Chancellor), Shatranj (Alfil and Ferz), Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) and Shogi (Japanese Chess), so that these games can also be played with legality testing on.
(Although the legality testing in the latter two might be not as strict as with Western Chess.)
Two board sizes ("middling" and "bulky") have predefined bitmaps for all the new piece types. One board size ("moderate") has bitmaps for traditional Shogi pieces. At all sizes, however, the piece representation can be arbitrarily defined by the user through font-based rendering.
Some screen shots:
XBoard
This shows XBoard playing a (normal Chess) engine-engine game, with the engine-output, move-history and eval-graph windows open.
WinBoard
Main window of WinBoard, using a marble theme for the board, configured to display engine logos.
WinBoard
WinBoard in size "petite", with the auxiliary windows open, and a marmoleum board theme.
Shatranj, the Arabic precurser of modern Chess:
This shows board size "middling", which has built-in bitmaps for the Elephants and General.
Xiangqi, in traditional oriental representation
This shows WinBoard in board size "middling" using font-based rendering with a true-type Xiangqi font and bitmap background with wood texture. WinBoard is fully aware of all Xiangqi rules, including the complex Asia rules for perpetual chasing.
Indicating target squares
WinBoard and XBoard can indicate target squares of any piece you pickup,
as shown here in a Xiangqi game.
Courier Chess, a Medieval intermediate between Shatranj and Modern Chess :
Capablanca Chess, with Archbishop and Chancellor:
Crazyhouse or Bughouse, a game with piece drops:
To effect drops the pieces can simply be dragged with the mouse from the holdings to the board.
Promoted pieces have a slightly different appearence, borrowed from pieces occurring in other games.
At other sizes these promoted pieces are somewhat demagnified versions of the normal Chess piece.
Shogi, with a Westernized representation of board and pieces:
Shogi in traditional Japanese representation:
(available only in board size "moderate")
Xiangqi (Chinese Chess), with Westernized board and pieces:
A mini variant:
Courier Chess at board size "Petite":
XBoard Engine-Settings dialog
UCI engines running under Polyglot (v 1.4.46b or higher) will get their UCI options transmitted to XBoard, so they can be configured through this XBoard menu.
Below you see how this dialog looks for Glaurung, which has quite a few options.
The Polyglot options appear also in this dialog.
XBoard file-selector dialog
XBoard now has a decent file-selector dialog, which allows you to browse for a file, while displaying the contents of three levels of directories.
