glChess status

I got the PGN autosaving working and it feels really good to use. So instead of any annoying dialogs you can just quit the program whenever you like and all your games are present when you reload it!

So next step is the AI... Most of the chess programs I've used tend to use the AI (GNUchess or crafty) to do the movement engine and save games so it will be interesting with glChess (which has its own engine and save games). I think I will get the engine to save itself and put hints in the glChess save file. This way the AI should be happy and should be synchronised with glChess after a load. If I don't lets the AI save itself it would loose all its long term strategy.

Oh and a heads-up for my friends who are reading... Be prepared to get thrown a URL and asked if you can install and run glChess without any instructions. I really need some OS virtualisations to test it properly though as once you have installed libraries etc it's always easier to install the second time.

glChess getting there...

Just got board highlighting working again in glChess. I will be interested on feedback if players consider it useful or not.

It's quite disturbing to count the amount of effort put in and I'm still not back to the 0.8 functionality level! Though of course there have been some new ideas added in as I've been coding (i.e. feature creep!).

Hopefully there will be a spell low typing in my day job so I can spend my typing time on glChess. I really want to get it tidied up (and release 1.0 before it's a decade (!) old).

So what I'm currently aiming for to release 0.9:
- Get AI working again (part ported, only support GNUchess for now)
- Automatically save games to PGN on exit and reload on startup (not in 0.8)
- deb package for Ubuntu, alien built RPM packages.

And what remains to get to the level of 0.8 - these should be in the 0.9.1 release.
- Stored preferences (.ini to be portable)
- Enable GUI elements config, end game, surrender etc
- Animation (rotating board and moving pieces (new to 0.9.1))
- Network play (not sure how portable this will be to windows)

For 0.9.2:
- Windows installer made using pyexe
- Fixed network play :)
- Fix umpteen other bugs

And what remains to catch up with pre 0.8!
- Textures
- Lighting and transparency (but only as a theme this time)

And for the future:
- ICS (Internet chess) support

And I must update/complete the website. Or find someone who is good at that sort of thing :)

Ode to repr()

The repr() function in Python is just great. I love the distinction between str() (presentation) and repr() (content).

The amount of times I've had to muck around in C until I find a string has a non-printable character in the middle of it (like carriage return)... I'm loving the debugging speed using Python :)

A new blog

Where should I begin...

For those who know me I like to get involved in Open Source. Unfortunately working as an embedded software engineer doesn't leave much typing power when I get home. So development comes in fits and bursts...

The most successful project I have worked on is glChess. Chosen as an achievable project it has been a vehicle for learning. It actually ended up being very successful (and I still don't really play chess!). The following projects were more ambitious and were less successful but taught me a lot. I am currently porting glChess to Python.

I hope to keep regularly posting here to keep a record of the successes and failures on where I drift in software development. (So when I get old and start forgetting I can refer to!). If time persists I am very keen to get more seriously involved in the Gnome community (hence the name).