Scatha 0.2.2 released

[Tord Romstad]

Hi all,

Scatha 0.2.2 for Mac OS X is now available for download from my Glaurung and Scatha page. Scatha is a "twin program" of Glaurung, and plays hexagonal chess. Most of the source code is shared between the two programs.

At the moment, Scatha's GUI is rather incomplete, and there are probably plenty of bugs. Many important features are missing, like game clocks, saving and loading games and the ability to set up positions. Nevertheless, even this basic version is quite fun to play against, and a useful tool for learning the rules of the game. When you click a piece, the program will show you the legal moves of the piece. There are several "Easy levels" for beginners. At the easiest level, Scatha makes random moves.

The GUI communicates with the engine by a straightforward modification of the UCI protocol. In the unlikely event that some other programmers want to add support for hexagonal chess to their engines and port them to Mac OS X, I will gladly document the protocol and help you make your engine run in my GUI.

Tord

[Tord Romstad]

Hi all,

It seems I made a stupid mistake. The Scatha binary I initially put on my Web page will almost certainly not work on any computer but my own. I had forgotten to disable some debug output to a file which doesn't exist on other users' systems.

It is fixed now. If somebody has already downloaded the program, please try again. I apologize for the inconvencience.

Tord

[Dann Corbit]

Is Scatha mac only?

[Tord Romstad]

Is Scatha mac only?

Yes and no.

The GUI is Mac only, and not easily portable, because it is made using tools which are not available on other platforms (OpenMCL and Apple's Cocoa toolkit). The engine itself should compile under Windows just as easily as Glaurung, but as long as there is no UCI compatible GUI for hexagonal chess engines, I doubt that many people would be interested. In addition to the UCI interface, the program has a slightly more human-friendly text mode interface with an ASCII board, but it is too crude to be useful as anything more than a simple debugging tool for the author.

At any rate, the source code for the engine will be released later this week (probably today).

Tord

[Tord Romstad]

I've found and fixed a simple bug: Scatha would occasionally hang when playing at "Easy Level 3". The Scatha022.dmg file on my home page has been updated to include this bug fix.

Tord

[Tord Romstad]

Hi all,

Because of an annoying limitation in the tools used to create Scatha, the program will only work in the exact Mac OS version in which it was compiled. A few days ago, Apple released Mac OS X 10.3.9, a free update for all users of 10.3. I have now recompiled Scatha for the new OS version, and replaced the binary on my Scatha page with the new one.

Apart from the recompilation and a new (ugly) application icon, there are no changes in the program.

Tord