Apple's Chess 2.0 Source Code Available

Petrochard writes "For all of you programmers who are big chess fans, check out Apple's release of Chess 2.0's source code. It would be cool if somebody could make a Simpson's Chess mod." Chess is based on sjeng (logic) and glChess (interface).

Comments

scary

[Tumbleweed]

I think I'd be too intimidated to play chess against "the world's most powerful computer." Gosh. :)

Joke aside, I'm eagerly awaiting the 970FX PowerMac, and VERY eagerly awaiting the 3gHz (980?) machines this summer. Ohhh yeahhh...

Re:Thats Nice of Them

[Otter]

It's the bundled OS X chess game. You didn't think Mac users played _Solitaire_, did you?

Is this something new ?

[javaxman]

While very cool, I have to ask if this is something new.

The reason I wonder is that when I click on the "About Chess" menu item in Chess 2.0 as installed on OS X 10.3, I notice that in the lower right hand corner of the About window there is a button labeled "Download Source Code...". The button opens this page Apple - Public Source - Miscellaneous.

So, while still cool, this is not likely to be "news". I do appreciate the pointer, though. It'll be nice to check out for programming ideas, as I'm getting back into Objective-C programming again.

For folks wanting Simpsons mods and other simple image changes, though, you probably don't need the source for that, you just need to realize that the images are in the .app package... changing those really shouldn't require a recompile, should it?

It can be done...

[Crash Culligan]

I think it'd be sweet if somebody made the application so that the board just floated over the other windows, not inside of it's own window. I thought that's how it was supposed to be originally, but unfortunately I was wrong.

One of the cornerstones of the current Cocoa-y way of doing things is that the front-end and back-end are separate beasts.

Don't like the back-end? It's possible to build the app to use a program other than sjeng as its brain. It's just a matter of building with a new shell tool (and a little glue so the front-end knows how to use it).

Don't like the front end? It's also possible to build a new wrapper app for sjeng that looks however you want it to. Use the source for the existing Chess program as a template for sjeng, and then go completely nuts. Screw reskinning, design a completely different and abstract chess game!

But the windowless interface might be confusing to some users...

55 W. P - e5
55 B. P x P
56 W. N x P
56 B. B x System Preferences ?
57 W. BitTorrent - A4 !!
Kernel Panic in 4 moves

Transparent window?

[CODiNE]

Could somebody figure out how to re-enable the transparent effect that was in the Panther betas? It was a preference before, but now it's gone. In case some haven't seen it before, the board was floating with no background window. I don't remember if the window was transparent or actually able to be clicked-through, but it was very cool. :)

I can't figure it out myself since I'm not a coder, but I've narrowed it down to MBCFloatingBoardWindow... no idea what to do with it tho. Any pointers? :)

Re:The Licensce

[geoffspear]

Thanks! I was worried that opensource.apple.com was going to be slashdotted.