As of recently, Knights has gone through Kdereview and is now hosted at git.kde.org as a part of Extragear/Games. I would like to thank Frederik Schwarzer for the conversion to a git repository and the Sysadmin team for the project page.
Since then, I’ve managed to add some more features. The most notable is the display of borders, known from the KDE3 times.
Of course the numbers and letters change orientation when the table is turned for the other player, as you can see the “Black” configuration on the screenshot. Much credit goes to Dave Kaye for putting the borders in the theme file, not only in this theme but in others as well.
Another one is not visible on the screenshot: When the app window is resized, the pieces have to be moved and scaled. Since yesterday, the scaling is also animated, and both moving and resizing animations have the same duration. That gives a more natural feeling.
There are only three themes shipping with Knights, but there are more available from kde-look.org. They can be downloaded from the Theme selection dialog.
I’ve also fixed some regressions: The color selected from the dialog somehow got reset to a random one. I narrowed it down to the working of QVariant: Apparently, it makes a difference between enums and integers. Now the “Play against the computer” mode works correctly.
Still in kderewiev, the internet play mode also got some fixes, because it did not recognize castling, and reported piece capturing wrongly. Now most of the quirks are gone.
Knights now has all the features I initially intended, feel free to suggest now ones 🙂 As usually, and testing is welcome. You can get the latest source from
git clone git@git.kde.org:knights
(for developers) or
git clone git://git.kde.org/knights
for the common folk.
The Noughmad's Land 
Posted by Emil Sedgh on 3. November 2010 at 14:13
Hi
I guess the current look of knights is very unprofessional:
The theme is nice, but the white background makes it look raw.
Blue and green borders around each cell are really irrelevant.
Thank you for bringing it back 🙂
Posted by noughmad on 3. November 2010 at 15:30
I know the white background looks bad, any suggestions?
The blue and green borders can be turned off in the configuration, but I find them useful especially for internet games when you’re waiting for the opponent and not looking at the board the whole time.
Posted by Emil Sedgh on 3. November 2010 at 16:03
No idea about the bg, im not an artist. You should ask KDE artists there.
The borders are very useful, they just look bad. I guess an artist could help you a lot there.
Posted by noughmad on 3. November 2010 at 19:04
They are as they were in the KDE3 version. I’m keeping the old graphics as a courtesy to its author.
There are other themes, for example the XBoard ones, and you can always copy one and modify it.
Posted by Alexander van Loon on 5. November 2010 at 09:04
Thanks again for your work on this and this update, but I have to agree with all the other commenters here about the artwork. You mention you’re keeping them as they are as a courtesy to the it’s old author, but is that really the best idea? Has the old author explicitly asked you to keep the old artwork intact, or do you assume the old author appreciates this gesture? I find it hard to imagine that the old author would not want the KDE artists, with their excellent craftsmanship, to give the artwork an overhaul. I hope you reconsider asking the KDE artists, because currently the artwork would detract from the experience of playing this game.
Posted by mutlu on 3. November 2010 at 17:23
Thank you Emil for bringing back Knights. It used to be my favorite chess game, but I dropped it about a year ago since it was the last thing keeping KDE3 libraries and Qt3 on my laptop.
Btw., I find the borders useful for the same reason as you. 🙂
Keep rocking!
Posted by noughmad on 3. November 2010 at 19:06
My name is Miha 🙂
Posted by vespas on 3. November 2010 at 20:17
make the clock SVG! it now looks like the old xclock 😉
Posted by yoda on 4. November 2010 at 15:33
nice but graphic look & feel is terrible:
– figures are poor
– background is eye scratcher
– clock are awful
please contact with kde artists because with look like this it can’t be kde game
Posted by Knights in shining armor « The Noughmad's Land on 7. November 2010 at 22:49
[…] there was some negative commentary about the looks of Knights in my previous post, I took the popular advice and used Plasma’s clock in Knights. And you were correct: it looks […]