Quite some time after a successful move to Extragear and Git, there is finally an official stable version of Knights for KDE SC 4.
Currently, Knights has all the basic chess features:
- Playing against a human on the same computer, on the FICS server, or against a computer engine
- Rules checking
- Markers for possible moves, opponent’s moves and danger
- Chess clocks, both digital and analog (from the Plasma theme)
- Four different themes, with the option to download more from kde-look.org
- Animations (if using Qt >= 4.6)
Source and binary packages can be downloaded from http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Knights?content=122046. Happy testing, and please report any problems, bugs and wishes.
A note too all people signing praises to the theme: The analog clock is from Plasma, you can change its appearance by changing your Plasma theme in System Settings => Workspace Appearance. Chess pieces and tiles on the second picture were done by Eugene Trounev.
The Noughmad's Land 
Posted by mutlu on 15. December 2010 at 21:24
Wow, this became really gorgeous! I got to check this out right away. 🙂
Posted by mutlu on 16. December 2010 at 00:32
I did. It’s excellent! Thank you!
Posted by flareguner on 15. December 2010 at 21:32
Cool! Normal chess for KDE SC!
Posted by Tsiolkovsky on 15. December 2010 at 21:34
Wooho, this looks awesome. Great job!
Posted by knight on 16. December 2010 at 01:01
does it support chess variants?
Posted by noughmad on 16. December 2010 at 18:51
No, and there is also no way to disable rules checking. However, I have written all the rules to a separate class, so new rules can easily be added in the future.
Posted by teho on 16. December 2010 at 05:21
I can’t say anything but that black theme looks truly gorgeous.
Posted by Einfach Toll on 16. December 2010 at 11:42
There is a serious bug: I’m losing every game! ;D
Posted by Fri13 on 16. December 2010 at 12:31
Finally good non-3D chess game for KDE SC! The 3D is over-wanted chess as the 2D is much better without visual clutter.
The dark theme is great and I only would like to have a red second hand like the white version does have. Could it be possible so the timed games could be easier to follow as you can see the second more clearly?
Posted by noughmad on 16. December 2010 at 18:45
I think I should have mentioned, but the clock is actually Plasma’s analog clock. To change its appearance, you must change your plasma theme.
Posted by Emanuele on 17. December 2010 at 10:24
Thanks!!! Finally a chess game for KDE4 😀
Posted by otr on 18. December 2010 at 23:20
Looking good, especially the new easy binaries for all the big distros. Still needs a bit more FICS integration (the console will almost entirely cover these needs).
I was having some trouble accepting seeks through the included dialog. I also encountered a bug when my opponent resigned and Knights didn’t indicate that until the clock ran down.
Posted by 西洋棋 Knights 2.2.0 | I, KDE on 19. December 2010 at 03:25
[…] noughmad This entry was posted in 程序 and tagged Knights. Bookmark the permalink. ← […]
Posted by kavol on 21. December 2010 at 08:50
Hi,
at first, I have to say I’m pretty disappointed that I, as the original Knights project member, got the information about the existence of this new project via a link to this blogpost. The Knights project mailinglists still work …
Second, GPL allows you to fork the project, but it doesn’t allow you just to leave out original copyright notices. I didn’t look into the code thoroughly to compare what may have been taken from the original Knights, but from the screenshots, I’m pretty sure the graphics is not 100% new – but looking into git, I was unable to find anything else than “Credits and Licenses Miha Čančula <email>miha.cancula@gmail.com</email> – Original Author” … original? Really? And what about trademarks? (Although not officially registered, you cannot just steal project name, e.g. … Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against making the new Knights continuator of the old Knights, but just do it properly.)
Now to respond to some comments:
> does it support chess variants?
the variants are supported in Kaya board game
> Finally good non-3D chess game for KDE SC!
> Thanks!!! Finally a chess game for KDE4 😀
– you’re a bit late, the abovementioned Kaya board game is with us since July 2009 …
Posted by noughmad on 21. December 2010 at 12:35
Alright, let’s go through. I also read your post on the Czech site, calling me a “debil” isn’t a nice thing to do.
1. I’m sorry, but I didn’t know who the project members were. I contacted Troy Corbin, who is listed as the copyright holder, and he approved the use of the name and graphics. I actually started writing this program as KChess, but several people expressed their wishes to keep the Knights name. This is also the reason for not using its mailing list. If you check the “Thanks to” section, Troy is mentioned, because I didn’t know who else worked on it.
2. I did not copy any code whatsoever from Knights for KDE3. Zero. Looking back, a more direct port would probably be easier and would keep most of the features, but I wanted to see if I can make a project from start to stable.
It’s not feature-complete yet, the reason is above; I started from scratch. But it will be.
3. I am aware of Kaya, and have been since shortly after I started writing Knights. I even changed Knight’s theme element names to match Kaya’s. However, it’s written in one of the few languages I just can’t understand, Ruby. So I couldn’t get myself to help there. But I also wanted more consistency with KDE, hence the use of KDE-specific technologies like Kdegames, KNewStuff and even Plasma libraries.
Posted by kavol on 27. December 2010 at 11:12
ad “debil” – acting like one is worse … it’s not the dictionary, but the actions; cursing someone isn’t a nice action too, for sure, but it is just a reaction to the really bad action
No one is able to see all the possible consequences of some action, so it is always better to stay on the safe side – there are some patterns which work good, and some that cause trouble. So, if you went through the Czech discussion, you may have seen one negative consequence: Some troublesome guy has picked the Czech translation of the new Knights. He spent a fair amount of work on it, but unfortunately, the result is not good. So the Czech KDE translation coordinator has spent a fair amount of time fixing it, and still it is far from perfect, and there is some quarrel over it. If you had sent some announcement to the original Knights team, I may have participated; as I’ve done the Czech translation of the original Knights and also of Kaya, I could capitalize on my experiences and do the translation better (maybe :-)), not wasting time of the coordinator.
(Now it may seem that the main problem is that I’d like to see my name on the contributors list instead of that guy. Far from true. I already have enough; e.g. new version of Kaya board game was released on Saturday, let’s go see if I can get it into Fedora as the previous try failed …)
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t know who the project members were.”
The original Knights project has its project page which lists all the official members, the mailinglist is still working …
“I contacted Troy Corbin, who is listed as the copyright holder, and he approved the use of the name and graphics.”
That’s interesting … within the project, tcorbin acts as dead for several years, now you manage to get his approval (but he’s not the only copyright holder!) while no one else knows …
Again, do not take me wrong – I do not ask you for copies of your gpg-signed emails or whatever means you’ve used to communicate; I just trust you. I criticize for not making the process public – do you know what “Open” in “Open Source” means?
“but several people expressed their wishes to keep the Knights name.”
I bet several people also expressed their wishes to keep the Phoenix name …
“This is also the reason for not using its mailing list.”
WTF? – how does this justify not sending any annoucement to the members (oh, and of course the users) of the original project?
“I did not copy any code whatsoever from Knights for KDE3. Zero.”
… and I haven’t accused you of copying any code, and I’ve expressed clearly that I didn’t look into the code; re-read my post again
“I am aware of Kaya”
But your readers (those people I quoted) are not …
“and have been since shortly after I started writing Knights.”
Now that’s what I see as a mistake too. Reinventing the wheel …
“However, it’s written in one of the few languages I just can’t understand, Ruby. So I couldn’t get myself to help there. But I also wanted more consistency with KDE, hence the use of KDE-specific technologies like Kdegames, KNewStuff and even Plasma libraries.”
These are valid points, okay, thanks for the explanation.
Posted by noughmad on 2. January 2011 at 15:17
I’m sorry to disturb you, but I didn’t think any of my actions were bad, and I still don’t. I could not find a list of all project members, and both mailing lists have been spam-only for at least two years. I thought nobody reads them any more. I contacted only Troy, and he responded after quite a long time.
And yes, I know I am (partially) reinventing the wheel. Apart from Kaya, the E-Board interface is quite popular and good, and probably more. But as I said, I started this projects to test myself and I’m going to complete it.
If you think the process wasn’t open enough, I’m sorry, but all the code and its history is public.
Posted by otr on 9. January 2011 at 03:11
Making a new Qt program when currently only a GTK+ one exists isn’t really reinventing the wheel; it’s filling a legitimate need. Chess-playing KDE fans everywhere thank you for your effort.
Also, eboard hasn’t been in active development for some time, so… it really doesn’t hurt at all to have *someone* who is working on a Linux chess front-end.
Posted by kavol on 21. March 2011 at 08:27
> Making a new Qt program when currently only a GTK+ one exists
oh, please, please, please … pay attention to what you react to
there are several mentions of Kaya, the last just two words before mentioning E-Board
and guess what … Kaya *is* a Qt program, so *not only* a GTK+ one exist
Posted by kavol on 21. March 2011 at 09:03
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I didn’t think any of my actions were bad, and I still don’t.”
… and that’s exactly the thing that gives me the moral right to call you a “debil”
reasonable person can realise the past mistakes – explaining the motivation behind them is fine, but doesn’t make the outcome any less bad … if you’d kill someone on the road, driving, you’d also say that you haven’t done anything bad, because you thought the road is not icy as you haven’t noticed any ice in the last two years?
“If you think the process wasn’t open enough, I’m sorry, but all the code and its history is public.”
well … like I’d hear: “There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaints and its far too late to start making a fuss about it now. “
Posted by swair on 2. June 2012 at 19:57
hi! thanks for the awesome work on Knights. Its my favorite chess client on linux. I wanted to check out the source code, wasn’t able to find the repo ( I did get the tarball, but wanted to get the git repo). Can you please let me know where the repository is?.
Posted by swairshah on 2. June 2012 at 20:08
oops! found it..you mentioned it in the starting of the post. sorry!
Posted by meteorrock on 24. April 2013 at 12:55
Hi its me. Nice app btw