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| 195 | pmbaty | 1 | # Chess Giants |
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| 5 | [Chess Giants](https://www.pmbaty.com/chess) was (and still is?) a chess software handcrafted with much attention to quality, style and detail. |
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| 7 | I wrote this software in 2010 when Microsoft removed from Windows 7 the excellent chess game they had since Windows Vista, _Chess Titans_. I wrote **Chess Giants** from scratch (including the Direct3D engine), added Windows XP support, other high-level chess engines (UCI and CECP), skinnable themes and sounds, and network play (using the FICS chess server). |
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| 9 | This program was long distributed as a [donationware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donationware), but I eventually made it open source. It's still working well in 2024 on Windows 11. |
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| 11 | If I were to redo it today, it would probably be a mobile app reusing a 3rd-party 3D engine (e.g. Unity, Unreal or Godot) instead of writing my own engine like I did here. |
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| 13 | This was the first game I ever did seriously, and it aged not too bad. I don't feel shame in 2024 at how it looks. Rest assured that my quality of coding has much evolved since :) |
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| 196 | pmbaty | 15 | ## Characteristics |
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| 17 | All this code was written from scratch by me with zero initial knowledge, so certainly some things might not be done in the orthodox way. |
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| 19 | - Direct3D 9 rendering engine with mirroring effects, materials, depth and stencil buffers. |
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| 20 | - OpenAL spatialized sound. |
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| 21 | - Supports all Windows versions from Windows XP up to Windows 11. |
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| 22 | - Chess game annotations, load/save, resume. |
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| 23 | - Forsyth-Edwards and PGN parsers. |
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| 24 | - UCI and CECP engine connectors to connect popular engines such as [Crafty](https://craftychess.com/), [Stockfish](https://stockfishchess.org/), etc (I did not develop chess engines myself, though). |
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| 25 | - Network play on the [FICS server](https://www.freechess.org/) (ICS protocol compatible). |
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| 26 | - Instant messaging between online chess players (good old MSN-like). |
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| 27 | - Easily skinnable and translation system (most skins and translations here were actually user contributions). |
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| 195 | pmbaty | 29 | ## How to build |
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| 31 | Open the Visual Studio solution file -> Generate. |
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| 34 | -- |
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| 35 | Pierre-Marie Baty <pm@pmbaty.com> |