IRC CHESS
IRC chess is a 2 player chess game that can be played right on IRC. No
need for web browsers, players don't need any fancy IRC software, nothing.
The IRC program on this page effectively turns one's computer into a chess
bot, so IRC users who want to play chess can do so using standard IRC
commands.
I call this a program as opposed to an IRC script because that's really what
it is. IRC chess consists of a Java backend server with IRC scripts that act
as frontends. The Java server is the actual chess game. The IRC scripts simply
connect to the server and are responsible for sending and receiving messages.
The server does all the hard work, the scripts are mostly dumb, and do things
like perform color translation etc etc.
This idea is very good (imho) since it effectively implies that porting the
program to a different IRC client simply means writing a different frontend
script. And since the IRC scripts are very small and simple, this isn't a
tough job. The original IRC script was written for IRSSI and contained roughly
200 lines of commented perl code. That was all that's required to turn IRSSI
into a chess bot. That script was then ported to XChat with very few
modifications. Currently, I'm looking for people to port the frontend to more
IRC clients. (Obviously, there's no need to port the server since it's written
in JAVA :))))
To run this game, you require Java. The
server included in the package was compiled using jdk-1.3. If you're the type
that likes compiling the code (I always do), the source is included. It may
compile on older versions of jdk, but I haven't tested it (All I've got is
jdk-1.3).
The README file in the package explains everything: what the game is about,
how to install it, the protocol used so scripts can be written, and lots of
other things as well.
This is the initial release of IRC-Chess. The software is not complete i.e.
there are features to be added, but the game itself works. If problems
(with the working of the game) are found, please email me at kodgehopper@netscape.net. Like I said, I'm aware of
the missing features in the software (like limiting the number of games that
can be played for instance), and I'll get to those in time.
Download links can be found below. The file includes the backend server and
scripts to turn IRSSI and XChat into chess bots(?).
IRCChess-0.1.tar.gz
MD5 hash for IRCChess-0.1.tar.gz
Enjoy :))
kodgehopper
kodgehopper@netscape.net