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