Did anyone run GLChess succesfully in Debian... anyone?
 

I have been trying for a year or so to get GLChess running on my Debian box running Lenny.

Various errors caused it to crash at startup, a number of those bugs were confirmed. This month this one, the next month that one.

Finally after upgrading to the latest Python-OpenGL, I received another error message in function ShowMoveHints: Assertion failed. When I hacked the assertion out of the code, the board is not shown in 3D, I cannot play against the computer and I cannot enter a setup. I give up.

I would expect that is this phase of Lenny, most programs would simply run. Unfortunately not this one.

Can anyone tell me how he or she got GLChess running on Lenny?

Alternatively, I would be willing to install a different Chess program. I install it on my son's computer and the requirements are:

(1) It must be possible to start with a user-defined setup of the pieces.
(2) 3D display (for my son, remember)
(3) Must be possible to play against the computer
(4) In case of (3), the play level should be CONFIGURABLE. For a youngster it is no fun to play against the best level computer chess program.

I did a comparision and a lot of test installs before I choose GLChess, but each program was lacking one or more features. All together they offered all features, yes, but not all in the same program. Any recommendations?

I am running KDE 3.5, I won't go to KDE 4.

jlinkels

I don't know what to tell you. It was in gnome-games and worked for me the first time, without any problems in Lenny. If there is anything I can check or lookup to help you, please let me know.

Weird. No I can't ask anything, I wouldn't know what question to ask. I assume that Lenny is the same for you and me, especially now Lenny is more or less frozen.

When I experienced the problems, I googled for every bug, and every recommendation in the bug reports I had followed.

Nevertheless, I am happy that it works for you.

BTW, while I was googling for alternatives, I realized that back in 1988 or so I did play a 3D chess game in DOS (!) using a Hercules card on a 80286 PC. Something must be availabel in Linux, right?

jlinkels

I wonder if it's because you're running kde?

Hi

Take a look at Jose:

http://jose-chess.sourceforge.net/

The GUI is Java so you need a java jre installed. It uses chess engines plugins so it playes quite well.

Jose looks very good, it is the first time I see it, despite of extensive googling. Now I just have to find a way to cripple the engine so it can play at a reasonable beginner's level.

Thanks
jlinkels

Heh, this is the problem I have with glchess. There just aren't enough levels. "Easy" is only easy if you have some past experience with chess, but it has no creativity so the games are repetitive. "Normal" is brutal, at least for me.

hi have you looked at " brutalchess "
https://sourceforge.net/projects/brutalchess/
https://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=139550
https://sourceforge.net/project/scre...roup_id=139550
the black background is a bit of a pain in the bu?? ,but an easy fix
edit "brutalchess.cpp" line 63

John VV: On my one machine with an NVIDIA card Brutalchess crashes at startup: "Couldn't find matching GLX visual". Other GLX enabled applications like Glxgears and Wings3D run fine. On the target machine with an i810 card, Brutalchess starts, takes up 98% processor time, can't make any move, no menu, no option settings, no error messages nothing. This is Debian Lenny, almost stable.

About josé-chess: I still like it, except for the chess engine. Standard is Toga II, but that one has a ELO rating of 2800+. When I tried to reduce the thinking time to 2 seconds, it was still thinking after 2:30 minutes, analyzing 5.5 million moves. Yeah, it put me mate in 5 moves.

I have tried to use Phalanx because that one claims that it can be really stupid. Unfortunately it doesn't interface well with José: after the first move of the machine it claims "Illegal move" and stops.

The other chess engines I am currently looking at did not convince me that there is a novice level available. Strange uh, it seems as chess engines developers try to build as strong engines as possible (understandable) but forget to implement options to set beginner's levels. Not everyone is a son of Gasparov!

jlinkels

hi jlinkels did you use the nvidia.run driver if so did you also reinstall/rebuild mesa
on fedora i need to reinstall ' mesa-libGL mesa-libGLU mesa-libGL-devel mesa-libGLU-devel'
or build it from the source.The nvidia driver replaces mesa with nvidia's own version of it( a diff."glext.h gl.h glxext.h glx.h") .99% of the time it is not a problem but sometimes...

Yes, I installed the .RUN from NVIDIA, and no, I did not re-install the mesa stuff. Could give that a try though.

jlinkels

Lenny also has dreamchess in the repositories.. Looks nice.. runs horrible on this non-accelerated machine I am currently on.

aptitude search chess

Tried it...

First received the dreaded "Couldn't find matching GLX visual" error. Did not google for the error, but for GLX Visual. It turned out that these errors can be caused by a color depth which might not be recognized by the application. (Very stupid, 16 bit depth ought to be enough). Fixed that by switching to 24-bit depth.

Yes, DreamChess runs, although I loathe waving menu entries when you hover over them. On the lowest level I was able to beat the computer, and that is very good, I haven't played chess in 35 years.

What misses is the ability to enter a random setup which has to be finished, you know like you find in the text books and newspapers. There are numerous of those learning examples in the chess text books. I know DreamChess imports PGN, but I haven't found a way yet to enter a setup in PGN.

I also notice that DreamChess takes up 99% processor resources as soon as the game is started (not when the program is started, but when the game is started). Even when killing the chess engine, the application keeps hogging the processor. That might explain the slow performance on your computer.

Thanks

A follow up on jose-chess: It is a very nice program, very nice to use with all the information is gives and the options it has. However it lacks a setting to lower the strength of the chess engine. I wanted to add that to the program, it is quite easy to tell the chess engine what you want.

The program source is in Java, and there is is *no* makefile or build instructions, while the source tree is (for me) complicated, 3 levels deep and chock full with circular import references. The project seems to be abandoned and the developer doesn't respond anymore. For the moment this witholds me from compiling. If someone else wants to try or give me a hand: :D the source can be found here: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/jos...5&big_mirror=1
I don't have a problem with issues like CLASSPATH or JARs etc, I understand that.

jlinkels

jlinkels just an idea .Check your xorg.conf and see if your module paths are correct
-- for fedora --- yours will be different --
you are looking for
libglx.so
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so

John, I wrote the GLX issue was resolved by setting a different depth.

Thanks anyway

jlinkels