MNO - I've been working on a client for Internet Chess servers such as the ICC (chessclub.com) and FICS (freechess.org) for the PocketPC using Tcl/Tk for Windows/CE.

It's fairly crude at present, The internal state engine is very minimal and configuration screens etc. are currently unimplemented.

The code now appears to almost work, using the excellent eTcl port. You need to also install the BWidget package somewhere that eTcl will find it.

I say almost since there are some issues

• The chess clocks sometimes both end up running which I suspect may be a race condition in my handling of the afters
• piece movement is by drag/drop only. It would be much better/easier/more accurate on the PocketPC if moving was via tap-tap on the source then destination squares
• queening of pawns currently requires the move to be entered manually in the interaction tab
• all other moves are only validated for legality by the ICS server - if you enter an invalid/illegal move, you'll have to wait for the server response (and possibly manually request a refresh) before it can be corrected.

pICS currently looks a little like this:-

The script is at the following location: http://www.aowp08.dsl.pipex.com/mark/sw/dl/PocketICS.tcl

Please bear in mind that it is buggy and at best alpha quality at present. Don't risk playing rated games until the bugs are fixed unless you don't mind losing rating points!

The PocketICS (aka pICS) homepage is at http://www.oakden.org/mark/sw/pICS (but hasn't been updated for the release of the above version yet).

---

Category Games | PDA | PocketPC