Knights Chess Interface

"The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; Several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits, ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have points to gain, and competition or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or want of it."

- Benjamin Franklin, 1779


Frequently Asked Questions

What can I do to help the project?
There are a number of duties that you can help with, and you don't even have to be a programmer. The first thing you should do is join the knights-devel mailing list and let us know that you'd like to help. Here are some examples of work that Knights needs done:
  • Testing the newest version for bugs
  • Creating new themes
  • Translating Knights into other languages
  • Writing chess tutorials
  • Tell a friend about Knights! =)

Which chess engines are supported by Knights?
Knights currently supports engines which use the XBoard Communications Protocol developed by Tim Mann. Knights has also begun to support the UCI Protocol developed by Rudolf Huber and Stefan Meyer-Kahlen. While Knights should work with all engines supporting either of these protocol, here is a list of engines that have been tested:

When I start Knights, I see a bunch of garbage instead of a chessboard.
The problem is that your $KDEDIR environment variable was not set correctly when you installed Knights. $KDEDIR should always point to where you have KDE installed. If you install Knights and it can't find $KDEDIR, it gets installed in /usr/local/kde. Then Knights looks for it's themes and other resources in your KDE directory. Since it's looking in one place, and it's resources are installed in another, Knights can't find the graphics and displays garbage.


To fix it, you need to edit your /etc/profile ( or ~/.bash_profile ) and add the line:


export KDEDIR="/usr"


...where /usr is your KDE's base directory. Then reconfigure, rebuild, and reinstall Knights. It should now be working.


If for some reason you can't edit your profile, or it still doesn't work, you can tell Knights where it's data is on the command line. If the Knights themes and resources were installed in /usr/local/kde/share/apps/knights, then you would use this:


knights -d /usr/local/kde/share/apps/knights

I can't get the computer to play.
Most everyone has GNUChess v4 on their system, so here are instructions for it:
  • Start Knights
  • Left click on Settings
  • Left click on Configure Knights
  • Left click on the Computer Opponents icon
  • Left click on the Add button
  • Left click within the Engine Name section and type "GNUChess 4" without the quotes
  • Left click on the Protocol combobox and select XBoard
  • Left click within the Engine Filename section and type "gnuchessx" without the quotes
  • Left click on OK
  • Do NOT check the "enable Book Engine" boxes
  • Left click on OK

I wrote a chess engine that Knights doesn't autodetect. How can I change this?
We'll be happy to add your engine to the list. Just post to the knights-devel mailing list and let us know about your engine. Once we're sure that that it works with Knights, we'll add it.

I run a chess server that Knights doesn't autodetect. How can I change this?
We'll be happy to add your server to the list. Just post to the knights-devel mailing list and let us know about your server. Once we're sure that it works with Knights, we'll add it.

How do you compile Knights from CVS?
Get to a shell prompt, and then navigate to the knights directory. Now run the following:
# make -f Makefile.dist
# ./configure
# make
# make install


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