README

Dames

Application for playing international draughts (10×10) against Scan or another Hub-compatible engine, or against another player.

Installation

The Linux archive on the Releases page is ready to use: it contains the executable and the Scan 3.1 engine, in scan_31/. Just extract it and run ./dames.

Otherwise, Scan can be downloaded from its website and placed in scan_31/, next to the executable.

Building and testing

make MSEDIR=/path/to/msegui/
cd draughts && make test

Images are looked for in images/, next to the executable. In draughts/, make tables regenerates the .inc files.

Playing

Click a piece, then its destination (or drag the piece there). If several captures remain possible, click the framed captured pieces.

The game is declared drawn according to the FMJD rules: position repeated three times, 25 king moves by each side without capture or man move, and, in endgames against a lone king, the 16-move and 5-move rules.

If the engine reports an error while thinking, the player makes that move in its place; the engine resumes on the next move. If it stops or does not respond, the "Moteur > Relancer le moteur" (restart engine) menu item restarts it.

With the -log option, the dialogue with the engine is written to dames.log, next to the executable (>: sent to the engine, <: received from the engine, !: error).

The -position option starts from an arbitrary position, in Hub format: the side to move (W or B) followed by the 50 squares, from 1 to 50 (e: empty, w/b: white/black man, W/B: white/black king). The "Partie > Nouvelle partie" (new game) menu item returns to the initial position.

./dames -position Weeeeeeeeeeeeebeeeebeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeweeeeweeeeeee

The -engine option replaces Scan with another engine using the Hub protocol. It takes the full launch command, in quotes if it contains spaces. A path containing a directory is looked for from the current directory, a bare name in the PATH; failing that, both are looked for next to the executable. The engine is started from its own directory, and the name shown is the one it announces.

./dames -engine engine/quidam
./dames -engine "/path/to/scan_31/scan_linux hub"

License

Zero-Clause BSD (0BSD), except Scan (GPL v3) and the images.

The images are by Lanea Zimmerman, under CC-BY 4.0.