Version history

Bug fixed: in some cases the mouse wheel could not work with the dockable main console

PgUp/PgDn in the console input line now scroll the console text up/down.

When a new observed game starts reusing an existing board, now the board does not become the active window.

Fixed a bug in the PGN game dialog (sort on date was not working).

Fixed a problem with the figurine font in Windows 98 ('book' symbol)

Fixed a problem with Windows 98/Me that could hang BabasChess in case of logon error (e.g. wrong password)

Fixed a bug BPGN export (']' was missing in tag 'Site')

Script lines containing tells/shouts are now reported in the chat/channel window if appropriate.

Two new 'Only when not playing' sub-options added to File->Preferences->Info window options.

Fixed a bug introduced in v3.1: the 'Help' button of the Preferences was not working (while pressing F1 worked normally) and the contextual help mode was not working on menus

Fixed a bug in move animation, introduced after v3.1

Added 4 new emoticons

Added Winboard vector pieces provided by TNoirLord and updated Winboard themes; added other vector pieces and square provided by TNoirLord.

Fixed a bug occuring when exiting/entering bsetup mode in a game examined by more users (with mexamine command)

Two new sound events added: logon and best rating achieved.

FICS login screen made more readable by removing some lines no longer useful (e.g. (If your return key does not work, use cntrl-J))

Fixed a bug introduced in v3.4: the last move information in the status bar was incorrect.

BabasChess now supports "Theme Pack" installation: a Theme Pack is a collection of pieces/backgrounds/sounds/themes/... zipped in a single file. This will allow new themes to be simply downloaded and installed in the future.

New features added to the plugin interface

Sound system redesigned using a separate thread, to avoid a new sound to "eat" the previous one

New sound events: check mate sound (a different sound can be also set according to the check-mating piece)

Added sabort/sdraw/adjudicate commands in YourProfile->Stored

Fixed a minor bug in Preferences->Board: Piece vertical offset was not always remembered

Fixed a bug in atomic: on a capture+promotion move the promoted piece did not explode...

Fixed a bug that could cause a premove/pre-smartmove to be incorrectly executed out-of-turn.

Option for board window background image (Preferences->Board Window).

Holding Ctrl key while entering a smartmove (or a pre-smartmove) will force the last piece-type moved (e.g. if the last piece moved was a Pawn, a pawn smartmove will be issued)

When a seek ads is removed, now the sought list line will remain empty for a few seconds (this is to avoid erroneously accepting a different seek ads).

A small book is now included with crafty; crafty.exe has been recompiled using VC7: it is a bit faster.

Fixed a minor bug in the analysis window (a 32 bit number was used to store the number of nodes).

Now the analysis window parses crafty output correctly when it is using the opening book.

New option in Preferences->Board(2): "Highlight source square", winboard theme updated to exploit this new option

$circle/$arrow kibitzes are now considered only if coming from one of the examiners of the game.

Behaviour of move sound events slightly changed: now, for instance, if you choose "No sound" for capture moves and a given sound for normal moves, the normal move sound is played when a capture occurs (the same for check/castling/drop/explosion).

Premoves are now canceled when a takeback occurs.

Fixed some minor bugs in Bughouse communications (say/ptell).

New option in Preferences->General: "Request confirmation for shout/it aliases ('!' and ':')"

New tab in the game console: Observers. The "Show observers" button has been removed from the toolbar, since the new tab should be more comfortable.

Bug fixed: ECO code was added to PGN files of non-standard chess games (e.g. atomic); now it is added only to standard chess games

Annotator pgn field added to the Game Properties dialog (Edit menu)

PGN date is now divided in year/month/day in the Game Properties dialog (Edit menu)

Some improvements to the PGN game list window (View->Game list in pgn file): it can now be resized and remembers its last position, size and pgn file opened; an option has been added to automatically close it each time a game is selected.

Fixed a minor bug that occurred when accepting a seek ad no longer available

Fixed a bug in the SAN generated for en-passant moves.

New options (Preferences->General) for embedding clock information in saved PGN files (enabled by default). This allows to view the remaining time for each move when examining a pgn game in BabasChess. Two formats are available: the [%clk h:m:s] command defined in An extension to the PGN standardand the new [%clkms ms] (enabled by default) that allows to save clock information with millisecond accuracy. When a pgn game containing clock information is uploaded to the server, the commands wclock/bclock are used to set the clocks at each move.

Bughouse games are now saved in BPGN format.

Messages like "User is not logged in" and "Player "name" is censoring you" are now displayed in the chat window (and in the game console window).

Minor bug fixed: tells from a user who matched the name of a pgn game player were displayed in the game console of the pgn game board window.

If your game starts or your opponent moves when the BabasChess is not the active window, the BabasChess main window flashes in the taskbar (not available in Windows NT and Windows 95).

Fixed a bug: whispers from users with rating<1000 where not correctly parsed (es. Pluto( 948)[181] whispers: ...)

New command "Type in next move" added to "Game" menu (it can be associated to keyboard shortcuts as well)

Added unlimited undo/redo to the pgn editor!

Now when a PGN game is modified, a '*' is displayed on the title bar of the board window: when a modified PGN game is being closed or replaced with another game, the user is asked to save to avoid losing the changes made.

"Primary <gamenum>" command is now automatically issued when switching among multiple observed board windows.

The pgn list window is now faster when reading large pgn files.

New command to analyze and autoannotate a whole game (available from edit menu, "Analyze game" command and from a new "Analyze" button in the Game Finished popup window)

Improved engine support. Winboard/xboard protocol: "protover 2" is now sent by default and ping/pong is used to avoid race conditions; UCI protocol: isread/readyok is used to avoid race conditions.

Now the analysis tab (game console) has the same colors of the movelist

Fixed a minor bug in the font picker control

Bugs fixed in engine support: when a mate was found by an UCI engine the score was 0; now it is set to +/-300. A pawn promotion in an UCI engine variation was not correctly parsed. Score in UCI engine has now the same meaning that in Winboard engines (positive value = white advantage, negative value = black advantage)

New commands added (right click on engine variation, right click on movelist, menu edit)

New movelist layouts: paragraphic movelist with or without variations, two-column movelist with or without variations, new toolbar in the movelist; layout options (column mode, show variations and show comments) are saved in the window layouts.

Added support for PGN RAV (variations) and NAG (annotation): this is a major update.

Improved appearance of the figurine font; furthermore cleartype antialiasing is used on XP.

New options added in Preferences->Board window to customize the movelist (font size, colors, ...).

Bug fixed: pressing ESC in the Main Console (in dockable mode) made it disappear

Bug fixed: remapping the F1 keyboard shortcut was not possible (the contextual help was called in any case)

New command in the context menu of the analysis tab: it lets you execute the firts move of the selected variation on the board

New command in the context menu of the analysis tab: it lets you examine the selected engine variation in a new board

The connection configuration can now be set in the command line, with "BabasChess /profile:<connection name>". For instance: "BabasChess /profile:MyGuest" activates the "MyGuest" configuration; "BabasChess /profile:default" activates the default configuration.

Added support for circles and arrows (not a complete support since this would require some work on server side). Commands can be given as kibitz messages (only while examining games); the following commands are available: $arrow <square> <square>, $circle <square>, $unarrow <square>, $uncircle <square>, $cleararrows, $clearcircles, $clearall. New options in Preferences->Board(2); UI commands for adding markers will be implemented in the next versions.

Bug fixed: BabasChess crashed when mexamine was used on a game in bsetup mode

Minor bug fixed: minimized Info/Chat/Channel windows where not saved/restored correctly in window layouts

Keyboard shortcuts are now customizable (from Preferences->Advanced): each shortcut can be directly associated to a single BabasChess command, or to a script (which can contain more BabasChess commands and/or server commands).

Scripts can now contain "BabasChess commands", that is commands to be executed on the client side instead of being sent to the server. Any line starting with">>" is considered a BabasChess command (e.g. >>LoadLayout "my_layout"). Above each script edit field there is a new button to help the user to insert a BabasChess command.

Minor bug fixed: now if a when layout has to be loaded when the application is minimized, it is loaded as soon as the application is restored

Bug fixed: it was possible to paste text from the clipboard longer than the maximum allowed limit (then being logged off by the server if that text was sent)

Fixed a minor bug: now when the Info Window is closed, any operation in process (seek info, game info, ...) is stopped to avoid consuming bandwidth

Fixed a minor bug in censor user-rule reply message

Now the engine output is in SAN notation both for winboard and UCI protocols and the moves are numbered according to the current move on the board

New option in engine advanced configuration: "Apply delay before starting to analyze"

Added a combo box to quickly choose the engine in the Analisys tab

Improved UCI engine support. Tested engines: AnMon, Aristarch, Delfi, Fruit, List, ProDeo, Ruffian, SmartThink, SOS, Yace

New options in Preferences->Board Window: Names font, Clocks font, Other text font.

New font picker in Preferences->Console, with preview. Now any available font type can be chosen.

The Channel Window title now always displays the description of the active channel (if available), even if the "show only channel number on the tabs" option is enabled

Minor bug fixed: in some cases the save pgn command could suggest an illegal filename to the user

Less vertical space reserved for the "guests" section of the seek graph

Automatic board flip on observed player now works also if the observe command is not given with the contextual menu (i.e. manually in the console)

Fixed a minor bug in the "New engine" button

Fixed a parsing bug that could cause a malformed !BCS-> text to hang the program

Fixed a minor bug in color picker dialog (used in the Preferences)

The autocomplete window is now sized according to the number of suggestions in the list

Fixed a bug in the automatic window layout command: some board windows could be placed behind the main toolbar on low resolution screen (800x600)

Many help pages updated

The open button in the toolbar (traffic lights) is now red when the user is closed to match and green when is open

New layout event: start observing a bughouse game

Fixed a bug in the layout manager: on low-resolution screens some layouts could be incorrectly loaded

Reorganized some contextual menus (friend list, player list, console/chat/channel window)

New option in File->Preferences->Board (2): Show dragged piece. If unselected, no piece will be displayed during your move (only target square highligh if enabled).

"Time interval for automatic move forward" option is now in millisec.

Fixed a bug in the toolbars: if both mouse buttons were pressed on a toolbar button, it remained locked.

Last move time was not shown in examined games; now, if available, it is displayed.

Promotion behaviour in pgn game editing is now the same of playing, controled by the "Show promotion popup" option (File->Preferences->Board (2)).

Introduced a small delay in analysis autostart, to avoid crashing crafty (it seems to be a crafty bug: the engine sometimes crashes if repeately started/stopped)

Mouse wheel moves back/forward in the movelist (only when the movelist or the board has the focus)

Some variables are no more forced at logon: highlight, pin, bell, showownseek, seekremove (ivariable)

Fixed a minor bug in the input line context menu

Fixed a bug introduced in v2.92 which could cause the program to crash when a new window layout was loaded

Added "Enter" command in the input line contextual menu

The "New chat window" dialog now shows the last opponent's name by default

Reorganized two contextual menus (right-click on a player's name on the board and right-click on the board)

Now in case of overlapped seek ads in the seek graph, a window with the list of overlapping seek ads is shown

The new server commands "bsetup krf", "bsetup qrf" and "bsetup kf" are now used to correctly upload Fisher Random pgn games

The "Close board" button in the Game Finished popup window now closes both the boards in case of bughouse games

Minor bug fixed: automatic move forward was not disabled when pressing the back button in an examined game

Now if script contains a variable that does not have a value (e.g. %white% when the active window is not a board), the script is no longer executed

Added three new macros: %white% and %black% refer to the active board, %input(label name)% asks the users to specify a value at run time (e.g. "finger %input(user name)%" will display a popup asking for "user name", then run the finger <user name> command)

Fixed some minor parsing bugs in the Profile command

Bug fixed: when a new piece arrived (bughouse or crazyhouse) while dragging a buffer piece, in some case the buffer pieces could be incorrectly drawn

Released the Plugin sdk, containing a sample plugin and the BabasChessTalk plugin in source code (sorry no documentation yet, just a few comments in the source code...)

Renamed plugin extension (from .dll to .BCPlugin)

BabasChessTalk plugin redesigned to use the new features in the plugin interface

The plugin interface has been enhanced. Added ui to install/remove plugins; a new "Plugins" menu available, where each plugin can create a submenu.

When test move legality is enabled, it is now applied in examined games too

New command in game list context menu: Show observers

New command in board setup context menu: Clear board

When the time is higher than or equal to 60 minutes, now the h:mm:ss format is used in the clock

If the no-partner user rule is activated for a user, his/her partner offers now are no longer shown in the main console

Fixed a bug when move animation

Fixed a bug in the promote popup

Winboard and Thief themes updated to exploit the new clocks and buffers layout options

New commands in Game menu to choose the position of names and clocks (Clocks and names position submenu): this setting is saved in the window layout

New commands in Game menu to choose the position and type of the piece buffers (Captured pieces submenu): this setting is saved in the window layout

Optimized board redraw when loading layouts

Fixed a bug introduced in v2.91: guest logon was not possible

Fixed a minor bug: 3 0 games where considered "lightning" when saving a pgn file

Fixed some minor bugs in PGN editing

IVariables are now set before login (thanks to AlexTheGreat for the suggestion): this avoids potential problems, in particular with autostart in tournaments.

Fixed a minor drawing bug in the clock display which could occur in some cases

Fixed a minor bug in board window layout introduced in v2.9.

New option in user rules to censor off-line messages: messages received from the censored user when you are on-line are not displayed in the main console: they immediately deleted together with any other message received by the same user and a reply-tell is automatically sent; messages received when you are off-line are automatically deleted when you read your messages using the "Messages" command in "View" menu.

BabasChess now will remember the last folder which a pgn was saved to (default is <user folder>\games).

If the no-play user rule is activated for a user, his/her challenges now are no longer shown in the main console

Minor bug fixed: status bar message "Move sent, waiting for server response" is now show only when playing (not when examining)

Added a new vector piece set: USCF

Channel sounds events: different sounds for different channels can now be configured

Sound event list has been transformed into a tree

When exporting a preference file, individual channel text styles are now saved only when different from the default channel text style: this speeds up the exporting procedure and, incidentally, also speeds up the opening of the Themes dialog, which is slow in some systems.

Cancel all premoves command (ESC key) is now faster and when a single premove is canceled by pressing its 'x' button, the board position is now restored correctly

Added new user rule: "Customized sound on user arrival", added "Play" buttons in user rules for testing customized sounds

Fixed some bugs in the new options in Prefs->Sound added in v2.9.

The Shout tab in the Channel window now has a Shout/It combo (default value corresponding to the option "Use It for shouts" in Prefs->Chat).

Last layout event in Prefs->Window layout renamed: from "When you finish playing, observing or examining" to "When you close all the board windows", which better correspond to what it actually does.

Fixed some bugs in the new options containers (Preferences) added in v2.6.

Minor bug fixed: in some cases (when other windows stole the focus, e.g. with automatic tab switch in chat/channel window enabled), the return key had to be pressed twice to confirm a message/command in the main console/chat/channel window.

New options in Prefs->Board window: "External margin", "Show coordinates outside the board", "Show coordinates on all sides", "Coordinate font size", "Coordinate color"

New options in Prefs->Board: Square border size and color

Fixed a minor bug in the games tab of the Info Window

Since seekinfo are not working in examine mode (server bug), now BabasChess forces the recreation of seek list/graph when exiting from examine mode

Now the friend list shows the "Logged on users having you on their notify list" part only if the notifiedby variable is set to 1.

Three new options in Prefs->Sound: "Play emotesound in channel tells only from the active channel", "Do not show !BCS->(sound name) text", "Do not show tells containing !BCS->(sound name) text"

New sound event: "Game: New piece available (bughouse)"

"Main Console dockable" setting (normal or dockable window) is now associated to the window layout. This is to avoid problems switching between layouts with and without dockable main console.

Added Themes (menu File)

Sought graph: added double buffering to prevent flickering on resize

Sought graph: two options added in Prefs->"Info window" to control the interesting (zoomed) region of the rating scale.

Added user rules (new command in contextual menu and in View menu)

Automatic save/restore of default board window layout have been improved (this applies only when the layout event in Prefs->Window layout is "take no action")

Bug fixed: v2.6 could not run on most Windows 95 systems

Minor bug fixed in Config Custom Commands dialog

Minor bug fixed in Console Preference tab

Bug fixed: new moves were not added to the movelist when looking at the initial position of a game in progress

Bug fixed: remove channel from "list channels" window was not working

Bug fixed: a graphic resource leak in the seek graph, which affected Win9x/Me systems.

Now the Chat window uses '!' at the end of the name (e.g. "tell jonny! bla bla" instead of "tell jonny bla bla")

Bug fixed: last move time was not displayed in non-standard games (crazy, bug, ...)

New option for timestamp in chat and channel windows (Preferences->Chat)

New options containers in some of the preferences tabs, to be able to better manage the continuously growing options...

Now the default quick command "Get a game quickly" uses "getgame f" instead of "getgame".

Bug fixed: potential crash on close board window with a game in progress when the board-console was visible

Bug fixed: board position was not updated in some situations when starting to observe a new game and a previous inactive board was present

Added three new configurable sound events: "Game finished: you won", "Game finished: you lost", "Game finished: you drew".

Now in the default preferences the shout tab in channel window is enabled

Added lag stats (option in Preferences->Board window, enabled by default): the total lag of each player is displayed in the board window, moving the mouse cursor over it displays a tooltip with more detailed statistics. The option "Display "(TS)" if player is using timeseal" is now disabled by default in new installations, since it is not very useful when lag stats is enabled.

Now BabasChess will attempt in any case to draw a board (removing names and clocks if there is not enough space) and the message "Not enough space to draw a board" (which created confusion in some users) is no longer displayed

New option "Do not leave pieces premoved on destination squares" in Prefs->Board (2) for those who like thief-style premoves

Color pickers in the preferences now remember the most recently used colors

New option "Automatically unfollow when you start playing" in Prefs->General

Title of Chat and Channel window now also displays the name of the active tab

New option "Automatic scroll locking" in Prefs->Console (automatically prevents console scrolling when reading previous text)

New bughouse options (Prefs->Board (2)): "Allow to suggest moves in partner's board", "Enable links for partner suggestions" (suggestions from a partner using BabasChess are underlined and you can execute them with a simple click) and "Wait for piece in contextual menu" (enables you to drop a piece which you do not have, creating a particular type of premove which will be executed as soon as the partner sends you the right piece; it can be canceled as all the other premoves, pressing ESC or clicking on the 'x' sign)

Default action for "start playing a bughouse game" event (Prefs->Window layout) is now "Load layout sample_bughouse"; Sample_Bughouse.bcwly layout has been slightly modified (main board a bit larger) [note: on previous installations the layout file will be not automatically copied from the installation folder to the user folder, but it can be done manually].

Minor bug fixed: the '#' character was not considered a word delimiter (for console right-click)

Improved support for editing games on the server (new menu edit, new dialog for position setup, new dialog for game properties, new bsetup mode, where a piece of each type is always available for setting up a position, new board contextual menus, ...)

Support for locally editing pgn games, which has been made as more similar as possible to the on-line editing on the server

Support for crazyhouse in pgn games: BabasChess now correctly handles the captured/available pieces.

BabasChess no longer uses the "promote" variable to set up the next promotion piece, but appends the =piece suffix to the move (the promote variable is obsolete and this also means more speed in fast games...)

Improved compliance to pgn format (now the STR tag pairs are always saved as required and quotes and backslash characters are appropriately handled)

Bug: explosions in atomic were not executed when the move was a check

Minor bug fixed: wrating/brating had no effect on the board window if the player was initially without rating (guest)

New option for displaying ECO code and variation in the board window (Prefs->Board window)

Bug fixed: comments in examined game moves could be lost when moving forward (in any case, the comments are associated to the moves, so moving back in examine move will delete them; editing pgn games in off-line mode is recommended)

New Edit menu, containing the new on-line and off-line editing commands; some previously-existing commands have been moved to this new menu: Copy to clipboard as pgn/fen (were in File menu) and the whole Examine submenu (was in Game menu)

New command "Duplicate game" in Edit menu

Minor bug fixed: pressing "OK" or "Apply" in the preferences could be slow in some cases

Minor bug fixed: when more links (e-mails, url, commands) were mixed in the same line, some of them could be not transformed in links

"Save layout" command now displays the same dialog used in "Open layout"

Minor bug fixed: pgn upload now truncates the players' names if they are too long

Fixed a bug in move-legality-checking, which in some rare cases could make BabasChess wrongly consider a castling illegal

Added three new languages for the BabasChess user interface: French, German and Portuguese

Help pages added and updated

Bug fixed: analysis with crafty was not working when launched by a user without write permission on the installation folder (crafty crashed attempting to create a temporary file); now crafty is executed in a "tmp" folder under the "user folder"

Minor bug fixed: in the seek graph it was not possible to accept a seek ad covered by one of your own seek ads

If move animation is enabled, now the move sound is executed at the end of the animation

Minor bug fixed in Italian translation: "Attivo" and "Non attivo" were swapped (Profile window)

Fixed a bug in Friend tab (Info window): sometimes the "Logged on users having you..." list could get corrupted.

Fixed a bug in channel synchronization after logon

Fixed a bug in pgn loading: pgn files beginning with one or more empty lines were not loaded

Bug fixed: seek/match presets were not saved in the "user folder", but in the installation folder

Bug fixed: now if the "user folder" is delete/renamed/moved, at next startup BabasChess will ask again the user to choose it.

Pgn upload now sets the result of the game (1/2-1/2, 0-1, or 1-0), if this information is available in the pgn file

Bug fixed in pgn upload: now the moves are now sent in long algebraic notation to avoid ambiguities

Minor bug fixed: illegal move sound was not played in some cases

Added three new default quick commands (only in new installations, or if you delete last_quickcmd.bccb): "Tourneys: t-shout off", "Tourneys: t-shout on" and "Tourneys: list tourneys"

Added last move time (bottom right of the board, only if "Show last move" option is enabled in Preferences->Board window)

Fixed a minor bug in Preferences->General (autosave path was always required, even if the options was disabled)

Automatic column resize in sought table now take also into account the length of the column header

Now the main console is not automatically cleared when you connect to the server (the "cls" server command or the Clear command in the right-click menu can be used to manually clear it)

Now players' channel tells are not echoed in the game console

Fixed a bug in boards created with "sposition" server command

The game console is no more cleared when a new game start; an informative line is written when a game starts/ends to separate kib, whisp, etc. of different games

Bug fixed: if the "counterproposal" button was pressed in the Challenge dialog and, while the Match dialog was opened, the challenge was withdrawn, BabasChess could hang or crash

Fixed a bug in pgn loading which could cause only the first game in a pgn file to be displayed in the pgn dialog

Modified the way pgn files are saved, to be compliant to pgn standard (no lines longer than 80 characters in the movelist)

Major bug fixed: games starting from a fen position were not correctly handled if the first move was black, the problem affected both pgn games open locally and games examined on the server; most of the movelist code have been rewritten now... well, this may have introduced other bugs...

Added the possibility of creating plugins to extend BabasChess features (a simple plugin for text-to-speech will be available soon)

Now ECO field is added to any pgn file saved by BabasChess (according to the data in the txt file "data\ECO\ECO.txt")

Added ECO column to the pgn dialog and ability to sort by any column (two clicks to reverse the sort order)

Added pgn upload to the server (new button "open as" in the open pgn dialog, you can simply drag&drop a pgn file from any explorer window to BabasChess window to open the pgn dialog): BabasChess will start an examine session on the server, send all the moves in the pgn game and then go back to the beginning of the game.

Minor bug fixed: board title was not updated when the player name changed (in examined games)

Added '$' (to avoid problem with aliases) to some commands sent by the interface where it was not added yet

Slightly modified the behavior when the chat/channel windows are automatically shown (options in Prefs->Chat): now the previous active window is restored, this should be less confusing, but I am not totally sure...

New option: "Draw premove arrow" (Prefs->Board (2))

Added CClient default piece set to BabasChess setup

New option: "Never play sounds in observed boards" (Prefs->Sounds)

German umlaut characters are now mapped into their standard ascii transliterations inside tells and commands

Fixed a minor bug that could cause the Friend tab to display wrong names in certain circumstances

Minor bug fixed: clocks were never running in examined games

Now vector pieces can be filled with any texture (bitmap file): some sample textures are provided, custom ones can be added as well; this works only with pieces fonts modified to support the new draw method (only "Alpha" for now)

Connection type: added the possibility of connecting without timeseal: new option in advanced connection options, stored in the connection configuration (each configuration can have a different "connection type").

New bitmap drawing method (no difference for the user, unless I have introduced bugs...)

New draw method for vector (font) pieces, which allows a definitely better antialiasing: it requires manually modifying the font (done only for "Alpha" for now).

Fonts (figurine notation and vector pieces) are now created at runtime and no more installed during the setup: this enables installing and using BabasChess even if you do not have administrative rights.

Added move animation (options in Preferences->Board window)

When the position on the board changes and it is not a normal forward of one half-move, only the simple move sound is executed (no special sound for capture, check, ... and no animations).

Multiple connection configurations can now be defined: the following options are now configuration-dependent: Handle, Password, Logon script, Server configuration (Default, IP address, port); a "<default>" configuration will be always created and cannot be deleted: options saved in previous versions will be automatically imported in the "<default>" configuration. If a configuration other than the default one is selected, its name is written in the main title bar.

Now BabasChess, the first time is executed, asks the user to choose the folder where data (layouts, logs, custom commands) has to be saved ("user folder"); the default location is "My Documents\BabasChess". This allows: 1) more BabasChess users on the same computer (WinNT/2000/XP) and 2) ability to run BabasChess on systems where users do not have write permission in the installation folder. If you upgrade from a previous version, your layouts, logs, custom commands and custom web links will be automatically copied to the folder you select as "user folder".

Minor bug fixed: automatic move forward did not stop when the end of the game was reached in examined games.

Bug fixed: emotesounds ignored the general "play sounds" option and the "do not play sounds in TheBoss! mode" option

Movelist now shows white and black move on the same line.

Fixed two bugs in smart layout, which sometimes caused the layouts not to be restored correctly: now smart layout is a bit more "smart"!

Now Board chat console is better synchronized with the chat window: if you chat with your opponent using the "say" item of the combo box in the board chat console, now the echo of your messages is also displayed in the Chat window (if a tab corresponding to your opponent is already present) and viceversa. This enables a conversation started in the game console while playing to be continued in the normal chat window and vice-versa.

Fixed a bug in command autocomplete from history.

Apply button added to Preference tabs.

Bug fixed: a graphic resource leak causing problems in particular in Win98/Me systems.

New options for board border (thickness and color) in Preferences->Board window

Fixed a bug that in some cases could cause an error during logon

Added button to reset smart layout data in Preferences->Window layouts

Some minor bugs fixed in board players' names and material-strength bars drawing

Added emotesounds button (near the emoticon button): it provides a user-friendly interface for inserting emotesounds

Now when wrating/brating commands are used the board window is correctly updated with the new rating

Game-related messages (e.g. "RRaf backs up 5 moves") now are displayed in the game console too

Bug fixed: option "Show friend information window when an arrival notification is received" was not saved.

Other characters with stress are now translated in corresponding 7bit ascii characters.

Added a warning for commands starting with "!" in the main console, this is to avoid users making shouts by mistake when typing !BCS->(...)

Automatic board flip on followed player now works also if the follow command is not given with the contextual menu

White and black square colors (solid color option) were reversed: now this has been fixed (unfortunately users that are using this option will see their white/black colors swapped in the new version)

Now right-click on a tab will change the active tab in tabbed windows (useful for Chat and Channel windows)

New option in Prefs->General: "automatically observe on game notifications" (introduced in v2.2), now will not observe notified games if you are playing.

Bug fixed: the program crashed if the command View->Board was given when 1) no board was present and 2) a layout with no board was associated to the layout event "Start observing" (actually associating a layout with no board to such event is not a good idea..., anyway now the bug is fixed).

Now when examining bughouse and crazyhouse games, you can use the right-click menu to drop any piece on the board

Fixed a minor bug in back/forward buttons (now in observed games the back button is not enabled until the move list has been retrieved)

Rewritten code that send moves and commands to the server: now it is faster (well, probably only a lightning player with very very good connection may note the difference, since in general it is negligible compared to network delays)

Predefined commands sent by the interface (menus, buttons, ...) now use the '$' prefix to avoid problems with aliases

Commands automatically sent by the interface to update the Info Window now use the '$$' prefix to avoid canceling any busy string set by the user

Fixed the following bugs introduced in v2.2: paste command was not working in input line, finger notes editor not working, tooltips in seek graph not working.

Added new vector font (alpha) and support for custom piece fonts with different piece<->character mappings (see Alpha.bcfi)

New options for adding shadows to vector pieces

Partner sounds (for bughouse): if the option in Preferences->Sounds is enabled, partner tells matching one of the sounds "Bughouse <msg>.wav" in the data\sound directory will play the sound. 35 bughouse sounds corresponding to thief default setup have been added to the new "BabasChess Sound Pack" setup, custom bughouse sounds can be added as well.

Emotesounds: chat messages containing !BCS->(filename) will produce the sound filename.wav (if the corresponding options in Preferences->Sounds are enabled). A new "BabasChess Sound Pack" is available: it contains some general-purpose sounds and Bughouse sounds. In the future a button similar to the emoticon button may be added, to quickly insert emotesounds.

Added two duck emoticons

Fixed a minor bug in the sought list (Info window)

Added support for vector (true type font) pieces, with the possibility of choosing colors and antialias; Board Preferences tab split into two tabs (Board and Board(2)), to host the new options; some vector pieces added to default setup, custom vector pieces can also be added.

Added new sound event: drop move (crazyhouse and bughouse)

Minor bug fixed: autolayout is now not executed if the main window is minimized

Game notifications are now written in the "notification" style, a sound can be associated to them and the is a new option in Prefs->General: "automatically observe on game notifications"

Modified board preview in preferences, so that the right white rook is shown on a white square (and white king on a black square,...) as it is supposed to be

Minor bug fixed: clock was running in untimed games

Now your own seek ads are shown in sough graph and sought table (with a different color)

Channel window: new "Users in this channel" command in context menu (right click on a tab)

Chat window: now a chat tab can be closed also when not logged on, and added new command in context menu ("Remove all")

Minor bug fixed in bugopen toolbar button (was not synchronized in some cases)

Minor bug fixed in voice countdown.

Now if you attempt to close a playing board (with the 'x' button) where no moves have been done, BabasChess proposes to abort the game, instead of resign.

New preference tab: Info window. Option "Show pending information when..." has been moved here from General tab; new options allow to customize the colors of all the tabs in the Info Window.

If a game starts when the main BabasChess is minimized, now the icon in the taskbar flashes.

New tab in the Info Window: "Friends". It displays users on your notify lists and who have you on their notify list, it is automatically synchronized, even when +/-notify commands are used. Double click on a user opens the chat window, right click the contextual menu. By default, when you are notified of an arrival the Friend tab is shown (option in the new preference tab "Info Window").

Now console command history does not start over when you reach the end of it

New keyboard shortcuts for start/end game (Alt+Up/Dn)

Fixed a bug in smart layout, introduced in v2.0

If multi-line text is pasted into a console input line, now carriage returns are replaced with spaces

Now the console input lines let you: use triple-click to select the full line, use Ctrl+Backspace and other common shortcuts, and it is possible to drag&drop text from any console to any input line

New option in the contextual menu (right click) of the Players tab (Info window): "show titled users only"

Fixed minor bug in autoflip board for examined games

Fixed a bug in board drawing, which could cause problems in particular in Win9x/Me systems

Bug fixed in windows layout (only happened with dockable console)

Minor bug fixed: remaining time was not displayed in "sposition" boards

Non-beta versions will delete any error.txt file created by previous beta-versions

Update to support lag information in compressmove added with the latest FICS server version

When you examine a game you have played, the board will be automatically flipped to put your pieces at bottom, if needed

Autoflag command (menu and game toolbar) now enabled also when not playing

Added 8 sample window layouts

Added four default sample quick commands (seek 3 0, seek 5 0, seek 15 0 and remove seeks)

Updated keyboard shortcut (underlined character) in main menu (Italian language)

Load window layout can now create boards and close boards (only if unused)

Added two default sounds for castling and capture

Added support for a generic "test language" to help translators

Bug fixed: the program crashed if the <space> key was pressed on a game finished dialog or a request/challenge dialog

New popup menu in analysis tab, which lets you copy the current variation to the clipboard or to the current move comment

Some changes to reduce resource usage in Win9x/Me systems: menu images code optimized and number of piece bitmap caches reduced (only in Win9x/Me)

Bug fixed: gin variable is now set to zero on disconnect (in previous version in some cases gin could remain set to 1)

Minor bug fixed: switching active tab in Info Window during logon could cause logon error

Minor bug fixed: last board size and pos were incorrectly saved also when the board was maximized

Clearscreen escape sequence from server now is correcly parsed ("cls" and "help cls" commands)

Minor bug fixed: scroll problems when switching active tab in Chat and Channel window

Bug fixed: in some cases the console was incorrectly cleared when the text was too long

Minor bug fixed in console command links

Added description for channels 40, 41 and 42 in channel list

Minor bug fixed in It shout parsing

Now pgn files containing variations can be opened (but variations, and comments in variations are ignored)

Updated keyboard shortcut (underlined character) in main menu (English language)

Fixed a bug in save/load window layout; unfortunately old layouts have to be recreated (they are no more loaded correctly), but now layout files can be exchanged among users even if they have different screen resolutions and layouts will not need to be recreated in case you change your screen resolution

Minor bug fixed: console window are now scrolled to bottom when resized (unless lock scrolling is active)

Now the text format list in Preferences->Console allows multiple-selection (dragging the mouse or pressing ctrl): this is particularly useful for configuring the text format of the channels

Ability to read/modify PGN comment to the initial board position

Modified window layout loading to reduce flickering

Added support for FEN start position in PGN games (now it is loaded if present and saved when a game which does not starts from the standard chess position is saved to pgn)

Added four new emoticons

Minor bug fixed: now pgn files with empty lines in the header are loaded

Now the default window layout action for "start playing" event is "Take no action" and BabasChess will remember the last board position and size. This is for helping new users that are confused by the "autolayout" associated by default to the "start playing" event.

Double click on player list (Info Window) opens the Profile Window of the selected user.

Fixed a bug that could cause the program to crash when closing user profile windows

Now if the return key is pressed while entering a message in the send message dialog, the message is not sent.

Added "minutes" label in timers configuration dialog

Bugfix: option "Do not show kibitzes and whispers in main console if the board chat window is visible" was not working correctly in observed games

Bugfix: corrected a resource leak that affected the program on Win98/Me systems, causing BabasChess to consume all available resource in a short time

Bugfix: solved some parsing problems in tell messages

Added console text style for qtells

In case a piece/square loading error occurs, BabasChess now tries to load the default pieces/squares

Bugfix: Corrected a shameful bug which made BabasChess crash when the number of available pieces in crazyhouse/bughouse games was equal to or greater than 17.

Bugfix: in some cases there were problems during castling in wild/fr games

Many help pages added and updated

Timer alert sound now is played only when entering in alert condition, and not at each turn if the alert condition persists

Extended characters (ASCII code>127) are now converted to spaces to avoid problems with timeseal

Minor bug fixed: F1 on modeless dialogs was not working

Sound events and explosions are now executed also when moving on the movelist (useful in particular for pgn games)

Sound event names reorganized and added new sound event for castling

Now when a new game starts the chat game console is not cleared if the players are the same

Minor bug fixed: splash screen now does not remain on top if an error message is shown

Minor bug fixed: tooltip of "Automatic move forward" command was missing

Minor bug fixed: description of examine commands game start/end were reversed

Minor bug fixed: player ratings were not loaded from pgn files

At startup, if "restore window layout at startup" is not enabled, instead of a simple "auto layout", the appropriate layout event is used

Minor bug fixed: changes to font size in Preferences->Console were not immediately applied to the main console

Slightly modified pgn parsing to allow loading pgn files not exactly compliant to the pgn specification

Minor bug fixed: in some cases the board window title was incorrectly set to "Info window"

Minor bug fixed: double click in chat, channel and game console window did not select the current word

Options for greet and cong. message texts moved from General to Board Window (2)

New option in Preferences->General: show splash window at startup

New options in Preferences->General: base file path for autosave of observed and played games

New option in Preferences->Chat: "Show superfluous server responses to chat commands in main console"

New option in Preferences->Chat: "Do not show kibitzes and whispers in main console if the board chat window is visible"

Now pressing esc key, besides clearing any premove, also clears any smartmove default-piece highlight

Minor bug fixed: game results were not written in the main console

Minor bug fixed: "(kibitzed to ..." and "(whispered to ..." were not treated as the other server responses to chat messages (told ..., shouted to ..., c-shouted to ...)

Bug fixed: user commands, chat messages and scripts are now added to the console log, when enabled.

The command line font is now bold if the normal console text is set to bold (and use sys font option is unchecked)

Bugfix: option "No sounds from other boards when playing" was not working

Seekinfo is now activated only when the sought graph/list is visible (to save bandwidth)

Bugfix: a '+' near a handle was considered part of the name (when clicking with the mouse on it)

Bugfix: in some (rare) circumstances the handle of a user making an It shout was not reported correctly in the shout tab of the channel window

Bugfix: if you activate a chat window or the main console (with the mouse or the keyboard), now the cursor is automatically moved to the corresponding input line

Now notifications like "RRaf has arrived/departed and isn't on your notify list", produce the arrival/departure notification sound.

Bugfix: syncronizations problems with the server when moving the current position in movelist while examining

Manual pgn file save now appends to instead of overwriting an existing file

Minor bug fixed: "It" shouts were shown as normal shouts in the Shout tab of the Channel Window, now the "-->" notation is used, as in the Main Console.

Added http://www.ficsforum.netto the default list of web sites (this is will appear only on new installations, or if the web list has never been customized)

Fixed minor bug related to layouts containing playing boards

Updated BabasChess figurine font: the '@' character was missing (for bug and crazy), now it has been added

Minor bug fixed: flickering in movelist (on move forw/back) removed

Now player ratings are shown in examined games

Bugfix: pgn rating fields were incorrectly saved as "WhiteELO" and "BlackELO" instead of "WhiteElo" and "BlackElo"

When a pgn file is dropped in the BabasChess window, the application is set to foreground

Minor bug fixed: the history tab of the profile window did not show B/W indication

Now it is possible to move back to the initial game position using the arrows

Fixed a bug in castling for wild/fr (actually this was due to a bug in the fics server, which seems to send compressmove in wild/fr, while it should send compressmove only for standard chess)

Fixed a bug: kibitzes and whispers from users with rating<1000 where not correctly parsed (es. Pluto( 948)[181] kibitzes: ...)

Autocomplete commands now is off by default (only for new installations): I hav found that many new users are confused by this feature; it can be enabled in Preferences->Console.

Formula wizard: this should be very useful for new users (from view menu and from "Your profile" window)

Added server variables editor for commonly used vars (form view menu and from variables tab of your profile)

Added splash window at startup

Fixed a minor bug in parsing channel tells (a "tell <n> tells you ..." was considered a private tell instead of a ch tell)

Fixed a minor bug in maximized docked main console

Fixed a bug in individual channels text format

Fixed a minor bug in board title for sposition

Option for making the console a normal window (and not a dockable window), as in thief

Option for choosing the font in the consoles

Option for using the same font (type and size) of the console in the command line

Autocomplete popup list now uses the same font and colors of the command line

Fixed a minor bug in the autocomplete list of the command line

Fixed some bugs in load/save layouts containing a maximized board window

Changed board drawing code to make less use of system resources (this is an attempt to solve the very-slow-piece-movement problem that in some systems often occurs)

Added "New..." button to the messages dialog

Added multi-line script in TheBoss! preferences to be automatically execute when TheBoss! command is given (default "set busy set busy is in TheBoss! mode")

Fixed a minor bug in window layout when in "TheBoss!" mode

Added font for figurine notation (option in Preferences->Board Window, enabled by default); the required font (BabasChessFigurine) is installed by the setup

Added ability to load pgn games: (by using File menu, or simply drag a pgn file into the BabasChess window); new event in (Preferences->Window layout) added for pgn game opening

Automatic board flip when you observe a game using the context menu command on a user (observe or follow)

New commands (Actions menu) and corresponding shortcuts Shift+F4 and Shift+F5

Automatic move forward (command in Games->Examine and button in board toolbar); corresponding option for time interval in Preferences->Board window)

Added console logging (options in Preferences->Advanced)

Addded game number in board title

Modified code for tabbed windows (slightly different appearance now; it was necessary to support tabbed windows in game console, that will be used to add annotation and analysis windows to the boards)

Fixed a bug in lastmove notation display (not displayed first black move when movelist was autoretrieved)

New graphical animation for atomic explosions (now a mushroom cloud is shown!)

Added comment tab in game console, for viewing/modifying move comments in pgn games (and add your comments to the games before saving them to pgn)

Added command for copying a game in pgn format to the clipboard (menu File)

Added command for copying current position in fen format to the clipboard (menu File)

Reorganized Board window preferences (now split into two tabs)

Added voice countdown (option in Preferences->Board window(2) and sounds in Preferences->Sounds)

New option for time alerts (Preferences->Board window(2))

Now script commands (logon, customized buttons/quickcmd/mouseactions) and greet/congratulate messages are echoed in the main console

New sound events: notification: user arrived and notification: user departed

Fixed a minor bug in player list

Fixed a minor bug: wrong rating sort order in player and game list

Fixed some errors in language strings (English and Italian)

Fixed a bug in layout event for bug games start

Added support for analysis with Winboard and UCI engines (crafty is included in the BabassChess setup): new options in Preferences->Board window(2) and new tab in game console (Analysis)

Bugfix: "remove from censor list" command was not not working

Fixed some minor bugs in the finger notes editor

Now user titles ( (TD), (*), ...) are displayed also in game console, chat and channel windows

Fixed a minor bug in game list (Info window)

Fixed a minor bug: now the emoticons window will appear over other topmost windows (e.g. the Windows taskbar) in case of overlap

Background of the "new chat window"/"add channel" windows of the same color of the console background

Optional confirmation request on resign command

Optional confirmation request on close BabasChess when connected

Options for text/back color for movelist

Two board layouts: with and without captured pieces

Fixed a bug in calculation of material strength in losers games

Added code to prevent the main console (docked) from covering all the main window

Message window: it allows to view/delete/reply-to messages

Added message command in actions menu and in many contextual menus

Removed "Lock scroll" command from console context menu (the menu was quite long and the same command is always present in a button near the emoticon button)

Fixed a bug which may create problems in case of a reconnection after a disconnect

Fixed a bug in sought graph: filtered-out ads were not visible, but still active

Fixed bug in coordinate display when board has black at bottom

New profile window (command in view menu for your profile and in console contextual menu for other player's profile), if includes a finger notes editor

Completely rewritten connection buffer management (this is an internal issue, users should not notice any difference, unless I introduced some bugs...); new implementation is faster and more roboust

When game list is active in the info window, BabasChess uses gin variables to automatically remove finished games from the list

Keyboard shortcuts now works also when a modeless dialog (e.g. challenge popup) has focus

When multiple request popups are present (e.g. multiple challenges), declining or ignoring one of them now will automatically move the focus to the next popup

Added promote dialog and corresponding option (Board preferences)

Chat preferences: added option for using It instead of shout in shout channel

Chat preferences: added options for disabling auto tab switch in Chat and Channel Windows

Added advanced connection options dialog, which lets configure the server address and port (available from connection dialog and server preferences)

Fixed a bug in sought graph tooltips

URL detection method in console changed from automatic to manual (this may adds some bugs in the detection of links, but is is necessary for implementing server-command links...)

Added server-command links (any text delimited by "..." is transformed into a link that sends the corresponding text as a command to the server)

Now the console windows (main console, chat wnd, ...) flicker much less when resized

ESC key to cancel piece movement now works also when not playing

Fixed a bug: if you moved a piece when it is not your turn and premove is off, the board was not updated immediately.

Fixed a bug in pgn saved from observed or adjourned games

Fixed a bug: now you can save pgn files also of observed and examined games (provided you have finished observing/examining the game)

Completely reorganized the code which handles board moves from server; this may have introduced bugs, but was necessary to enable compressmove and, in the future, loading of pgn games.

BabasChess now uses compressmove (there should be no difference for the user, but great benefit for the server and then for the users, when most of the users will use compressmove-enabled interfaces...)

Fixed some bugs in gamelist and playerlist

Fixed a nasty bug in player list occurring if variable provshow is set to 1

Fixed bug: sposition was not working, now it should be ok

Fixed a bug that sometimes could crash the program on exit

Game console and move list now appear at their minimum size the first time are displayed

Reorganized autosave settings: now also obs games can be autosaved to pgn and files can be divided according to game type, date and opponent; added command in File menu to automatically open the pgn file folder

Added "Save preferences now" and "Save preferences on exit" commands, "Save/Load preferences" renamed to "Export/Import preferences"

Double click in the console now selects the word under the cursor and Ctrl+C copies the selected test in the clipboard

Added option for configuring a different text format for each channel (Preferences->Console)

Fixed a bug in movelist autoretrieve for suicide and wild games

Fixed some minor bugs

Fixed material strength calculation in movelist autoretrieve for suicide and losers games

Added losers, atomic and wild in player- and game-list context menus

Fixed bug on menus when a window is maximized

Added mouse actions to seek table/graph and player list

Added mouse actions on player names in the board window

Added commands for mailing last played game move and examining last played game

Added rightclick menu to quickly drop a piece in bughouse and crazyhouse

Added tenth of second display

The background and text color of the console input line now are the same of the console text

Fixed a prompt bug

Added legality support and movelist autoretrieve for atomic, suicide, losers and many wild games

Fixed a bug in the Italian version (on takeback request)

Added sound for capture

Added sound for explosion capture (atomic)

Added animation for explosion capture (atomic)

Legality check (for standard chess, bughouse and crazyhouse)

Smartmove

Multple pre-smartmoves

Auto movelist retrieve

Bugfixes (solid color in board squares, child wnd activation, autopopup channel wnd)

Option for channel number only in channel wnd

Alternate tcp port (23) option

Remember user and pwd option

Option for drag or click+click piece movement

Other minor bugs fixed

Configurable chess web site links

Window list in window menu

New time alert option added

Option for having the command line cleared when enter is pressed

Added chat command in challenge and partnership popups

Auto accent translation (useful for chatting in Italian)

Possibility of displaying a board also when not playing/observing/examining

Added some keyboard shortcuts

Added "ask for help on the server" command

Fixed a major bug that in some circumstances could freeze the program

Added support for simul matches

Added contextual help

Chat support (chat and channel windows)

Syncronization between open/silence/bugopen/autoflag variables and corresponding buttons and menu items

Board coordinates

Layout event "no more boards"

Smart layout

Fixed 2 major bugs (causing crash in Windows98/Me)

Option for solid color in board squares

Customized buttons

Customized quick commands

Customized mouse actions

Maximize and close console buttons

Some minor bugs fixed