17th November 2023:    The 2024 release is out!

 

I am able to deliver the new version two weeks earlier than anticipated. The testing went very well.

 

This is the new design of the start window.

And here are a some changes that become available with the 2024 release.

 

1. A global short-key for opening a new Setalyser

With Control+W a new Setalyser instance will be opened. (As usual use Meta instead of Control on macOS.)

If your current window is a game browser, then the new Setalyser opens with the current position.

 

2. Faster FEN setup in the Setalyser

If you are working with a Setalyser, press Control+V to open the FEN setup dialog. If there is already some FEN content in your system clipboard (e.g. copied from somewhere else with Control+C), this FEN will be used as a suggestion.

Since some sources offer FENs under diagrams, which however contain often a line break, this feature eliminates one line break if necessary.

 

3. A filter for PGN files and their directories

The PGN file selection dialog (see the button "Open an PGN file") received a text field for filtering files and directories. The number of saved recently used files and directories has been significantly increased.

 

4. Doubled pawns in Pawn Configuration Search

Searching for Pawn traits in the general Search pawn configuration dialog supports double pawn search criteria (the same as for free pawns).

 

5. Sort PGN files

In the past I was often disappointed when I wanted to delete or sort games in a chess database program because it was so cumbersome. The PGN file browser now provides a way to conveniently accomplish these tasks.

 

6. More screenshots

Screenshots can now also made in the Winning zone tool.

 

7. Four directions button

Have you ever used the Four Directions Button in the Setalyser or the Winning zone? Now you can select a part of the board and then move only the pieces on the selected squares up, down, left or right! As an example you can apply this in the Setalyser to check Bähr's rule in a minute.

 

8. Auto-play in game tool tip

One of the most useful features of the PGN file browser (and the bulk report dialog) is to preview the position with a click in the list and to play forward or backward through the game by means of the arrow keys. Now this quick preview comes with an auto-play mode! This saves many mouse clicks, but as soon as you click once, you are back in control.

 

9. Properties of first moves

The first move of a chess problem or an endgame study is of special interest. There is now a new search menu that can be used to filter by properties such as check, capture, promotion and wtm/btm.

In the long run this will become a search menu for more general move properties of the first or even all moves.

 

10. Copy all FENs of a game to the clipboard

The 2023 release included a mass data interface for FENs. Now I have added "FENs" buttons to game browser and a "Get all FENs" button to the Setalyser. When these buttons are pressed, all FENs of the current game are copied to the system clipboard. From there they can be used (Ctrl-V), e.g. to find positions from this game in a whole PGN file (PGN file browser).

 

11. Eight instead of four

The four directions button of the Setalyser (see also no.7) is now an eight directions button. In other words: You can now not only move all or part of the figures horizontally and vertically, but also diagonally. This accelerates and simplifies the checking of Bähr's rule, for example.

 

12. New incident searches

With each new release, more search options are added. For example, I just added three new options to the incident search (menu item "Search mate, stalemate, promotion, etc."): En passant, Castling and Chess960.

 

13. Auto save bug fix

Did you know that the ChessSuite automatically saves all games  and fragments opened by the user in a file named autoSave.pgn in the project directory? This has been happening for years, but there was a gap that has now been filled.

 

14. Search options restricted to start positions

More and more search options in the PGN browser can be restricted to start positions (which is very useful when you work with fragments). Now I have added this feature to three of the four search options for pawn configurations.

 

15. Tracking pieces

You want to visualize the route of a piece during a game or an endgame? Do a right-click on the square of the piece in the game browser and choose the option Track the piece from the popup menu. Done.

You can track as many pieces as you like and all tracks are always updated automatically.

 

16. Create animated GIFs

Animated GIFs that automatically demonstrate a game or study are very popular. That's why it was definitely overdue for the ChessSuite to be able to generate such GIFs. But please don't flood Twitter and Instagram with any crap!

 

17. Piece tracking in the PGN file browser

The PGN file browser got the new option Set piece tracking in tooltip in the menu Properties. The tooltip is the board that shows a position from a game. You can select a piece type (white king, white queen, ..., black pawn) and already in the tooltip the trace of all pieces of that type is shown. Image you have searched in a PGN file for R+P vs R and you select 'white rook' to be tracked. As before the board shows the first position of the PGN game with the given material, but now also the trace of the white rook is added.  

 

18. Open a Game Browser from Setalyser

The Game Browser and the Setalyser have a lot of functionality in common and I've had the idea of combining both in one tool for a long time. However, this tool would be very complex. Probably too complex. That's why I keep them separate but make it easier to transition from one to the other. Point 1. above was a step towards the Setalyser.

Now you can also open a Game Browser from the Setalyser, whereby the game is transferred from the Setalyser to the Game Browser. The short key is Control+N.

 

19. Material search extended

The material search, best known from the PGN file browser,  can now search for light and heavy pieces using the letters l and h, respectively. Examples:

  • hlp* finds all positions with one heavy piece, one light piece and any number of pawns.
  • 2l finds all position with two bishops or two knights, but positions with one bishop and one knight don't match.
  • Any combination of l with b or n as well as h with q or r is illegal. So, bl yields an error message on multiple use of bishops, because replacing l by b yields the illegal serach string bb.

20. Swapping Black/White and Left/Right

This new feature is mainly for game fragments such as puzzles, endgames or even endgame studies (though it works for whole games too). In the game browser's "Game" menu, there is a new entry "Swap game" with the sub-entries "Swap colors" and "Swap left and right". The first option swaps the black and white pieces and the second option swaps queen- and kingside. Both options are not implemented for Chess960 games and swapping left and right cannot be performed, if the game or game fragment contains a castling move, of course.

 

21. Merge PGN files

There is a new experimental menu option in the start dialog: merge PGN files.