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Chessville
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Interface Reviews: Thiefby J. Varsoke
Since version 1.0 FICS pundits put their hopes in Thief to steal the throne from BlitzIn as the best ICS interface, but the author didn't have such populist goals in mind. Instead, he continued to develop an interface tailored for the so-called veteran users. Still, what started as a niche interface for BugHouse players has matured into a staple interface among the on-line chess playing community. It's the second most used interface on FICS (WinBoard holding the pole-position) and even has a substantial following on ICC. To give you an idea why, here's a set of quotes from my recent OCL opponent, whom I recommended Thief to.
First Impressions: Depending on what interface you usually use, the first things that might strike you are the beauty of the board and pieces, but there's the frustration of not having a seek graph. But if you like the former you'll probably gladly do without the latter, considering which you spend more time looking at.
Even if you don't find your fancy in those 1,170 pre-installed combinations hope it not lost. Thief supplies an easy method of adding your own custom pieces and board tiles. The last option of the piece or board selector is custom. Simply point the file browser at a directory that includes files named "BBISHOP.BMP" etc, click and your new piece set will be loaded onto the preview board. You want to re-intact the American Civil War OTB? All you need do is fire up Photoshop, scribble away, and and load your results into Thief. The ultimate in user choice. Features: Choice is a big motif in Thief. You can customize just about anything you want. Opening up any of the preference menus hits you with a plethora of options. You name it, you can change it. Though sometimes it's like getting one of those 25-point adjustable chairs, you spend the next 3 hours trying to get everything "just right." If the console window looks familiar to you it's because the author based it on the freely available code from WinBoard. There are a few changes though. Because the screen can get pretty busy with channel tells Thief allows you to change the color or every kind of message you receive. Just go to Preferences -> Telnet Console Configuration -> Telnet Console Colors. If you don't see your favorite channel in the standard list over to the right is a button named Add Channel #. And, of course, the Font is changeable as well. Thief also builds on WinBoard's console by by underlining hyper-text links and server commands so you can double click them, which loads the page in your web browser of choice or issues the command to the server. Standard features, like WinBoard's command history (accessible via the up arrow), are also present.
Thief also alleviates the 50 entry limit on your server censor list (which is, sadly, sometimes not enough) by keeping it's own list in the Thief interface.
Not only is ignoring someone easier with Thief, but communicating
with them is also less-painful. For those BlitzIn users who just can't
live without their F9 key, well this is the FICS interface for
you. Say "JoeLongObnoxiousHandle" has just sent you tell and you want
to respond. Well, instead of typing his handle you can just hit the
F9 to scroll through the last few people to send you a tell.
Other commands on Joe are easily accessible by right clicking on his
name in either the console window or a Board window. With the
right-click you can choose from a list that includes observe,
finger, and match, so you don't have to type these
commands to the server along with his handle. Other common commands
like
Thief is also the first interface I've seen to make more than trivial use of sound. Each move on the board gives a pleasant thump, the end of a game gives a twang and when someone sends you a tell you get a quick whistle. These are all common applications. But when you're in time trouble, with 10 seconds on your clock the read-out turns red and the interface starts counting down the seconds in recorded voice. Also, captures and a move that puts you in Check have different sounds. And of course, as you've come to expect with Thief, these are all customizable. In all, there are 49 customizable sounds (not counting the 70 BugHouse specific sounds). Another welcome feature is the ability to save multiple window layouts. I have one for just chatting where only the console is visible, one for playing an OCL league game where only a giant board is visible, and one for observing friends and post-mortems where multiple boards and the console are on the screen at once. This is all configurable under Window -> Save Window Layout. You have 10 slots to save configurations. Unfortunately, you can't name the slots and both Save Window Layout and Restore Window Layout are precariously close to one another. There are a bunch of other little odds and ends that make this interface the choice of many veteran users. Thief supports True Pre-Move, where you can make a move on the board before your opponent responds to your last move. When your opponent moves the interface issues your Pre-Move immediately to the server, thus burning 0 seconds on your clock -- a controversial imperative for 1 0 chess. Also for the speed demons, Thief supports Smart-Move; if you click on a square that only one piece can move to it will move that piece for you (saving you a click -- or drag).
There's also a timer to auto-issue a user defined command even when you're idle. This will prevent you from being auto-logged out by the server after being idle for 60 minutes, but it makes you a bandwidth leech! Server specific / Same Interface features: Most of the benefits you receive by someone having the same interface you do are found in BugHouse. There are partner tell buttons with BugHouse jargon on them. If your partner doesn't have the same interface then they just see a ptell, if they do have the same interface, though, they hear the sound file. In fact, Thief has many BugHouse specific features that I haven't mentioned. There are no Server specific features of Thief. Players on ICC and FICS use the interface all with the same feature set. Pet Peeves, Annoyances and Bugs: Due to issues I'll address below, the Help Pages, which were hosted on a website, are no longer accessible through the interface. Your best bet on finding out how to do something in Thief is to ask in Channel 6 (Interfaces & Timeseal) on FICS or Channel 1 (Server Help). Experienced Thief users will gladly address your questions. With all the different configuration options it would be nice to have loadable Themes like you have for your MS-Windows desktop. Thief supports this in a rather primitive way. Once you have Thief "just right" you can choose File -> Save Personal Configuration Profile. This will save your options, which you can reload later (after you screw things up). It would be nice if this feature were integrated into your login session, where depending on who you logged in as, the appearance of the board might be different. Thief has the same problem BlitzIn has with internal windows disappearing off the edge of the main window. The best way to find them again is to maximize your main window and search the edges for your lost sheep. Development & Maturity: Other than the nits above, I've found Thief to be stable and bug-free. And that's pretty fortunate considering the following. Just after the release of version 1.1 the author of Thief decided that chess, and BugHouse in particular, encourages people to waste their lives on trivial games. To that end he reportedly destroyed all the source code of Thief and other projects he authored. So I wouldn't expect a new version out any time soon. Summary: Thief doesn't have enough push-button pleasantries to make it a good first interface. And if you fear server commands, this is not what you're looking for. But veteran ICS users, and those who don't mind memorizing the 2 server commands that a seek graph replaces, will find the aesthetics worth the switch. It's missing a few features you might have grown accustomed to, but it sure is easy on the eyes. [Interface Series Intro] [The Big List (comparison chart)] [BlitzIn]
Copyright 2002 J. Varsoke
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Board & Pieces: If for some reason you don't like the pieces or board you
first see in Thief, or you lust after some schlock pieces you are used to from
another interface, you're in luck. Under Preferences->Game Configuration->Board
Appearance there are 45 selectable piece sets and 26 boards that come pre-installed
with Thief. A quarter of the pieces are derived from ugly vector drawn sets of
interfaces that specialize in speed (vector sets are faster to draw than
bitmaps), and some of the board tiles are obnoxious.
The
best feature about the console window isn't something that's been added, but
the ability to take things away. For example, have you ever played a (C)omputer
account that kibitzes its evaluation of the position for every move just because
it wasn't set up correctly, or you like to observe other's playing the computer
but don't want to see all the computer's evaluation whispers? Well, usually
you'd add the computer to your +censor list to squelch that noise. Unfortunately,
if you did this a lot you'd soon find your censor list full. Well, in Thief you just
need go to Telnet Console Configuration -> Telnet Console Options and
check the box for Suppress Computer Whisper. There are about 8 types
of auto-generated noise that you can suppress in this window. Too bad ICC
RoboAdmin's "Welcome to GrandMaster So-And-So", or FICS' "ics auto-salute"
from MAd aren't among the options.
Two
notable exceptions to this are Seek a Game and Match Player both
found under the Games menu. Clicking on Seek a Game gives you
a dialog to help you post a seek ad. Seek ads are used to advertise that you'd
like to play a game of a certain variant, with certain time controls, against
someone within a specified rating range. You can even choose which color you'd
like to be. This is the same as typing in the server command: 
Also
crucial for this sort of Space-Invader's style chess is the Lag meter. Next
to each player's clock is a measure of the difference between when the move
was sent (by the server) to your opponent and when he/she/it received the move.
If your opponent has a bad connection it might be 2 minutes before he makes
a move on the board, but his clock only ticked away 5 seconds. The reason is
that it took a long time for him to receive the move from the server. 5 seconds
after he saw the move he played his reply. Programs like Timeseal, Timestamp
and AccuClock make sure people on bad connections don't suffer a loss on time
because of it. Thief even includes a considerate option to issue a command when
your lag tolerance is exceeded (such as 
