Python Chess - 0.5

Nice program. I recommend learning algebraic notation. While it is reasonable to assume that many users will not know algebraic notation, some will. Since this program uses coordinates, even if you don't use algebraic notation, you should at least name the squares in a manner consistent with algebraic notation. Specifically, the file should precede the rank, as in 'e4' instead of '4e'.

See http://www.fide.com/fide/handbook?id=125&view=article Appendix E, especially section E7.

I like the look of your board and have played a couple of games.

Problems (1) No provision for castling.
(2) Unable to generate an exe file.
(3) Possible problem with en-passant move, not checked.

It's looking good. Using Windows XP Python 2.6.2

Colin W.

Well, class: and class(object): are not the same in python2.5 and below. If you inherit from object, it is "new style", and things like super() or def getattribute work right; if you don't inherit from object it is "old style", and none of those work. So to be safe, if you were using old style before (not inheriting from object) you should convert it to "Class:". In python2.6 and up, there are no old-style, so "class:" already inherits from object. More info here: http://www.python.org/doc/newstyle/

It's nice to see an attempt at chess ai in python, one of the most heated places for ai algorithms to duke it out. I'm interested in looking at the source and seeing how you did it, it seems pretty good to me.

Thanks for finding those errors! I'll incorporate the fixes in the next version.

A few things about compatibility:
1. Python 2.4.4 (or at least my one) doesn't like "Class():". It will only take "Class(object):" or "Class:" (both of which have the same effect I believe.)
2. The three squares have a ".PNG" suffix, rather than the expected ".png". This causes troubles when trying to load them on my Linux computer.
3. For some reason, rendering text fails when antialiasing is off. Which raises an exception. I think this happens to some other people too.

After changing those, it worked fine :)

I would have liked to see the colour of the square underneath the cyan bit, but that's a bit tricker to do. Also, when you exit, you call exit(), which is both the name of a function and the name of a string (d'oh.) So I get this:
....exit()
TypeError: 'str' object is not callable

the string 'exit' defaults to:
Python 2.4.4 (#2, Oct 22 2008, 20:20:22)
[GCC 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> exit
'Use Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit.'

so you probably don't have a function exit().

You should quit with pygame.quit() followed by sys.exit(0)-- for maximum compatibility.

Python 2.4.4 (#2, Oct 22 2008, 20:20:22)
[GCC 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
>>> sys.exit(0)

Looking at your AI functions, they look pretty good
.The defensive AI put up a good fight :)