StingRay Chess

StingRay Installation Guide

As a first step, try and install the package for your platform. If using Ubuntu / Debian you should use the .DEB debian type package, and if using Fedora, use the .RPM type packages. If your machine is 32-bit, choose that version, otherwise choose the 64-bit version. For the Raspberry Pi there is only one package.

This should hopefully install StingRay for you. If not, or the software install just stops with no sign of progress, you can try a reboot, or manually remove any old version of StingRay and try again. If the installer still fails, copy the StingRay executable to a sensible folder (eg /usr/games) and run it. You can extract it from the DEB package for your platform using an archiver / extractor utility .

If you are manually copying the binary and also want the icons, extract these from the DEB package into the relevant place, eg: /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/ etc).

Copying the StingRay .desktop file into /usr/share/applications/stingray.desktop

would then allow StingRay to show up in your applications menu, as a proper installer would copy the files in the same way.

You should make the file executable, either through your file manager GUI, or from the command line, eg:

You will need a chess engine ( eg stockfish, gnuchess etc ) to make the most of it ( otherwise you can only play Human vs Human ). It should understand all the rules of chess if you do play human / human.

If running StingRay on desktop Linux ( x86 / x64 ) versions, it starts up looking for stockfish. The Raspberry Pi (32-bit ARM) version looks for fruit by default. If the appropriate engine for your version of StingRay is already installed, it should find it and work off the bat.

If it does not find an engine, it should start up in rolling demo mode, where it plays a sequence of famous, classic games. In this mode you can only play human vs human until you install an engine.

As an example, to install stockfish, crafty or fruit, you would run:

etc. , depending on your requirements.

These are instructions for Ubuntu, for Fedora you would replace 'apt-get' with 'yum' in the above commands.

Some of these engines are not available for all platforms, so you might have to delve into the instructions for them to install the one you want. I find that installing stockfish and gnuchess works mostly always, while crafty and fruit are available for Ubuntu; Komodo runs on 64-bit Linux distros by downloading and copying the executable file (and ensuring it is executable).

You can quite easily build (or find) a crafty exacutable for other platforms and can even build it (without Nasimov tablebases) for the Raspberry Pi. If you need help on this, email me or the author of crafty and I will try and help.

You can override the engine path StingRay looks for by creating a file called 'StingRayConfig.txt' in the run directory with the engine path, e.g. a single line like this:

or

This then overrides the global StingRay settings file. This might be useful if you temporarily want to run with a different engine to your normal one, or if your global settings file is read-only etc, etc.

Once you have an engine installed, from the StingRay program, click on "Players" in the main menu, then select "Pick Engine" and point at ( e.g. ) "/usr/games/stockfish".

From then on you should be able to play a game. To quit demo mode, click on the board and you can play ( 1 sec/move default for the PC ).

StingRay should work with either Xboard ( e.g. Linux ) or UCI ( e.g. Windows, commercial ) protocols, and should be okay with crafty, fruit, sjeng, stockfish, komodo (x64 Linux only), phalanx, gnuchess, toga, critter, glaurung, fairymax, etc.

Each engine has its quirks, so if you find a sequence that breaks StingRay or does not work with a particular engine, let me know and I will try and fix it, time permitting.