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Version5.2

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Fulvio Benini edited this page Feb 5, 2026 · 2 revisions

SCID v5.2

SCID v5.2 brings significant performance improvements, a modernized user interface, and new analysis features. This release focuses on leveraging modern hardware with multithreading support and improving the user experience in the Engine and Gamelist's Tree stats.

Key Highlights

1. New Engine Analysis Chart

The engine window has been overhauled. It now features a real-time evaluation chart that visualizes the game's progress.

  • Visual Evaluation: A new graph displays the evaluation score history, with color-coded areas for positive and negative advantages.
  • Interactive Cursor: Hovering over the chart highlights the corresponding move in the game.
  • Auto-Scan: A new "Autoscan" feature allows the engine to automatically analyze the main line.
  • Layout Improvements: The configuration pane can now be collapsed to save space, and buttons have been reorganized into overflow menus for cleaner access.

Engine Evaluation Chart

2. High-Performance Tree & Statistics

The Tree window and Statistics calculation have received a major performance boost.

  • Multithreading Support: Position searches and statistic calculations now utilize multiple CPU cores (std::thread), making them significantly faster on modern processors.
  • Cleaner UI: The statistics bars in the Tree window have been redesigned for better readability and clarity.
  • Memory Mapped Files: Underlying file operations now use memory mapping (FileMap) for faster database reading and writing.

Tree and Statistics Window

3. Improved Variation Navigation

Navigating complex game trees is now more intuitive.

  • Keyboard Navigation: Enhanced support for navigating through variations using keyboard arrow keys, allowing for a smoother review flow.
  • Main Line Logic: Improved handling of main lines and variation promotion.

Variation Navigation

Other Improvements

User Interface

  • Header Search Redesign: The Header Search window has been completely rewritten using a grid layout. It is now more compact, aligned, and includes a collapsible "Find games with" flags section.
  • Dark Theme Polish: improved scrollbars and treeview styling for the Dark Theme.
  • Clipboard Import: You can now paste PGN content directly via the board toolbar.
  • Dynamic Menus: Menus in various windows now automatically collapse into an overflow button (...) when the window width is too small.

Tcl/Tk 9 Compatibility

It now runs with either Tcl/Tk 8.6 or Tcl/Tk 9. This update ensures the application is future-proof and ready to leverage the performance improvements and features introduced in the library, while maintaining full backward compatibility.

Tools & Scripting

  • Lichess Broadcast Downloader: The download_lichess_broadcasts.sh script has been completely rewritten.
    • Now POSIX-compliant (runs on Linux, macOS, MinGW).
    • Supports both Bulk Mode (fast, archived games) and API Mode (live/recent tournaments).
    • Added date filtering and dependency checks (curl/wget).

Fixes

  • UCI Parsing Fix: Fixed an issue where null characters or malformed separators in engine output could break the UCI parser.
  • Null Move Handling: Fixed generation of UCI position strings when null moves are present in the game history.
  • Score Notation: Default engine score notation reset to none (raw score) for better consistency.
  • Focus Handling: Improved keyboard focus handling for engine options; specific options can now be targeted programmatically.
  • Lazy Loading: Implemented ::legacy_engine lazy loading for various tools (Tactics, Review Game, etc.) to significantly speed up Scid's startup time.
  • Dialog Placement: Fixed an issue where pop-up dialogs would appear in the center of the screen instead of near the mouse pointer.
  • Input Validation: Added "debouncing" to file path entry fields in Preferences to prevent validation errors while typing.
  • Responsive Menus: Added logic to collapse toolbar buttons into menus automatically when window width is insufficient.
  • Animation Control: Board animations are now suspended during heavy processing tasks to prevent UI lag.
  • Unicode Support: Full support for UTF-8 filenames and paths via the new FileMap class (fixing issues opening databases with non-ASCII names).
  • Thread Safety: Implemented std::atomic for filter counters to ensure safety during multithreaded searches.
  • Testing: Integrated GoogleTest framework. New unit tests added for FileMap, Game logic, and Engine communication.
  • Fixed redundant database switching if the target base is already active.
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