Chess software ''Talk 64'' launched

Margao, Oct 10 (UNI) ''Talk 64'', a chess software especially designed for visually-challenged players, was officially lauched today at the XIth Individual World Chess Championship for the Blind 2006 in progress here.

It has been developed by the GTL Foundation, an arm of GTL Limited.

''Talk 64'' is claimed to be the only fully featured chess software in the world which has complete speech support, speaking out every single move played on the chess board. Thus, even visually-challenged players are kept informed about the moves that have been played, a GTL Foundation release said here.

A chatter feature has been provided, whereby the software interacts with the player via comments which gives the player the feeling that he or she is playing with another person.

''Talk 64'' helps a player enhance his or her skills by providing an analysis feature. Games can be saved and resumed and later analyzed as well. The voice, speed and pitch of the speech can be customized according to the user's performance, and sighted players can use the software without speech. Full speech is supported in English and German.

''Talk 64'' supports engine plug-in architecture, whereby a user can download freely available chess engines supporting the winboard protocol, and plug them in to the software very easily. It also supports a synthesier plug-in architecture, whereby the user can easily plug in various speech synthesizers supporting the microsoft speech API 5.1, to get the benefit of various voices and voice quality.

For self-learning, database of over 100,000 games from interntional tournaments as well as games of world champions have been provided. All the various opening traps with their sub-variation, along with middle and end games, from both sides (black and white) have been provided for analysis and learning. This would greatly enhance chess playing skills, according to the press release.

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