Excited by progress on the new Lazarus-based GUI, I've decided to make a prerelease of AHEM version 0.5 so that all of those who've been waiting for the new GUI can take a peek. You can download the Windows prerelease here - just unzip the files and run ahemgui.exe. The following items still remain before 0.5 is officially released:

• Implementation of the "machine gunning" rule
• Visual representation of cows in hand during first phase (slightly irritating in the prerelease)
• Selection of skill levels in the GUI
• Engine shared library and GUI binaries for Linux

The prerelease already contains the best Morabaraba engine I've ever released. This version can also be compiled (without any source code changes) by GCC, MSVC and the Intel C Compiler, increasing performance and removing the Cygwin dependency.

So what comes in 0.6?

• Completion of the PHP bindings
• Basic AJAX-based web interface
• First cut of the Free Internet Morabaraba Server
• Create your own board/piece themes
• Board as reusable control
• Graphical FIMS client
• With any luck I will be able to squeeze in a strength boost - perhaps from killer moves or transposition tables (which ought to make a HUGE difference)

I guess this means that I've switched a few things around (the GUI was down for later in the roadmap, where the AJAX stuff was to come sooner), but Lazarus made building a cross platform GUI feasible and easy enough that I decided to take it on now - enjoy!