This website is an all encompasing information source for the XiangQi Engine project. In its pages you will find the latest news items to read, quicklinks to the latest releases, the complete and current CXBoard protocol specification, sources of information being used by the developers, and other tidbits of useful information. Developers can use this site to get the information they require to develop conforming interfaces and/or engines as well as a staging point for their own research in chess engine theory. Users will find things like the rules for XiangQi as well as a list of conforming engines and interfaces.

The purpose of the XiangQi Engine Project is twofold: to provide a free and open source program to play and analyze Chinese Chess games; and to establish a working protocol for the communication between Chinese Chess engines and graphical interfaces (an XBoard for Chinese Chess). The first of these goals is implemented in the tsito engine, which can be compiled and run on a variety of systems. The second is implemented in what has been titled the CXBoard protocol, which is a derivative of the XBoard protocol by Tim Mann.

At this time the goals of this project have been partially met by the tsito engine and an alpha version of the protocol. A new version of the engine is being designed at this time to use a bitmap based board representation; a technique well known in the international chess arena but not widely used for XiangQi. The CXBoard protocol is complete enough to use but lacks certain controls to make it complete; developer feedback is appreciated and hereby requested in order to solidify and formalize the standard. Discussion of this and other topics should take place in the Open Discussion forum.