Why Penguin, Why GoRilla ?

Penguin and GoRilla were developed in my spare time over a number of years.

Both programs share a common origin - an Othello / Reversi desktop game board that I developed for my own needs, initially to teach myself C++, MFC and Windows programming, and also to give me an edge in some of my play-by-eMail games.  After a while I developed an interest in other games - Unlur and Havannah, and these games were added to my original program.  Sometime later I was in the unfortunate position of having to look for work and had an awkward gap in my curriculum vitae to fill.  I had the idea that if I could offer my program to the world as a freeware download then I would be able to add this effort to my curriculum vitae as a self starting venture.  I renewed my interest in the game of Go and added it to my program, thought up the name 'GoRilla' and launched the first public version of that program.

Enhancements and improvements were then added over subsequent years.

Then, I was invited to play Chess in the North Gloucestershire Chess League.  My moderate successes at Go, Unlur, Havannah taught me the value of having a software tool to be able to replay and analyse my games.  A similar tool for Chess was going to be a necessity and so I developed Penguin from the GoRilla code and added support for PGN.

I also had another reason for wanting to deliver GoRilla and Penguin.  Over the years I had personally benefited from a number of freeware products that I had been able to download for nothing.  In gratitude for this I considered it my duty to offer back to the world some programs of my own.

Today, both programs share a lot of common functionality.  Further development is progressing in tandem.  I am an experienced software programmer and this sort of work is what I enjoy doing.  It is a pleasure for me to spend odd moments, making occasional improvements and fixes.

I hope that you will find my editors both enjoyable and useful.

You may contact me, Dariusz Stachowski, at  [ penguin@dashstofsk.f9.co.uk ].

To help keep my interest alive in these products and to help fund further development, please consider making a donation.

Download Penguin v8.1

Download GoRilla v14.1