Scid fork and Phalanx news

[hgm]

Any chance of implementing millisecond time controls in computer matches for ultrafast matches?

It seems to work fine now. Just input a decimal value (".2" for eg) in the time dialog, instead of using the arrows which only selects integers.

The only issue is that the xboard command is "st SECONDS". Testing phalanx, it says: "ENGINE 2 says: Error: "st:" expected integer , but got .2", so it looks like your mileage may vary. UCI time slice is given in milliseconds, so .2 becomes "go movetime 200.0" which works fine with Robo,Stock and Toga.

Note that we are in the process of defining an extended level command in WinBoard protocol. This command would allow the increment parameter of the level command to be a float, rather than an int. (The latest WinBoard development version already does this.) Of course it will be dependent on the engine if it would understand this. But WB engine athors are encoraged to already start parsing the level command as if the increments could be fractional (which is upward compatible with tme being integer, so there is never any danger in this).

[shiv]

Scid does support polyglot books, it would be great if those can be used during the matches.

I'll certainly look at in the next couple of weeks, but i'm a little confused. Is the idea to select different books for each competitor , or have them use the same book (which would involve fewer new widgets). And wouldn't it be ok to have the matches start at a certain position (which would be easy to code too) and seems to me to suffice.

The latest release can always be got from

Code: Select all

svn co https://scidvspc.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/scidvspc

Since 4.1 i've added some extra code to catch malformed "feature" lines which may allow a few more engines to work (specifically, Zct).

Personally, I prefer the book solution so that book learning can be implemented at some point. The benefit of this approach is that the computers learn from the games and play better openings game after game, and humans can see the effect of an automatically tuned opening book. Same book support is fine to start with, though to test book quality, people might be interested in using the same engine but with different books. The fritz/shredder interfaces have this feature but are not open source.

PGN support is useful as well, though it is hard to do capture learning.

Thanks for considering this feature request.

[stevenaaus]

Personally, I prefer the book solution so that book learning can be implemented at some point. The benefit of this approach is that the computers learn from the games and play better openings game after game

This is an interesting idea i never thought of, and probably isn't too hard to implement given the power of Scid.

It'll be good to flesh out the Tournament feature over time, but i'm not prepared to delve seriously into books yet. I have added a "Start from Position" feature into svn. Thanks for the feedback.

[stevenaaus]

I've coded si4 support , so it's now compatible with the latest Scid database format. Configuring on 64bit operating systems should be fine now too.

Testing is welcome (please backup any important DBs first), and after a while i'll make a proper release with windows binaries.

svn co https://scidvspc.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/scidvspc

[Mithu]

A few minor suggestions ( not worth wasting too much time

1.Whether its the regular SCID ( PG) or ScidvsPC, a splash screen asking me whether I wanted to play a game, or use the database function, was something I prayed for.
For a feature that started as a side-note, to becoming a well developed (developing?) one, this welcome screen would serve to highlight the multi-featured program, and also make it easy for novices instead of having to navigate around, initially.

2.How about using bitmaps in all parts of the screen windows other than just the board?
Right now the board window looks good but bitmaps would really make it 'MY toy'.

3.Hand cursors while moving pieces?

4.Option to remove menu icons in Engine windows ( frankly they are not pretty)? Instead these menu options could be seen while right-clicking the window...

5.The Game info window may be configured to just show the Players name and the whole notation instead of the event and other PGN-fit info that wouldn't be useful for day to day use.

I am really enjoying this program, therefore I hope my suggestions are taken positively.

[stevenaaus]

A few minor suggestions ( not worth wasting too much time

1.Whether its the regular SCID ( PG) or ScidvsPC, a splash screen asking me whether I wanted to play a game, or use the database function, was something I prayed for.
For a feature that started as a side-note, to becoming a well developed (developing?) one, this welcome screen would serve to highlight the multi-featured program, and also make it easy for novices instead of having to navigate around, initially.

Yeah... something needs to be done here. I've spent ages thinking it over in my head, but am still unsure of the best approach.....

2.How about using bitmaps in all parts of the screen windows other than just the board?
Right now the board window looks good but bitmaps would really make it 'MY toy'.

What are you thinking ? The Gameinfo widget and Menubar can be hidden using the two rightmost large buttons .

5.The Game info window may be configured to just show the Players name and the whole notation instead of the event and other PGN-fit info that wouldn't be useful for day to day use.

I've restructured this again... It's an on-going thing. Looks like -

[Mithu]

That Pic of yours has a better look than mine

BTW the backgrounds could not be changed, in your version?

And if you meant the game info window then ... yes . It is definitely an improvement

But is the 'next move' and 'previous move' more important than the whole game notation ? That was what I wanted to simplify...

AND thanks for your reply.

[luisrodg]

You mention you can play on FICS but can this be used to put an engine to play on a server? Don't have my comp with me right now so ant download to see.

[stevenaaus]

> BTW the backgrounds could not be changed, in your version?

No... every thing is still changeable :>

The game info widget down the bottom is the only thing that is hard to change
via options because of Scid's internal structure. It is coded in C++,
instead of tcl, where things are are much easier to change via options in the GUI.

> But is the 'next move' and 'previous move' more important than the whole game
> notation ? That was what I wanted to simplify

You're right... the game notation is probably more important than all that info that's
currently cluttered there.

Why don't i change it then ? Hmmm... It's a decent sized rewrite to put the PGN
window where the gameinfo currently is.. Another consideration is that the
PGN window is quite/very slow (especially at the end of large games) because it is
chock full of big hyperlinks handled by a slow Tcl widget... Rewriting this for speed
is a serious undertaking and one i'll probably never get around too. I've looked at
speeding it up without a rewrite, but without much luck so-far. Perhaps a way exists .?.?

[stevenaaus]

You mention you can play on FICS but can this be used to put an engine to play on a server? Don't have my comp with me right now so ant download to see.

I believe you are only allowed to use computer engines on Fics when you have clearly said so (when creating the Fics account). Doing otherwise is cheating , and there's no point in it really. Both you and your opponent lose.

There is no automatic method, but it is fairly easy to do with manual user input.

Start a game with Fics as usual. Start an engine with F2 or via Tools->AnalysisEngines. Click on "+" (add move) at anytime when it is your move.
I havent tested this myself (finger stevenaaus for my dismal blitz rating!), but can't see why it won't work.