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What should I support, UCI or Winboard?
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Daniel Shawul



Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 2283
Location: Ethiopia
PostPost subject: Re: Winboard ftw    Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 3:21 pm Reply to topic Reply with quote
Quote:

I like the design with a referee engine. It means that only the author of the first engine for a certain game is burdoned with things like rule enforcement, result adjudication, (and optionally move highlighting). Any later engine could be 'light weight', and omit implementation of the parts of the protocol involved in these tasks. The GUI would use the heavy-weight engine as referee, consulting it to obtain the required rule knowledge.

It is the best design for board games IMO. It is basically part of the GUI in a separate executable. This separation gives great freedom to game inventors without the core GUI code (i.e painting stuff) not being touched. Rule checking (legal move or not) ,highlighting or any other fancy stuff could all be put there taking away much off the burdon for known games. You can even make the whole design of winboard (not only the alien edition) like this without anyone noticing it. Automatically loading a simplistic referee engine in the background should do it. If the user wants other games, he switches the referee engine. Even older engines which do not support alien protocol can be played with no problem. The design provides a neat template for future games...

Quote:

I might convert WinBoard / XBoard to utilize this scheme. In fact these are already sort of using this method: the first engine is always following the currently displayed position, even in Edit Game mode, judging move legality. So the referee engine in fact is already there. But currently you cannot play against any other engine than the referee engine, and when two engines play, it is always the referee against another.

So what I would have to do is allow active use of the second engine (for analysis or human-engine play) where the first engine remains following the game in force mode silently (unless there are illegal moves, or it detects game end). It seems a good feature anyway to make it possible to analyze with two engines at once, which requires nearly the same code change (just refraining from silencing the referee). And for engine-engine games there would have to be a third engine. Although that would be less important, as the referee is mainly needed for implementing functions that involve humans. (Who make mistakes during move entry, want to see target squares highlighted, and one-click moving to be available.)

I think you should do it. For one nobody will notice the change (important for the mass user Smile ), since the standard chess referee will be loded by default but it gives a simple way to add the alien stuff. The referee engine is loaded at startup and is blocked on input (no cpu time is lost). Then whenever an input is recieved from any of the two (or more) playing engines, it simply sends it to the referee FIRST, then the referee checks for legality, highlights, adjuncates and do other stuff, after which the next engine to play will be sent the same move info. This reminds me also about multi-player games where this design will also simplify. No white,black or red color. Existing winboard engines that have no idea of multiple colors can play multi-player games or other types of weird pairings. It is better if the engine doesn't try to figure whose turn it is to allow complex pairings. The refree can do such things and others we may not have thought about yet.
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Subject Author Date/Time
What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Asim Pereira Sun Apr 22, 2012 5:28 am
      Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Ted Wong Sun Apr 22, 2012 6:26 am
            Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Asim Pereira Sun Apr 22, 2012 7:39 am
                  Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Ted Wong Sun Apr 22, 2012 9:14 am
                        Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Sun Apr 22, 2012 9:32 am
      Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Sun Apr 22, 2012 8:27 am
            Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Aart Bik Tue Apr 24, 2012 9:54 pm
                  Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Daniel Mehrmann Wed Apr 25, 2012 6:17 am
                        Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:55 am
                              Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Daniel Mehrmann Wed Apr 25, 2012 5:57 pm
      Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Matthias Gemuh Sun Apr 22, 2012 3:04 pm
            Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Sun Apr 22, 2012 6:48 pm
                  Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Matthias Gemuh Sun Apr 22, 2012 8:14 pm
                        Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Sun Apr 22, 2012 9:10 pm
                              Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Miguel A. Ballicora Sun Apr 22, 2012 9:19 pm
                                    Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Evert Glebbeek Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:25 am
                                          Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Mon Apr 23, 2012 6:54 am
                                                Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Evert Glebbeek Mon Apr 23, 2012 8:50 am
                              Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Ronald de Man Sun Apr 22, 2012 11:23 pm
                                    Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Carlos Pesce Sun Apr 22, 2012 11:34 pm
                                          Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Christopher Conkie Mon Apr 23, 2012 12:11 am
                                                Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Carlos Pesce Tue Apr 24, 2012 12:12 am
                                                      Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Christopher Conkie Tue Apr 24, 2012 1:18 pm
                                                            Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 1:25 pm
                                                                  Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Christopher Conkie Tue Apr 24, 2012 1:34 pm
                                                                        Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 1:37 pm
                                                                              Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Christopher Conkie Tue Apr 24, 2012 1:45 pm
                                                                                    Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 1:53 pm
                                                                                          Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Christopher Conkie Tue Apr 24, 2012 2:27 pm
      Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Christopher Conkie Sun Apr 22, 2012 10:42 pm
            Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Mon Apr 23, 2012 8:07 am
                  Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Ted Wong Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:43 am
                        Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Mon Apr 23, 2012 11:16 am
                              Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Christopher Conkie Tue Apr 24, 2012 1:00 pm
                                    Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 1:04 pm
                                          Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Christopher Conkie Tue Apr 24, 2012 3:09 pm
                                                Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 4:50 pm
                                                      Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Asim Pereira Tue Apr 24, 2012 5:29 pm
                                                            Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Michel Van den Bergh Tue Apr 24, 2012 6:07 pm
                                                            Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Miguel A. Ballicora Tue Apr 24, 2012 6:16 pm
                        Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Evert Glebbeek Mon Apr 23, 2012 11:25 am
                        Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Tony Mokonen Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:00 pm
      Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Don Dailey Mon Apr 23, 2012 1:44 pm
            Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Mon Apr 23, 2012 2:11 pm
                  Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Don Dailey Mon Apr 23, 2012 2:51 pm
                        Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Mon Apr 23, 2012 6:01 pm
                              Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Ronald de Man Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:33 pm
                                    Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:49 pm
                                          Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Ronald de Man Mon Apr 23, 2012 9:03 pm
                                                Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Mon Apr 23, 2012 9:31 pm
                              Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Don Dailey Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:34 pm
                                    Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Mon Apr 23, 2012 9:15 pm
                                    Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Michel Van den Bergh Tue Apr 24, 2012 6:23 am
                                          Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 8:19 am
                                                Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Evert Glebbeek Tue Apr 24, 2012 8:39 am
      Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Daniel Mehrmann Mon Apr 23, 2012 9:49 pm
            Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:08 pm
                  Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Daniel Mehrmann Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:42 pm
                        Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 5:36 am
                              Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Daniel Mehrmann Tue Apr 24, 2012 6:50 am
                                    Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 7:17 am
                                          Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Daniel Mehrmann Tue Apr 24, 2012 7:42 am
                                                Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 7:49 am
                                                      Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Daniel Mehrmann Tue Apr 24, 2012 8:16 am
                                                            Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 8:35 am
                                                                  Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Daniel Mehrmann Tue Apr 24, 2012 8:50 am
                                                                        Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 9:08 am
                                                                              Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Ed Schroder Tue Apr 24, 2012 10:16 am
                                                                                    Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 11:57 am
                                                                              Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Daniel Mehrmann Tue Apr 24, 2012 7:45 pm
                                                                                    Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 8:06 pm
      Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Jon Dart Tue Apr 24, 2012 1:45 am
            Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 5:44 am
                  Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? Jon Dart Tue Apr 24, 2012 11:15 am
                        Re: What should I support, UCI or Winboard? H.G.Muller Tue Apr 24, 2012 12:32 pm
      Winboard ftw Daniel Shawul Wed Apr 25, 2012 2:10 pm
            Re: Winboard ftw H.G.Muller Wed Apr 25, 2012 2:45 pm
                  Re: Winboard ftw Daniel Shawul Wed Apr 25, 2012 3:21 pm
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