Shokidoki wins silver at ICGA Olympiad for 5x5 Shogi

[TonyJH]

Congrats H.G.. Can WinBoard support variant minishogi? I made a version of TJshogi that plays minishogi too, but I haven't really tested it. I'm sure it has the same problems you had at first (piece values, etc.).

[hgm]

Yes, it was intended to do so, but it had some problems when I first tried it. Mini-Shogi is not a separately named variant, but a sub-variant of normal Shogi with a different board size. So you have to use the options /boardHeight=5 /boardWidth=5 /holdingsSize=5. Furthermore, you have to tell WinBoard that the Knight and Lance are not participating, to prevent it from reserving space in the holdings for these piece types. This is done by /pieceToCharTable="P.BR.S...G.+.++.+Kp.br.s...g.+.++.+k".

A consequence of this is that WinBoard will send variant 5x5+5_shogi to the engine to indicate mini-Shogi (and 6x6+6_shogi could, for example, be Judkins Shogi). The engine must say it supports this to WB at startup, or WB would refuse to send it: feature variants="shogi,5x5+5_shogi".

The size of the promotion zone was all wrong, though, as for Shogi WB had that fixed to 3 ranks (and there are no options to set it). I changed it to the board height divided by 3, rounded down, which should work in mini-Shogi (5/3 = 1 rank), Judkins Shogi (6/3 = 2 ranks) and normal Shogi (9/3 = 3 ranks). Because WB encoded promotion internally as promotion to Queen (which in Shogi is used as Lance), the absence of the Lance exposed a bug that I had to fix before I could play mini-Shogi. (All promotions were flagged as illegal first...) There also was some weirdness in SAN output, which I only discovered during the tourney, as Kc1-d1 was taken to be a castling by the SAN generator, and output as O-O!

I will post a fixed version of WinBoard later today, after I sorted out all the hacks I have made to it during my trip.

I will then also post a version of Shokidoki that can do both mini-Shogi and regular Shogi. (Out of fear for breaking something, I made separate versions for those during the tourney, as I had not enough time to test.)

[hgm]

OK, I uploaded a file with a new WinBoard and latest Shogidoki, to

http://hgm.nubati.net/WinBoard-SG.zip

It can play both Regular Shogi and mini-Shogi with the same Shokidoki executable; for mini-Shogi a shortcut is included to invoke WinBoard with the required board-modifyng options.

[shogi4fun]

Congrats H.G.. Can WinBoard support variant minishogi? I made a version of TJshogi that plays minishogi too, but I haven't really tested it. I'm sure it has the same problems you had at first (piece values, etc.).

Hi Tony,

is this version of TJshogi able to play minishogi an extra program? I've downloaded both WB- and USI-version of TJshogi, but I was not able to make it minishogi play.

By the way: I'm the author of BCMShogi and for a short time I have added Mini- and Judkins-Shogi to BCMShogi, but still not released yet.
First I was searching for an engine. Unfortunately PetitShogi (the only available minishogi engine I knew at that point) has a bug (read also here).

How have you realized the interface?
For this, PetitShogi (SSP.EXE) have done nice things: it can autodetect the game-type, by simply sending it for example a 5x5-SFEN.

Shokidoki is already working with BCMShogi (9x9 and 5x5) - much thanks to H.G.Muller.
Still have to do some (no, a looooooooot) of testing.

BCM

[TonyJH]

Hi Bernhard,
Yes, the minishogi version is a separate program, and I did not put it on my website yet.
To make it support minishogi under winboard properly, I'll have to have it report it supports "5x5+5_shogi" as H.G. mentioned. Of course that's no problem. I have not tried making a USI minishogi version, so just WB so far.

[shogi4fun]

Hi Bernhard,
Yes, the minishogi version is a separate program, and I did not put it on my website yet.
To make it support minishogi under winboard properly, I'll have to have it report it supports "5x5+5_shogi" as H.G. mentioned. Of course that's no problem. I have not tried making a USI minishogi version, so just WB so far.

Something new?

Is there any download of TJminishogi?