1. Is there a way to enter moves using a format such as P@c4 with the mouse? I wanted to try playing some reversi engines, but didn't seem to find a way to enter moves other than through the keyboard.
2. I recently converted the SamChess engine to play nightrider chess, a variant that is not one of the variants listed in the File->New Variant menu. What would be the proper character for a move that underpromotes to a nightrider? I looked at the source of FaileNR and it seems to send an 'n' character, but other engines send an 'h' instead.
Even more Winboard/xboard alien/variant questions
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tmokonen
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hgm
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Re: Even more Winboard/xboard alien/variant questions
You can still use the old way for dropping pieces (from before I added graphical holdings to the board in bughouse), which is right-clicking the square on which you want to drop. This used to bring up a drop menu from which you could select the piece to drop, but I stream-lined that a bit in the Alien Edition, by skipping that menu in variants where only a single piece type participates (such as Go and Reversi).
Be sure to set /dropMenu=true as 'Additional options', though, otherwise right-clicking starts a PV walk (using the main board as 'variation board').
As Nightrider Chess is not known to WinBoard, there is no standard for it. WinBoard does know the Nightrider piece, and in variant fairy is is indicated by H. But there is no universal assignment of letters to pieces, and each variant can define it as it pleases, through the /pieceToCharTable option. This is shared by both engines, though, so there is no way to play two engines against each other that disagree on the piece IDs.
The best solution would probably be to play it as normal Chess with legality testing off, so that WB doesn't care that the engines move the Knight as a Nightrider. Then at least WB thinks it is playing from the standard opening position, and doesn't send any FENs or edit commands to the engine, so it is not very important how the engines encode the pieces. Only under-promotions would be messed up, in that case.
Beware that engines without rep-draw detection in search are prone to crashing in Nightrider Chess, as mutual perpetual checking is possible, and in combination with check extension causes infinite search depth.
Be sure to set /dropMenu=true as 'Additional options', though, otherwise right-clicking starts a PV walk (using the main board as 'variation board').
As Nightrider Chess is not known to WinBoard, there is no standard for it. WinBoard does know the Nightrider piece, and in variant fairy is is indicated by H. But there is no universal assignment of letters to pieces, and each variant can define it as it pleases, through the /pieceToCharTable option. This is shared by both engines, though, so there is no way to play two engines against each other that disagree on the piece IDs.
The best solution would probably be to play it as normal Chess with legality testing off, so that WB doesn't care that the engines move the Knight as a Nightrider. Then at least WB thinks it is playing from the standard opening position, and doesn't send any FENs or edit commands to the engine, so it is not very important how the engines encode the pieces. Only under-promotions would be messed up, in that case.
Beware that engines without rep-draw detection in search are prone to crashing in Nightrider Chess, as mutual perpetual checking is possible, and in combination with check extension causes infinite search depth.
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tmokonen
- Posts: 1296
- Joined: Sun Mar 12, 2006 6:46 pm
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- Full name: Tony Mokonen
Re: Even more Winboard/xboard alien/variant questions
Thank you Harm, your reply was helpful, as always.