WinBoard-AA beta release

[Carlos777]

In the swiss crazyhouse tournament I am running with Winboard AA, there are 2 problems:

1. When I wanted to add a new engine via Engine>Load first engine>Click on 3 dots button, Windows 4.6.2 folder appeared from the start, so when I changed the folder, the program closed. I have to say that I have:

Winboard AA installed on C:\Winboard
Winboard 4.6.2 installed on C:\WinBoard-4.6.2 (used for standard chess)
Winboard 4.8.0 installed on C:\WinBoard-4.8.0 (used for chess variants)

Maybe is something related to the winboard.ini with so many versions.

This happened until last sunday, not sure what have changed, now it works fine.

2. Sometimes, let's say 30% of the time, after one game concludes, the next one does not start and WB does not show any error message. So, I have to close the windows of the recent finished game, modify the tournament file (because there is an asterisk on the position where the next game should be). Then, I open a new WB instance and keep going with the tournament. I am not sure if this is related to some engines or WB. Anyway, it happens with many different engines, that is my doubt.

I have to say that I have run many swiss tournaments on Winboard 4.6.2 and had no problems, so I can let the tournament run without supervision, although the difference is these swiss tournaments were for regular chess.

[Guenther]

In the swiss crazyhouse tournament I am running with Winboard AA, there are 2 problems:

1. When I wanted to add a new engine via Engine>Load first engine>Click on 3 dots button, Windows 4.6.2 folder appeared from the start, so when I changed the folder, the program closed. I have to say that I have:

Winboard AA installed on C:\Winboard
Winboard 4.6.2 installed on C:\WinBoard-4.6.2 (used for standard chess)
Winboard 4.8.0 installed on C:\WinBoard-4.8.0 (used for chess variants)

Maybe is something related to the winboard.ini with so many versions.

This happened until last sunday, not sure what have changed, now it works fine.

2. Sometimes, let's say 30% of the time, after one game concludes, the next one does not start and WB does not show any error message. So, I have to close the windows of the recent finished game, modify the tournament file (because there is an asterisk on the position where the next game should be). Then, I open a new WB instance and keep going with the tournament. I am not sure if this is related to some engines or WB. Anyway, it happens with many different engines, that is my doubt.

I have to say that I have run many swiss tournaments on Winboard 4.6.2 and had no problems, so I can let the tournament run without supervision, although the difference is these swiss tournaments were for regular chess.

I don't think it is a good idea to have several installations at the same time, because of the winboard.ini (and other shared data?).
I have also several Winboard folders here, but only one installation and also no such old versions as 4.62.
(the self created adapted copies of specialized folders, one for ZH only e.g., don't interfer with the original installation and even the original installation is only for registering
some file types, otherwise I absolutely like the portable usage w/o installation, but that's my preference)

[hgm]

Well, the first time Rodent is started, XBoard waits with sending the option command for the personality file ('amy.txt') until after receiving the option feature for it, and having acknowledged that with an 'accepted' command. Rodent again acknowledges reception of the new setting by an info string 'reading ...'. It also sends such an acknowledgement after you change the setting to 'dory.txt' from the settings dialog.

But when you then start a new game, which starts a fresh engine process, XBoard is less patient, and already sends the option setting (still 'dory.txt') immediately after it sends 'protover 2', without waiting for the engine to say anything. 'protover' triggers sending of the 'uci' command to the engine. The engine now does not acknowledge this with a 'read' info string. Some non-standard personality still seems to be applied, however, as Rodent searches only 2 ply?!?

The next start the personality file is again set immediately after 'protover 2'. But now it is 'chris.txt'?!? How did it get changed? Again there is no acknowledgemet, but before playing any moves you change the setting to 'amy.txt' by hand, which is acknowledged.

You then start Rodent again, and now XBoard does not attempt to set the option at all. Neither after 'protover', nor in response to the option feature. So there is also no acknowledgement, and indeed Rodent seems to search full depth. Why would XBoard no longer think the setting 'amy.txt' has to be applied? Did you order a reload of the engine here, rather than just starting a new game (which for reuse=0 implies a reload, keeping the settings)?

I don't understand why Rodent would sometimes fail to acknowledge the reading of a personality file. In all cases the engine recives 'uci' and then 'setoption' for the personality file.

I am sorry I have to ask this, but could you make and post another xboard.debug where the UCI2WB debug mode is also on? For this you would have to reconfigure XBoard with

-uxiAdapter {uci2wb debug -%variant "%fcd" "%fd"}

This would also show us what (and when) UCI2WB sent to and received from the engine.

[hgm]

I don't think it is a good idea to have several installations at the same time, because of the winboard.ini (and other shared data?).

Well, the WinBoard-AA install explicitly promised to be possible next to other WinBoard installs: it uses a separate ini file for the user settings (specified in the winboard.ini in its own folder). So there should be no interaction at all with other WinBoard installs. (It also doesn't define file associations.)

[Guenther]

I don't think it is a good idea to have several installations at the same time, because of the winboard.ini (and other shared data?).

Well, the WinBoard-AA install explicitly promised to be possible next to other WinBoard installs: it uses a separate ini file for the user settings (specified in the winboard.ini in its own folder). So there should be no interaction at all with other WinBoard installs. (It also doesn't define file associations.)

Good to know :) but this surely doesn't work good for old 4.62 and 4.80 together? (he wrote he has installed ALL of them)
(From WB_AA I only used WB itself the new bitmaps and the updated UCI2WB adapter, no installation)

Edit:
Actually I have no WB installed at all, I checked it now again, but as I said
that's just my preference. This I way I can simply create backups and use
them on each other system I like as for all other portable software.

[styx]

-uxiAdapter {uci2wb debug -%variant "%fcd" "%fd"}

after starting xboard with this parameter, uci2wb seems to be broken:

ERROR: UCI2WB: . died on me


*edit* I think "%fcd" should be "%fcp", right? at least now it works again

[hgm]

1. When I wanted to add a new engine via Engine>Load first engine>Click on 3 dots button, Windows 4.6.2 folder appeared from the start, so when I changed the folder, the program closed.

Indeed, you mentioned something like that before. But I (and others) could not reproduce it.

As soon as you are in the file-selector, browsing for the engine, you are no longer exercising WinBoard code, but are in a Windows system function. I have no idea why that could crash. Normally control would only go back to WinBoard once you selected the file, reporting what it had done. It cannot be excluded that passing invalid parameters to the dialog could cause it to crash during operation. But it is very strange this would happen just when navigating between folders.

I have to say that I have:

2. Sometimes, let's say 30% of the time, after one game concludes, the next one does not start and WB does not show any error message. So, I have to close the windows of the recent finished game, modify the tournament file (because there is an asterisk on the position where the next game should be). Then, I open a new WB instance and keep going with the tournament. I am not sure if this is related to some engines or WB. Anyway, it happens with many different engines, that is my doubt.

Is that both with UCI and WB engines? It is strange (and wrong) that WB would leave a * in the tournament file for games that are interrupted; normally it would remove that when it exits. So I guess it must have been really hanging in some system code. 30% is quite a lot.

I have to say that I have run many swiss tournaments on Winboard 4.6.2 and had no problems, so I can let the tournament run without supervision, although the difference is these swiss tournaments were for regular chess.

In principle 4.6.2 should also be capable to do Crazyhouse tournaments. The only thing special on the WB-AA version is that it uses the anti-aliased piece bitmaps with transparancy. And that it was configured to use UCI2WB instead of Polyglot. But I think you could do that in 4.6.2 too. It is only UCI2WB that is the new development.

[styx]

it's hard for me to reproduce this bug since I don't know how to do it with 100% success

[Carlos777]

Good to know but this surely doesn't work good for old 4.62 and 4.80 together? (he wrote he has installed ALL of them)

Actually, only WB 4.6.2 is installed, I had a back up of WB 4.8.0 with many engines and just copied the folder to C:\

[Carlos777]

Is that both with UCI and WB engines? It is strange (and wrong) that WB would leave a * in the tournament file for games that are interrupted; normally it would remove that when it exits. So I guess it must have been really hanging in some system code. 30% is quite a lot.

Yes, both. And it is almost sure when both are UCI, because SF does not know it is playing crazyhouse if not set from the start. I set it up like this:

"Stockfish 021116" -fcp "stockfish-windows-amd64-modern 021116.exe" -fd "..\sf021116" -fn "Stockfish 021116" -fUCI

Maybe it is possible to configure the line above in order to always plays crazyhouse.

Yes, all the times I have to edit the tournament file to delete the * for the game that did not start.

In principle 4.6.2 should also be capable to do Crazyhouse tournaments. The only thing special on the WB-AA version is that it uses the anti-aliased piece bitmaps with transparancy. And that it was configured to use UCI2WB instead of Polyglot. But I think you could do that in 4.6.2 too. It is only UCI2WB that is the new development.

I kept 4.6.2 because it is very stable and I like it for regular chess.