Wandering trought the barren lands of non professional progs

[fern]

I begun the thread precisely because I have not found any of interest, yet. I wanted to be illuminated by some other pals

My best
fernando

[Christopher Conkie]

I begun the thread precisely because I have not found any of interest, yet. I wanted to be illuminated by some other pals

My best
fernando

"You can dance.....you can jive....."
"Having the time of your life....."

http://hem.passagen.se/kurtglim/waxmane.htm?k



Christopher

[Alessandro Scotti]

This one was bundled with OS X 10.3:

http://www.freeverse.com/games/game/?id=4015

It's not strong at all, but fun to play with.

[genorb]

One example is "chenard" (author Don Cross), this chess program comes with is own GUI and I don't think it is a UCI or winboard engine. It is difficult to find it nowaday, but there is still a copy here

ftp://ftp.pitt.edu/group/student-activi ... rvers.com/

[nczempin]

One example is "chenard" (author Don Cross), this chess program comes with is own GUI and I don't think it is a UCI or winboard engine. It is difficult to find it nowaday, but there is still a copy here

ftp://ftp.pitt.edu/group/student-activi ... rvers.com/

What I am wondering about such programs: Do the authors of these programs live in their own vacuum, and have they never heard of UCI and WB?

[genorb]

The last version of Chenard is already quite old (1997). I think at that time the winboard protocol was not yet so popular and the UCI protocol was released end 2000. The last version of PAX is dated from end 2001 but the project started much sooner, 1996. I had contact with that author. And at that time (1998-1999) I put him in contact with Michael Borgstät (author of Goliath) because Michael Borgstät wanted to develop a GUI to sell Goliath and was not able to do it himself (at least at that time). In 2001, it's true that both protocol was then existing but I think that the author was also interested to develop is own GUI, so no real need of winboard or UCI protocol. Of course now if you want to make engines compete together then you need those protocols but I think the author of PAX was not necessarily aware that such competitions could interest someone. And remember that at the beginning the real purpose of the winboard protocol was to provide an "universal" GUI for chess program authors which were not able to create one themself. It was not done to make engines compete together. Moreover, I am not sure that, at that time, there were so much testing compared to now.

A friend of mine developed sometime ago a chess problem but it was for his own pleasure, just to see that he was able to do a chess program. So he didn't look at the protocols, he looked at the algorithms (alpha-beta etc.).

[GenoM]

Yes Olivier make something great -- giving a chance and room for weaker engines is really great.
Thanks, Olivier!

Regards,
Geno

[slobo]

I am sure you have, from time to time, as me, navigated in exotic sites or just common downloading locations to see what chess programs they have. Sometimes we tend to believe that the chess universe is just the sum of commercial + the known freeware we see in specialized places. And although this is just enough to populate the landscape with hundreds of engines, in fact there are even more programs out there. Some are commercial, some not. Common to all or almost all of them is that You never get the name of the author. Else: they are extremely weak, fact that could be amazing as much any software house desirous to launch a decent program could, from sure, put a hand on many if not in any of the 100 engines that are more than 2000 elo strong. Seems like they, on purpose, arm his programs with weak engines to give pleasure to the casual player that by chance download them.
Now my question: have you ever found one or two of them worthy of a second look?
I would like to know and see.

My best
Fernando

Have you tried "BabyChess" ?

[fern]

I saw something about it, the one with the ladies, but for some reason I did not download it. It is worthy the effort?
fernando

[slobo]

I saw something about it, the one with the ladies, but for some reason I did not download it. It is worthy the effort?
fernando

No, it is an innocent black&white standalone program that you can trash without thinking.