Fairy-Max bug-fix released

[hgm]

The version of Fairy-Max that is available on my web-site now seems to be reasonably free of bugs (Fairy-Max 4.8s).

In contrast to all earlier versions, it can now retrieve information from its hash table (before, I accidentally used a variable that contained the hash key for something else, overwriting the key.) Apart from the normal benifits of hashing, this means it can now also recognize rep-draws again (the game history is stored in the hash table).

An added feature is that it can switch variants while running, so that the user no longer has to edit the fmax.ini file to put the game definition in front. All definitions can be present simultaneous in the file, preceeded by there name, and on receiving the 'variant' command it simply scans the file for the variant name, and starts loading from that point on.

Currently defined variants (defined in the fmax.ini that you should download with it) are Shatranj, Courier, Knightmate and Capablanca, and of course normal FIDE Chess. Only Capblanca has tuned piece values, though, the rest are just wild guesses, so it might play very poor there. I tested Gothic Chess (which should have the same piece values as Capablanca) against TSCP-Gothic, and it seems that in blitz (40/2' on C2D 2.4GHz) it is about 125 points weaker than the latter. Which I consider a good result, as TSCP-Gothic is really an advanced engine compared to its primitive sibbling TSCP.