OFAK. Fritz’s malicious castrations

[rainhaus]

People who are only interested in short inputs and bare facts should jump to the bold typed “please note” passage immediately.

Do you know the constant companion of an operator or programmer? For sure, it is the devil in detail. I don’t want imagine all the tragedies because of this this diabolic leprechaune. I can just feel the helpless suffering, when the narrow limits of your cognitive possibilities have already been crossed, when the hotline is permanently temporarely not available and when the desperate cries for help fade away in the anonymous spaciousness of the fora, unheard.

My contribution today in this section refers to an especially malicious restriction of the Fritz GUI which only occurs during tournaments.
In a tournament game Nirvanachess 2.2 (popcount) 4CPU against Deep Rybka 4.1 SSE42x64 4CPU (what word-monsters) I permanently got a stop with the error “ Nirvanachess 2.2 (popcount) 4 is not defined”. Single tested and in matches the engine run very properly, and even a new installation didn’t change anything ( as usual in this cases). Nothing helped and I decided to let the matter rest until the next day. I can really recommend this procedure, otherwise there is a great danger to get a sudden boost of madness and then you are plunging into a deep mental abyss of lethargy and depression.
Obviously my guardian angel has done a big job overnight. Waking up towards midday I rubbed my well rested eyes and really, the devil was banished out of the detail. Checking again the EngTourn.cbh, with hundreds of listed engine pairings, I saw it on the expanded screen: Nirvanachess 2.2 (popcount) 4 - Deep Rybka 4.1 SSE42 x64 4CPU was written. What a bloody triviality.. Nirvanachess must end with the appendix “4CPU” and not only with “4”! The engine name was truncated by the program itself, for reasons of insufficient space. This bitch of a GUI did it unauthorised, without being asked! All what I had to do then, I’ve created an engine Nirvanaches 2.2 (pop) 4CPU. But you must be tricky here too, because the original engine name must be included, normally.
Yes, I know, you would have seen it at first glance!? Of course, when the wrong name stands directly below the correct name, like here. So what.

Please note: In Fritz 12 the engine-pairings must not have more than 58 characters, both names together, incl. blanks! The problem exists in tournaments only, because here you get an ENGtourn.cbh file in which all the engine pairings are written. It’s the turn of a pairing with too long names you get an error, because the truncated engine name doesn’t match with the installed one.
Whether the problem has been fixed by now, I don’t know. In any case, this fatal restriction does definitely no longer meet the crazy modern standard of super long engine names.

Nevertheless, in spite of this malicious little devilry, Fritz is currently my favourite GUI. Have a look on this posting : http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 5&start=10

Now I have a little idea again. Come out here in CCC with remarkable crashes, errors, mistakes, tips and solutions. Start your posting with OFAK in the title (Operators First Aid Kit) and everyone can check and collect the OFAK-postings with the search function!
Oh yes, this was not my first proposal for the sake of the community. You know, disappeared in the anonymous spaciousness of the forum, unheard….

[carldaman]

People who are only interested in short inputs and bare facts should jump to the bold typed “please note” passage immediately.

Do you know the constant companion of an operator or programmer? For sure, it is the devil in detail. I don’t want imagine all the tragedies because of this this diabolic leprechaune. I can just feel the helpless suffering, when the narrow limits of your cognitive possibilities have already been crossed, when the hotline is permanently temporarely not available and when the desperate cries for help fade away in the anonymous spaciousness of the fora, unheard.

My contribution today in this section refers to an especially malicious restriction of the Fritz GUI which only occurs during tournaments.
In a tournament game Nirvanachess 2.2 (popcount) 4CPU against Deep Rybka 4.1 SSE42x64 4CPU (what word-monsters) I permanently got a stop with the error “ Nirvanachess 2.2 (popcount) 4 is not defined”. Single tested and in matches the engine run very properly, and even a new installation didn’t change anything ( as usual in this cases). Nothing helped and I decided to let the matter rest until the next day. I can really recommend this procedure, otherwise there is a great danger to get a sudden boost of madness and then you are plunging into a deep mental abyss of lethargy and depression.
Obviously my guardian angel has done a big job overnight. Waking up towards midday I rubbed my well rested eyes and really, the devil was banished out of the detail. Checking again the EngTourn.cbh, with hundreds of listed engine pairings, I saw it on the expanded screen: Nirvanachess 2.2 (popcount) 4 - Deep Rybka 4.1 SSE42 x64 4CPU was written. What a bloody triviality.. Nirvanachess must end with the appendix “4CPU” and not only with “4”! The engine name was truncated by the program itself, for reasons of insufficient space. This bitch of a GUI did it unauthorised, without being asked! All what I had to do then, I’ve created an engine Nirvanaches 2.2 (pop) 4CPU. But you must be tricky here too, because the original engine name must be included, normally.
Yes, I know, you would have seen it at first glance!? Of course, when the wrong name stands directly below the correct name, like here. So what.

Please note: In Fritz 12 the engine-pairings must not have more than 58 characters, both names together, incl. blanks! The problem exists in tournaments only, because here you get an ENGtourn.cbh file in which all the engine pairings are written. It’s the turn of a pairing with too long names you get an error, because the truncated engine name doesn’t match with the installed one.
Whether the problem has been fixed by now, I don’t know. In any case, this fatal restriction does definitely no longer meet the crazy modern standard of super long engine names.

Nevertheless, in spite of this malicious little devilry, Fritz is currently my favourite GUI. Have a look on this posting : http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 5&start=10

Now I have a little idea again. Come out here in CCC with remarkable crashes, errors, mistakes, tips and solutions. Start your posting with OFAK in the title (Operators First Aid Kit) and everyone can check and collect the OFAK-postings with the search function!
Oh yes, this was not my first proposal for the sake of the community. You know, disappeared in the anonymous spaciousness of the forum, unheard….

You're allowed to edit/shorten the engine's name, if you look under Appdata/Roaming/ChessBase/Engines.UCI, where you can open up each installed engine's .uci file and edit the Name= line accordingly.

Just make sure hidden folders are made visible first.

CL

[rainhaus]

Thanks for feedback. For my part, I already know (most of?) Chess Bases secret places. Here is the file:

[ENGINE]
Name=Nirvanachess 2.2 (popcount) 4CPU
Author=Thomas Kolarik
Filename=C:\Program Files (x86)\ChessEngines\Nirvana\Nirvanachess 2.2\Nirvanachess 2.2 (popcount).exe
[OPTIONS]
Threads=4

As you see, the variable “Name” is already in use. If I write Name= line accordingly I get an engine with the name “line accordingly”! No,no , only a little joke, couldn’t quash it Probably most of the readers know what is meant by this established term: In this file you can rename the engine however you want to call it. The original file name must not be contained .
That’s what I meant with “you must be a little tricky”, but Carl has now revealed the simplest way to do it. I hope he will not get haunted as a whistle-blower from now on because of his user friendly revelations. Or is it written in the manual?

Nevertheless, the error “engine is not defined” can happen to any operator who didn’t check that an engine-pairing may not need more than 58 characters.

You're allowed to edit/shorten the engine's name, if you look under Appdata/Roaming/ChessBase/Engines.UCI, where you can open up each installed engine's .uci file and edit the Name= line accordingly.

Just make sure hidden folders are made visible first.

CL