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New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent
Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2019 11:23 am
by silentshark
Hot on the heels of the 0.20 release (after an 8 year break), Francesca 0.21 is almost ready for release - should be later today.
This should be another good step forward in strength. Currently, in my testing 0.21 is a +59 ELO improvement over 0.20. 0.20 was a +74 ELO improvement over 0.19. But my figures include lots of self-play testing, so are probably optimistic
Detail will be in the readme.txt file - the main improvement was an eval fix for kings in the endgame (old versions of my engine just didn't want to centralise the king enough and this made a big difference), better aspiration windows, more aggressive pruning, and better handling of passed pawns (still not very good though).
Buying a new PC at the start of last year has really helped. I can now test much better - lots of games in parallel. When I look back, over the years, there were many times where I thought I'd made an improvement (and hadn't), or incorrectly binned something good. This was all due to not playing enough games in testing. Lesson learnt!
Cheers,
Tom
Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent
Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2019 11:55 am
by Gabor Szots
silentshark wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 11:23 am
Hot on the heels of the 0.20 release (after an 8 year break), Francesca 0.21 is almost ready for release - should be later today.
This should be another good step forward in strength. Currently, in my testing 0.21 is a +59 ELO improvement over 0.20. 0.20 was a +74 ELO improvement over 0.19. But my figures include lots of self-play testing, so are probably optimistic
Detail will be in the readme.txt file - the main improvement was an eval fix for kings in the endgame (old versions of my engine just didn't want to centralise the king enough and this made a big difference), better aspiration windows, more aggressive pruning, and better handling of passed pawns (still not very good though).
Buying a new PC at the start of last year has really helped. I can now test much better - lots of games in parallel. When I look back, over the years, there were many times where I thought I'd made an improvement (and hadn't), or incorrectly binned something good. This was all due to not playing enough games in testing. Lesson learnt!
Cheers,
Tom
Hi Tom,
You have moved up a gear! FYI, in our testing Francesca 0.20 is 63 Elo above 0.19. I am still playing a tournament so that may change. See here for the current comparison:
http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/40 ... +opponents
Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent
Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2019 11:57 am
by silentshark
Thanks, Gabor, that's great news
Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent
Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2019 11:59 am
by silentshark
Ok, v0.21 is up. Download from the usual place
www.silentshark.co.uk - select Computer Chess.
The zip file contains 3 exes. All 64 bit compiles.
fran.exe - small version, 150Mb of hash tables
lardy.exe - regular version, about 1GB for hash tables
legacy.exe - for old PC's. No SSE etc. compiler flags used, so should run on older PC's. Uses about 150Mb for hash tables.
Any feedback - let me know
Cheers,
Tom
Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent
Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:12 pm
by CMCanavessi
Nice progress! Can you put a link on your website to download old versions? I was trying to download 0.20 but I can't find it!
Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent
Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:18 pm
by Gabor Szots
CMCanavessi wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:12 pm
Nice progress! Can you put a link on your website to download old versions? I was trying to download 0.20 but I can't find it!
Funny, when I tried to download 0.21 I was always directed to the main page where 0.19 was offered. Refreshed the page in the browser several times but no success. It took quite a while till I found 0.21.
Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent
Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2019 7:50 pm
by CMCanavessi
Gabor Szots wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:18 pm
CMCanavessi wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:12 pm
Nice progress! Can you put a link on your website to download old versions? I was trying to download 0.20 but I can't find it!
Funny, when I tried to download 0.21 I was always directed to the main page where 0.19 was offered. Refreshed the page in the browser several times but no success. It took quite a while till I found 0.21.
When that happens, you can do CTRL+F5 to force a web cache refresh.
Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent
Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2019 8:07 pm
by Gabor Szots
CMCanavessi wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 7:50 pm
Gabor Szots wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:18 pm
CMCanavessi wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:12 pm
Nice progress! Can you put a link on your website to download old versions? I was trying to download 0.20 but I can't find it!
Funny, when I tried to download 0.21 I was always directed to the main page where 0.19 was offered. Refreshed the page in the browser several times but no success. It took quite a while till I found 0.21.
When that happens, you can do CTRL+F5 to force a web cache refresh.
Yes. Or CTRL+R. Or F5 without CTRL. None of them worked. Thanks anyway for the hint.
What helped was deleting all browsing history.
Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent
Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2019 9:34 am
by silentshark
Yeah, sorry about that. Right-click in the middle of the screen and selecting 'Reload Frame' sorts this out in Chrome.
Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent
Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2019 6:51 am
by tpoppins
silentshark wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 11:59 am
Ok, v0.21 is up. Download from the usual place
www.silentshark.co.uk - select Computer Chess.
The zip file contains 3 exes. All 64 bit compiles.
fran.exe - small version, 150Mb of hash tables
lardy.exe - regular version, about 1GB for hash tables
legacy.exe - for old PC's. No SSE etc. compiler flags used, so should run on older PC's. Uses about 150Mb for hash tables.
Any feedback - let me know
Why not have fran.exe use double the hash and POPCNT rather than BMI2?
CMCanavessi wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:12 pm
Can you put a link on your website to download old versions? I was trying to download 0.20 but I can't find it!
franmad020.zip