Banksia GUI released

[Gabor Szots]

I tried to install Francesca MAD 0.26 using autodetect but the GUI said: 'This engine does not support any protocol.'

And when I told it to use wb it said: 'This engine does not support the selected protocol.'

I guess that's because Francesca uses WB protocol 1. And then other old WB engines cannot be installed either.

[Leo]

Great job.

[Ras]

Actually, it does run under Win7-64 - just two additional MS DLLs required. Although I don't quite see the point of making it Win10 and MacOS only for now. My CT800 UCI engine seems to work nicely.

Some things I noticed when playing around:

1) Why do I have to enter the engine name manually? That should be automatic detection with UCI.
2) When the engine mates, its final mating move is not made on the displayed board. It's only displayed in grey in the move list.
3) Making moves works only via drag & drop, not via clicking the origin piece and target square. Both methods should be supported.
4) Cores, Syzygy and ponder look like they are offered for engines that don't support them.
5) I could not find the Elo slider for UCI_Elo supporting engines.
6) The brown icons at the top are very hard to make out against the background which is also brown, and even patterned.
7) Settings could be two menu points, one for GUI settings and one for engine management.

But for an alpha version, it's already quite impressive!

[supersharp77]

Hi all,

I am glad to release my new program: Banksia GUI - a chess GUI. It is totally freeware and can run in almost all major operating systems, can do almost all typical tasks of a chess GUI.

Just list a few features:

• Support both UCI and WinBoard protocols

• Can play all types of games (human-human, human-computer, computer-computer, engine tournaments), support all popular tournament types

• Good and high customizable graphics

• Support databases, popular book formats (PGN, EDP, Polyglot)

• Supports some new chess techniques/trends. For examples, it supports:

• [+] Lc0: understand and show its stats in multi visual ways: tables (all columns are sortable), bubbles (customizable for sizes, colors and contents/which stats to show)

• [+] chessdb.com: query for both opening and endgame positions

• [+] syzygy: users can exam endgame positions

• Engines, databases, books could be auto-downloaded and configurated

• Easy to use. Many tasks could be done much easy and fast, such as auto-detecting engines, making/reusing tournaments

Home page: https://banksiagui.com

Download (temporary for alpha versions) pages: https://banksiagui.com/preview-versions

Current releases are alpha versions and just for computer chess enthusiasts. At the moment there are binaries for Windows 10-64 bit and macOS only. Other binaries (for Win 7, Linux) will be released later.

Banksia GUI is built based on our open-source Banksia - a chess tournament

Thank you a lot for downloading and using. Feedbacks, bug reports and ideas are warm welcomes



Some screenshots:

Easy for playing and for running tournaments:


Support deeply Lc0:


Simple:


Query chessdb.cn:


A friend sent me a screenshot when he was testing with 18 concurrent games:

GUI loaded and have also loaded some engines...some major problems with the winboard adapter (not working correctly)
Comet, King 312a, All Scorpio engines, Crafty 16.1 and Awesome 1.67 not working as "pure winboard engines" engines do work with wb2uci adaptor....All UCI engines loading and playing normally...Notation screen does not resize properly..same with engine info screens (board goes from normal size to extremely small) chess pieces are not in 100% scale to the chessboard (resize option?) Fischer clock screen seems to be missing from settings...no setting screens for extra time controls..also adjudication box for games (important) seems to be missing...has some unusual features...every engine loads with a unique color for the move arrows...color customization box seems to be missing for the square colors..
Overall not a bad effort!! AR

[phhnguyen]

Thank all for using

Thanks phhnguyen.

Thanks for sharing your software. Can you program perform interactive analysis a la IDEA in Aquarium?
https://chessok.com/?p=24457

There are several excelling free GUIs around (even with several overlapping function), but I haven't been able so far to find this feature.
Thanks again.

Oh yeah, I always go after giovanni and suggest the same thing. This is about storing a chess graph in a way that the user can have analysis of multiple engines and backsolve it. ChessDB is doing that but only with Stockfish and the user doesn't have a free alternative currently to do that.

Thanks for suggestions.

The current version of Banksia GUI (BSG) can do interactive analysis. Just select timer as 'infinite' then make (manually) moves. BSG stores some computing information such as score, depth, time, move into PGN. It can read back and display on move list and score graph.

Look like what I am missing is analysis trees. However, do you think they are really useful?

[phhnguyen]

Thanks, This might be a bug or feature that has not been enabled yet. However I am unable to change background color.

Thanks. It is a bug

PS: I would change it in the BanksiaGUI.ini file but I don't recognize the syntax. I would like it to be #efeae2.

It is a standard format for ini text file. However, I consider it as internal data thus was careless for naming items (that is why it is a bit difficult to understand).

[phhnguyen]

Thanks for the new GUI.

However, I can't exit using the menu Exit command, only by clicking on the top-right x (as with other programs).

Oops, it is a bug, thanks

[phhnguyen]

Thank you again, it is a pleasure to be working with another GUI. My engine matches seem to be working well and I like chessdb.cn access.

https://i.ibb.co/2tzqR9q/2019-11-18-10-14-46.jpg

PS: I notice that there are problems detecting Eman (4.41)

It is strange since Eman is derived from Stockfish which BSG has no problem to detect.

Sorry I cannot check further since Eman requires a license.

Perhaps you may add it manually via JSON? (edit it via Settings dialog/General)

[phhnguyen]

I tried to install Francesca MAD 0.26 using autodetect but the GUI said: 'This engine does not support any protocol.'

And when I told it to use wb it said: 'This engine does not support the selected protocol.'

I guess that's because Francesca uses WB protocol 1. And then other old WB engines cannot be installed either.

Thank you for info! Look like BSG has trouble with WB protocol 1 since it counts keywords from engine's output. Francesca MAD prints out too few. You may try to add it manually via JSON file (edit via Settings dialog/General).

I will come back to this issue soon.

[phhnguyen]

Actually, it does run under Win7-64 - just two additional MS DLLs required.

Wow, thanks for the info. Can you tell me the name (and download links if you have) of those DLL?

Although I don't quite see the point of making it Win10 and MacOS only for now.

Simply I have only two systems of Win10 and macOS. Thus I can't compile and test in other systems.

My CT800 UCI engine seems to work nicely.

Nice to know. Hope to hear more about both BSG and CT800

Some things I noticed when playing around:

1) Why do I have to enter the engine name manually? That should be automatic detection with UCI.

No, you just select engines, BSG will do the rest, including detecting names. Enter the name only if you want.

One of the strong points of BSG is that it can detect multi engines at once. Just give it the main folder of engines (each engine can locate in it own subfolder) and BSG can do the rest: scan and detect all engines.

2) When the engine mates, its final mating move is not made on the displayed board. It's only displayed in grey in the move list.

Thanks for the report. It is a bug and will be fixed in the next version. For the current version, just click on the button "go end" to see that move.

3) Making moves works only via drag & drop, not via clicking the origin piece and target square. Both methods should be supported.

Thanks for the report. It is a bug too. BSG is designed for both methods.

4) Cores, Syzygy and ponder look like they are offered for engines that don't support them.

It is another bug too

5) I could not find the Elo slider for UCI_Elo supporting engines.

Currently, BSG does not support UCI_Elo since options with the prefix UCI_ require GUI to really understand the meaning of data. I am not sure what that option requires.

6) The brown icons at the top are very hard to make out against the background which is also brown, and even patterned.

Do you mean icons of buttons on toolbar?

7) Settings could be two menu points, one for GUI settings and one for engine management.

Thanks again for suggestions