Variants supported by winboard in zippy mode.

[mathmoi]

Hi,

Simple question : where could I find a list of variants supported by winboard to play on ICC or FICS?

Thanks,

[phenri]

I think winboard supports all variants supported by ICS

search this word "variant VARNAME" at this page http://www.gnu.org/software/xboard/engine-intf.html#8

[Angrim]

It probably supports whatever the ICS does, since it lets the ICS handle the legality checking. But for a list of what it supports in local mode go to
http://www.gnu.org/software/xboard/manual/xboard.html
and search for "-variant varname" which is followed by a list of variants.

[hgm]

The following variants have been tested for ICS play:

Code: Select all

normal
wildcastle
nocastle
fischerandom
shatranj
twokings
3check
suicide
giveaway
losers
crazyhouse
bughouse
kriegspiel
seirawan
capablanca
caparandom
gothic
grand
super
knightmate
spartan
great
courier
shogi
xiangqi

WinBoard should recognize the 'wild number' of most of those, i.e. if the ICS says 'wild 23', WinBoard will know it is frc (or was it crazyhouse?). Note that many wilds are not really variants, but just normal Chess starting from a (sometimes very weird) non-standard position, and as the ICS specifies the start position anyway, WinBoard can automatically play those without having any specific knowledge.

[mathmoi]

Will an engine in Zippy mode will be allowed to play all theses variants through Winboard?

[hgm]

Sure. But you have to configure WinBoard to accept challenges in them, through the -zippyVariants option. It would decline any challenges for variants not mentioned in that option, and it would of course also decline any challenges in variants that the engine does not master (as reported in the engine's variants feature at startup). I don't think there is any checking if you make the challenge yourself. (AFAIK the ICS does not offer an opportunity to decline your own challenges, so I guess this cannot be helped.)

[mathmoi]

Thanks for your answer.

[JVMerlino]

The following variants have been tested for ICS play:

Code: Select all

normal
wildcastle
nocastle
fischerandom
shatranj
twokings
3check
suicide
giveaway
losers
crazyhouse
bughouse
kriegspiel
seirawan
capablanca
caparandom
gothic
grand
super
knightmate
spartan
great
courier
shogi
xiangqi

WinBoard should recognize the 'wild number' of most of those, i.e. if the ICS says 'wild 23', WinBoard will know it is frc (or was it crazyhouse?). Note that many wilds are not really variants, but just normal Chess starting from a (sometimes very weird) non-standard position, and as the ICS specifies the start position anyway, WinBoard can automatically play those without having any specific knowledge.

Did the Wild20 stuff that you worked on earlier this year ever get officially released?

jm

[hgm]

Well, I added that in the development version, (the future 4.8.0), and there are only 'developer releases' for that anyway. But I am not even sure if we have had one of those. (They are not very important; people that want the development version can just take the latest commit from git.)

I have not had much time this year to work on WinBoard. I still have a lot of backlog in my own on-line repository which did not make it yet to GNU, because I apparently broke something in the Xaw build, which is still the official stable version. And I did not have time to fix it. The backlog is mostly Chu-Shogi related anyway, or XBoard stuff (the ICS/chat window).