hgm wrote:Tord already warned me that the FRC additions in WinBoard_x were broken, and that they made a dedicated version of WB for FRC, because to fix the problems seemed to interfere with playing normal Chess. I think everything is fixed in the current WinBoard_F alpha (4.3f.13); I was able to play many normal and wild22 (=FRC) games on ICC between DanaSah960 and Glaurung without any problem. I was also able to adjourn and resume them. I also tested local self-play of DanaSah in FRC, again no problems.
Now that I understand better how the WB-ICS communication protocol works, I might be able to fix the Shatranj problem as well. (It is caused because the board the ICS is parsed before WB knows the game is Shatranj, so that the B and Q the ICS send end up on the board as Bishop and Queen, rather than Elephant and Ferz.) For debugging the Shatranj stuff on ICS, I would need a computer opponent which accepts Shatranj 1+0 unrated matches. Could your engine act as such?
I can confirm it is works fine, I played some more games last night.
Glaurung will use Winboard_F as a GUI at the tonight ICC chess960 event
It would be nice if you could also test if observing FRC games works correctly. I do not expect any problems there, but I could not really test it for lack of games to observe. But during the event there will be plenty of games going on to observe! (And I myself will be on my way to, or in Belgium for Richard's programmer's tourney.)
i can give a copy of my engine to test with. if yoru looking for an account to log in as an opponent, fegor runs 'finger citychicken' with my engine. He keepts it on about a 55% life. It plays shatranj. I can check with fegor but we work closely together in all testing areas and improvements of pulsar and its interface. I"ve got a hacked version of winboard X that i gave him to run shatranj.
I can provide a shatranj bot to test against. whatever strengths or styles or play needed.
I am the operator of "citychicken" and "citywok" on ICC, they play shatranj (with Mike's Pulsar engine).
Citychicken seems fine for testing unrated play what ever you specify, my email is wiserthanyou at gmail dot com, ICC account Fegor, the best way to contact me might be to send me a tell or if I don't answer then send a message to "Fegor" on ICC. I can set up Citychicken however you want.
hgm wrote:I just fixed an alpha version of WinBoard_F (4.3.13f) that should be fully FRC compatible. The previous versions had some problems when playing on ICS, in particular when resuming an adjourned game. I had never tested them for ICS play, so they only worked for engine-engine games.
The current version ( http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/alpha.tst , rename to winboard.exe) is extensively tested on ICC, and seems to correctly handle castling rights when playing, and when restoring an adjourned game.
It was a rather messy operation, as WinBoard uses entirely different mechansims (and thus code) for keeping track of a position in local play and in ICS play. Plus that ICC in general does not send correct castling rights in FRC (which was no problem in old WinBoard, as it neglects castling rights completely anyway, but became a ig problem in WinBoard_F).
I would be very grateful if people could try out the alpha.tst in normal Chess and FRC, on local engine-engine and ICS play (playing, resuming, observing other games) to see if everything works, and if I haven't broken anything.
I just noticed the Knightmate castling bug has re-appeared - invisible rooks again.
Yes, unfortunately my own development branched, when the most recent source (with the Knightmate bugfixes) became inaccessible for some time when my laptop got infected by a virus that overwhelmed my anti-virus software. So I had to keep it in isolation until I found a solution, and in the mean time some new WB bugs presented themselves in other areas. They seemed more important than the Knightmate stuff, so I fixed them from an older source on another computer, and posted them immediately.
Although my laptop is desinfected now, it has taken so long that I forgot what actually the changes were in the laptop version, and I have still to re-integrate the two versions. I will try to do that soon.
The current alpha.tst should have both the FRC bugfixes of last week, and the earlier Knightmate additions.
I also fixed a time-control bug that had crept in the alpha version, where it added time after mps moves at sudden-death time controls (when increment was 0).
In variant fairy it should now refrain from sending the initial position to the engine if this is the WinBoard standard.
