Banksia GUI released

[phhnguyen]

Hi phhnguyen

I can tell you that the problem with the casteling is solved !!!! so you have fixed it with the last update 0.28 i think its was the problem with the
WB UCI engines or something else now the gui is a super gui for me and my book work
thx for youre great work

Regards
Robert

Thanks a lot for the report and good words

[phhnguyen]

Using the new version, I had my bot challenge me to a casual 3+2, and the "level 0 3 2" was sent. However, I then challenged a bot to a rated 3+2, and it was not sent. Book was enabled for both games. So, maybe challenging another bot to a rated game is what it will take to reproduce?

I am currently playing with Arasan 22.0 on lichess.org with my BOT Silitho (https://lichess.org/@/Silitho) via BanksiaGUI v0.28.

Unfortunately, a game "hangs" from time to time, i.e. BSG thinks it is the opponent's turn and his time is running, but the time of my BOT is running on lichess. Therefore, many games end in defeat because my time is up (see https://lichess.org/@/Silitho/all).

I cannot reproduce exactly why this is happening. In my opinion it occurs very often when I set Ponder to On (usually I play with Ponder = off). Another suspicion: during a game I switched the books from the gmbook to chessdb.cn in the corresponding dock and it also seems that the system hangs.

Since I had to listen to harsh comments from opponents every now and then, I founded a Team BanksiaGUI BOTs https://lichess.org/team/banksiagui-bots. Here you can find those BOTs who also test their lichess bots via BSG and who know about the current beta status. New team members are welcome .

Thanks all for the reports. I have been working on Lichess bot issues.

[phhnguyen]

I'm trying hard to substitute Arena with Banksia but so far I'm not very successful.

What I'm doing with Arena most of the time is
- load 1-3 engines
- load a game from pgn or even a single fen via clipboard or file
- let the engines analyze the current position
- optional: select a position from the pgn by going back and forth while the engines still analyzing
- optional: Do moves (and take them back) manually while the engines are still analyzing.

How is this possible with Banksia. I found the "Auto analyse game" button but that is probably not what I want to do.

Thanks in advance.
Andreas

That function is still in my TODO list, not implemented yet

[phhnguyen]

Idea:

You may want to contact Ed Schröder and see if he would not mind you adding his collection of programs to your download section. He has a nice collection of classics.

Rebel's
Prodeo's
Benjamin
Mephisto Gideon Pro

His contact info is located on his website: http://rebel13.nl/index.html or you can message him on the forum.

Thanks a lot for your suggestions.

It is a bit of a dilemma. On one hand, I don't want to push authors, make them give permission (for downloading their engines, books... via BSG) just because of being polite when someone asks directly. Thus let them feel free. (However, if any authors read and feel OK, please drop me a line here or via private msg, I will do the rest and thanks in advance). On the other hand, even I wish authors to join, but I am not confident if BSG good enough to attract them since it is still in the beta stage, missing some functions and there are still many bugs. I will wait for more time

[phhnguyen]

Version 0.29 beta released

* Fixed bugs: Lichess Bot: fix timeout problem
* Some small improvements/adjustments such as convert to PGN book with notation in settings
* New features:
- Gauntlet: can select not only one but multi-engines. That can help to compare those engines since they have similar rivals/matches.
- Lichess bot: select timers (may be helpful to test engines in specific modes, say, 1 search node only), move time margin

Notes:
I have been still fighting with the problem timeout of Lichess bot function. Some engines use time in hard ways, thus later they may have only a few seconds per move. It is easy to be out of time since the internal communication between engines and the GUIs as well as the network may be suddenly lagged and eat all the time left. The new version of BSG has some improvements for vs that lagging but can't fix completely. If you observer that issue (out of time), you may try:
- increase move time margin: BSG subtracts the time lefts (from Lichess) to that margin then sends them to engines. It means engines have less time to think, saved time may help to vs lagging
- stop viewing playing games, turn off all logs... to vs system, engine-GUI connection lagging
- select better timers for games, say, have lagger increments
- select other timers for engines, say, depth, or node limits per move (if select the right one, it may never be timeout)

[Gejsi Marku]

Organizing an engine Tournament with this GUI is a total nightmare, and very much not User Friendly. Commands and instructions are not comprehensible. You also have to write all engine parameters from the beginning for every tournament. Creating a simple engine tournament shouldn't take an hour. I guess back to good old Arena

[AdminX]

By chance I happen to update LC0 to the latest pull request (Dev v 26), it happened to be yours . Anyway I have not had any problems at all today with Leela and the latest version of Banksia GUI when it comes to LiChess Bots and to timeout issues. Plus I must say (Side Note and Off Topic) that MLH seems to improve Leela's endgame play. Anyway thanks for all of your work.

[phhnguyen]

Organizing an engine Tournament with this GUI is a total nightmare, and very much not User Friendly. Commands and instructions are not comprehensible. You also have to write all engine parameters from the beginning for every tournament. Creating a simple engine tournament shouldn't take an hour. I guess back to good old Arena

Thanks for the report and sorry to hear that.

Could you help me by giving the name of one or some engines as well as one or some of their parameters in which you have the problem? Basically, BSG must auto remember all settings, including engines' options. Thanks again.

[phhnguyen]

By chance I happen to update LC0 to the latest pull request (Dev v 26), it happened to be yours . Anyway I have not had any problems at all today with Leela and the latest version of Banksia GUI when it comes to LiChess Bots and to timeout issues. Plus I must say (Side Note and Off Topic) that MLH seems to improve Leela's endgame play. Anyway thanks for all of your work.

Nice to hear that! The timeout issue of the Lichess bot is still one of the hardest issues to solve. It may happen when we set bots to auto time (since engines tend to use all time they have thus there is no reserved time for network/internal GUI-engine lags).

BTW, I had some chances to work with Lc0, dev versions too. For the next release, BSG will support Lc0's new option UCI_ShowMovesLeft even it is not merged yet

[BrendanJNorman]

Feature Request:

- Allow human player/s in engine tournaments.

- Change font size of engine output.

Much appreciated, especially the first one.