Compiling ChessV 9.2

[TonyJH]

Nice work Greg and H.G. It's nice to see a new version of ChessV that is compatible with WinBoard.

[hgm]

Sorry, it doesn't support Knightmate, although it wouldn't be difficult to add. There are thousands of variants, and that one's pretty obscure ... I could add it to the next version, but didn't want to hold up the release.

This in itself was a good decision but Knightmate "obscure"...?

WinBoard supports it, and there are quite some WinBoard engines that play it: Fairy-Max, Joker, CCCP, MSCP, Dababba, Lime, Vanilla Chess, Gerbil, Faile, FimbulWinter. (We should do a live tournament again, one of these days!)

Knightmate can also be played over the internet on my ICS. Which, btw, is now on-line 24/7, as I just bought an Eee PC which I dedicated to running it. To connect to it with WinBoard, type 80.100.28.169 for the server specification (after you ticked "Use and Internet Chess Server" in the startup dialog). If you want to use an /icshelper, use timeseal (not timestamp). There is no need to specify a port, as it uses the default port 5000.

The ICS now supports the following variants:
Bughouse
Crazyhouse
Chess960 (FRC)
Capablanca Chess (with various opening setups)
CRC
Shatranj
Courier Chess
Xiangqi
Shogi
Archbishop Chess
Chancellor Chess
Knightmate
Superchess
Great Shatranj

[Matthias Gemuh]

Ok, ChessV 0.9.4 is now available. It fixes the problems with the crashes and changing of colors, and incorporates Winboard support. It can be downloaded from http://www.samiam.org/chessv

Sorry, it doesn't support Knightmate, although it wouldn't be difficult to add. There are thousands of variants, and that one's pretty obscure ... I could add it to the next version, but didn't want to hold up the release.

Enjoy!

ChessGUI cannot cope with WB parameters in quotes.

Why is the parameter not simply capablanca or fischerandom or ... ?

Matthias.

[hgm]

The parameter is the way ChessV uses for the variant in its menu. Using only WinBoard variant names would not do, as it should also be able to play variants not strictly supported by WinBoard (with legality testing off).

But surely there are other WinBoard engines that need an argument with spaces in the engine command, e.g. for a pathname of a book or tablebases?

[Greg Strong]

Sorry, it doesn't support Knightmate, although it wouldn't be difficult to add. There are thousands of variants, and that one's pretty obscure ... I could add it to the next version, but didn't want to hold up the release.

This in itself was a good decision but Knightmate "obscure"...?

WinBoard supports it, and there are quite some WinBoard engines that play it: Fairy-Max, Joker, CCCP, MSCP, Dababba, Lime, Vanilla Chess, Gerbil, Faile, FimbulWinter. (We should do a live tournament again, one of these days!)

Knightmate can also be played over the internet on my ICS. Which, btw, is now on-line 24/7, as I just bought an Eee PC which I dedicated to running it. To connect to it with WinBoard, type 80.100.28.169 for the server specification (after you ticked "Use and Internet Chess Server" in the startup dialog). If you want to use an /icshelper, use timeseal (not timestamp). There is no need to specify a port, as it uses the default port 5000.

The ICS now supports the following variants:
Bughouse
Crazyhouse
Chess960 (FRC)
Capablanca Chess (with various opening setups)
CRC
Shatranj
Courier Chess
Xiangqi
Shogi
Archbishop Chess
Chancellor Chess
Knightmate
Superchess
Great Shatranj

I didn't realise Knightmate has so much software support. Should be easy enough to throw in so I'll get around to that someday soon; I don't want ChessV to be behind the curve!

Pretty cool you've got ICS playing so many games. And Joe Joyce's Great Shatranj to boot! Nice choice Does it happen support the flexible castling rule that Schoolbook and a few of the other Capablanca variants support?

[Greg Strong]

Ok, ChessV 0.9.4 is now available. It fixes the problems with the crashes and changing of colors, and incorporates Winboard support. It can be downloaded from http://www.samiam.org/chessv

Sorry, it doesn't support Knightmate, although it wouldn't be difficult to add. There are thousands of variants, and that one's pretty obscure ... I could add it to the next version, but didn't want to hold up the release.

Enjoy!

ChessGUI cannot cope with WB parameters in quotes.

Why is the parameter not simply capablanca or fischerandom or ... ?

Matthias.

The reason is because ChessV wasn't really meant to do it... The passing the name of the actual game was fairly easily accomodated. I guess it would be possible and perhaps desirable to hande the Winboard short-names for the limited number of games that Winboard lists.

But for the time being, there's an easy work-around for you. You can specify the filename of a saved game file (a text file with an SGF extension) instead of the name of a game, so just make a file with no space in the filename. So, for example, to start a game of Capablanca Chess, the file doesn't need to contain anything except the text:

Code: Select all

Capablanca Chess

Of course, you don't need to make the file yourself either. You can always just start a new game of whatever type and then save it through the GUI.

[Christopher Conkie]

Could it be made to work in Arena please?

Christopher

[Greg Strong]

Could it be made to work in Arena please?

Christopher

You mean playing variants with Arena? Or just Chess?

[Christopher Conkie]

Could it be made to work in Arena please?

Christopher

You mean playing variants with Arena? Or just Chess?

Well normal chess and hopefully FRC both of which Arena supports.

We were trying to make it work earlier but to no avail.

The thread where we tried is in the CCC General Forum.

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 17&t=29922

Even though Arena uses the edit command in FRC it still does not explain why we cannot get it to play normal chess.



Christopher

[hgm]

ChessV works from the command prompt if you start it as:

ChessV_WinBoard "Orthodox Chess"

and requires only new and go to produce a (book) move for white in that case. That means that when ChessV is invoked in such a way that argv[1] = "Orthodox Chess" it should work. If it does not work under Arena, IMO it must mean that the first argument of the engine command was not properly passed, as Arena most certainly also sends the new and go commands.

I do not know the quoting conventions of Arena, and how you have to enter the engine command to make sure it is called with the single argument Orthodox Chess. You cannot expect us to debug Arena, especially since it is not open source. The command-line behavior of ChessV demonstrate that it should work as a normal WinBoard engine when properly called.