Larry I believe that Bonkras can beat the Shogi Champ NOW...

[pichy]

Daigo Moriwaki of the GPS Shogi team taught me the following trick: from the command line, run

.\gpsshogi --health-check

Then it tests and reports if it can access all data files it needs.

But on my XP machine it reports everything is OK, and then I have exactly the same problem as you. I will report it to Daigo.

Larry has not said anything yet as far as when will he play Versus GPS-Shogi using the:
http://81dojo.com/

[hgm]

There is a 'reply' button that you can use to post without quoting, did you know that?

I did report the Win XP problem to Daigo Moriwaki, and he confirmed they can reproduce the crash, and are currently working on a solution.

[pichy]

It seems that although I select the "usi" engine to install, it reports that I have installed the incorrect gps engine. So this is probably the problem. What is the solution?

What version and date of your GPSShogi you installed?

The version number appears to be 20111117.1.1-win32, dated Nov. 15, 2011.

Here is something that I did, I decided to download the BCMGames GUI and took the gpsusi file the same that you have and rename it Spearshogidokoro then I deleted the old Spearshogidokoro file that came with BCMGames GUI which is an old version from 2008 which is found in the Subdirectory of C:\BCMGames\USI\Spear and replaced it with the renamed Spearshogidokoro. By doing it this way you do NOT have to make any changes in the Settings that came with BCMGames. Now to play a game versus the new GPS Shogi engine which was renamed Spearshogidokoro, simply go to the GAME Menu then select Playing Mode and make sure that you select human for one of the side and click Ok.

PS: BCMGames GUI is able to handle different versions of GPSShogi better than Shogidokoro GUI with different version of windows without having to Check the environment variable OSL_HOME.

[hgm]

You can rename it whatever you want, but if it does crash on the first move after the two-ply iteration, it will not do you any good.

Installing GPS Shogi is pretty trivial. That is not the problem at all. I just enter in the WinBoard Load Engine dialog (after switching to Shogi)

Engine (*.exe):

UCI2WB

Parameters:

-s gpsusi "C:/Program Files/gpsshogi/smp" " byoyomi %d"

and tick the "Force current variant with this engine". That is all. But of course it crashes as soon as it gets out of book, because the executable is no good...

[shogi4fun]

Here is something that I did, I decided to download the BCMGames GUI and took the gpsusi file ...

But this don't change anything to the existing problem: the current version of GPSShogi has problems with Windows XP - and not any GUI can repair it.

And Larry seems using XP ...

... and rename it Spearshogidokoro ...

PS: BCMGames GUI is able to handle different versions of GPSShogi better than Shogidokoro GUI with different version of windows without having to Check the environment variable OSL_HOME.

But with your way handling GPSShogi as Spear, you've killed this functionality.
(Still I'm wondering that it works, copying the EXE into an other directory, because OSL_HOME wouldn't be set. Or have you used the gpsshogi-installer to install directly into the final directory? )

The way BCMGames is doing:
deicindg if and how OSL_HOME have to be set, BCMGames is using the path+file to the engine. If it contains "gpsusi", then it will set OSL_HOME (cutting any existing "single" and "smp" at the end)

Of course there would be other realizations possible, too.
For example:
Var. A) starting the engine and getting the name it sends (this works even without OSL_HOME). But than the current process has to be ended, variable has to be set and engine must be started again. => not a good workflow
Var. B) when installing new engines, the installer could check all needed things and save this informations. => BCMGames has no engine-installer (and never will get one)

So I've decided for the way I've told above. Of course it could have done also by saving flags to the engine-configuration (like variation B would do it automatically), but detection by filename seems looking more comfortable - at least for me, not making dirty tricks exchanging engines.

[hgm]

Well, normally this whole OSL_HOME business should not be a problem, as the GPS installer sets it. It is just that you have to know a reboot is required after install.

I hate engines that require an installer, and usually I stay away from them. But with Shogi there is not that much choice. It is of course horribly poor design to make the functioning of an engine dependent on an environment variable, which requires setting by an external program (in this case the installer). Decent engines can find their own data files without help. (Either relative to their own directory, (Windows), or through a standard path like /usr/local/share/games/packagename/* (Linux).)

[pichy]

How strong is your sdk09s shogi engine? Do you think that it is around 2 DAN on my AMD Athlon 2.50 GHz?

[hgm]

I really have no idea. I don't even know what 2 DAN means. I participated with it in the ICGA Computer Olympiad 2010 in Kanazawa, and it managed to score 2 points there (where one was 'for free', against an experimental engine that did not even have search).

I know it is much weaker than SPEAR, which again is much weaker than GPS Shogi and Bonanza (on the same hardware).

[shogi4fun]

How strong is your sdk09s shogi engine? Do you think that it is around 2 DAN on my AMD Athlon 2.50 GHz?

Yeah, it's very strong. It finished second place at ICGA Computer Olympiad 2010 in Kanazawa, Japan ...

... but in Minishogi.

In standard Shogi it's weak - still beatable by me.

[hgm]

Indeed, the mini-Shogi performance was a big surprise. I had not designed it for that, and in fact had never heard of that game before I got to Kanazawa.

One of the major weaknesses of Shokidoki is that it has no tsume search, but completely ignores checks in the quiescence search. So its QS happily continues capturing pieces even when the opponent has already enough in hand to mate through check drops, and a defensive move is called for.

In mini-Shogi this problem does hardly ever occur: there just isn't enough material to trade to make the hand strong enough.