Myracle GUI

[PHILOCHESS]

hi,

first, I'm glad you enjoy the GUI!

just did a quick test here and quanticade cronus 3.0 works without any problems here (tried the avx512 binary)

I'd check that the paths to the engine are setup correctly (working folder etc.), then perhaps if you use avx512 that your CPU supports
it,
if not I'd suggest to use the bmi2 build.

otherwise I'd ask You to provide more info, perhaps? I'm very much interested in any such issue + potential stability problems, thanks

Thank you very much for your reply.

I must confess that I am not an expert in chess engines or GUI configuration, so I am still learning some of these details. Your reply, together with Gabor’s note that Quanticade Cronus 3.0 BMI2 was working in his tournament, made me think that something was probably wrong on my side.

I checked the engine details in Myracle and found the cause of the problem. When I imported the engines from Cute Chess 1.4.0, the entry for Quanticade Cronus 3.0 was created, but the Command and Working folder fields were left empty.



After filling in those fields manually, Quanticade Cronus 3.0 started correctly in Myracle.

So it was not really a problem with the engine or with Myracle itself, but with the engine configuration. I am not sure why those fields were not carried over for this engine, while the other engines seemed to be set up correctly.

Thank you again for your help and for your work on Myracle. I am enjoying the GUI and learning a lot while testing it.

[mar]

I checked the engine details in Myracle and found the cause of the problem. When I imported the engines from Cute Chess 1.4.0, the entry for Quanticade Cronus 3.0 was created, but the Command and Working folder fields were left empty.

After filling in those fields manually, Quanticade Cronus 3.0 started correctly in Myracle.

So it was not really a problem with the engine or with Myracle itself, but with the engine configuration. I am not sure why those fields were not carried over for this engine, while the other engines seemed to be set up correctly.

this sounds like it could be some kind of bug on my part. could you perhaps share your engines.json with me? (it can be found in Users\<your_username>\AppData\Roaming\cutechess\engines.json)

or at least the part that contains settings for Quanticade? you could use a PM here in the forum, for example. thanks

[mar]

My questions and suggestions weren’t meant as demands, but simply as ideas from a user’s perspective. Of course, I’m aware that you develop this project in your free time and that not every idea is practical or feasible.

If certain features aren’t planned, that’s completely fine. I just wanted to ask and maybe contribute something.

hi Mark,

sure, I still do appreciate the feedback and suggestions - and thank you all for that - and I still consider each suggestion.
just that I felt like there were a bit too many accumulated requests recently and the clarification wasn't really meant to discourage
anyone, just to make people understand what it implies

another thing is that each new feature, no matter how small, is a future potential maintenance burden

some features (like adding/removing engines or changing cycles) would be a great addition and I'd like to at least try in the future,
the problem is with the schedule, for example. the idea is that you want to carry the finished games from the previous tour.
but if you add or remove an engine, then the pairing is suddenly completely different (assuming round-robin),
I can still match the games, but like I said the tour back-references the pgn games, so I couldn't change the "Rounds" tag
to match the new schedule - and what now. I could probably run through the old pgn and create a temp one and rename
it later or something like that, and would also have to remember a sequence
of each addition/removal since the schedule itself is not saved but recreated each time to save space.

other tour types, such as swiss, requires a dynamic schedule that depends on previous round and would require some extra work too,
also replaying games in swiss would probably have to be disabled, because replaying a single game in a round would invalidate
all following rounds. it could be done, but there would have to be a real demand for swiss. a low priority at the moment

[Modern Times]

build 61 is up:
- remove thick checkbox frame
- 20 time contol sets instead of 10
- some fixes related to logging (log order consistency, wait for engine unload log to be properly flushed first)

Hi,

What is the best procedure to update from a prior version ?

many thanks.

[mar]

Hi,

What is the best procedure to update from a prior version ?

many thanks.

since the data hasn't changed for a very long time (except for removing EveAnn book in the bundle),

it should be enough to download the minimal zip and simply replace the single executable

[Modern Times]

another thing is that each new feature, no matter how small, is a future potential maintenance burden

Thanks for all your hard work Martin. I agree, keep it simple, and don't spend too much more time on it apart from bug fixes. In my opinion what broke Banksia was that it tried to be all things to all people and became incredibly complex and the author got burnt-out too I think. If I recall correctly the author said it needed a complete re-write.

[peter]

Something I miss a little, compared to CuteChess, is the there to be chosen option "Sequential" in menue "Opening order", it helps to find same starting positions in "book" (.pgn used as such) and played off match- .pgn. And I don't see the repetition of opening- positions with colours reversed, chosen by GUI out of books, with SPRT- option of tournament, "Repeat reverse" is deactivated in this mode (SPRT, icon Repeat reverse is grayed out then), regards

[mar]

Something I miss a little, compared to CuteChess, is the there to be chosen option "Sequential" in menue "Opening order", it helps to find same starting positions in "book" (.pgn used as such) and played off match- .pgn. And I don't see the repetition of opening- positions with colours reversed, chosen by GUI out of books, with SPRT- option of tournament, "Repeat reverse" is deactivated in this mode (SPRT, icon Repeat reverse is grayed out then), regards

the sequential order has to be enabled in book settings (for a specific set) in settings/book (note that this is only supported for pgn books, not polyglot)

SPRT is intended for engine devs only https://www.chessprogramming.org/Sequen ... Ratio_Test, it's a simple 1 vs 1 tour type that tries to compare which of the two engine versions is better
since it uses cutechess-style trinomial model (WDL only), the reverse is disabled as it'd require a pentanomial model (this is intentional)
(I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong)

also SPRT tournament forces a minimal schedule of 100k games, since it'll be stopped automatically once H0 or H1 is accepted,
i.e. if the patch has failed or passed - that's the point, to only play as many games as needed

[peter]

Something I miss a little, compared to CuteChess, is the there to be chosen option "Sequential" in menue "Opening order"

the sequential order has to be enabled in book settings (for a specific set) in settings/book

Thanks again for the prompt answer, one more time overlooked this already existing option

[Mark 1]

Hello Martin,

sure, I still do appreciate the feedback and suggestions - and thank you all for that - and I still consider each suggestion.
just that I felt like there were a bit too many accumulated requests recently and the clarification wasn't really meant to discourage
anyone, just to make people understand what it implies

another thing is that each new feature, no matter how small, is a future potential maintenance burden

some features (like adding/removing engines or changing cycles) would be a great addition and I'd like to at least try in the future,
the problem is with the schedule, for example. the idea is that you want to carry the finished games from the previous tour.
but if you add or remove an engine, then the pairing is suddenly completely different (assuming round-robin),
I can still match the games, but like I said the tour back-references the pgn games, so I couldn't change the "Rounds" tag
to match the new schedule - and what now. I could probably run through the old pgn and create a temp one and rename
it later or something like that, and would also have to remember a sequence
of each addition/removal since the schedule itself is not saved but recreated each time to save space.

other tour types, such as swiss, requires a dynamic schedule that depends on previous round and would require some extra work too,
also replaying games in swiss would probably have to be disabled, because replaying a single game in a round would invalidate
all following rounds. it could be done, but there would have to be a real demand for swiss. a low priority at the moment

Many users underestimate (myself included, at times) how much work goes into tournament logic, PGN handling, and dynamic pairings. Your explanation creates transparency and helps prevent unrealistic expectations. You don’t come across as defensive or annoyed – more like someone who takes responsibility for the quality of their project.

Best regards,
Mark