Andscacs

[Ovyron]

I was expecting a comment from the author about stopping Laser's development. For what I've seen they could be taking a 2 year hiatus (Rybka 4.1 had a really long hiatus before the Fritz 15 revival.)

[Alayan]

Nothing prevents the author to come back at it later, but for now development has completely ceased.

[Guenther]

It is.

https://github.com/jeffreyan11/laser-ch ... ci.cpp#L79

You don't need to update your public github and still can have a newer version locally...
It was not announced dead anyway. Others even came back after >10 or >15 years w/o any announcement.

[Alayan]

Wolfgang was saying that Laser is maintained because a beta is playing at TCEC. I was showing him that this is the name used by the dev version since after the 1.7 release and it doesn't indicate any update.

That nothing prevents an author to come back to a project later on doesn't mean that, for now, it is not abandoned. Most abandoned projects don't get a formal announcement about it, either.

The Laser author had been doing his tests on OpenBench for months before he ceased development, and there is no reason he wouldn't use OpenBench if he wanted to try new things.

[Ovyron]

I'd still like to know from the author why work has ceased, and if they have planned about continuing it. This is important because effort would be wasted by someone branching off Laser to keep it alive only to have Laser's author return and work on their own stronger branch.

It's definitively a different type of abandonment from Andscacs.

[AndrewGrant]

You can check here and work on these engines when interested :

http://chess.grantnet.us/

Would be nice if more open sources engines could be included in this testframe.

People just have to ask. OpenBench requires only a few changes for most engines. Only thing I ask of those who make use of the framework is that they strive to make their code readable and usable by others. Goal is to boost the whole field, not just an individual engine, where possible.

[Alayan]

Incorrect, the last open source version was 0.921 ; while the latest released version was 0.95 (~20-25 elo stronger).

I downloaded the 0.921 sources a few days before andscacs.com went down ; I could upload them if other people are interested and don't have them.

I would be interested.

Here is a google drive link for the 0.921 sources (can't use the forum's attachment feature).

I hope you find it useful !

[Roland Chastain]

Here is a google drive link for the 0.921 sources (can't use the forum's attachment feature).

Thank you.

[Dann Corbit]

A crying shame for the mighty planetary cheese balls to languish.
But sometimes real life messes with good clean geeky fun.