Banksia GUI released

[phhnguyen]

When I tried to edit one of the engines (miniMardi), the program displayed the parameters for Mussaurus. It seems it was confused by having similar names in the list. The relevant part looks like:

MiniChessAI
miniMardi
Mussaurus

Or could it be the small letters? It simply disregards miniMardi?

I wanted to attach a picture but I was warned that my board attachment quota had been reached (which is funny because I have never attached anything before).

I have tried to reproduce the bug (download and play with all the above engines) but not successfully. Can you send the image to me via email (banksiagui at gmail dot com)? If you want to post an image in this forum, you need to upload it to somewhere first (e.g., I use https://imgur.com/ a free service for uploading images) then embed the image link here.

Thanks

[AdminX]

Cheng also is not detected correctly.

[brinan]

Is it possible to assign a different opening book to each competing engine?
Or even an opening book to one engine only?

Your question is a bit ambiguous thus I divide it into a few cases:

1) If you mean assigning manually (by users): YES. Every engine can be set via its parameters and options. They can use their own books. Just turn off books of GUIs to avoid affecting. Note that not every engine has its own book, e.g., Stockfish, Lc0 don't have books.

2) If you mean assigning automatically for each engine via options (BSG can auto-assign cores/threads, memory/hash for each engine): NO. Engines use too many different names/ways to set up their own books thus BSG cannot detect all. Again, not every engine has own book.

3) If you mean a GUI automatically plays opening moves, using different books for different engines: NO/YES. Some books don't have moves, e.g. PGN, EPD books (they have only chess positions): the GUI picks up randomly a position and sets up the game starts from that position. Some books such as Polyglot actually can be used like that (the GUI auto uses two books for two sides). However, it is almost no meaning to let the GUI play itself in the opening period, even using whatever. Instead, GUIs simply pick up a line (of moves) from a Polyglot book to set up a game. Thus for Banksia GUI it is NO.

Thanks for responding so quickly.

Below is an example to clarify.

Want to set up a game between Stockfish and Lc0.
Neither engine has an own-book UCI setting.

But, can Banksia be set to play opening moves from, say, Perfect2019.bin for Stockfish, and, say, Noomen_2Ply_Book.pgn for Lc0?

If not, please consider this post a feature request. Appreciate the work you have done.

[phhnguyen]

Cheng also is not detected correctly.

Oops, it is a bug! Thanks a lot.

That bug is hard and quite rare when option words order is min-max-default, not in typical way default-min-max. BSG used some regular expressions for fast detecting thus failed.

It is fixed for the next release. BSG now can work well with any order, wrong or missing some info.

[phhnguyen]

Thanks for responding so quickly.

Below is an example to clarify.

Want to set up a game between Stockfish and Lc0.
Neither engine has an own-book UCI setting.

But, can Banksia be set to play opening moves from, say, Perfect2019.bin for Stockfish, and, say, Noomen_2Ply_Book.pgn for Lc0?

If not, please consider this post a feature request. Appreciate the work you have done.

No because it is impossible.

Noomen_2Ply_Book.pgn is a set of positions thus it has no move to play (play move by move). We can pick up only a position => both engines must start from that position.

[phhnguyen]

Version 0.8 released

As usual, it fixed some bugs. The most serious one it could not detect some options which words in rare orders; a bug about not showing pv for engines pondering; table's headers become black in Linux.

New features:

• Shuffle tournament games Carousel

• Customizable color for highlighting boards in Playing boards dialog and for move highlights

• Tournament result tables are shown in different tabs (not all in one)

[brinan]

Thanks for responding so quickly.

Below is an example to clarify.

Want to set up a game between Stockfish and Lc0.
Neither engine has an own-book UCI setting.

But, can Banksia be set to play opening moves from, say, Perfect2019.bin for Stockfish, and, say, Noomen_2Ply_Book.pgn for Lc0?

If not, please consider this post a feature request. Appreciate the work you have done.

No because it is impossible.

Noomen_2Ply_Book.pgn is a set of positions thus it has no move to play (play move by move). We can pick up only a position => both engines must start from that position.

So sorry. Noomen_2Ply_Book.pgn was a stupid choice. Meant pgn opening moves file, not opening positions.
Question still stands. Can each engine be given a different book of opening moves? Arena GUI allows this, although restricted to abk files.
If not, consider reply a feature request.
Sorry for confusion.

[AdminX]

Feature Request:

I don't know if this is within your scope for Banksia, however I have always been a fan of 'Live URLs' as they are implemented in Hiarcs Chess Explorer. They give you the ability to view live PGNs as the game is in progress at some major events. This allows you to use the engine of your choice to assist with game analysis.

[AdminX]

Dock Placement Feature Request

is it possible to customize the placement of two docked windows side by side with no tabs. I would like the ability to have the 'Score Graph' dock to the left or right of the 'PV Board' dock. Currently I can only place it above or below. Maybe even with the ability to size them.

[Guenther]

...
For example, BSG can work with an engine JSON:

Code: Select all

{
    "app" : 
    {
      "command" : "C:/Engines/UCI/Gogobello_21-64/gogobello_21-64.exe",
      "name" : "Gogobello_21-64",
      "protocol" : "uci"
    },
...

Shouldn't this work then, but it doesn't?

Code: Select all

{
    "app" : 
    {
      "command" : "C:/Engines/UCI/AbsoluteZero_2440-64/AbsoluteZero_2440-64.exe -u",
      "name" : "AbsoluteZero_2440-64",
      "protocol" : "uci",
      "working folder" : "C:\\Engines\\UCI\\AbsoluteZero_2440-64"
    },
},
{
    "app" : 
    {
      "command" : "C:/Engines/UCI/RubiChess_16-64/RubiChess_16-64.exe",
      "name" : "RubiChess_16-64",
      "protocol" : "uci",
      "working folder" : "C:\\Engines\\UCI\\RubiChess_16-64"
    }
}