Banksia GUI released

[Eduard]

Sometimes when I close the GUI and restart, all settings for "Lichess Bots" are lost. Today I had to re-enter my account, token and engine several times.

[phhnguyen]

However, I have now noticed a bug where Banksia sometimes leaves engine instances open. These sometimes seem to be asleep, then they only occupy RAM, but sometimes these instances are still searching, which then translates into an effective halving of the nodes/s.

I have not yet been able to reproduce the error reliably, but it now occurs quite often. I use Banksia on Linux.

It is one of the hardest problems since that is very hard to reproduce and I have attempted to fix it some times already. That doesn't happen to all engines but some of them. They refuse to quit even BSG tries several ways to stop, quit, terminate, kill them. If that is not your engine, consider changing to use another engine.

I just guess that some of the trouble engines may resist quitting to write down some things, thus mess up with the system. I will come back to that issue soon.

Oh, I forgot to mention which engine it is. I have the problem with Stockfish. So just switching to another engine is not really an option.

If I can help in any way to narrow down the error, let me know. The error occurs very often, so it is not a problem to observe it.

Thanks for the info.

It is quite strange since Stockfish is my favorite and "standard" engine to test for almost all my tests and in all my platfroms.

[phhnguyen]

Sometimes when I close the GUI and restart, all settings for "Lichess Bots" are lost. Today I had to re-enter my account, token and engine several times.

Thanks for the feedback!

Can you help me to check whenever losing settings for Lichess bots? Steps:
- open the configuration folder of BSG (go to Settings dialog box -> General tab -> Configuration files -> Browser) and check if there is a file named banksiabots.json. It stores all info about your bots. You may backup that file too and copy it back in case losing data
- open that file by any text editor and find item "libots", check if there is the name of the bot and item "token" somewhere. That is just a tiny file thus you won't get too hard to check

Thanks

[phhnguyen]

Version 0.51 released

Fixed bugs:

• Cannot load/start if games are stored with TCEC computing format

• Analysis (whole) games didn’t work

• Cannot save configurations if usernames are in Unicode

Some minor bug fixes, some small improvements/adjustments such as fixed font size for Engine Info panel, new digit font for clocks (Fig. 1), support feature-options of Winboard protocol…Move list: all computing info, comments could be removed

New features:

• For developers/testers: Run test suites (Fig. 2)

• Multi thinking arrows (Fig. 3, 4)

• Improve features/functions to work with the local network: remote engines can send computing info - now they (remote engines) work as they are in the right front of the user (Fig. 4); analysis can work with remote engines; same-name engines over a local network can be combined for calculating results/Elo

• Support new language: Vietnamese

Notes:

• Run test suites: another new feature for developers/testers. As usual, it is designed to maximize efficiency/convenience for users. They can create a new test within only a few clicks, re-do a test with only one click. The test is very flexible: data can be loaded from files or pasted from the clipboard, chess positions can be turned on/off individually, run with multi engines, concurrencies to speed up/reduce the time... All results are displayed with rich information. Those also are displayed in text form to easily copy and save to compare, refer later

• Multi thinking arrows: instead of only turning on/off to show one thinking arrow (for each engine), now users can set a number to display multi arrows. If the value is zero, it’s similar to turn off all arrows. If it is 1, that equals to turn on and show one arrow as it is in previous versions. If it is more than 1, BSG will display multi arrows based on moves in the PV lines (the “traditional” thinking arrow is actually the first move of a PV line). A large number (e.g., 100) means to display all moves in the PV. Users can also choose to display arrows for the side of the engine or both sides (set “all sides” to on). The first arrow is displayed with the normal size and color (as before). The rest are displayed thinner and more transparent/dimmer thus users can distinguish them. Users may need to change/adjust the colors of arrows (they are the colors assigned to the engines) for a better view of those arrows. Multi arrows may be useful: just by a glance users can get quickly some information such as which pieces, areas, moves have been involving, which pieces may be captured, if there are any threats/closed attacks to the Kings… From our observation, when the number of arrows is small, say, 1 or 2, it is not hard to track them. However, when the number becomes bigger, there may be too many arrows on the screen, make it look so complicated and it is not easy to follow them. Users should not set the value too high and/or needed some practice to “read” them.

Fig. 1 Digital clock


Fig. 2 Test suites


Fig. 3 Multi thinking arrows (for playing side only)


Fig. 4 Multi thinking arrows. One engine is thinking, the rival is pondering

[AlexChess]

Version 0.51 released

Thank you very much Pham!

I will soon use also the new positions testing suite feature!

Best regards, Alex

[shaoxinyu]

Probably a bug report: when I stop the analysis, it will jump to the last move.

Is it possible to keep the engine info (and arrows probably) when I stop the analysis?

[Chessqueen]

Probably a bug report: when I stop the analysis, it will jump to the last move.

Is it possible to keep the engine info (and arrows probably) when I stop the analysis?

How do you set the Multi thinking arrows (for playing side only)

[Eduard]

something is always changing!

e.g. Fonts:

Here is my preferred font from version 0.50



And here now from version 0.51 (just installed):



How do I restore the font to version 0.50? Why is it not possible that the layout always remains the same as in the previous version? I see that only the font size can be changed. But not the font! I would like it to be the same as in version 0.50. I don't like the new fonts, it's totally outdated and confusing. There is a letter format, totally wrong for a GUI.

[shaoxinyu]

Probably a bug report: when I stop the analysis, it will jump to the last move.

Is it possible to keep the engine info (and arrows probably) when I stop the analysis?

How do you set the Multi thinking arrows (for playing side only)

settings--move/stats--general--thinking arrows

[shaoxinyu]

Probably a bug report: when I stop the analysis, it will jump to the last move.

Is it possible to keep the engine info (and arrows probably) when I stop the analysis?

one suggestion: probably we may use different arrow colors for two sides.