Trial of new ICS

[hgm]

I have hacked the Lasker ICS code, to make a server that can support a wider range of variants. As a trial, I will leave it running on my laptop until next morning (which means probably 2:00 a.m. EST).

You are welcome to try it (you will have to login as guest). Even if you are not interested in variants, you can play a normal game, to see if I haven't broken anything in the conversion.

Basically it works just like FICS, except that it supports the variants "gothic" and "knightmate". You will need a specially adapted WinBoard to understand the Gothic Chess 10x8 board in ICS protocol. This can be downloaded from

http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/alpha.tst

Knightmate can be played with the standard WinBoard 4.3.14 release, as it is played on an 8x8 board.

For a description of how to start a Gothic Chess game, see the the forum on gothicchess.com:

http://z13.invisionfree.com/Gothic_Ches ... try6637235

ANy feedback is welcome.

[F. Bluemers]

I have hacked the Lasker ICS code, to make a server that can support a wider range of variants. As a trial, I will leave it running on my laptop until next morning (which means probably 2:00 a.m. EST).

You are welcome to try it (you will have to login as guest). Even if you are not interested in variants, you can play a normal game, to see if I haven't broken anything in the conversion.

Basically it works just like FICS, except that it supports the variants "gothic" and "knightmate". You will need a specially adapted WinBoard to understand the Gothic Chess 10x8 board in ICS protocol. This can be downloaded from

http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/alpha.tst

Knightmate can be played with the standard WinBoard 4.3.14 release, as it is played on an 8x8 board.

For a description of how to start a Gothic Chess game, see the the forum on gothicchess.com:

http://z13.invisionfree.com/Gothic_Ches ... try6637235

ANy feedback is welcome.

the ip of the server is : 80.100.28.169
I thought it might be handy to know
Best
Fonzy

[Zach Wegner]

Cool, I'll try to remember to put ZCT up later today.

[TonyJH]

I connected two WinBoard_F clients to your server and was able to start a game. Nice work on getting this going!

TJchess10x8 doesn't natively support Gothic chess. How about adding Capablanca chess as well? Although, I can understand not wanting to add too many variants that are too similar.

Does the lasker server code include crazyhouse support? I couldn't start a crazyhouse game, but the server did recognize some bughouse commands.

[Zach Wegner]

Hehe, I played a quick ZCT vs. ZCT game, 2 cpus against 2. It doesn't allow kibitzing or talking on channels (at least as guest accounts), so it will be cool to see this when its up to full speed.

[Event "ICS unrated lightning match"]
[Site "80.100.28.169"]
[Date "2008.11.10"]
[Round "-"]
[White "GuestCNZX"]
[Black "GuestAJHE"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "0"]
[BlackElo "0"]
[TimeControl "120+1"]

1. e4 Nc6 2. Nf3 e5 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. O-O Nxe4 5. d4 Nd6 6. Bxc6 dxc6 7. dxe5
Nf5 8. Qxd8+ Kxd8 9. Nc3 Ne7 10. h3 Bf5 11. Nd4 Bg6 12. Bg5 Kc8 13. Na4 h6
14. Bd2 b6 15. b4 a5 16. a3 Kd7 17. c4 Nf5 18. Nf3 Be7 19. e6+ Kxe6 20.
Rfe1+ Kd7 21. Ne5+ Kc8 22. Bc3 Bd6 23. Nxg6 fxg6 24. c5 b5 25. Nb2 Bf8 26.
Nd3 Ne7 27. bxa5 Nd5 28. Bb4 Kb7 29. Ne5 g5 30. Ng6 Rg8 31. g3 Nf6 32. Re6
h5 33. Ne5 Re8 34. Nxc6 Bxc5 35. a6+ Kxa6 36. Rxe8 Bxf2+ 37. Kxf2 Rxe8 38.
Rc1 g4 39. h4 Re4 40. Bd2 Kb7 41. Kg1 Ra4 42. Bb4 Nd5 43. Nd8+ Kc8 44. Ne6
Nxb4 45. axb4 Rxb4 46. Nxg7 Rb3 47. Nxh5 Rd3 48. Kf2 Kb7 49. Nf4 Rd7 50.
Ke3 Rf7 51. Ke4 c6 52. Ne6 Re7 53. Kf5 Kb6 54. Ng5 Re8 55. Kxg4 c5 56. Kf4
c4 57. Ne4 Rf8+ 58. Ke5 Rg8 59. Rb1 Ka6 60. h5 Ka5 61. Nf6 Rxg3 62. h6 Rh3
63. h7 b4 64. Kd5 Kb5 65. Rc1 c3 66. Ke6 Kc4 67. Ng4 Rxh7 68. Ne5+ Kd4 69.
Nc6+ Kc5 70. Nb8 Ra7 71. Nd7+ Rxd7 72. Kxd7 Kc4 73. Ra1 c2 74. Ra7 b3 75.
Rc7+ Kd3 76. Rb7 Kc3 77. Rc7+ Kb2 78. Rb7 c1=Q 79. Rb6 Qc5 80. Rc6 Qa5 81.
Rc8 Ka2 82. Rb8 b2 83. Rxb2+ Kxb2 84. Ke8 Kc3 85. Kd7 Kd4 86. Ke6 Qc7 87.
Kf5 Qe5+ 88. Kg6 Qb5 89. Kg7 Qf5 90. Kg8 Qd7 91. Kf8 Ke5 92. Kg8 Kf6 93.
Kh8 Qg7#
{GuestCNZX checkmated} 0-1

[hgm]

I connected two WinBoard_F clients to your server and was able to start a game. Nice work on getting this going!

TJchess10x8 doesn't natively support Gothic chess. How about adding Capablanca chess as well? Although, I can understand not wanting to add too many variants that are too similar.

Does the lasker server code include crazyhouse support? I couldn't start a crazyhouse game, but the server did recognize some bughouse commands.

There is bughouse support, so I guess it should be quite easy to offer crazyhouse too. I guess I will have to refine the mechanism by whic it selects variants. Except for bughouse, which is treated special, its idea of a 'variant' is smply normal Chess wih a non-standard initial setup. It accepts any pair of strings (referred to as category + board) as variant name in a ' match' command, and then looks for a file ' data/boards/category/board' in its directoy If it does not find one, it complains that te vaant you have chosen does not exist. If it does find the file, it reads the opening array from it and starts the game. Some categories are recognized by the code that updates ratings, to diversify them.

I intercepted the categories 'gothic' and 'knightmate' in the board_init routine, to set some added parameters for board size and King type, and use the standard setup for the chosen game with tht board size and King type. I am not happy with this, there should be a mechanism that is much more general. I do like the idea of the ICS admin being able to define the supplied vaiants purely by descriptions in files. But this means I have to expand the definition format to not only contain a list of pieces and squares, but allow it to define board length + width, rule modifiers. E.g. holdings and wich pieces go in it, if they demote when they do, if there is atomic capture, how stalemate scores, if baring the King counts as a win, which castlings, if any, are posible, from which ranks Pawns have a double step, how they can promote, and perhaps a way to define the moves of non-standard pieces. So that in Shatranj it could redefine Bishop and Queen.

Once this is done, offering capablanca next to gothic would be very easy.

[krazyken]

Anybody got the quick howto for connecting xboard and an engine to the server?

[Zach Wegner]

xboard -zp -ics -icshost "80.100.28.169" -fcp "./PROGNAME" -fd PROGDIR

[hgm]

Note that the xboard 4.3.14 of the latest release does not yet support the ICS protocol for deviating board sizes. So although it supports variant gothic in engine-engine and human-engine play, you could not use it to play gothic in human-ICS or engine-ICS mode.

For those that are interested to try this, I did post the backend.c that contains this modification on my website. (It contains many other modifications as well, as it belongs to my 4.3.15 alpha version. I did not try if it would compile under Linux together with the other files of the 4.3.14 release. Probably not, as some structs defined in header files will need extra fields. So if you want to try gothic on the ICS, you should only lift the routine ParseBoard12 out of it, and overwrte the corresponding one in the 4.3.14 backend.c with it.)

[krazyken]

Thanks!

You got a quick howto on how to get opponents now?