Banksia GUI released

[mephisto]

I have managed to load individual old chess computer ROM engines from the CB-Emu package but is there a way to load more than one ROM engine at the same time?

And this is how I instruct Banksia to load individual ROMS selecting that it is a UCI engine.
C:\Users\1952\Downloads\CB-Emu_Pro\CB-Emu\MessChess\Arena\mess.cmd

This is where the ROMS are stored in Arena as part of the CB-Emu package.
C:\Users\1952\Downloads\CB-Emu_Pro\CB-Emu\MessChess\roms

If I try to use the option "Add Engine - All engines in the main folder"
I get "Error: This engine does not support the selected protocol"

This error message is the same when I try to load an individual ROM but don't specify that it is a UCI engine.
Unfortunately when using the "Add Engine - All engines in the main folder" there is no option to select them as UCI engines.

Any suggestions please.

[F.Huber]

I have managed to load individual old chess computer ROM engines from the CB-Emu package but is there a way to load more than one ROM engine at the same time?

No, the ROM files are no Windows executables, you have to call 'MessChess.exe' with the 'engine' name as parameter.
This can be done by a batch file (engine.bat), but BanksiaGUI does NOT support BAT files with the feature "Add Engine - All engines in the main folder", a BAT file works only for adding 'One' engine.

I've explained a trick for making installation of CB-Emu engines much easier in the BanksiaGUI on our Schachcomputer.info forum especially for you - look here:
https://www.schachcomputer.info/forum/s ... stcount=10

Franz

[phhnguyen]

First of all I want to say a BIG THANK YOU to Nguyen Hong Pham for developing this really great chess GUI!

At the moment I'm only missing some features - maybe it is already implemented and I don't know how to use it:

1.) i would like to play a tournament with two (or more) Engines with two different time controls

Yes, you can set engines to 5 different time controls. Just select "Multi timers" when creating a new tournament.

and two different thread-counts, individually per engine (not colour)

Simply turn off the mode "Overall options" (in New tournament dialog) and set manually threads/cores for each engine.

2.) When I am not playing a tournament, I am obviously in "game playing mode" as I understand it.
I would like to have an additional "analysis mode". In the analysis mode you should be able to manuelly play back and forward half-moves and start/stop thinking one or more of several loaded engines by clicking on them.

BSG has the function Analyse on the fly (menu -> File -> Game Analysis), users can make moves manually and freely, engines compute in the background. BSG can analyze with multi-engines too.



For more details about Analyse-on-the-fly and Analyse-a-game, take a look at my new tutorial video:

[phhnguyen]

Just a quick question: is Banksia 0.38 for MS Windows (Merry Christmas Version) the current version?

Yes, you may check and download the latest at the official home page: https://banksiagui.com/

[phhnguyen]

My first tutorial video: Using Leela Chess Zero (Lc0) with Banksia GUI

[Nordlandia]

Is it technically doable to have a handicap option such as available.

Engine A think during opponents turn

Engine B does not think during opponents turn

So ponder/permanent brain handicap essentially speaking.

The idea is that being able to think on opponents time should compensate considerable for a weaker engine, which under normal circumstances drain more time than the stronger engine.

[phhnguyen]

Is it technically doable to have a handicap option such as available.

Engine A think during opponents turn

Engine B does not think during opponents turn

So ponder/permanent brain handicap essentially speaking.

The idea is that being able to think on opponents time should compensate considerable for a weaker engine, which under normal circumstances drain more time than the stronger engine.

Sure, doable!

Just look at feature “Overall options” (on New tournament or Engines tab of Settings dialog boxes). You can see “Ponder” is an option controlled by that feature. By turning on the feature, users can easily to set all engines to have similar options of ponder, hash size, cores/threads since they are the most important ones for having fair matches.

Now if this feature (Overall options) is off, an engine will obey what the users set for its options. You can set manually, freely and with different values for pondering, hash size, cores... for different engines as you want.

[Cornfed]

Just a quick question: is Banksia 0.38 for MS Windows (Merry Christmas Version) the current version?

I am presuming that is the 'current version'...

[phhnguyen]

Version 0.39 beta released

Fixed bugs:
* Analyze on the fly with multi-engines: crashed sometimes
* Fix font for Lc0’s stats table
* Crosstable displayed wrong scores
* Couldn’t verify huge Syzygy files (over 2 GB)
* Local network: did not play
* Lichess bot: couldn’t challenge when the concurrency number is small
* Wrong suggestion to download NNUE files when installing Stockfish
* Might be crashed/freeze because of bugs in graphical functions

Some small improvements
* Faster and more clever parser for Lc0 stats to avoid being laggy and/or freeze when Lc0 creates too much data (if your computer is weak and/or playing a tournament, it is better to turn Lc0 stats off by setting options LogLiveStats and VerboseMoveStats to false)

New features:  
* Graph: can setup background; can use engines’ colors; shows multi graph lines for multi-engines when analyzing
* Two PV boards (auto being showed) if both sides are chess engines

[Nordlandia]

Many thanks for new update and the work put into the GUI as a whole.

I wanted to try local network but noticed they don't show up. I guess they have to communicate via cmd.

How do i connect two computers again using RJ-45 connecion via router ?

Both computers is using wired connection.