New XiangQi engine: MaxQi

[hgm]

There is nothing to build in, but the components (XQwood.bmp and XIANGQI.ttf) could of course be packaged with it. Although I am not sure that would be legal for the true-type font. The bitmap I could include, but it is a rather large file (490x441, 24-bits/pixel), and ot too many people will actually be interested in using it. So perhaps it would be better to just include download links in the next WinBoard package, so those interested in playing Xiangqi could download the files by themselves.

I could include a small .ini file + shortcut using it in the WinBoard package, though, containing the exact option settings needed to achieve the above display.

Btw, if you want to have some more opponents for TJxiangqi:

I have made a small adapter program WB2QH.c, which allows one to run Qianhong plugins (=engines) under WinBoard. (Sort of, as the QH plugins do not really allow you to set time usage per move, but are controlled by a rather ill-defined level number to set their strength. So it still requires some experimenting. The adapter is so small, that I posted its source on the Qianhong forum.

The Qianhong plugins vary from extremely weak (but fast) to extremely strong:

Qianhong (weak)
VSCCP (The Xiangqi equivalent of TSCP ?)
Ki11egg
Elephant Eye 1.05
Elephant Eye 3.1

The latter three are formidable opponents.

[hgm]

Soem preliminary testing shows that TJxiagqi at 40/1 is about as strrong as Ki11eg level 5 (Pentium M 1.3GHz), although the latter use about half the time.

MaxQi at 40/1 is about as strong as VSCCP level 5, although the latter uses about 10 times as much time (and is very erratic in its time usage, probably fixed depth).

[TonyJH]

UCCI is a protocol modified from UCI, most commands are same, some is different, and some is new. The UCCI document has no English version. I attempted to translate it into English, but NOT finished because my poor English.
But now, most topest level engines are using UCI, such as DeepSky, Cyclone, GGChess, etc.
WinBoard protocol is rarely in Chinese Chess Engine, only some old engines use it, such as XQMaster, NeuChess.

LiuKai,
Since you mentioned UCI (DeepSky uses it, etc.) for xiangqi, and also UCCI for xiangqi, does that mean that they are two different/incompatible protocols, or are they referring to the same protocol, as far as xiangqi is concerned?

[TonyJH]

Btw, if you want to have some more opponents for TJxiangqi:

I have made a small adapter program WB2QH.c, which allows one to run Qianhong plugins (=engines) under WinBoard. (Sort of, as the QH plugins do not really allow you to set time usage per move, but are controlled by a rather ill-defined level number to set their strength. So it still requires some experimenting. The adapter is so small, that I posted its source on the Qianhong forum.

Great, I will have to try out your adapter. I still need to fix the repetition bug in my engine. It has to do with the hash table. It could also be prevented if TJ would extend its search time (to finish the current iteration) when its current best move is a very bad move.

[NowCan]

They are different, some commands are incompatible.
go command in UCI is: go wtime xxx btime xxx winc xxx binc xxx
go command in UCCI is: go time xxx increment xxx opptime xxx oppincrement xxx

setoption in UCI is: setoption name <option> value <value>
setoption in UCCI is: setoption <option> <value>

for detial, http://www.elephantbase.net/protocol/cchess_ucci.htm but in Chinese.