How to solve Arena's time issues

Discussion of chess software programming and technical issues.

Moderator: Ras

Michel
Posts: 2292
Joined: Mon Sep 29, 2008 1:50 am

Re: How to solve Arena's time issues

Post by Michel »

In local play you could do this. But in ICS play the ICS keeps the time, and the clock would always be running.
Ok. On fics I use xboard to log in with my human account while my bot is playing. Then I use "follow". That way I can have my cake and eat it too!
bob
Posts: 20943
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2006 7:30 pm
Location: Birmingham, AL

Re: How to solve Arena's time issues - correction

Post by bob »

According to Frank, this was the Shredder GUI, not Arena. So it looks like that GUI has some sort of unknown "lag source"...
User avatar
hgm
Posts: 28405
Joined: Fri Mar 10, 2006 10:06 am
Location: Amsterdam
Full name: H G Muller

Re: How to solve Arena's time issues

Post by hgm »

Michel wrote:
In local play you could do this. But in ICS play the ICS keeps the time, and the clock would always be running.
Ok. On fics I use xboard to log in with my human account while my bot is playing. Then I use "follow". That way I can have my cake and eat it too!
True. But on pay sites like ICC that would not be an option.

As it is so easy to switch the animation off, I don't think it would be worth it to make a major effort on this. Which would be needed in WinBoard, because solutions like stopping both clocks while an opponent has already responded to a move that is still being animated would require a maor change in design. Currently, the interrupt routine handling engine input also handles the animation, and returns only when it is done. And t does not allow recursive interrpts. So if there is input from the other engne, it will not be noticed at all. And most of the time such input would be thinking output from the engine, not a move, so checking if there is input during the animation does not help.