For H.G.Muller about Winboard and variants with Stockfish.

[Isaac]

Why would you want to use atomkraft which is based on SF 2.1.1 (5 years old) which is weaker than the SF versions you linked to? As far as I remember it cannot even run natively on linux and so I don't know its compatibility with modern Winboard commands.

[George Tsavdaris]

This sounds like there still is a problem with the UCI2WB -var option. You can avoid to be dependent on this option by using the line

"UCI2WB ATOMKRAFT64.exe" -fd "D:\WinBoard" -variant atomic -firstOptions "UCI_Atomic=1" -firstFeatures {variants="atomic"}

This forces WinBoard to think the engine said it played Atomic. Can you post here what the engine prints in response to the 'uci' command, when you run it from the command line?

The above line works and engine is working but not as intended.
When i put it in Winboard161130.ini file(in the %APPDATA% folder of Windows and not the one in Winboard folder), Winboard does not even start, saying Unrecognized argument }.

When i remove -firstFeatures {variants="atomic"} from Winboard161130.ini, open Winboard and then put manually in "Specify Chess Engines" dialog in the opening screen of Winboard the line in the engine parameters, it accepts it and runs fine. It's not convenient at all of course to put this manually every time it starts.


EDIT:
When i put -firstFeatures variants="atomic" instead of
-firstFeatures {variants="atomic"}
in the Winboard161130.ini then Winboard does not complain about the } character and runs fine along with the Atomkraft that runs also fine.
So something has to be wrong with putting {} in the variants="atomic" commands.



The UCI commands says this:

[hgm]

Never mind, I managed to do it myself.

It turns out that the -var VARNAME option on UCI2WB does not work for engines that report the UCI_Chess960 option. Initially UCI2WB will send feature variants="VARNAME" to the GUI, as instructed. But when it later encounters the UCI_Chess960 option from the engine, it sends another feature variants="normal,ficherandom" that overrules this.

Arguably it is an ATOMKRAFT bug that it sends this option, because I am pretty sure it does not play Chess960 at all: it seems to be hard-wired for playing Atomic, as it does not seem to announce any option with which you could switch this on or off. That means any -firstOptions WB option to select atomic (like UCI_Variant=atomic or UCI_Atomic=1) are pointless and not needed.

But it seems anyway better to append the value of the -var option to the variants feature command that announces fischerandom in response to encountering UCI_Chess960, like is already done for the variants list derived from the UCI_Variant option. I will patch UCI2WB accordingly, before releasing an official 3.0 version.

Because UCI2WB's -var doesn't work with ATOMKRAFT, the only solution is the -firstFeature work-around, which is the ultimate weapon anyway. (With that option you could even make WinBoard think NotePad.exe is an engine that plays atomic...) So it seems the line

"UCI2WB ATOMKRAFT64.exe" -firstFeatures {variants="atomic"} -variant atomic

should do it. (No need for an -fd, because UCI2WB.exe is in the WinBoard folder. If the engine wouldnot have been in that folder its directory could be given as the last argument of UCI2WB.)

[George Tsavdaris]

Because UCI2WB's -var doesn't work with ATOMKRAFT, the only solution is the -firstFeature work-around, which is the ultimate weapon anyway. (With that option you could even make WinBoard think NotePad.exe is an engine that plays atomic...) So it seems the line

"UCI2WB ATOMKRAFT64.exe" -firstFeatures {variants="atomic"} -variant atomic

should do it.

Yes thanks for all the help. I've managed to do it myself also with what you recommended before removing the {}(see the previous post).
Problem is that by putting:
-firstFeatures {variants="atomic"}
in the Winboard161130.ini makes Winboard to not even open complaining about unrecognized argument }.
When i remove {} and instead put:
-firstFeatures variants="atomic"
It opens and the Atomkraft works fine.

[hgm]

Ah, I see our postings crossed.

OK, I see. You cannot nest {}, which would be what happens in the engine list, which itself is enclosed in {}. It would have worked on the command line. You can use single quoting instead:

-firstFeatures 'variants="atomic"'

Without the quotes it apparently also works. I wouldn't have dared trying that, out of fear that a quote at the end without one at the beginning would confuse the option parser. But it seems resistent to that.

[George Tsavdaris]

Ah, I see our postings crossed.

OK, I see. You cannot nest {}, which would be what happens in the engine list, which itself is enclosed in {}. It would have worked on the command line. You can use single quoting instead:

-firstFeatures 'variants="atomic"'

Without the quotes it apparently also works. I wouldn't have dared trying that, out of fear that a quote at the end without one at the beginning would confuse the option parser. But it seems resistent to that.

OK thanks, happy to know that is was not only me who couldn't use {} inside Winboard.ini.
So now with the single quotes it works fine again. Thanks.