Xboard crazyhouse problem

[Daniel Shawul]

Hello Tony
Yes only NebiyuAlien has it. NebiyuChess don't have games with holdings like shogi. Try the latest version 1.42 if it didn't work for you.
cheers

[TonyJH]

Hi Daniel,
I tried NebiyuAlien 1.42, and WinBoard reports that NebiyuAlien doesn't support crazyhouse, apparently because NebiyuAlien doesn't report crazyhouse as a supported variant in the "feature variants=..." list. It only reports alien variants such as 8x8+5_alien.

[hgm]

I guess NebiyuAlien is designed to run under the WinBoard Alien Edition, which defines a variant alien as a universal catchall for variants with completely unknown rules (where the engine is responsible for the board update after evey move).

[Daniel Shawul]

I think I have made it to play crazyhouse against sjeng even in the standard edition. You have to select the game type from a combo box ofcourse. Here is a "protover" of NebiyuAlien that duplicates alien with different dimensions and puts the real names in a combo. It is auto generated so some are duplicates. A better solution for this ?

Code: Select all

feature variants="8x8+0_alien,14x14+0_alien,14x11+0_alien,9x9+7_alien,8x8+5_alie
n,8x8+0_alien,8x8+0_alien,12x8+0_alien,10x8+0_alien,10x8+0_alien,10x10+7_alien,8
x8+0_alien,8x8+0_alien,8x8+0_alien,8x8+0_alien,8x8+0_alien,10x8+0_alien,10x8+0_a
lien,10x8+0_alien,10x8+0_alien,10x8+0_alien,10x8+0_alien,"
feature san=0 usermove=1 setboard=1 draw=0 colors=0 highlight=1
feature smp=0 memory=0 egt="nebiyu"
feature option="variant -combo *8x8+0_atomic /// 14x14+0_quadruplechess /// 14x1
1+0_triplechess /// 9x9+7_shogi /// 8x8+5_crazyhouse /// 8x8+0_ultima /// 8x8+0_
normal /// 12x8+0_courier /// 10x8+0_capablanca /// 10x8+0_gothic /// 10x10+7_gr
and /// 8x8+0_makruk /// 8x8+0_shatranj /// 8x8+0_knightmate /// 8x8+0_berolina
/// 8x8+0_spartan /// 10x8+0_coordinatorchess /// 10x8+0_immobilizerchess /// 10
x8+0_withdrawerchess /// 10x8+0_longleaperchess /// 10x8+0_advancerchess /// 10x
8+0_pushmepullyuschess"

[TonyJH]

I tried using NebiyuAlien's combo box to select 8x8+5_crazyhouse, but it didn't solve the problem.

[hgm]

If it does not say feature variants="crazyhouse" then WB assumes it cannot play crazyhouse. In the v2 protocol it is mandatory to specify the supported variants at startup, if it is more than just normal. Even the Alien Edition cannot guess that 8x8+5_alien is the same as crazyhouse. For all it knows it could be a drop version of Ultima.

[Daniel Shawul]

But it can play the game IIRC. I just installed Winboard 4.6 and played a normal chess game between NebiyuAlien and Fruit. That is after selecting "8x8+0_normal" from the combo with NebiyuAlien as the first engine. Some previous versions complain that Fruit don't support variant alien but this one didn't. Btw how do you install engines. It seems that editing the "winboard.ini" or "defaults.ini" has no effect now. Is there a hidden file in the windows registry somewhere... I had many versions of winboard so I uninstalled many hoping to fix it but I still can't install sjeng.
Edit Nevermind, I found it in user's directory. And it seems crazyhouse don't work in standard edition with the board dimension attached to it. But I do remeber older versions letting me do that. Also normal chess works with or without the board dimension.

[hgm]

Well, if you managed to somehow do that, it should be considered a WinBoard bug. Fruit (or actually Polyglot) does not support variant alien, so any attempt to make it play variant alien should have resulted in a fatal error. Checkboxes in Nebuiyu should not Variant alien is nice for human-engine, or when both engines play it, but you cannot use it against an engine that does not play it.