Banksia GUI released

[phhnguyen]

Feature Requests:

- Support for font-based piece sets
- Display a logo and Elo in clock area

Thanks a lot for all suggestions/ideas. I have added them into my TODO list.

- Pause/Restart Tournaments later

You can do that now. When creating a new tournament, just uncheck the box "Play" next to Start button. BSG will create a tournament in pausing mode (won't play any games). You may resume/stop later.

Appreciate your great work, Hong Pham.

P.S. What do the options in "Shuffle" mean (None,Players,Games, Carousel)? In my tournaments, it seems weird if its round robin for example, and one engine plays 4 games, then another plays a few or whatever...seems kinda random.

Because of being software, for a similar input (same engine list, tour types...) BSG will create exactly the same list of games for a tournament event you re-create many times. It is so boring. "Shuffle" tells BSG to make that list be random order.

Tip: you may re-order manually the games in the tournament. E.g., sometimes you want a pair to play first. Just drag/drop a game (or a group of selected games) to a new position. You may use buttons up, down on top of that list to move selected games too.

[phhnguyen]

I would suggest to include these 2 options in the engine option box once the engine is installed for user convenience. Although it is prefixed with UCI it does not mean that the engine option box is a bad location to put these 2 options. The user can create an engine config which may use this UCI_LimitStrength/UCI_Elo option pair and can easily select such configuration.

Thanks for the suggestion.
BSG from 0.11 allows using UCI_LimitStrength/UCI_Elo. If an engine is used with BSG from older versions, users may need to re-detect that engine thus BSG can recognize and save those options.

I tried a new engine installation (Rhetoric) on v0.11 alpha. This engine supports UCI_LimitStrength/UCI_Elo options. But those options are still not shown in engine options box. Please see image below.




Console:

Code: Select all

Rhetoric 1.4.3 x64 UCI by Alberto Sanjuan, Spain
uci
id name Rhetoric 1.4.3 x64
id author Alberto Sanjuan
id country Spain
option name Hash type spin min 4 max 1024 default 128
option name Clear Hash type button
option name Use Log File type check
option name MultiPV type spin min 1 max 4 default 1
option name Material type spin min 50 max 200 default 100
option name UCI_LimitStrength type check default false
option name UCI_Elo type spin min 1300 max 2600 default 2600
option name UCI_EngineAbout type string default www.chessrhetoric.com
uciok

Oops, so sorry I messed my mind. UCI_LimitStrength/UCI_Elo options will be supported for the next version 0.12.

[phhnguyen]

Maybe I am missing something but the "Result" menu option doesn't seem to do anything so I can't quickly see which engine is winning\won the tournament.

In the below image, users can see:
- In the Tournament panel (on the left side): which games are completed, their results and who won.
- In the Tournamenet result panel (on the bottom): There are few tabs with different information. E.g. in a cross tab is the crosstable, it shows scores of each engines, scores vs other engines, numbers of games,...

All info on all panels are automatically up to date when tournament playing.

[phhnguyen]

I would like to save my played games, but banksiaautogame.pgn is in overwrite mode, so my old played games are not saved. Can you make it append mode or perhaps add an option to overwrite or append.

Thanks for the suggestion.

This feature (overwrite or append mode for banksiaautogame.pgn) is one of simple but headache thing. That file is designed to help users to continue/resume a game after BSG/system crashes. Thus it is not for normal use and doesn't require attendance from users. Users should save their games manually after finishing games. If we use append mode it can save everything. However, the file size may grow unattended.

Perhaps, I will add some "clever" ways such as storing the last 10 games into banksiaautogame.pgn and/or allow auto-save games into a database.

[phhnguyen]

If you can see games in the database, the database is good and ready for creating books.

Go menu -> Tools -> Create Opening to open below dialog. Fill in database path and path of your new book, select book type and hit Process then wait a bit (ignore all other options).

Thanks for the explanation.

I tried to make a bgbd database file from a pgn database, but that didn't work. Banksia crashes on my pc if I try this.

Thanks for the report. I have just fixed a bug (for the next release) makes BSG crash when BSG see some comments in odd structures. Hope the next version can run with your PGN database.

It works for making bin opening books from the gm2001.bgbd file.


I also tried the pgn book format as output.

I compared the bin book to the pgn book. Its seems like many variations are missing in the pgn book. Maybe it has something to do with the settings I used.

I used these settings for the bin book:

And these settings for the pgn book:

I made a ctg book from the pgn book in chessbase to compare them.
This is how the books look like if I compare them with SCID en Chessbase:

It doesn't work for me to attach pictures in this forum. That's why I use links to my google drive.

Can you set both "min game length" and "repeat at least" boxes to zero (in Game condition) then re-create books? That allows BSG to take all games and save to books.

[Ferdy]

I would like to save my played games, but banksiaautogame.pgn is in overwrite mode, so my old played games are not saved. Can you make it append mode or perhaps add an option to overwrite or append.

Thanks for the suggestion.

This feature (overwrite or append mode for banksiaautogame.pgn) is one of simple but headache thing. That file is designed to help users to continue/resume a game after BSG/system crashes. Thus it is not for normal use and doesn't require attendance from users. Users should save their games manually after finishing games. If we use append mode it can save everything. However, the file size may grow unattended.

Perhaps, I will add some "clever" ways such as storing the last 10 games into banksiaautogame.pgn and/or allow auto-save games into a database.

All right I see now the main purpose of banksiaautogame.pgn. How about creating a new file say appendautosavehumangames.pgn where it is in append mode and only completed games (with results 1/2-1/2, 1-0 and 0-1) are saved here from human vs engine games. The file size should not be critical as this is only for human vs engine games. The filename appendautosavehumangames.pgn indicates that this file is in append mode and would help the user decide to archive it somewhere to save disk space if needed.

[AdminX]

Feature Request: Ability to connect to 2 systems for remote network play. Example PC1 Running Banksia connecting to PC2 running Banksia over local network.

[Jonathan003]

Can you set both "min game length" and "repeat at least" boxes to zero (in Game condition) then re-create books? That allows BSG to take all games and save to books.

If I set the"min game length" box to zero, the Process button is grayed out. Zo I set the "min game length" box to 1 and "repeat at least" box to zero.
Here is how the books looks like if I compare them. I used the same settings to make the bin book an the pgn book.


The variations in the pgn book are not in the right order. Not al main lines are on top. But that's maybe because I made a ctg book from the pgn book. I can also use Chess Position Trainer to display the pgn books or COW, or Lucas Chess. Are there some other ways to display the pgn book? And to be able to delete or add variations that way?

It's interesting to see that there are now many more variation in the pgn book than in the bin book.
I like that because if I make a repertoire book I don't have to search for moves if they are already included. I always can delete variation if I don't like them, that's faster and better then having to look for new variations.

In Chessbase there is an option to display un-played transposition in a ctg book. Sometimes these un-played transpositions are included in a bin book made from the same games. Sometimes they are not included and sometimes other un-played transpositions are included.

I also use the book making option from the old software Bookbuilder. http://superchess.blogspot.com/
I open the program make a new book and save it. Than I import the pgn games in the book and and save the book as
bps book.

Than I use the program bb36c find in the installation directory of Bookbuilder and I export the book to a Yace pgn engine book. I open this pgn book in Chessbase and copy the games to a new database to normalize the pgn. I also un-annotate the games.

The books made in Bookbuilder finds the most un-played transpositions.
But more is maybe not always better. Maybe it would be better if only interesting un-played transpositions where added. Or maybe some setting when making a pgn book, to choose what count, or how many un-played transpositions wil be included.

I'm not a programmer, I just look for best ways to make a repertoire.

[phhnguyen]

I would like to save my played games, but banksiaautogame.pgn is in overwrite mode, so my old played games are not saved. Can you make it append mode or perhaps add an option to overwrite or append.

Thanks for the suggestion.

This feature (overwrite or append mode for banksiaautogame.pgn) is one of simple but headache thing. That file is designed to help users to continue/resume a game after BSG/system crashes. Thus it is not for normal use and doesn't require attendance from users. Users should save their games manually after finishing games. If we use append mode it can save everything. However, the file size may grow unattended.

Perhaps, I will add some "clever" ways such as storing the last 10 games into banksiaautogame.pgn and/or allow auto-save games into a database.

All right I see now the main purpose of banksiaautogame.pgn. How about creating a new file say appendautosavehumangames.pgn where it is in append mode and only completed games (with results 1/2-1/2, 1-0 and 0-1) are saved here from human vs engine games. The file size should not be critical as this is only for human vs engine games. The filename appendautosavehumangames.pgn indicates that this file is in append mode and would help the user decide to archive it somewhere to save disk space if needed.

Thanks for the suggestion. I have added it into my TODO list

[phhnguyen]

Feature Request: Ability to connect to 2 systems for remote network play. Example PC1 Running Banksia connecting to PC2 running Banksia over local network.

Thanks for the suggestion. I have added it to my TODO list.

BTW, it looks like that is not common for playing over local networks nowadays. right? E.g., my office does not use any local networks, all data are shared via airdrop (macOS) and/or store on some servers/cloud services.

I have been considering to connect BSG to some chess servers. If you have the experience, please suggest (which services, purposes...). Thanks