Most, if not all, 24/7 bots on FICS use icsdrone or some derivative of it. Non-24/7 bots typically use xboard/winboard. I used icsdrone on a ppc mac for several years without any issues. Now my bots run on a Xeon with FreeBSD. Therefore I don't expect problems getting it running on an Intel Mac and OSX.
If you want to observe the games it is best to use a second 'owner' handle for that purpose. The owner can also control the computer account. Although you can use console mode to control the bot as well (run it in screen), you won't see the games in console mode.
There is a modest learning curve, but not much different from learning how to setup xboard with all its options.
In response to Jon's remark, I don't see the reported "-resign off" issue with Rookie, who also resigns on its own behalf.
I do the book learning with the pgnFile option and supplying it with a pipe-filename, which triggers the running of a shell script that handles the completed game, as follows:
Code: Select all
env TERM=vt100 ./icsdrone\
-icsHost freechess.org\
-icsPort 5000\
-timeseal ./openseal\
-program "$PROGRAM"\
-dontReuseEngine on\
-owner marcelk\
-console off\
-loginScript Settings/icsdronerc\
-autoJoin on\
-tourneyFormula "python tourneyFormula.py '%s'"\
-sendGameEnd "seek 5 0 r m f\nseek 20 0 r m f\n"\
-issueRematch on\
-limitRematches 100\
-resign off\
-acceptDraw off\
-easyMode off\
-shortLogging off\
-pgnFile "|tee -a Logs/Rookie-$TIMESTAMP.pgn | ./learn-pgn Data/results.csv"\
-logFile Logs/$LOGFILE
Games always have a result tag when I see them. (Rookie doesn't have the "result" command).
When I check now, I see the icsdrone program has last needed a restart in August:
Code: Select all
Interface: "icsdroneng-0.25 + Rookie 3.9x6 (4 cores). Online since Tue Aug 18 21:57:40 2015 GMT (4686 games played)."
