Problem with Arena and Dual Protocol engines

[CRoberson]

Somebody reported a problem to me about the new Ares release. Said it had slowness problems under Arena and didn't respond to the UCI stop command.
He said he installed it as UCI. I've seen this problem with all versions of Ares.

If you install a dual protocol (or at least a partially dual protocol) engine in Arena as UCI it doesn't work correctly. It will set it as auto detect. Then use it as xboard.

There is a problem in Arena due to Ares having minimal xboard support.

If you follow the normal Arena install process. You do this:

start Arena
click Engines
click install new engine
click the program (Ares)
Now comes the issue. You get the UCI or Winboard protocol question box. You click UCI then OK.
Now at Start Engine Query, you click No or Yes.

At this point, Arena should think Ares uses the UCI protocol, but it doesn't. To fix it:

click Engines
click Manage
click the Details tab
click the version of Ares in the engines list
You will see that the Type (protocol) is set to "Autodetect" which will check for xboard first and then be happy, but Ares has minimal xboard support.
So, click the down arrow and select UCI. Then click the Apply button at the bottom.

That should fix it. I have to do that every time I use a new version in Arena as well.

[Alexander Schmidt]

Hmmm, I use Arena since ages, but I never had this problem. When adding a new engine to Arena it always set the protocol as I checked it in the question box. Even if I cancel the question box, Arena does autodetect the protocol and set a bilingual engine as a winboard engine.

Maybe it is an issue with your Arena config files, sometmes they are messed up somehow...

[Kohflote]

Dear Sir,

I have both problems (poor speed performance, and "Stop" / "Go" command not working) in both Arena 3.5.1 and Shredder GUI.

I have followed the steps that you outlined for Arena but both problems still exist.

Best regards,
Koh, Kah Huat

[CRoberson]

Dear Sir,

I have both problems (poor speed performance, and "Stop" / "Go" command not working) in both Arena 3.5.1 and Shredder GUI.

I have followed the steps that you outlined for Arena but both problems still exist.

Best regards,
Koh, Kah Huat

Two things to try. The first is specific to engines that have command line benchmarks and the second you will
fake being a UCI GUI.

Bring up a windows power shell or command box. Type Ares2.3.14.exe -bench -fd 15. As below, it ran on my laptop
in 16.345 seconds. It ran through 6 positions at a fixed depth of 15 (-fd 15). You can run it at other depths if you like.

.\Ares2.3.14.exe -bench -fd 15
Ares
Running benchmark 1 2 3 4 5 6
Time Interior Nodes Quiesce Nodes Total Nodes NPS
16435 27683836 6805709 34489545 2098000
Leaf Interior Nodes searched = 3669624
Transposition Table Hits 759522 Misses 9211286 Ratio = 7
Pawn misses 1293309 Pawn attempts 13111201 Pawn miss rate = 9.86415

Now to fake being a UCI interface.
In a command box or windows Power shell, cd into the directory where you saved Ares.
type the following one line at a time
Ares2.3.13.exe
uci
ucinewgame
go infinite

The program should be producing lots of out put as it searches the starting position of a chess game.
At this point type stop or quit. quit will stop the search and exit the program. stop will stop the search without
exiting the program.

If all this goes well. It is not Ares by itself.It is either, the GUI or how it was installed.

[Kohflote]

Dear Sir,

I have tried the 2 things you mentioned and runs as you've written. But still have the 2 problems regardless I run Ares under Arena OR Shredder GUI.

Thank you & regards,
Koh, Kah Huat

[Alexander Schmidt]

I am not sure about Shredder, but under Arena an engine with lots of output will slow down the GUI.

So under Arena try to check: Engine -> Manage -> UCI -> UCI-Filter -> Always use UCI-Filter

I think this problem also occurs under some other GUIs, so the best for an engine is to limit the output at the beginning of the search.

[Ras]

the best for an engine is to limit the output at the beginning of the search.

Which is what the UCI spec recommends:

I suggest to start sending "currmove", "currmovenumber", "currline" and "refutation" only after one second to avoid too much traffic.