8x8 and 10x8 capable GUI

[Reinhard Scharnagl]

Would there be an interest in having such a GUI supporting 8x8 and 10x8 Chess (slightly comparable to the terminated SMIRF-GUI approach) then using e.g. an UCI related protocol?

If such a GUI would exist, who would be interested then to also develop 10x8 or 10x8/8x8 aware Chess engines?

Reinhard.

[Nicolai Czempin]

Would there be an interest in having such a GUI supporting 8x8 and 10x8 Chess (slightly comparable to the terminated SMIRF-GUI approach) then using e.g. an UCI related protocol?

If such a GUI would exist, who would be interested then to also develop 10x8 or 10x8/8x8 aware Chess engines?

Reinhard.

Just do it and see what happens. It should be sufficient that YOU are interested.

If you build it, they will come...

[Reinhard Scharnagl]

Would there be an interest in having such a GUI supporting 8x8 and 10x8 Chess (slightly comparable to the terminated SMIRF-GUI approach) then using e.g. an UCI related protocol?

If such a GUI would exist, who would be interested then to also develop 10x8 or 10x8/8x8 aware Chess engines? ...

Just do it and see what happens. It should be sufficient that YOU are interested.

If you build it, they will come...

Hi Nicolai,

sorry, you probably are wrong. It would be much easier to make such a GUI without any intermediate protocol. Nevertheless I had made before a SMIRF-GUI supporting a newer TMCI protocol without gaining any serious resonance by that.

Thus I am trying to investigate, whether there is a need for that at all, before I make a too extensive new approach.

Reinhard.

[Volker Pittlik]

...
Thus I am trying to investigate, whether there is a need for that at all, before I make a too extensive new approach.

Reinhard.

I don't know if there is a need. For me (who still have some ideas for a chess program) only 8x8 chess boards are important. The only variant I'm interested in is FRC. And I think it is already supported by the so-callled Winboard protocol (which correct name is Chess Engine Communication Protocol) and the UCI.

Another game of skill I'm personally interested in is go. Then there are some card games: skat, soppelkopf, schafkopf, jassen (only known in German speaking countries), Bridge and (of course) Texas Hold’em. There are very much interesting alternatives to the usual chess. Chess itself is still interesting so I'm not so interested in other variants.

Volker

BTW: Does someone know a good free poker training program?

[Volker Pittlik]

...
Thus I am trying to investigate, whether there is a need for that at all, before I make a too extensive new approach.

Reinhard.

I don't know if there is a need. For me (who still have some ideas for a chess program) only 8x8 chess boards are important. The only variant I'm interested in is FRC. And I think it is already supported by the so-callled Winboard protocol (whose correct name is Chess Engine Communication Protocol) and the UCI.

Another game of skill I'm personally interested in is go. Then there are some card games: skat, doppelkopf, schafkopf, jassen (only known in German speaking countries), Bridge and (of course) Texas Hold’em. There are very much interesting alternatives to the usual chess. Chess itself is still interesting so I'm not so interested in other variants.

Volker

BTW: Does someone know a good free poker training program?

[Reinhard Scharnagl]

... Thus I am trying to investigate, whether there is a need for that at all, before I make a too extensive new approach. ...

... The only variant I'm interested in is FRC. And I think it is already supported by the so-callled Winboard protocol (which correct name is Chess Engine Communication Protocol) and the UCI. ...

Well, Chess960/FRC is supported but in an incompatible manner, nevertheless I do not want to start a new discussion on that theme. Let the users be happy with that status quo, I am avoiding. ;-)

Personally I am not interested in programming card- or dice-games.

The game of Go could be more interesting indeed, but there still is no modern GUI and protocol, e.g. supporting also pondering (as far as I know). There also is no unique computer Ko rule and no unique computer point counting method, where the latter actually seems to be less important, as long dan players are big ahead against programs.

Reinhard.

[Nicolai Czempin]

Would there be an interest in having such a GUI supporting 8x8 and 10x8 Chess (slightly comparable to the terminated SMIRF-GUI approach) then using e.g. an UCI related protocol?

If such a GUI would exist, who would be interested then to also develop 10x8 or 10x8/8x8 aware Chess engines? ...

Just do it and see what happens. It should be sufficient that YOU are interested.

If you build it, they will come...

Hi Nicolai,

sorry, you probably are wrong. It would be much easier to make such a GUI without any intermediate protocol. Nevertheless I had made before a SMIRF-GUI supporting a newer TMCI protocol without gaining any serious resonance by that.

Thus I am trying to investigate, whether there is a need for that at all, before I make a too extensive new approach.

Reinhard.

I was trying to tell you that there is probably no point in asking this kind of thing in the forum. Just because someone would say "I'm interested" doesn't mean they will support you in any way.

And just because no-one answers, it doesn't mean that no-one will be interested if something is available. The first WB developer didn't have to ask, he simply wrote something and made it available.

Usually successful programs (at least in the FOSS world) start out because the developer has an itch to scratch.

So if your own need for this GUI is not sufficient, I don't think you should start it, irrespective of any answers you may get.


Just do it!

[Dann Corbit]

What, you mean like this one:
http://www.chessv.com/

Here is a 10x10 with Pascal source:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=200369

[Reinhard Scharnagl]

What, you mean like this one:
http://www.chessv.com/

Here is a 10x10 with Pascal source:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=200369

Hi Dann,

no, Smirf has reached a stage comparable to those since long.

See e.g. for CRC at: http://www.chessvariants.org/contests/10/crc.html

SMIRF donationware version download at: http://www.10x8.net/down/SmNewSetup.exe

Reinhard.

[Dann Corbit]

... Thus I am trying to investigate, whether there is a need for that at all, before I make a too extensive new approach. ...

... The only variant I'm interested in is FRC. And I think it is already supported by the so-callled Winboard protocol (which correct name is Chess Engine Communication Protocol) and the UCI. ...

Well, Chess960/FRC is supported but in an incompatible manner, nevertheless I do not want to start a new discussion on that theme. Let the users be happy with that status quo, I am avoiding.

Personally I am not interested in programming card- or dice-games.

The game of Go could be more interesting indeed, but there still is no modern GUI and protocol, e.g. supporting also pondering (as far as I know). There also is no unique computer Ko rule and no unique computer point counting method, where the latter actually seems to be less important, as long dan players are big ahead against programs.

Reinhard.

The go equivalent of Winboard or UCI protocols is Go Text Protocol:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~gunnar/gtp/
This appears to be a good alternative:
http://www.inventivity.com/OpenGo/

[Reinhard Scharnagl]

Despite of that ChessV has some strange behaviour when the engine's color side has only exact one move left, testgames between ChessV and SMIRF are interesting, especially when comparing the quality of positional evaluation models. ChessV did not notice the always increasing evaluation for the Black side as written in the PGN (sorry, SMIRF still confuses letters C and A in MBC games). Instead it mostly was convinced to be placed better on the board.

In the following game you can see the progresses SMIRF made in contrast to ChessV since the last 10x8 GothicChess Computer Championship, even when having a game of the Embassy (MBC) starting array:

[Event "Embassy Chess (MBC) Testgame"]
[Site "CHESSBOX-MAC-XP"]
[Date "2007.09.17"]
[Time "21:35:49"]
[Round "Test-1 (40 sec / move)"]
[White "ChessV 0.9.2"]
[Black "SMIRF MS-168f"]
[Result "0-1"]
[Annotator "RS"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "rnbqkmcbnr/pppppppppp/10/10/10/10/PPPPPPPPPP/RNBQKMCBNR w mKQkq - 0 1"]

1. Nc3 g6 {(11.01=) -0.232} 2. g3 Na6 {(10.21=) -0.209} 3. Nh3 c6 {(10.01=)
-0.047} 4. j4 Nh6 {(09.20) +0.156} 5. Rj3 Bf6 {(09.02=) +0.402} 6. f4 d5
{(10.01=) +0.402} 7. d4 Nf5 {(09.01) +0.787} 8. e3 h5 {(09.02) +0.732} 9. Ne2
Nd6 {(09.01=) +1.311} 10. Bd2 Bf5 {(09.01) +1.602} 11. Bf3 Qb6 {(09.02) +1.988}
12. b3 Nb4 {(09.01) +2.076} 13. Bxb4 Qxb4+ {(10.00) +2.082} 14. c3 Qa5
{(09.03=) +2.340} 15. b4 Qa6 {(09.02) +2.396} 16. a4 Nc4 {(10.01=) +2.436} 17.
Ra2 Ah6 {(09.01) +2.469} 18. Af2 Me6 {(09.00) +2.438} 19. b5 Qb6 {(08.01=)
+2.592} 20. bxc6 bxc6 {(09.01=) +2.748} 21. e4 dxe4 {(08.73) +2.547} 22. d5
exf3 {(09.10) +4.016} 23. dxe6 fxe2 {(10.01=) +6.291} 24. Kxe2 Ag4+ {(09.59)
+9.656} 25. Axg4 Bxg4+ {(10.16) +10.54} 26. Mf3 Qe3+ {(10.17) +10.61} 27. Kf1
Bxf3 {(11.01=) +11.15} 28. Qe1 Qxe1+ {(12.02=) +11.85} 29. Kxe1 fxe6 {(12.01=)
+12.00} 0-1

[Nicolai Czempin]

And I think it is already supported by the so-callled Winboard protocol (which correct name is Chess Engine Communication Protocol) and the UCI.

Well, just because the paper you are linking to uses that title doesn't mean that it's the name of the protocol.

In fact, at the very bottom of that paper there's this section:

ChessMaster 8000 also implements version 1 of the xboard/winboard protocol and can use WinBoard-compatible engines. The original release of CM8000 also has one additional restriction: only pure coordinate notation (e.g., e2e4) is accepted in the move command. A patch to correct this should be available from The Learning Company (makers of CM8000) in February 2001.

In addition, everybody I know calls it the WB protocol.

[Volker Pittlik]

...
In fact, at the very bottom of that paper there's this section:

ChessMaster 8000 also implements version 1 of the xboard/winboard protocol ...

In addition, everybody I know calls it the WB protocol.

Ah yes. I was confused by the header line of the document. But please repeat your argument at least 20000 times to make sure I'm really convinced.


Volker

[Nicolai Czempin]

...
In fact, at the very bottom of that paper there's this section:

ChessMaster 8000 also implements version 1 of the xboard/winboard protocol ...

In addition, everybody I know calls it the WB protocol.

Ah yes. I was confused by the header line of the document. But please repeat your argument at least 20000 times to make sure I'm really convinced.


Volker

Oops. I guess I am famous now

[H.G.Muller]

Would there be an interest in having such a GUI supporting 8x8 and 10x8 Chess (slightly comparable to the terminated SMIRF-GUI approach) then using e.g. an UCI related protocol?

If such a GUI would exist, who would be interested then to also develop 10x8 or 10x8/8x8 aware Chess engines?

Reinhard.

I was interested, in so far such a GUI would support Winboard protocol, to such a large extent that I even built one. (Not from scratch, but by adapting the existing Winboard, to be sure.) This new Winboard_F will be released very soon. It supports upto 12x8 boards. It even supporst more than 8 ranks graphically, but I am not sure what consequences this will have on move and FEN parsing and writing, as you run into the double-digit problem.

I have little experience with 10x8 Chess. Perhaps you can give me some hints as to the hidden problems that might occur. Is it enough to simply allow i- and j-files, and the extra piece indicators A and C? For FEN reading I support double-digit skips, like 10/10/10. I understand that there is also a system that uses 'x' for this purpose. It is not clear to me how you would write 11 or 12 in such a system. Is that simply 'x1' and 'x2'? Or is it 'y' and 'z', or 'xi' and 'xii'?

[Reinhard Scharnagl]

Dear H.G.

I remember a discussion on that theme as I published the X-FEN description. There seems to be another approach to encode fairychess positions, where the decision has been to use numbers instead of digits for empty space information. Thus I switched to uses "10" to describe an empty 10 squares row. Therefore I suggest to use "12" for to encode 12 empty squares.

Reinhard.

P.S.: I am very interested in new big board supporting GUIs. But this moment I am preparing my SMIRF for a coming event. Thus I rather will remain in the background actually.