WinBoard plus WinZippy ICS (FICS) Support.

[ChessKnight]

I have started using Winboard 4.3.14k enhanced with WinZippy on FICS.
I like all the enhance features like move-list (History), Evaluation Diagram n Engine Output.

Further more I would like to request following features for WinBoard in WinZippy mode:

1) By default, WinBoard in WinZippy mode should be able to accept all offers (accept t all -> true), and able to accept the request for "ABORT", as opponent do not like to play with Chess Engine.

2) By default, WinBoard in WinZippy mode should able to say "This is xxx Chess Engine using WinBoard x.xx interface. Hope you may enjoy or you may abort." to an opponent when new game starts. Allowing an opponent to choose whether to play against chess engine or not.

3) WinBoard in WinZippy mode should able to say "Thanks for Playing. A nice Game." and seek new game automatically (if true) with 3 different custom configurable parameters in winboard.ini (FICS allows 3 different seeks like 1 0, 2 12 n 5 20). [ /winzippy new game seek1, /winzippy new game seek2 n /winzippy new game seek2].

Thanking you for enhancing Winboard and making it better n better.

[H.G.Muller]

I have little experience with zippy play, but I think that the automatic seek is usually done by defining an alias for GAMEEND on the ICS itself. WinBoard in Zippy mode sends this string to the ICS after every game, just for this purpose.

I considered a welcome announcement similar to what you suggest when -autoKibitz is switched on.

The other think I don't immediatley understand, for lack of ICS experience. Are you tlaking about options that WinBoard should set on the ICS?

[ChessKnight]

Thanks for replying.

As suggested by you auto seek at game end has been accomplished by gameend, starting greet is dome by gamestart alias.

thanks

[Eric Mullins]

I have little experience with zippy play, but I think that the automatic seek is usually done by defining an alias for GAMEEND on the ICS itself. WinBoard in Zippy mode sends this string to the ICS after every game, just for this purpose.

Yeah, that's how it's properly done. And in your login INI file, you terminate with GAMEEND.

I considered a welcome announcement similar to what you suggest when -autoKibitz is switched on.

One idea here is to have the engine/interface be represented with %engine and %interface (you pick the name/syntax-- doesn't matter) so that you can use it when/how you want in gamestart/gameend.

Additionally, it would be nice if the gamestart/gameend supported '\n' so that you could do multiple things. icsDrone, which I prefer for running on FICS, already does that for the gameend string. I had to add gamestart though, for a greeting.

[H.G.Muller]

Multiline strings are already supported, not? I find the option -zippyGameEnd, where you can define the string sent to the ICS at game end to any string, including new-lines. Default for this is "gameend\n" (note the newline!), which you can alias on the ICS with anything. But you might as well redefine it in WinBoard as well. There even is an environment variable, ZIPPYGAMEEND, that you can use to overrule the command-line option. But I don't know enough about environment variables to know if that can multi-line or not. But the command-line options should be able to handle any number of lines.

[Eric Mullins]

I thought I had tested '\n' once and it didn't work. Was years ago though-- Perhaps I imagined it not working, or am just remembering incorrectly. The other thing (also from memory) was routinely getting output like: "I'm not ready for a game yet" occasionally when ppl rematched. I had intended to see the cause and perhaps address it, but never got around to it.

[H.G.Muller]

From the zippy.README distributed wth the WinBoard/XBoard sources:

Code: Select all

  -zippyGameEnd string
   At the end of each game, Zippy sends this string to ICS,
        followed by a newline.  If you do not set this option, the
        string "gameend" is sent.  This is not a legal ICS command,
        but you can alias it to whatever you like, or you can leave
        it undefined, which will cause ICS to print a harmless error
        message after each game.  If you want to send more than one
        command at the end of the game, on ICC you can alias gameend
        to a "multi" command (see the ICC help files), but on FICS that
        does not work.  Instead, use the -zippyGameEnd option to have
        a string of several commands sent, with newlines in between.
        For example, you could give WinBoard the command line option
          -zippyGameEnd='say thanks\nseek 5 0\nseek 2 12\n'
        You could give xboard the command line option
          -xrm '*zippyGameEnd: say thanks\nseek 5 0\nseek 2 12\n'


This confirms what I read from the code, but also adds some info on the behavior of ICC and FICS.