New othello engine for Winboard

[edax]

Hello,

I would like to mention the availability of Edax, as an Othello engine for the Alien Edition of WinBoard. I succeeded to make it play and analyze some games with the following winboard executable (http://hgm.nubati.net/WinBoard-Alien.zip). Unfortunately, I do not think Othello support available is in the main branch of WinBoard, at least not yet.
My Othello program is available here :
http://abulmo.perso.neuf.fr/edax/4.2/edax.htm

I hope my program will add some interests to get a definitive and better Othello support inside WinBoard.
I hope also to see other strong program using this protocol.

Richard

[Mathieu]

Hi!

Thanks for that information. I did not know that version of Winboard and I'll definitely give it a try as I'm a multi game (but weak) player.
I think it can't beat dedicated intefaces (ex : GTP engines and SGF file support for the exemple of go) but it's an easy entry to play new games. I'm too bad in othello to judge your engine, but i'll try it anyway.

[Philippe Etard]

I've installed Winboard with Edax and edited the position in order to put the 4 starting pawns. I can make Edax play against itselt and analyse.

The only thing I can't do is playing against Edax.
Have you succeded or must i stay with Nboard ?

[H.G.Muller]

You should be able to play against the engine by right-clicking squares on which you want to drop. You might have to run with Additional option "-pieceMenu true" once, to make this work; I have forgotten what setting for -pieceMenu we ship it with.

[edax]

I've installed Winboard with Edax and edited the position in order to put the 4 starting pawns. I can make Edax play against itselt and analyse.

The only thing I can't do is playing against Edax.
Have you succeded or must i stay with Nboard ?

In version 4.2.x xboard support was somewhat buggy, and Edax had trouble to understand when it was its turn.
A new version 4.3.alpha3 with several fixes is available at google-code :
http://code.google.com/p/edax-reversi/downloads/list

--
Richard

[Philippe Etard]

Still no luck .
I must type my moves manually with : View->Type in move...
then for instance P@d6

"/pieceMenu=true" is set in WB-alien.ini
or
-pieceMenu true in the option leads to the same way

[edax]

You should be able to play against the engine by right-clicking squares on which you want to drop. You might have to run with Additional option "-pieceMenu true" once, to make this work; I have forgotten what setting for -pieceMenu we ship it with.

Isn't it "-dropMenu true" instead of "-pieceMenu true" ?
Also, in order to show the initial position with 4 discs, Test legality needs to be turned off, via the menu "Options/General" or the command line "-xlegal"

--
Richard

[Philippe Etard]

Isn't it "-dropMenu true" instead of "-pieceMenu true" ?
Also, in order to show the initial position with 4 discs, Test legality needs to be turned off, via the menu "Options/General" or the command line "-xlegal"

--
Richard

Yes ! Your are right Richard. "-dropMenu true" and disabling the "test legality" draw the 4 pawns and I can play normally. Well done.

Also editing the WB-alien.ini like this :

/singleEngineList=false
/firstChessProgramNames={wEdax-x86.exe /fd=c:\test /variant="reversi"
}
/secondChessProgramNames={wEdax-x86.exe /sd=c:\test /variant="reversi"
}

avoids creating a shortcut.

[H.G.Muller]

Oh yes, sorry! -pieceMenu is for EditPosition. I mixed up the two.

Indeed putting some WinBoard command-line options with the engine line is often a good idea. You could similarly add the /dropMenu=true to the edax line as well, if you have some other engines that you prefer to run with /dropMenu=false.