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winboard not recognising prodeo properly

PostPosted: 26 Apr 2009, 04:14
by lion
Hi,

I have gone through the howto tutotorial on setting up winboard to work with prodeo. Have had no luck getting winboard to utilise prodeo's personalities :(

My winboard.ini file looks like this:

/firstChessProgramNames={"ProDeo" /fd="D:/Documents and Settings/Owner/Desktop/My Chess Games & others/engines/wbx_20060129_win32/ProDeo16/ProDeo16/"
/fcp='ProDeo w1 "Average Club Player.eng"'

I am using Winboard 4.2.7 and prodeo 16.

Can anyone help?
Thanks

Re: winboard not recognising prodeo properly

PostPosted: 26 Apr 2009, 05:48
by Charles Browne
What you have in the winboard.ini file looks correct to me.

One thing you might try if you haven't already, is before checking the ProDeo param.txt file to see if the changes are entered, is give ProDeo enough time (i.e. enough moves played) to where it is out of book and the engine is thinking on its own. I failed to mention in the thing I wrote that the changed entries only show up in the param.txt file after the engine has entered the stage where it is thinking on its own. That has been my experience anyway.

If that doesn't do it maybe someone else can offer a solution.

Re: winboard not recognising prodeo properly

PostPosted: 26 Apr 2009, 06:06
by Alex Guerrero
I recommend to erase spaces in personalities files.

Here mi old post.
I use ProDeo in Winboard thus:

"Prodeo_12 w1 rebel.eng" /fd="Engines\2800-2600\Prodeo"

The problem is in personalitys with spaces as 'Strong Club Player.eng'.
I did a copy in personal folder without spaces 'Strong_Club_Player.eng' and i put in winboard.ini:

"Prodeo_12 w1 Strong_Club_Player.eng" /fd="Engines\2800-2600\Prodeo"


Of course expert in ProDeo is Charles Brown.

Re: winboard not recognising prodeo properly

PostPosted: 26 Apr 2009, 06:17
by Charles Browne
Hi Alex,

I only went by what was written in the Winboard help file itself.

If the engine name or an engine argument has a space in it, use single quotes around the whole command, and inside them use double quotes around each item that contains spaces.



Anyway just to check it I downloaded Winboard 4.2.7b from Tim Mann's site and the personality changed in ProDeo 1.6's param.txt file once the engine was out of the opening book with no problem.

Re: winboard not recognising prodeo properly

PostPosted: 26 Apr 2009, 06:21
by lion
Charles Browne wrote:What you have in the winboard.ini file looks correct to me.

One thing you might try if you haven't already, is before checking the ProDeo param.txt file to see if the changes are entered, is give ProDeo enough time (i.e. enough moves played) to where it is out of book and the engine is thinking on its own. I failed to mention in the thing I wrote that the changed entries only show up in the param.txt file after the engine has entered the stage where it is thinking on its own. That has been my experience anyway.

If that doesn't do it maybe someone else can offer a solution.


Thanks Charles, tried this with the same result :(

Re: winboard not recognising prodeo properly

PostPosted: 26 Apr 2009, 06:37
by Charles Browne
lion wrote:Thanks Charles, tried this with the same result :(


Hello lion, If you have the ProDeo engine at least making moves then you might try Alex's method of replacing the spaces in the personality file names with underscores and also replacing the spaces in the eng personality file name in the winboard.ini file with underscores.

You might want to set up the winboard.ini file the way Alex showed above.

Re: winboard not recognising prodeo properly

PostPosted: 26 Apr 2009, 06:42
by lion
Alex Guerrero wrote:I recommend to erase spaces in personalities files.

Here mi old post.
I use ProDeo in Winboard thus:

"Prodeo_12 w1 rebel.eng" /fd="Engines\2800-2600\Prodeo"

The problem is in personalitys with spaces as 'Strong Club Player.eng'.
I did a copy in personal folder without spaces 'Strong_Club_Player.eng' and i put in winboard.ini:

"Prodeo_12 w1 Strong_Club_Player.eng" /fd="Engines\2800-2600\Prodeo"


Of course expert in ProDeo is Charles Brown.[/quoute]

I downloaded winboard 4.2.7b tried this including all of the above still with no luck.

Re: winboard not recognising prodeo properly

PostPosted: 26 Apr 2009, 07:04
by lion
This is really frustrating. I don't want have to switch to some other host, just to utilise the prodeo personalities as I quite like the simplicity of winboard.

Re: winboard not recognising prodeo properly

PostPosted: 26 Apr 2009, 07:16
by Charles Browne
lion,

Alex's way works for him and the Winboard help file way of using quotes works for me so I am at a loss on what could be going on.

By the directory name you posted I suppose you were using Alessandro Scotti's Winboard_X from here

http://www.ascotti.org/programming/chess/zip/wbx_20060129_win32.zip


When using the above Winboard_X version the personality changed in the ProDeo param.txt file for me with no problem.

The only other thing I can suggest, a long shot, is to make sure the param.txt file is not set to read only.

Re: winboard not recognising prodeo properly

PostPosted: 26 Apr 2009, 08:13
by lion
Charles Browne wrote:lion,

Alex's way works for him and the Winboard help file way of using quotes works for me so I am at a loss on what could be going on.

By the directory name you posted I suppose you were using Alessandro Scotti's Winboard_X from here

http://www.ascotti.org/programming/chess/zip/wbx_20060129_win32.zip


When using the above Winboard_X version the personality changed in the ProDeo param.txt file for me with no problem.

The only other thing I can suggest, a long shot, is to make sure the param.txt file is not set to read only.

Just checked that and the file is okay, thanks.

One interesting thing that I have noticed is in the "debug.txt" file, taken from the ProDeo directory, which indicates and unknown command:
[0] - xboard
[0] - protover 2
[0] - protover 2 --> Unknown command <--
[0] - new
[0] - random
[0] - level 40 1 0
[0] - post
[0] - hard
[0] - time 6000
[0] - otim 6000
[0] - d2d4
[0] - time 5998
[0] - otim 5804
[0] - c1g5
[0] - time 5996
[0] - otim 5606
[0] - g5f4
[0] - time 5995
[0] - otim 5339
[0] - d4d5
[0] - time 5993
[0] - otim 5153
[0] - f4c1
[0] - time 5990
[0] - otim 2095
[0] - e2e3
[1] - time 5551
[1] - otim 1909
[1] - d1d5
[1] - time 5517
[1] - otim 1609
[1] - d5d1

Re: winboard not recognising prodeo properly

PostPosted: 26 Apr 2009, 08:32
by lion
Okay, if I can't solve this, any other engines that work well with winboard that have very customisable paremeters ?

Thanks

Re: winboard not recognising prodeo properly

PostPosted: 26 Apr 2009, 08:43
by Charles Browne
In regards to ProDeo. May be another long shot. I just sent you a PM to suggest trying to replace the forward slashes in the winboard.ini file

Code: Select all
"D:/Documents and Settings/Owner/Desktop/My Chess Games & others/engines/wbx_20060129_win32/ProDeo16/ProDeo16/"


to backward slashes

Code: Select all
"D:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Desktop\My Chess Games & others\engines\wbx_20060129_win32\ProDeo16\ProDeo16\"


And I think you could leave off the last slash, though I don't think that makes a difference.

The entry in the winboard.ini file would look like this

Code: Select all
/firstChessProgramNames={"ProDeo" /fd="D:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Desktop\My Chess Games & others\engines\wbx_20060129_win32\ProDeo16\ProDeo16" /fcp='ProDeo w1 "Average Club Player.eng"'

Re: winboard not recognising prodeo properly

PostPosted: 26 Apr 2009, 09:53
by Charles Browne
lion wrote:Okay, if I can't solve this, any other engines that work well with winboard that have very customisable paremeters ?


Ufim (UCI and Winboard), Horizon (Winboard) and the newer Crafty (Winboard) versions have a limit strength option. There are others also.

Re: winboard not recognising prodeo properly

PostPosted: 26 Apr 2009, 10:16
by lion
Charles Browne wrote:In regards to ProDeo. May be another long shot. I just sent you a PM to suggest trying to replace the forward slashes in the winboard.ini file

Code: Select all
"D:/Documents and Settings/Owner/Desktop/My Chess Games & others/engines/wbx_20060129_win32/ProDeo16/ProDeo16/"


to backward slashes

Code: Select all
"D:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Desktop\My Chess Games & others\engines\wbx_20060129_win32\ProDeo16\ProDeo16\"


And I think you could leave off the last slash, though I don't think that makes a difference.

The entry in the winboard.ini file would look like this

Code: Select all
/firstChessProgramNames={"ProDeo" /fd="D:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Desktop\My Chess Games & others\engines\wbx_20060129_win32\ProDeo16\ProDeo16" /fcp='ProDeo w1 "Average Club Player.eng"'


It's working now ! Must have been your finetunings. Thankyou very much
:)