Arasan 9.4

[jdart]

Arasan 9.4 is available from http://www.arasanchess.org.

Changes in Arasan 9.4:
1) Some speed enhancements. For example, check evasion is incremental now.
2) Q-search has special code for check evasion. Checking move
generation can be enabled in the q-search (off by default).
3) Scoring changes: king safety, passed pawn, piece placement, bad trade.
4) Engine will kibitz if on ICC and opponent is a computer.
5) Fix for PV display under Arena with UCI: use O-O, O-O-O for castling.
6) Fix result learning information in arasan.log.
7) Fix draw accept logic - was erroneously accepting draws from lower
ranked players on ICC in some situations.
8) Fix tablebase probe logic - probes in more cases now.
9) The usual book additions/fixes.

--Jon

[Graham Banks]

Thanks Jon. Arasan marches from strength to strength!

Just one thing. Arasan 9.4 doesn't display it's thinking line until it finally moves under a Chessbase GUI.
Apart from that, all seems fine.

Regards, Graham.

[George Speight]

I might add to that the fact that 9.3 showed all the thinking lines immediately, which gives me pause for concern.


Regards,


George

[jdart]

I'll look at it.

I have to say, as an engine author, that I really hate UCI. Besides all its other issues it looks like different UIs implement it differently.

--Jon

[Graham Banks]

Arasan 9.4 doesn't display it's thinking line until it finally moves under a Chessbase GUI.
Apart from that, all seems fine.
Regards, Graham.

Actually, Arasan 9.4 also hangs in some games, that is it thinks to a certain depth and time and then starts all over, thus never completing the move.

I'm now trying it using the wb2uci adapters. It shows the thinking lines okay using this method.
I'll let you know whether there are any further "hangs".

Regards, Graham.

[George Speight]

Im confused, Jon. If you hate UCI that bad, why dont you just make it Winboard. Plenty of other programmers take that route. Your problem with UCI would then be solved, as far as i can tell.


George

[jdart]

I have received enough requests for UCI that I now support it. But I don't use it personally. Among other issues, since UCI does not communicate end of game to the engine, Arasan's result learning does not work under UCI. (Position learning still works).

--Jon