How to set up Pro Deo in Winboard

[Charles Browne]

When I first started using Winboard, Pro Deo was one of the first engines I successfully set up.

I'm posting this for any people that might be looking for solutions.

When will you be making the next instalment?

This is it I'm sure - I'm out of ideas.


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How to set up Ed Schröder's Pro Deo chess engine as a Winboard engine in the Winboard GUI.

(The below is some words and graphics, but it takes longer to read the below post than it actually takes to set up Pro Deo as a Winboard engine in the Winboard GUI.)



From Mr. Schröder's website - http://www.top-5000.nl/ - currently on the right side of the page is a link for downloading Pro Deo 1.6.


Here I have downloaded the file to my "Chess Engines" folder and I have extracted the contents to that folder. What was extracted from the zip file was the "ProDeo16" folder and the "setup" executable file.





I delete the zip file and the "setup" executable file. The only thing that remains is the "ProDeo16" folder. You can name this folder what you want, but in this example I will leave the name as ProDeo16.





Setting up Pro Deo in Winboard is basically simple. To be honest there is a lot to this engine and I haven't really explored all of its possibilities. What is being shown here though will get a person up and running with using the chess engine.


In the ProDeo16 folder are two things to note. First off is the "readme" file.


Opening the "readme" file and scrolling down till this section is seen -





The above section in the readme file has to do with the hash table settings for Pro Deo. Instead of using megabyte numbers for the hash table settings, Pro Deo uses codes to signify how many megabytes the hash table is being set to. As an example: If we wanted to set the hash table for Pro Deo to 96 megabytes we would use w3 for the setting, not the numeral 96. We'll come back to the hash table setting in a few minutes.


The next thing to look at is the "personal" folder. Mr. Schröder has given Pro Deo the capability to use different personalities. This is what is in the personal folder -





The two things shown above, the readme file and the personal folder, are the two things to note for now. I should also point out the ProDeo.exe file that is in the ProDeo16 folder. This ProDeo.exe file is the Pro Deo Winboard chess engine. We will come back to these things in a few seconds.


Now we'll turn our attention to the Winboard GUI. In this example I am going to start off with with a new winboard.ini file. Of course if I already had a winboard.ini set up I would just add the data to it, no need to start with a new winboard.ini file each time a chess engine's data is inputted.


Opening the ini file I scroll down to this section in the file -





In this section will be inputted the data that the Winboard GUI needs to function with the Pro Deo Winboard chess engine.

A caveat. Below is the way I set up this section of the winboard.ini file. I have seen, and if you are new to this you may in the future see, other people input the data differently than I do. Please do not discount what you see other people do here. It may be that the way they do it is a better way than I do, maybe even a way that you would prefer to do it. But one thing is for certain, some things have to be done a certain way in this section or else the Winboard GUI will not be able to communicate effectively with the chess engine (whichever chess engine that might be). It's a learning experience, and not too difficult of one at that really.



This is what I input into this section of the winboard.ini file -






And here, what is shown in the graphic above is displayed as code -

Code: Select all

}
/firstChessProgramNames={"ProDeo 1.6" /fd="C:\Program Files\Chess\Chess Engines\ProDeo16" /fcp='ProDeo w4 prodeo.eng'
}
/secondChessProgramNames={GNUChess
"GNUChes5 xboard"
}


In the /fd= section I have input the path to the folder (directory) that my copy of the ProDeo.exe file is in.

In the /fcp= section I have put the ProDeo.exe file name. No need to put the .exe extension on the end. But if the executables file name was - ProDeo1.6 - then we would need to put the .exe extension on the end because the file name would then have two periods [.]. As it is there in no additional period in the filename, just one period, so just inputting - ProDeo - is fine. This from the Winboard help file tells about it:

If the engine name has more than one period in it (for example, QChess1.5.exe), you must include the ".exe" extension; otherwise you can leave it out.

Also in the /fcp= section above it can be seen that w4 has been put in. That is because 128MB is the hash table I decided to use, and from the "readme" file mentioned above, w4 to Pro Deo signifies 128 megabytes for the hash table.

Lastly in the /fcp= section I put the name for the prodeo.eng personality that is in the "personal" folder that was also mentioned above. The .eng extension does have to be included in the personality name.


So Pro Deo is all set up in the winboard.ini file. I close the winboard.ini file and save the changes that were made.


Now I go to the Winboard GUI and open it up. And with "Play against a chess engine or match two engines" selected I click OK.





Just for the heck of it I'll go to "Engines > Options" and check "Ponder Next Move" and "Enable and Show Thinking".





Then going to "Options > Time Control" an one hour game with each side having thirty minutes each will be set up.





With me playing white, and after a few careless moves I stop (abort) the game.






Then going to the Pro Deo chess engine folder (ProDeo16) I see that a file named "param" has been created - Param equals Parameters.

Opening this Param.txt file it can be seen that the settings that were inputted into the winboard.ini file were indeed successful. The ProDeo.eng personality is being used and the setting for the hash table is 128MB -







Now say we want to use a different personality from the personal folder. Lets choose the Vishy Anand.eng personality file.


So in the winboard.ini file we changed some data and this is what we have in the ini file now. I have also changed the hash table to w3 - w3 equals a 96MB hash table.





Now if you used the above shown setting in the winboard.ini file for the Vishy Anand.eng personality and you moved a few pieces on the chessboard, and then went to check the param.txt file in the ProDeo16 folder, you would see that the hash table setting did change to 96MB but there is no personality listed. Something is wrong






What is wrong is that the personality file name has spaces in it - Vishy Anand.eng. The first personality that was used in this example - ProDeo.eng - did not have spaces in the file name so it worked fine.

This is a Winboard GUI problem not a Pro Deo problem. The Winboard help file says this about spaces in the engine name or engine argument -

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.

So to rectify the situation we input the data for the Vishy Anand.eng file the acceptable way into the winboard.ini file. All that was done below is that quote marks were added at both ends of the - Vishy Anand.eng - entry, with the single quote mark placed on the outside.





The above shown as code:

Code: Select all

}
/firstChessProgramNames={"ProDeo 1.6" /fd="C:\Program Files\Chess\Chess Engines\ProDeo16" /fcp='ProDeo w3 "Vishy Anand.eng"'
}
/secondChessProgramNames={GNUChess
"GNUChes5 xboard"
}


And now after opening the Winboard GUI and making a few moves, going back to the param file it is seen that the Vishy Anand.eng personality is successfully being used. All it took was quote marks around the file name.






That is all there is to getting Pro Deo set up in Winboard as a Winboard engine. As was mentioned above there are a lot of possibilities with this engine that I do not know about, but I do know from reading that there are functions I have not even tried with it yet.

Doing a search with a search engine on - chess Ed Schröder Pro Deo - or similar terms, should bring up a lot of pages of information to look at to expand the knowledge base should it be desired to get deeper into using the Pro Deo chess engine and taking advantage of what it has to offer.

I'm not aware of any serious errors I made in the process outlined above, but errors may still exist.



The post below this one will look at setting up the Pro Deo chess engine to work as an UCI chess engine with the Polyglot adapter in the Winboard GUI.

[Charles Browne]

How to set up Pro Deo as an UCI engine in the Winboard GUI via the Polyglot adapter.


First question: Pro Deo is a Winboard engine and it will work fine in the Winboard GUI that was intended to run Winboard engines, why would I want to run Pro Deo as a UCI engine in the Winboard GUI using the Polyglot adapter?

Well, it turns out (as far as I know) that Pro Deo has some capabilites and settings that do not appear to be settable when Pro Deo is run as a straight Winboard engine in the Winboard GUI. Granted a lot of these settings are somewhat advanced, but if a person learns how to use them then they ought to be able to use them I suppose.

I use Pro Deo as a Winboard engine, and then other times I might set it up with Polyglot. For me at this point in time, it changes.


When Ed Schröder released his Pro Deo engine to the public (us) he included in the package Odd Gunnar Malin's wb2uci adapter.

Mr. Schröder also included this section in the wb2uci.eng file -





It is because of this [EXTRAS] section in the wb2uci.eng file, that we can make use of the Polyglot adapter with Pro Deo in the Winboard GUI.


I have submitted a post on setting up Polyglot with Winboard here, and a post on making a polyglot.ini file here. Rather than repeating a lot that has already been posted, I will just show how I go about setting Pro Deo up with the Winboard GUI and Polyglot.


I have made a folder called "ProDeo 1.6" in my Polyglot folder and I put a copy of Fonzy Bluemers' modified version of Polyglot in it. Fonzy Bluemers' modified Polyglot does not require a Cygwin1.dll file to function.





Now I make a polyglot.ini file for the Pro Deo engine, but here is the catch. When making the polyglot.ini file I do not point the ini file to the ProDeo.exe chess engine file. The ProDeo.exe file is a Winboard chess engine. Instead the polyglot.ini file is pointed to the rebeluci.exe file.

If you double-click the rebeluci.exe file that is in the "ProDeo16" chess engine folder, and you type "uci", lower case without quote marks, into the console window, and press "Enter". This is what you should see -





To make a polyglot.ini file one can refer to the post on making ini files mentioned above. I am going to take the easy way out and download Alex Guerrero's Polyglot_GUI, that is found on his website, to make the ini file.


Double-clicking the Polyglot_GUI exe file I navigate to the "ProDeo16" chess engine folder from within the Polyglot_GUI, and I then double-click the rebeluci.exe file (not the ProDeo.exe file) -





After double-clicking the rebeluci.exe file, this window appears -





In the above window, shown in the graphic, in the "Engine section" are some settings that can now be set, like was mentioned above, that aren't settable when Pro Deo is used as a straight Winboard Engine. And like was also mentioned above, some of them may be considered settings for advanced users. Really what I mean by that is a person would have to know what the setting does.

I may just keep most settings at their default setting and go ahead and make the ini file. Later, settings can be changed, or not, as wanted.

Clicking the "Save" button in the Polyglot_GUI the ini file is saved to the Polyglot_GUI folder, and I move the ini file to the "ProDeo 1.6" folder that is in my "Polyglot" folder.


Below is how I have the polyglot.ini file set up for this example. The only thing changed in the Engine Section is - Ponder - was turned off, and the personality was set to - Strong Club Player. In the Polyglot section of the ini file also make sure - Book= - is set to - Book=false






Now comes the kicker. To change the hash table setting one needs to go to the ProDeo16 chess engine folder and open the "wb2uci.eng" file with a text editor - "notepad" in this case -





And under the [OPTIONS] heading will be seen this line -

Code: Select all

[OPTIONS]
Program = prodeo.exe w1 ProDeo.eng


Remember, that when Pro Deo was set up as a Winboard engine, the hash table for the engine was set by the entry in the winboard.ini file.

Now that we are setting Pro Deo up via Polyglot, the hash table for the engine is set in this "wb2uci.eng" file. In the first post in this thread, was mentioned that Pro Deo uses codes for the hash table settings. With the w1 like it is now in the wb2uci.eng file, Pro Deo is set to use a hash table of 48MB. We will go ahead and change the hash table to 96MB (I don't have much memory in my computer). So the w1 is changed to w3.

Also I have the personality in the polyglot.ini file set to - Strong Club Player - so I change the personality in the "wb2uci.eng" file to "Strong Club Player", too. In the wb2uci.eng file the .eng extension does need to be in the personality name, and quote marks need to be around the file name since the file name has spaces in it.

Code: Select all

[OPTIONS]
Program = prodeo.exe w3 "Strong Club Player.eng"


Now I will tell it straight, that even though I added the "Strong Club Player.eng" entry to the wb2uci.eng file to reflect the entry that is in the polyglot.ini file, I am not so sure that the personality entry needs to be in the wb2uci.eng file, too. It would be an easy thing to check in the param.txt file to see if leaving it out of the wb2uci.eng file affected anything in a negative way, but I just haven't gotten around to doing that easy check. Or if even leaving it at the default "ProDeo.eng" entry would cause anything negative when using personalities in the polyglot.ini file. I figured I didn't change engine personalities too often so putting the entry in both the wb2uci.eng and polyglot.ini files didn't cause me any extra fiddling around. And it may be that both entries do need to be entered, I just don't definitely know.



O.K., The wb2uci.eng file is set up for the hash table and the personality being used, and the polyglot.ini file is set up, too. Now we turn our attention to the winboard.ini file.


Since I have already posted on setting up Polyglot with Winboard, I am just going to show how the winboard.ini file is set up for using Pro Deo via the Polyglot adapter. I have also added Ron Murawski's chess engine Horizon as a second chess program.





The above graphic entries displayed as code:

Code: Select all

}
/firstChessProgramNames={"ProDeo 1.6" /fd="C:\Program Files\Chess\Polyglot\ProDeo 1.6" /fcp='polyglot'
}
/secondChessProgramNames={"Horizon 4.4" /sd="C:\Program Files\Chess\Chess Engines\Horizon" /scp='Horizon_4_4'
}


Clicking the winboard.exe file and clicking OK (with "Play against a chess engine or match two engines" selected) -






When the GUI opens I go to "Options > Engines" and make sure that "Ponder Next Move" is unchecked. I uncheck this because two engines will be playing each other, and I only have one cpu. I don't want any engine conflict for computer resources going on - too much.


Then I go to "Mode" and click "Two Machines"





and Pro Deo and Horizon play a game of Chess. I already had the time set, but before clicking "Two Machines" the game time could be adjusted.







That's about it.




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Lastly.

Just a word about the modified versions of Fabien Letouzy's original Polyglot adapter. I think, as I know that other do too, that Jaap Weidemann and Fonzy Bluemers have both made a great work in their modifications of Polyglot.

I have an old computer and Jaap Weidemann's last modified version works well for me, and I also use some of Fonzy Bluemers releases.

For me the problem with Jaap's version on my computer is that using the Cygwin1.dll file that comes with the modified polyglot.exe file download, causes this console window to pop up when Winboard is started, and if the console window is closed an error message appears and clicking OK in the box causes Winboard to close. So the console window would have to be minimized to use Polyglot with that Cygwin1.dll file. But using the Cygwin1.dll file that is available on the original Polyglot download page with Jaap's modified version does not cause these errors for me. Everything runs fine as far as my usage of Polyglot goes. I think it depends on the operating system and possibly the computer as to whether or not any version of Cygwin1.dll causes a problem.


Well thanks to Jaap Weidemann and Fonzy Bluemers for their modifications of Fabien Letouzy's original program. If one version gives your computer problems try another one. They're all good.

Fonzy Bluemers website

Jaap Weidemann's modified from March 2007 - uploaded to rapidshare by me.

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edit: fixed type error