FRC WB engines and Shredder Classic

[Volker Pittlik]

It seems Shredder Classic denies to play WB FRC engines to run.

I've tested with Spike 1.0, Baron 1.7.0 (shouldn't work anyway but I expected an error message) and my own engine.

Checking the log files it seems nothing has been send to the engine neither variant fischerandom nor a setboard command. Instead of that Shredder Classic poped up an error message:



for all tested engines. This is wrong and misleading because Spike does play FRC as WB engine and understands both FEN styles very well.

Can someone confirm that or telll me what I'm doing wrong?

Regards

Volker

[Guenther Simon]

My answer is not directly related to your problem, but IIRC Shredders
WB support is not much better than the 'famous' WB support in CB.
I guess the Shredder GUI is untested with WB/FRC, as most users
will have WB2UCI setups.
(If I think more about it, I must admit that I don't know if WB2UCI
will support FRC too? In this case all pure WB/FRC programs wouldn't
be able run at all under Shredder?)

Best regards,
Guenther

[milix]

I think that shredder gui expects from the xboard engine to send the "feature variants=fischerandom" command in order to indicate that the engine supports FRC. AFAIK Spike does not send this to GUI.

[Volker Pittlik]

I think that shredder gui expects from the xboard engine to send the "feature variants=fischerandom" command in order to indicate that the engine supports FRC. AFAIK Spike does not send this to GUI.

True Spike doesn't send that command. But TheBaron does it as well as my engine. Besides that Spike plays FRC in Arena as WB engine. (Arena sends "variant fischerandom" to the engines without checking if this feature has been enabled.)

Which others engines could be used for test (sorry, I'm not aware of all FRC enabled WB engines)

Regards

Volker

[milix]

Just checked with my engine also. The real problem is that Shredder GUI does not send the "protover" command. My engine sends its features as a response in this command.

-- EDIT
My assumption with the "feature" command seems to not stand. I tried to send this command to Shredder GUI right after the "xboard" command and the error message is the same with the one you described. I'll do some more checks later and I'll post them here.

[Volker Pittlik]

...The real problem is that Shredder GUI does not send the "protover" command. My engine sends its features as a response in this command.

As it should be done according to the specification. However, I've made an experimental version of my engine sending the "feature" commands after receiving "xboard". There is no difference in Shredder Classic's behaviour (still avoids playing FRC). It seems there is some potential for improvement in Shredder Classic.

Regards

Volker

--EDIT

it seems we both had the same idea...

[Daniel Mehrmann]

It seems Shredder Classic denies to play WB FRC engines to run.

I've tested with Spike 1.0, Baron 1.7.0 (shouldn't work anyway but I expected an error message) and my own engine.

Checking the log files it seems nothing has been send to the engine neither variant fischerandom nor a setboard command. Instead of that Shredder Classic poped up an error message:



for all tested engines. This is wrong and misleading because Spike does play FRC as WB engine and understands both FEN styles very well.

Can someone confirm that or telll me what I'm doing wrong?

Regards

Volker

Hi Volker,

Well, SMK and Huber are the authors of the UCI protocol. In the first case the Shredder GUI, i mean both versions, are UCI GUI's.
But it's nice that Stefan allso support the wb2 protocol over an adapter (WB2UCI).

1)
I'm pretty sure Stefan support only the original wb2 protocol and no extensions as Arena and ChessPartner created.
And this is good, otherwise Stefan would accept an extensions that comes not from the wb2 author. I would be allso very annoying.

2)
From marketing view it looks like not good to support this extensions, which not included in wb2 and no offical standard

ps: We're only talking about protocol facts

Basicly, for me, its clear why that doesn't work....

Best
Daniel

[Volker Pittlik]

...
But it's nice that Stefan allso support the wb2 protocol over an adapter (WB2UCI).
...
Basicly, for me, its clear why that doesn't work...

OK, I think I got it too.

Regards

Volker

[milix]

But this adapter works fine with normal chess (it starts a new game every move and sends all moves from starting position til current in force mode - but at least it works ok). And I think it only supports protocol 1, not 2 and this is probably the reason that does not support frc in wb.

Hint: You can try to run WB2UCI.exe in command prompt, type uci and "setoption name LoadEngine value your_engines_full_path_and_name" and see what your engine gets from this adapter.

[Volker Pittlik]

But this adapter works fine with normal chess (it starts a new game every move and sends all moves from starting position til current in force mode - but at least it works ok).

Yes no problems with normal chess.

...

Hint: You can try to run WB2UCI.exe in command prompt, type uci and "setoption name LoadEngine value your_engines_full_path_and_name" and see what your engine gets from this adapter.

I possibly try that later. At the moment I'm a bit tired of this protocoll issues and want to continue with the chess stuff. Fortunately it works in WB (experimental versions).

Regards

Volker

[Daniel Mehrmann]

But this adapter works fine with normal chess (it starts a new game every move and sends all moves from starting position til current in force mode - but at least it works ok).

Yes no problems with normal chess.

...

Hint: You can try to run WB2UCI.exe in command prompt, type uci and "setoption name LoadEngine value your_engines_full_path_and_name" and see what your engine gets from this adapter.

I possibly try that later. At the moment I'm a bit tired of this protocoll issues and want to continue with the chess stuff. Fortunately it works in WB (experimental versions).

Regards

Volker

I guess it will come in wb3 too, but not in wb2.

For example i'm working hard currently on wb3 preparation:

selection of new engine-interface.html:

Code: Select all

With protocol version 3 xboard can read more search information. If "feature output" set to 1, the thinking output should be in the following new format:

ply score time nodes tbused tbhits hash cpuload mate window multi pv


[/code]

[Jose Antonio Gonzalez]

I have tested Shredder and Arena for running FRC engines, and I find that both GUI are complementary:

WinBoard FRC engines works properly in Arena, but not in Shredder.

UCI FRC engines works properly in Shredder, but not in Arena.