Scatha 0.2.7

[Tord Romstad]

Hi all,

Scatha 0.2.7 is now available, with a new and somewhat prettier GUI with several new features. As before, you will probably need Mac OS X 10.4 in order to run it. You are welcome to try it in 10.3, but I strongly doubt that it will work. If some OS X 10.3 user with slightly above average technical skills is willing to help, I can probably produce a separate 10.3 executable.

The main news:

The GUI has been rewritten following the discussion on CCC last week. The single window in version 0.2.6 and earlier has been replaced with separate windows for the board, the move list and the engine analysis. Some work still remains in order to make the windows arrange themselves nicely. For now you will have to move and resize them manually. I have some screen shots of the new GUI on my Glaurung/Scatha site.

At last, Scatha is able to ponder! There is currently no way to disable the pondering, except in engine vs engine games (where pondering is always disabled). This should theoretically make Scatha a tiny bit stronger than before (as if I needed that; I haven't been able to score even a single draw against Scatha so far).

Support for multiple engines. Four engines are pre-installed: Scatha 0.2.7, Scatha 0.2.4, Scatha 0.2.3 and Scatha Brute Force. Scatha Brute Force is a dumbed-down version of Scatha 0.2.7. The difference is that all selectivity is disabled. Brute Force does not use null move, futility pruning or late move reductions. The purpose was to make myself an opponent which is not nearly as fearsome as Scatha 0.2.x, but more challenging than the "easy levels" found in the GUI. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work so well. Scatha Brute Force is actually quite strong, and achieves decent results against its big brother (I haven't played enough games to be sure how big the Elo difference is, though). Perhaps null move pruning is overrated? Or perhaps Scatha's (and hence also Glaurung's) search is nowhere near as efficient as I would like to believe?

It is also possible to install additional UCI hexagonal chess engines from the "Engine" > "Install Engine" menu item. At the moment, there are of course no UCI compatible hexachess engines except my own, but I hope there will be others some day. There is still no engine configuration, though.

Computer vs computer matches are possible, but only a single game so far (i.e. no multi-game matches). "Game" > "Computer vs Computer" opens a little dialog where you can choose two engines (both can be equal, if you prefer) and watch them play.

There is now a slightly more user-friendly dialog for setting up positions. It is not quite as nice as it looks on the screen shot on my Scatha page, though. For instance, if you click too close to the border between two squares, the piece will appear on both squares rather than the single square you intended. There is also no legality testing at all at the moment. You can enter any position you want, including positions with no kings or multiple kings for both sides. Doing this will almost certainly cause the engine to crash instantly, so be careful. Needless to say, this will be improved in the next release.

Some tiny evaluation bug fixes and adjustments have been made in the engine. I expect the playing strength to remain unchanged (indeed I don't think there has been any real progress in strength from 0.2.3 to 0.2.7). I hope to release the engine source code within a couple of days.

Have fun,
Tord

[Tord Romstad]

Hi all,

Unfortunately there was a nasty bug in Scatha 0.2.7 which would often cause it to crash or hang when a new game was started (especially after an engine vs engine game). I have now fixed the bug and replaced the binary on my home page. There are also to other tiny changes:

There is a new item named "Load Patch File" in the "File" menu. The purpose of this is to make minor bug fixes less painful for the users. The next time I fix a crash bug like the one described above, you won't have to download the whole, big Scatha executable. Downloading a tiny Lisp file from my home page and installing it with "Load Patch File" should be sufficient in most cases.

The pieces now look slightly nicer at small board sizes.

Tord

[Tord Romstad]

Hi all,

I have fixed two really annoying bugs in Scatha's GUI, and made a little visual improvement by displaying the current move in the move list with bold-face blue letters.

The Scatha binary on my home page has not been updated. Instead, I have prepared a tiny patch file (the download size is just 9 KB) which is installed in the Scatha GUI from the "Load Patch File" menu item. For further details, including a more detailed description of the bugs and the improvements, visit my Scatha page and have a look at the new "Patches" link (directly below Scatha 0.2.7 in the download list).

Opinions about the patching procedure would be very welcome. I have tried to make this as simple and user-friendly as possible while avoiding the need for huge downloads for every new version, but I am not sure how well it works for the average user.

I apologise for the massive amount of Scatha spam over the last few days, and I hope to reduce the volume from now on. I will not post messages about every single bug fix or new feature I add, but instead silently add new patch files to my Scatha page from time to time. Those among you who want to stay up to date are adviced to have a look at the patch area on my page regularly.

Major new versions and really cool new features will still be announced here, of course.

Tord