wbtm's and java engines

[Laurens Winkelhagen]

Dear all,

I'm interested in running a small winboard tournament for engine-testing purposes, but my engine is a java engine (.jar-file) and the tourney managers I've currently tried (PSWBTM and GalisWBTM) do not seem to let me enter "java -jar jarfile.jar" type engines in their system. Running my java engine in winboard itself was not a problem though, so I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong or perhaps overlooking something.

I've also tried making a windows executable with launch4j but unfortunately this application does not work for me in winboard (even though it works perfectly as a console app).

Does anyone have any ideas / experience or perhaps even a sample engine file for PSWBTM or GalisWBTM?

Kind regards, Laurens Winkelhagen.


update: I found http://code.google.com/p/tourneyman/ - which is a java tourney manager, I'm betting it can handle java engines;-) Just a matter of downloading and building now:-)

[H.G.Muller]

I don't think PSWBTM cares what your engine is written in. You just have to give it the command line in its Engine Manager that is needed to start the engine. This is what it passs to WinBoard as argument to the -fcp (or -scp) option. It can be anything you want, PSWTM just considers it as a text string. If there exits a command that can make your engine run undr WinBoard, it can run onder PSWBTM.

You might have to enter the full pathname of "java", though, as PSWBTM derives the argument of the -fd (or -sd) command it passes to WinBoard from the engine executable, which in your case is "java".

If you don't want your engine to run in the java directory, you wil have to use a kludge to overrule the directory PSWBTM thinks you want, by entering as engine command:

java -jar jarfile.jar WBopt -%sDirectory PATHNAME

where PATHNAME is the path name of the directory where you do want your engine to run.

[Olivier Deville]

Hi Laurens

Here is how it is done here under PSWBTM :

Name : java_engine
Exe : C:\Winboard\java_engine\java.exe
Parameters : -jar java_engine.jar

Olivier

[Laurens Winkelhagen]

Thanks for the input,

with it, even if I didn't succeed immediately, I've tinkered some more and managed to get at least the java engine working in the engine manager screen:
I've put my c:\PathToJava\java in the .exe box, and -jar c:\PathToEngine\fw.jar in the parameters

When I do [Launch engine] winboard starts and loads the correct engine: sofar so good.

Unfortunately when I try to run a mini tourney, I get the message that "the game ended without starting. would you like to pause?". A control-tourney with 2 .exe files does work, so I'm still at a loss at what is going wrong. I cannot find any info on how to turn any debug info on either, I'm afraid.

on that last note by the way; where can I find information on that WBopt command? it looks handy and indeed, I want winboard to start my engine from a specific directory. I've tried the command, but cannot see if it works because the [launch engine] button in the engine manager does not let xboard produce a debug file and the tourney itself (which would have produced a debug file) does not play any games with this engine.

Anyway, Thank you for the input; I hope you have some more good tips:-)

update: Oliver, I hadn't seen your post yet, but: what you post is practically what I've tried now and still the tourney doesn't play my games as described above. Is there anyway to get debug information from this?

[Olivier Deville]

Hi Laurens

Actually my java.exe is not in the engine's path, this is just a trick to fool PSWBTM

To tell PSWBTM to write a debug, you just need to create a debug folder and check the debug box in the New Tournament window.

Olivier

[Pedro Castro]

Another possibility is to use Arena and create a .bat file with the java-jar java_engine.jar

[Jim Ablett]

Frank-Walter 1.0
Excelsior Jet compiled Win32 exe >

http://www.mediafire.com/?a3z2ynrldw2

Sorry about the quite large download (10.5mb) but I
needed to include the Jet runtime dlls.

Jim.

[H.G.Muller]

Information on the WBopt argument is n the WinBoard help file, under

"command-line options" -> "Chess engine options" -> "/fcp, /scp"

It is very strange that WinBoard does not run in a tourney, while you can launch the engine from the engine manager. PSWBIM is supposed to use the same /fd and /fcp arguments in both cases. Like Olivier pointed out, you can ask PSWBTM to save all debug files of a tourney. What I sometimes do is simply add "/debug" to the winboard.ini file.

[Laurens Winkelhagen]

Thanks all for the helpful replies!

(and the executable too, Jim, though because the engine is still quite bad and will probably improve rapidly: I couldn't ask anyone to make me good binaries every time I implement some change;-)

unfortunately I any tests will have to wait till saturday when I get home again.. I believe maybe some interaction with the java tournament manager I mentioned earlier might have been causing some problems for PSWBTM, I did notice yesterday night that this program had editted some parts in the winboard.ini file, and I was running some test tourney with that java manager whilst trying to get PSWBTM to work. As I mentioned earlier, I at one point did get a tournament with two 'normal' executables to work in pradu's program, but when I repeated that experiment later it did not work. If worse comes to worst, then I will just do a fresh install of the various programs on saturday.

Cheers again for thinking with me:-)

On a side note, my test tournament revealed that my current development version is quite worse than almost anything I've downloaded from the internet, only beating Pos and a single game against Mizar 2.0. So obviously I want to find some opponents that are more in it's range and because engines in that range are sometimes unstable, sometimes always play the same moves (like mine currently does) and I have some more 'wanna haves' I thought I'd pose the question here:
Which engines would you suggest for such testing, considering:
- I need weak engines: I looked at Leo's WBEC-rating list and only a very small selection seems to be in the correct range
- I would very much like the engine to be stable and accept / produce (only) legal moves.
- an opening book, or some randomness in moves is preferred
- ease of download would be nice, as would a version that runs on a mac (so I can make some use of my mac-mini)

Thanks again for reading all of this^^
--Laurens

[Laurens Winkelhagen]

Frank-Walter 1.0
Excelsior Jet compiled Win32 exe >

http://www.mediafire.com/?a3z2ynrldw2

Sorry about the quite large download (10.5mb) but I
needed to include the Jet runtime dlls.

Jim.

Oh and Jim, thanks again for the executable, I downloaded it and saw you also made some nice logo's I'll put those on the site sometime soon:-)

[H.G.Muller]

Micro-Max 1.6 is weak and very stable; 4.0 is somewhat stronger. They are all available for download from my website in WB-compatile versions, as Windows executable, but also as source.

[Laurens Winkelhagen]

Dear all,

I still had some problems even after re-installing the versions I had. In the end I decided to download the winboard gold pack from H. G. Muller and with that I could immediately run the premade tourney with PSWBTM. Very promising;-) However, I couldn't lauch my java engine properly untill I remembered the advice from Olivier and now I'm running my test tournaments with the handy start positions, which also reduce the priority of writing an opening book and using only engines that have a book.

warm regards, Laurens.

also I implemented move ordering in Frank-Walter, and it's making quite a difference already - sofar it's a good day ^^