How many "official" Toga projects there is now?

[Ryan Benitez]

I have no idea about any of th Toga stuff but I can say that Fruit is still developed and is now a bitboard engine with a rewritten eval that is much different than the old eval.

[Marek Soszynski]

Ryan,

On the Fruit website http://www.fruitchess.com/ it says "The development on Fruit by Fabien Letouzey has ceded and it is unlikely to continue." So could you please explain a bit more what you mean by "Fruit is still developed." Thanks.

[Thomas Gaksch]

Congratulations Ryan,
this redesign was the right step to be sucessfull for the next years. That was really a lot of work for you. but a great decision to do it.
Now in practise Fruit isn´t anymore Fruit 2.1 and in my opinion Fruit is now your own baby. Why didn´t you rename it?


Thomas

[Andrej Sidorov]

I have no idea about any of th Toga stuff but I can say that Fruit is still developed and is now a bitboard engine with a rewritten eval that is much different than the old eval.

Don't you mean Rybka?

[Rolf]

Congratulations Ryan,
this redesign was the right step to be sucessfull for the next years. That was really a lot of work for you. but a great decision to do it.
Now in practise Fruit isn´t anymore Fruit 2.1 and in my opinion Fruit is now your own baby. Why didn´t you rename it?


Thomas

How could a redesign and some changes in the evaluation mean a genuine ownership resp. creativity? If Ryan would lend me the actual code and would stop here, would I then be the owner in three years? Imagine Ryan would even declare that I am now the right owner, am I therefore the creative force behind the project? Although I havnt created anything at all, perhaps except calling it Wilfried?

[slobo]

I find situation really confusing. We need overview of all developments
under way. I remember to read 2007, that Thomas Gaksch is stopped to
work with Toga, but that's was happily preliminary info. But who has written Cluster Toga and 3.1.2 SE? Is Fruit under development also?
Are programmers working in co-operation?

thanks Jouni

Dann Corbit said:

Cluster Toga by Kai Himstedt
Toga II
Gambit Fruit

Plus a plethora of illegitimate clones.

[Rolf]

I find situation really confusing. We need overview of all developments
under way. I remember to read 2007, that Thomas Gaksch is stopped to
work with Toga, but that's was happily preliminary info. But who has written Cluster Toga and 3.1.2 SE? Is Fruit under development also?
Are programmers working in co-operation?

thanks Jouni

Dann Corbit said:

Cluster Toga by Kai Himstedt
Toga II
Gambit Fruit

Plus a plethora of illegitimate clones.

I wished to have a map with the many clones so that proximity to one another is to be seen. x for names and y for height of technical translations of something originally known... 950€!

[Thomas Gaksch]

what i mean is that changing the engines data structure to bitboard and to rewrite the eval so that it is much different to fruit is nearly the same effort as to write a complete new engine and that also means that there is not much more in common with the original fruit.
but i think you have not the technical background to understand that.

[Rolf]

what i mean is that changing the engines data structure to bitboard and to rewrite the eval so that it is much different to fruit is nearly the same effort as to write a complete new engine and that also means that there is not much more in common with the original fruit.
but i think you have not the technical background to understand that.

The latter is correct but what do you think what this means? Let me ask the main question this way. What new ideas from a chesscomputer standpoint are authentic then if all the ideas of someone else are taken and then translated and transformed? Or, please help me out, is everyrthing in computerchess programming ALWAYS only about transforminf or translating or tuning here and there, technically spoken? Are there never new IDEAS? Because these, if ever appearing, are already "stolen" minutes afterwards because everybody is always and continually compiling the codes of all serious competitors? I mean, you are perhaps a good address to explain this for a lay, since you are also only rarely in the daily work?

The answer to my first question is that also if you are absolutely not in the details of a field, you can well judge certain appearences from the outside. Else there could never be an interdisciplinary communication.

[playjunior]

Rolf,
Fruit is a very complex engine. Its source is open for a long time, yet small fraction of computer chess people understand the code.
Fruit advantages are, as far as I understand:
1. Stability
2. Fast and very good eval function, which is very well-tuned.
3. Great search function, with many different cutoff techniques, that actually work.

Note that a good search heuristics generally is dependent on your eval function. You change the eval-the old heuristics might become not working. You have to understand the eval, the search, and tune them together.

Now let's me try to explain what Thomas is saying.
The eval has been changed. The engine has become bitboard. If you change something like that, you introduce bugs, and you lose stability. You have to test and debug. New Fruit is rather stable, so Ryan has done a fine job there.
Then, he changed the eval, which means he had to somehow change the search also. So he has changed something in Fruit that so many have copied, (claiming it's nearly perfect-mind you, that's the eval function).

Huge amount of job has been done. The new engine is stable, plays better. Ryan has, in fact, made such big changes that he could not fully benefit from biggest advantages Fruit had-points (1)-(3). Go figure yourself how much effort would be needed to do this.
Thomas says-not less than you need for a new engine.

Hope this helps.