UCI engins for Suicide, Wild, Crazyhouse...

[TasicV]

Hi,
Can someone to tell me, is it posible to make someone UCI engins for Suicide, Wild, Crazyhous chess, like Chess 960. I know, thay need new GUI for this, but and 960 need also this, and we now haven engins and GUI for this.
Can I play in Arena GUI suicide chess, and what is this, what I must write in command line of engin, in engins manager, that this engin worked through?
Sorry, for my bad english!

Vladimir

[hgm]

Use XBoard/WinBoard...

There exist plenty Suicide / Crazyhouse / Atomic engines for that.

[Evert]

Can someone to tell me, is it posible to make someone UCI engins for Suicide, Wild, Crazyhous chess, like Chess 960. I know, thay need new GUI for this, but and 960 need also this, and we now haven engins and GUI for this.
Can I play in Arena GUI suicide chess, and what is this, what I must write in command line of engin, in engins manager, that this engin worked through?
Sorry, for my bad english!

UCI was never designed with chess variants in mind, and there is no accepted correct way to handle them. That said, SjaakII plays many variants (it plays Crazyhouse and Chess960, and can probably be configured to play Suicide, I don't know what "Wild" refers to) and it can communicate through UCI. Finding a UCI GUI that supports them will be a challenge though.

XBoard is your best bet, but then you could simply use SjaakII with its native CECP mode (I don't even know if you can reliably play variants other than 960 through UCI there).

Now, as I posted a while back, I'm all for agreeing to a standard for variant support in UCI, but when I brought this up a while back I got the distinct impression that everyone prefers to come up with their own way to do it and any attempt to come to some sort of standard agreement was met with hostility.

[TasicV]

I use Winboard 4.8.0 and many engins for suicide: Pulsar, Sjeng11.2, Wizard, Nebiyu, but... thay can't use 4 core, and u can't use and edit oppening book. Maybe with polyglot_14 but this is hard, and i dont understen this way. I can't in Winboard edit setings of engins. Too many problems.

I see on Google play android programs for suicide, but this is also with many bugs. But thay will be updated very soon and playfully. I think many program for chess go forward on android, and windows go dawn, like in others programs.

[hgm]

So what you really want is engines that use 4 cores. That has nothing to do with the engine being UCI or WB. There are also many WB engines that use 4 cores. For normal Chess. Just not for the variants you mention. Engines do not magically acquire new features when you let them communicate in UCI rather than WB protocol (in fact they lose features, as UCI does not support draw offering or resigning), anymore than a farmer becomes a heart surgeon when you teach him to speak Chinese.

WinBoard 4.8.0 has an Edit Book menu dialog. Why don't you use that to edit the opening book? I always do (for my mini-Shogi opening books).

I don't know what settings exactly you need to change, but in general it is easy to change the settings of engines in WinBoard. (Through the Engine -> Engine #N Settings menu dialog.) The engine must have settings, though. Otherwise there is nothing to change. You can also not change settings of UCI engines that have no settings...

[Evert]

I use Winboard 4.8.0 and many engins for suicide: Pulsar, Sjeng11.2, Wizard, Nebiyu, but... thay can't use 4 core,

Well, UCI will not help with that. As far as I know Nebiyu at least should be multi-core.

and u can't use and edit oppening book.

XBoard should allow you to edit opening books, and I think you can also force an opening line (but I've never tried that).

Maybe with polyglot_14 but this is hard,

Polyglot 1.4 is old.

I can't in Winboard edit setings of engins. Too many problems.

Engine->Engine #1/#2 settings. If an engine doesn't expose any options there, having UCI will not help.

[TasicV]

Nebiyu not suport suicide. Suport 8x8+0 variant. I dont know what is this.
When I open Engine->Engine #1/#2 settings in winboard I dont see anything, in all suicide engins.
Is Xboard diferent then Winboard? Is Xboard for Windows or other program?
I have't Xboard.

[Evert]

Nebiyu not suport suicide.

Well, you listed it as one of the Suicide engines you tried. Anyway, Nebiyu's website lists suicide, and the string is present in the executable (which I can't run here), so it looks like it should be supported.

Suport 8x8+0 variant. I dont know what is this.

That's a catch-all name for a generic game on an 8x8 board without drops.

When I open Engine->Engine #1/#2 settings in winboard I dont see anything, in all suicide engins.

Well, if they don't define any options, they don't define any options. There is little that can be done about that except complain to the authors.
Note though that things like "ponder" and number of cores is not in the engine options, but under "Options->Common Engine Options"

Is Xboard diferent then Winboard? Is Xboard for Windows or other program?

No, the original name of the program is XBoard (X for the X Window System), when it was ported to Windows the port was named WinBoard. I suppose they diverged for a while, but the different ports are back together now, so the different naming on different platforms is a bit of a relic from the past. XBoard/WinBoard/OSXBoard are all the same program running on different platforms. There should be no functional difference between them.

[hgm]

I have a version of NebiyuChess.exe here (it says 1.45) that plays Suicide. (And I could actually play a Suicide game against it, so it is not lying.) And it shows a lot of options, in the Engine #1 Settings dialog. I don't think Nebiyu is SMP, though. Sjaak II plays Crazyhouse, and shows lots of options.

So you should better ask for WB engines that support SMP and the options you want, than for UCI engines. Because even when you would get the latter, they might not support SMP, and they might not show any options for you to set. And even if they did, you still would not have a GUI to run them in...

So there are lots of things you could want that existing engines do not provide. But being UCI should be at the very top of the list of things that you absolutely don't want. Because it is not much joy playing against a UCI engine that you run from the command line, for lack of a GUI!

[TasicV]

Yes, Nebiyu have in comand line /variant suicide, but when load engin say: not suport suicide variant, but 8x8+0 is! And then play standard chess.

Also I have problem when I use book always is empty, and I can't edit!