Banksia GUI released

[ChickenLogic]

So far I have been lurking in this thread. I've got three things to say:

1) Thank you a lot. Your GUI looks very promising and works great for an alpha stage program.

2) I'd like to be able to set the draw adjudication rule manually with a +- draw score range and specify a move when it should start to be active. Some games start out with a ~0.00 eval out of book and then some moves later it is adjudicated as a draw although it wasn't even move 20 yet.

3) I'd like to be able to see book/EGTB info while the engines are playing. It works great when I'm only analysing already!

[phhnguyen]

I am new at trying chess engine match software, so please forgive me as a noobie. I had three problems setting up and using Banksia 0.18 alpha (Win7 laptop).

1. I started a human vs human game, then abandoned it. But I cannot make the game go away. Every time I open the software, there is my abandoned game. Is there a "delete game" or "start over" or "clear" command?

It is the auto-saved game, very useful in case the program or your computer crashes.
You may click on button New game (or menu->File->New game) a new game will be created and overwrite that game. SImple?

If you really want to delete that game, visite the configuration folder of BSG which contains all internal data/files of BSG and delete the file banksiaautogame.pgn there. To find where is the configuration folder, open Settings dialog (menu -> File -> Settings), on the first (General) tab click the button (named "View/Edit/Delete") on the bottom to open another dialog, click on the first button Browser to open that folder.

2. I ran a simple tournament, and abandoned it, halfway done. Now when I select from the menubar File > Tournament Load/Save, I do not see my tournament, but a green message near window top says, "Current Tournament roundrobin 2 engines, games: 1/2" which is true. How can I eliminate this abandoned tournament? How can I restart it, if I choose to restart it? Note that clicking the button bar button "Show all playing games" shows no playing games, but the abandoned tournament is somewhere. Where?

Tournament Load/Save is for ongoing/ingoing tournaments (you pause a tournament, save it, create a new one, after a while, you can come back to the previous tournament to continue by loading it.

To control the current tournament, you need to display the panel of the tournament. menu -> Windows -> Docks -> tournament. Typically BSG display it on the left-hand side as below illustration.

On that panel, there is a button to stop, resume the tournament. From the drop-down (next to that button) you can control how to view tournament games. There are also some buttons to delete or move up/down games on the tournament. You may right-click to pop up a menu to reset a few games, reset all games to re-play or delete them all (abandon)...

3. I used the menu bar command Tools > Download and successfully downloaded and used the available default engines Komodo and Stockfish. However, I failed to download Crafty and Lc0. The two engines do download content into my engine folders. However, the second automatic part, says "Detecting," the progress bar moves up through 100%, but then "Error, the engine doesn't support the selected protocol!" I tried both wb and uci. I tried the Protocol pulldown on "Auto-detect" but receive the error message "This engine does not support any protocol!"

It is a bit strange for me since those engines were there for a while. I have just tried to reproduce but all were smooth on my computers (a macOS and a Win10). Can you help to check:
- If those engines were downloaded and unzipped correctly - just visit the folder you set to download and find them if they are already in the form of exe/runable
- check if those engines are OK (runnable) from the command line (terminal)? (run them, type winboard\nprotover 2\n\ping\ngo....)

Some systems such as macOS and/or some antivirus programs may prevent those engines from running.

Banksia looks like it will be lots of fun! I want to get it right. I am new at this and may be making a user error, but I can't find it. These problems remain even when I deleted the files and re-extracted everything. Thanks for any advice.

Thanks a lot for using, the report and the good words. They all help us much

[phhnguyen]

So far I have been lurking in this thread. I've got three things to say:

1) Thank you a lot. Your GUI looks very promising and works great for an alpha stage program.

Thank you a lot too, for using and for good words

2) I'd like to be able to set the draw adjudication rule manually with a +- draw score range and specify a move when it should start to be active. Some games start out with a ~0.00 eval out of book and then some moves later it is adjudicated as a draw although it wasn't even move 20 yet.

Actually BSG did not hard code parameters of the draw adjudication thus users can set them manually. However, users need to modify its JSON file, called banksiatour.json. This file is in BSG's configuration folder (in which BSG stored all internal data).

To find that folder: 1) open Settings dialog (menu -> File -> Settings -> select first tab General) 2) open configuration dialog: Click on the button (Configuration files) on the bottom (from General tab of Settings). You will see the box Tournament on JSON files part, copy that path to open by another editor or click on button Edit to open and edit by BSG editor. You will see an item named "game adjudication" as below:

Code: Select all

  "game adjudication" : 
  {
    "draw if game length over" : 0,
    "mode" : false,
    "resign score" : 0,
    "score draw from ply" : 100,
    "score draw mode" : false,
    "score draw ply range" : 20,
    "score draw score range" : 9,
    "tablebase" : true,
    "tablebase max pieces" : 10
  },

Explain some terms:
* score draw mode: to on/off this draw adjudication (when "mode" is an overall switcher)
* score draw from ply: the draw adjudication function will start checking when the length of the considered game over that number
* score draw ply range: if the number of continuing moves match the condition
* score draw score range: score in the range. 0 means not working, 10 means BSG will count as a draw when scores in the range [-10, 10] centipawn

3) I'd like to be able to see book/EGTB info while the engines are playing. It works great when I'm only analysing already!

You can see book/EGTB information only when at least a player is a human. For engine-only matches, you can't see them since those moves will be played too fast.

[mmt]

Actually BSG did not hard code parameters of the draw adjudication thus users can set them manually. However, users need to modify its JSON file, called banksiatour.json. This file is in BSG's configuration folder (in which BSG stored all internal data).

Will you add this to the GUI? I think those are settings that everybody will want to set up before the tournament starts.

[phhnguyen]

Actually BSG did not hard code parameters of the draw adjudication thus users can set them manually. However, users need to modify its JSON file, called banksiatour.json. This file is in BSG's configuration folder (in which BSG stored all internal data).

Will you add this to the GUI? I think those are settings that everybody will want to set up before the tournament starts.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will do a study the need. At the moment the dialog for creating tournaments is quite congested by controllers thus I have to consider very carefully to add any new one.

[phhnguyen]

Version 0.19 beta released

Note: since BSG did not see any serious bugs (for playing / tournaments) and important functions seem to be stable for a while, I changed the version stage from alpha to beta, a step closer to official releases

* Fixed bugs: almost all known bugs so far such as bugs on showing player names from games of databases
* Some small improvements/adjustments
* New feature: Play via Internet Chess Server such as FICS. Users can use BSG to log in, watch playing games, chat with people, challenge players, seek (request to play), play manually (as a human) or use a chess engine. It can auto-detect and reply seeks (requests to play from other players) thus the engine can play continuously all the time.

IMHO, the new feature (Internet Chess Server) is a fun function - I can watch for multi hours matches between the engine on my computer (especially if it is my engine) and other people/software on ICS. It may be much better to watch normal engine tournaments since you connect to the World and many rivals are real human (using engines to play as a guest or computer account to vs human is totally legal in FICS). Hope you all have fun and stay safe through the time of the pandemic

[Damir]

Thanks for all your hard work.

[Nordlandia]

I tried two computer match feature and it seems to be working fine. But there is few options that would be beneficial to the operator/spectators.

* Ponderhit -> move expected by the opponent in percentage.

Considering predicted Move
Search with the predicted opponent move from the Principal Variation is actually made. If the expected move is really played by the opponent, a so called Ponder Hit occurred and one may either continue searching with the saved time.

* Pondermove -> the expected move in text. I.e " Bc4 "

Thanks for those suggestions. I have added them to my TODO list.

This is how it looks like in cutechess gui.



While in fritz gui, the percentage get updated during each game. Can be good for tournaments. Maybe it's good idea to have both alternatives. One for single game and one for tournament that keep being updated. Alternative is to make it optional which to choose.

[carldaman]

Actually BSG did not hard code parameters of the draw adjudication thus users can set them manually. However, users need to modify its JSON file, called banksiatour.json. This file is in BSG's configuration folder (in which BSG stored all internal data).

Will you add this to the GUI? I think those are settings that everybody will want to set up before the tournament starts.

+1 Adjudication settings are very important to any one running engine tests. It's best if they're easily visible.

[Nordlandia]

Actually BSG did not hard code parameters of the draw adjudication thus users can set them manually. However, users need to modify its JSON file, called banksiatour.json. This file is in BSG's configuration folder (in which BSG stored all internal data).

Will you add this to the GUI? I think those are settings that everybody will want to set up before the tournament starts.

+1 Adjudication settings are very important to any one running engine tests. It's best if they're easily visible.

Maybe the current adjudication settings in cutechess gui can be inspirational.