Re: Winboard.debug file missing.
Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 5:25 pm
Oh too bad then there is no easy workaround.hgm wrote: ↑Wed Dec 11, 2019 2:26 pm Well, in engine-engine games WinBoard would sent a "computer" command to both players (after the variant and level commands) to inform them their opponent is an engine, and this is a configurable command, which could be altered though the -computerString option (e.g. to send a hard-coded egtpath command again). For human-engine I cannot imagine a work-around. (Perhaps WinBoard should support a special -workAround option for such purposes, where you can define a stringthat should be sent to the engine at game start after everything else, both in homan and engine games.)
I think this should really be fixed in Stockfish. The most sensible implementation seems to be that it loads the EGT on reception of the 'ucinewgame' command, at which time both the variant and the egtPath should be known. It would also work when it loads EGT on both the setting of EGT Path and UCI_Variant, according to the most recent values of those, but this could lead to a lot of wasted loading (as under WinBoard the only way to start a new variant game is to first swicth back to normal chess with a 'new' command, after which you cannot rely on a 'variant' command to follow it, as for normal chess this would not come). And the loading might be slow. But I guess not all interfaces do send 'ucinewgame' (it was introduced in UCI only later), and to not break Stockfish for those interfaces it must load normal chess EGT on setting of the EGT Path. Or it should make a check each time it receives a 'position' or 'isready' command to see if the proper EGT are loaded, and if not, load them before proceeding.
It is also bad that you / the GUI would have to change the EGT Path when you want to do another variant. That would require the user to somehow define a new path for each variant. There really should be only a single SyzygyPath, and the engine should be able to use that for finding the Syzygy EGT for all variants. E.g. by adopting the convention that variant EGTs are in a sub-folder of the given path named after the variant.
So i can't use Stockfish analysis for variants in Winboard with tablebases support.
I've opened an issue in Stockfish_variant page(https://github.com/ddugovic/Stockfish/issues/567) and i hope they support Winboard but i don't have big hopes.
Anyone knows any other GUI that supports Atomic Chess UCI engines for analysis(and not just for playing)? I'm sure there isn't any or else i would know.
EDIT: Hmm i remembered PyChess so let me try this. But i doubt it can replace the functionality of Winboard so that would be not 100 % satisfying solution.
EDIT2: Installed PyChess but it doesn't do what i wanted. It's just for playing games between humans or engines.