ProDeo (A Crazy Idea)

[AdminX]

I've been playing around with some of the old Dos Rebels on my Tablet using Magic Dosbox and started wondering how difficult would it be to backport Prodeo (Maybe even Benjamin) to the old dos Rebel GUI? I know it is a crazy idea, but it would allow users a way to use them under Android via DosEMU.

[Rebel]

Actually I made a (small) start with this 4-5 years ago just for the fun of it, not sure if I still have it, but it's a lot of work and I gave up. OTOH, there will be a new ProDeo soon.

[mvanthoor]

Actually I made a (small) start with this 4-5 years ago just for the fun of it, not sure if I still have it, but it's a lot of work and I gave up. OTOH, there will be a new ProDeo soon.

If I understand correctly, ProDeo is actually "Rebel 13", but freeware. Is it also based on the Rebel 12 source code?

Seeing that ProDeo is rated "only" 2722, have you never thought about just starting a new engine from scratch? I'm sure that if you did, you could easily surpass ProDeo with regard to strength. Of course it would be possible to start replacing small parts of ProDeo with newly written code, and so "phase out" the existing engine without making a hard break. I could imagine though, that Rebel's/ProDeo's source code would make this more work than just starting over.

I've been thinking about this with regard to authors that have been writing chess programs for a long time; is it still possible somehow to improve older engines to compete with newer ones without rewriting half the engine?

[AdminX]

If one did not know better they would say you programed it for the future Ed.

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[mar]

Seeing that ProDeo is rated "only" 2722, have you never thought about just starting a new engine from scratch?

umm, "Rustic" hasn't been properly rated yet, but you're already lecturing a former world champion, that's hilarious
2700 is a low rating for you perhaps? you barely wrote 1 engine yet you already tell other people to do a rewrite?
maybe you should make a youtube video about that? oh wait, that's the other guy.

where does this BS with rewriting come from anyway? if you rewrite, you need to catch up with your last version first, which will take some time (been there, done that).
you don't magically gain 500 elo out of thin air along the way like Sceviour of course (assuming native=>native).

[BrendanJNorman]

you don't magically gain 500 elo out of thin air along the way like Sceviour of course (assuming native=>native).

hahaha shots fired. Love it.

[BrendanJNorman]

I've been playing around with some of the old Dos Rebels on my Tablet using Magic Dosbox and started wondering how difficult would it be to backport Prodeo (Maybe even Benjamin) to the old dos Rebel GUI? I know it is a crazy idea, but it would allow users a way to use them under Android via DosEMU.

Hi Ted,

Your idea is pretty cool, but I'd imagine it'd be easier to figure out how to port (all/any) of them to android as native engines?!

Wouldnt it be?

IMO An Android Rebel/ProDeo would be pretty awesome...especially if ppl can throw their own choices in the /personal folder.

[mvanthoor]

umm, "Rustic" hasn't been properly rated yet, but you're already lecturing a former world champion, that's hilarious
2700 is a low rating for you perhaps? you barely wrote 1 engine yet you already tell other people to do a rewrite?

OMG. Why are you always screaming "Where's you're engine?!" and "Where's you're rating?" if someone asks a genuine question about another engine? (My engine is right there on Github, and currently, its rating is somewhere around 1600... for now.)

I have nothing but respect for what Ed (and others that started at around that time) did in chess computer programming, but you can't have missed that there are NEW engines that start at 1400 Elo, and after less than two years of development, exceed 2700 or even 2800 Elo on the CCRL list, beyond the engines that have been around quite some time. This suggests that it is very hard to still improve engines that are based on an older code base, and easier to improve newer engines.

Therefore I asked if some of the authors of engines that were once top of the line, aren't considering in writing something new from scratch. Yes, it may take a year, but then you have a new code base that can last another 30 years.

maybe you should make a youtube video about that? oh wait, that's the other guy.

That's just unnecessary. Maksim may not be the god of chess programming (and I'm not either), but he's doing some good work in getting the basics explained for people who can program and want to try writing a chess engine, but don't know where to start.

where does this BS with rewriting come from anyway? if you rewrite, you need to catch up with your last version first, which will take some time (been there, done that).
you don't magically gain 500 elo out of thin air along the way like Sceviour of course (assuming native=>native).

Where the rewrite BS is coming from? Some engines have a code-base that goes back 30 years. Some are even older. They may contain code that was optimized perfectly for the CPU's of the day, but which doesn't run that great nowadays. Older code may prevent the author from using newer compilers, and/or prevent them from implementing newer techniques in the engine. It can be worthwhile to write a new engine, or even to port the engine to a newer version of the language it is written in.

Fabien Letouzy wrote Fruit in the beginning to mid-2000's. That program reached an Elo-rating of 2695. 10 years later he released Senpai, and that program reached a rating of 3100. That's a 400 point advantage for a newer engine.

[AdminX]

I've been playing around with some of the old Dos Rebels on my Tablet using Magic Dosbox and started wondering how difficult would it be to backport Prodeo (Maybe even Benjamin) to the old dos Rebel GUI? I know it is a crazy idea, but it would allow users a way to use them under Android via DosEMU.

Hi Ted,

Your idea is pretty cool, but I'd imagine it'd be easier to figure out how to port (all/any) of them to android as native engines?!

Wouldnt it be?

IMO An Android Rebel/ProDeo would be pretty awesome...especially if ppl can throw their own choices in the /personal folder.

Good Morning Brendan,

Yes porting to Android would be nice, however I asked Ed about this and he did have a reason for not doing it and I do respect his choices.

[mclane]

But i HAVE mchess, cstal, rebel, isichess, genius, Fritz, ... wchess, ... running in android using magic dos box.


The reason eds program is 2600-2700 while others begin with 2300 and very fast reach 3500 is that they copy ideas from Stockfish.

When ed began programming the sources were all secret.

The problem i see is that each programmer is in a kind of paradigm.
And its difficult to go OUT of this paradigm.