desperate HELP needed for a chess gui

[Michele Tumbarello]

Hy all.
I am a computer chess enthusiast and decent player from italy, my name michele.
Since some month i am collaborating with a spanish programmer to improve its software, LUCASCHESS.
LC is cute gui, with many features, some of them not available even in commercial ones (LC is completely free); and many other new features are already coming soon.
My "job" is to make some tests, discover bugs, propose improvements while he is the one to put these ideas in practice (into code, actually).
What i do is completely for free, just for love of chess; i believe i am not the only one to do this, among talkchessers.
I have had a cute idea but to carry it on i need that somebody of you, able to write and modify engines, help me!!!
My target is to create, using an engine, a lot of simulations of great champions of the present and the past and also many imaginary virtual players: the more configurable is the engine, the more precise result i can get (i studied over 15000 games, so i have a very precise idea about champions' styles).
I am officially kindly asking to some of the most famous chess programmers to help me, but any "other" help is very welcome: it is a bit rude to call a specific name, but i have recognized most of the big names...
From the very start of its appearance, LUCASCHESS has had as main target to be a superlight gui, both in terms of ram used and cpu load.
And here is what i need exactly: modern good engines when running at full power are already stronger than any existing human player, so actually i dont need simply a permission to include that x engine inside LC (and after all LC is designed mainly for beginners and club players, to improve).
A beginner, a club player, even a master doesnt need to play vs a software that is stronger than 2300-2400.
So this is my idea: might you add a nodes-per-second limitation (and the proper parameter to set via uci panel), in order to weaken an engine?
For example, if i set 10000 nodes per second, most engines will still play very well (about like a strong fide master), but at this speed any modern cpu will not even used at 2 or 3%.
If i set 500 nodes per second, most engines will likely play like a strong club player, and naturally the load over cpu is almost undetectable...
Vladmir medvedev, author of greko, and Pawel Koziol and Edmund Moshammer, authors of glass, already did it for me but i need the maximum variety.
This idea has two big advantages compared to other systems: not only it saves old hardwares from overheating, but also any imaginary playing personality will have the same strength in different hardwares (users) as...say 1000 nodes per second are always 1000!
I dont think this is difficult: just a system that limits the number of nodes that the engine calculates every second, then for the majority of the time actually the engine will do nothing but remain idle, waiting for the next cicle of calcs in order to respect to value set.
I dont think this is difficult, for you at least.
Not only: if you decide to help me and LC, we have a further request; personally we think that the idea to recall style parameters from ini files is not that comfortable for users and it would be much better if all parameters were available in the uci window (though this is a minor problem).
If you decide to help us, it's useless to say that you will named as a contributor both in the site and in some menù of LC.
You are invited to dowload last release of LC, and see what i am talking about.
I think i explained all stuff decently, but if anyway you wish more details, any of you are welcome to mail me.
Aloha.

[velmarin]

Lucas Chess is beatufil

http://lucaschess.host22.com/

[hgm]

WinBoard protocol already defines a command for this, nps. If an engine supporting it receives the command nps 1000, it is expected to interpret the time it can think as if it were running at 1000 nps. (E.g. if it has 20 sec left, and must do 3 moves in that time, it should use 6,666 nodes per move).

Note that Polyglot does implement this command, so that all UCI engines that implement "go nodes" can actually be run in this mode.

To make it work well, the GUI will have to decrement the clock based on the reported node counts, of course, using the inverse transformation. But that is not an engine matter. The GUI could also decide to hide th time-odds, and wait displaying the engine move until the time-equivalent of the nodes has elapsed.

[Michele Tumbarello]

Well, 130 views and only two replies means clearly that nobody wanna help.
Thnx a lot to all for your wasted 2 minutes, spent to read my post.

[Adam Hair]

Well, 130 views and only two replies means clearly that nobody wanna help.
Thnx a lot to all for your wasted 2 minutes, spent to read my post.

Keep in mind that some of those views were by people such as myself, who can not help you.

[hgm]

And I thought I already solved the problem for you!

[Michele Tumbarello]

HG, your idea is likely working in this gui, but lucas has already too many things to do; and after all is much simpler if it is the engine to do this, not the gui.
But indeed hg or adam i am not angry with you, actually i am not angry with nobody.
Disappointed is maybe the most correct term.
Disappointed cause this is matter of one hour, AT MOST, for an expert chess programmer, and here there are all the best of the world...
One hour for them, several years for me (that am a chemist, and i so my programming abilities are close to zero) spent to find a proper system and the proper gui to carry on my idea.
Naturally i am not neither in the position to force anybody to do anything, nor simply i demand it.
But i dont think i am to blame if i am disappointed.

[hgm]

... and after all is much simpler if it is the engine to do this, not the gui.

Simpler for you, you probably mean. What you propose is to let hundreds of engine authors all implement the same thing in their engine, what would have had to be only implemented once if it had been done in the GUI. So hundred times as much work as necessary. But you don't seem to care, as it is only others that would waste their time, not you.

But you can rest assured that each and every engine author values his own time at least as much as you value Lucas' time. So perhaps you will get a feeling now as to why your idea is not enthusiastically hailed...

So my advice would be to use the already existing nps feature of Polyglot. And if Lucas cannot afford to spend the 10 minutes it would require to implement that in his GUI, use WinBoard in stead of LucasChess, as WinBoard can already do it. And it also displays the engine options in a configuration dialog, so you don't have to edit ini files!

[michiguel]

HG, your idea is likely working in this gui, but lucas has already too many things to do; and after all is much simpler if it is the engine to do this, not the gui.
But indeed hg or adam i am not angry with you, actually i am not angry with nobody.
Disappointed is maybe the most correct term.
Disappointed cause this is matter of one hour, AT MOST, for an expert chess programmer, and here there are all the best of the world...
One hour for them, several years for me (that am a chemist, and i so my programming abilities are close to zero) spent to find a proper system and the proper gui to carry on my idea.
Naturally i am not neither in the position to force anybody to do anything, nor simply i demand it.
But i dont think i am to blame if i am disappointed.

You can use Gaviota as is. From help in the terminal

Code: Select all

help sn

sn <nodes>
Limits the search to a maximum of <nodes> nodes

help nps

This is an xboard/winboard command
Please check the winboard protocol at
http&#58;//www.gnu.org/software/xboard/engine-intf.html

or in the Gaviota.ini.txt file you can include

Code: Select all

forced_sn = 10000

The nps command gives you a very general solution, as HGM pointed out.

Miguel
PS: Anyway, your "disappointment" is really strange, considering it came ~27 hours after your first post in a weekend, and that some one already gave you a solution that is already general and readily available.

[Michele Tumbarello]

Ok maybe i am too impatient.
Surely tomorrow i'll find a row of top programmers with new flaming exe to send me ...
Anyway thnx for you availabilty miguel, but i need an engine with dozens of style/precision/search parameters; what gaviota is not .
I could even give up the nps affaire, but not the high configurability of the engine.
I know, i am a demanding person !
But really if i want create a proper simulation of chess champions i need a lot of those parameters.
I didnt want to call specific names, but if you wanna know...: well i am referring to two engines in particular, that are prodeo 1.8 or fruit 2.3.1!
They have dozens of parameters to tune, and also an internal time allocation algorythm and many ways to handicap the strength with reasonable human play.
Ok finally i went for all-in , i have fully discovered my cards; what cards have my "opponents"?