By popular demand, I have now released a development version of my Mac OS X GUI for Glaurung (the one I used to operate Glaurung in the OPCCC last weekend, and in Mainz last summer). The GUI currently has the following main features:
UCI support. Glaurung 1.2.1 and Glaurung Lodz 2007 are pre-installed, but all other UCI engines for OS X should work. I have tested with Diablo, Eden, Fruit, Hiarcs and Shredder.
Plays normal chess and Chess960 (with compatible engines).
GUI book for engines which ship without a book of their own.
Can read and write PGN games with comments and variations.
Supports cut and paste of PGN games and FEN strings to and from the clipboard. This is quite neat: If you see a test position in FEN format posted on the CCC or elsewhere, just highlight the FEN, copy it (Command+C), switch to Glaurung, and paste it (Command+V). The position instantly appears on the board. There's a similar function for PGN games, but for some reason it sometimes causes the program to crash for PGNs made by the most recent versions of the ChessBase programs.
Engine vs engine games. This isn't completely stable yet, but it works OK for short matches (10-20 games).
Please note that this program is still very much a work in progress. There are several known bugs, countless missing or broken features, and the program is likely to crash occasionally (but as long as you only play human vs computer games or browse reasonably standard PGN files, it should be quite stable). Use at your own risk.
If you try my GUI and find some bug, please don't even bother to report it yet. It is quite likely that I'm already aware of the bug. Right now I am mainly interested in the following types of feedback:
Glaurung needs a nice icon! I lack the artistical skills to make one myself. If someone could contribute a pretty icon for Glaurung, I would b very pleased.
Would anyone be interested in trying to port the GUI to Linux? I think it should be only moderatly difficult to use GNUStep to port the program to Linux, but I have no time to do the work myself.
Does the GUI work on PowerPC Macs? I've tried to compile a universal binary, but without a PowerPC Mac available for testing I can't verify that it works. Please note that the Glaurung Lodz 2007 engine does certainly not work on PowerPC Macs, you'll have to use Glaurung 1.2.1 (the default engine).
Does the Glaurung Lodz 2007 engine work on 64-bit Intel Macs (i.e. Core 2 Duos)? If yes, is it noticably faster than Glaurung 2 - ε/5?
The program can be downloaded from my web site. The download contains the application itself as well as full source code for the GUI and the two engines.
will it be long before Glaurung Lodz 2007 will be available separately for all platforms?
Hello Graham,
In fact, I don't intend to release Glaurung Lodz 2007 for other platforms at all, except maybe as an extra bonus for collectors when Glaurung 2 is finally released.
Glaurung Lodz 2007 is almost the same program as Glaurung 2 - ε/2, and there is not much point in releasing it for all platforms. The only changes are the addition of some new endgame knowledge and slightly different time managment in ponder on games.
The reason why Lodz 2007 is 23% faster than 2 - ε/5 on 64-bit Intel Macs is that the new version is compiled with 64-bit support, while the previous one was 32-bit. For Windows, there already is a 64-bit version of 2 - ε/5.
will it be long before Glaurung Lodz 2007 will be available separately for all platforms?
Hello Graham,
In fact, I don't intend to release Glaurung Lodz 2007 for other platforms at all, except maybe as an extra bonus for collectors when Glaurung 2 is finally released.
Glaurung Lodz 2007 is almost the same program as Glaurung 2 - ε/2, and there is not much point in releasing it for all platforms. The only changes are the addition of some new endgame knowledge and slightly different time managment in ponder on games.
The reason why Lodz 2007 is 23% faster than 2 - ε/5 on 64-bit Intel Macs is that the new version is compiled with 64-bit support, while the previous one was 32-bit. For Windows, there already is a 64-bit version of 2 - ε/5.
Tord
Okay - thanks for the info.
I wondered if Glaurung Lodz 2007 and Glaurung 2 were one and the same, but you've clarified the situation fully for me now.
Tord Romstad wrote:Right now I am mainly interested in the following types of feedback:
Does the Glaurung Lodz 2007 engine work on 64-bit Intel Macs (i.e. Core 2 Duos)? If yes, is it noticably faster than Glaurung 2 - ?/5?
Update: It turns out that it does work on 64-bit Intels, and is about 23% faster than Glaurung 2 - ?/5.
I still don't know if the GUI works on PowerPC Macs, and I still lack a nice application icon.
Tord
A brief 1 minute test this morning showed that the GUI start on my PowerPC Mac and one can make moves.
Does the Glaurung Lodz sources can be compiled for PowerPC or don't they work at all?
Guetti wrote:A brief 1 minute test this morning showed that the GUI start on my PowerPC Mac and one can make moves.
Great! That's more than I dared hope for.
Does the Glaurung Lodz sources can be compiled for PowerPC or don't they work at all?
They can, but there are some minor technical complications. Producing a PowerPC binary would take me about 10 minutes of work for me, and I was too tired to do it late last night. If there is any interest, I suppose I could try to update my GUI to include a universal binary of Glaurung Lodz 2007 some time later this week (but today I am probably too busy).
As much as I'd like to help bring the GUI to Linux, I'm very unfamiliar with GNUStep. I have a bit of C++ knowledge, but it may not be enough to do this project in a reasonable amount of time(I don't know, it'd of course depend on how GNUStep works, maybe I do). However, if no one else more qualified is willing to take up the challenge, I may as well give it a shot.
