Norm Schmidt .....and the computer chess

[Sylwy]

Hi all !

I know Norm Schmidt is a guilty man !
But Cyclone 4.0 is released !
And.....Cyclone isn't a prohibited series . Isn't it ?

Regards,
Silvian

[Graham Banks]

Hi all !

I know Norm Schmidt is a guilty man !
But Cyclone 4.0 is released !
And.....Cyclone isn't a prohibited series . Isn't it ?

Regards,
Silvian

Despite some not liking Cyclone because it's a Toga derivative, if it is released with its source code and complies with GPL requirements, then it's perfectly legitimate.

[Matthias Gemuh]

Despite some not liking Cyclone because it's a Toga derivative, if it is released with its source code and complies with GPL requirements, then it's perfectly legitimate.

You are right, Graham.
I downloaded and compiled Cyclone 4.0 for Windows because I would support the re-integration of Norman into the chess scene if he stops cloning.
I think his come back would be generally accepted if he ditches his other chess projects and stays only with Cyclone.

Matthias.

[Olivier Deville]

You guys really love to be cheated...

Olivier

[Sylwy]

Despite some not liking Cyclone because it's a Toga derivative, if it is released with its source code and complies with GPL requirements, then it's perfectly legitimate.

You are right, Graham.
I downloaded and compiled Cyclone 4.0 for Windows because I would support the re-integration of Norman into the chess scene if he stops cloning.
I think his come back would be generally accepted if he ditches his other chess projects and stays only with Cyclone.

Matthias.

AGREED !

[Sylwy]

I think his come back would be generally accepted if he ditches his other chess projects and stays only with Cyclone.

Don't we have an abundance of Toga clones (oops, derivatives) already?

Not at all ! Protector -for example- is an original project not a Toga derivative - despite some claims !

[Michael Diosi]

Hi,

Did you read the readme file ? Did you look at the sourcefile ? Did you understand the code ? Did you comapre it with Toga /Fruit code ?

It is silly to test all those engine where only the name and maybe (in best case) evaluation of pawns is changed.

They make some math and the engine output looks different (for some)...

You shouldn't belive those Russians...by now you should know better.



M

[Sylwy]

Hi,

Did you read the readme file ? Did you look at the sourcefile ? Did you understand the code ? Did you comapre it with Toga /Fruit code ?

It is silly to test all those engine where only the name and maybe (in best case) evaluation of pawns is changed.

They make some math and the engine output looks different (for some)...

You shouldn't belive those Russians...by now you should know better.



M

"Hello all,

my name is Raimund Heid and I am the author of Protector. Protector is new to you and I'd like to clarify its relation to Toga/Fruit in order to give you a solid base of information for obvious questions like the one issued by K. Inuen.

When I claimed 'Protector is kinda bitboard-based Toga' I wanted to point out that Protector is based on many ideas implemented in Toga/Fruit. However, you have to keep in mind that Protector was written from scratch (about six years ago) as a bitboard-based program of its own. As a consequence it has a data structure that differs fundamentally from Toga's data structure. And of course Protector's algorithms refer to this data structure. For this reason it doesn't make sense to copy any *code* from Protector to Toga or vice versa.

This could seem to be a problem, but I think it isn't. Experience tells that chess programming is not a matter of coding but a matter of having clever ideas (or copying them ). For this reason in most cases it should't be a big effort to carry successful ideas from one program to the other.

(But, agreed, this still doesn't answer the question why I've written Protector instead of simply enhancing the Toga code. I don't think that this is a topic for the current discussion thread and for this reason I want to give only a short answer here. In fact I saw (and see) only one benefit in the option to start with the Toga code: saving a lot of time. On the other hand I saw a lot of benefits in a new program written from scratch, the most prominent being: 1) When I started with Protector back in 2003 there was no Toga or Fruit around 2) Bitboards. I like Bitboards and I think a modern chess program should be bitboard-based in order to benefit from 64 bit architectures as much as possible. 3) Learning curve. I felt that it's only possible to write a good chess program if you fully understand what's going on. One easy way to get this experience is writing a program from scratch

Coming back to the original question from K. Inuen: I guees it would take about half a day for a decent programmer with profound knowledge of the Toga data structures to attach the tablebase code. I assume the reason why this didn't happen until now is simply the copyright from Eugene Nalimov and Andrew Kadatch, which would't allow the Toga sources to be released any further under GNU licence.

Any questions left? Feel free to ask.

Anyway: Have fun with Protector"

Source:
http://www.computerchess.info/tdbb/phpB ... ?f=9&t=394

Regards,
Silvian

[Michael Diosi]

I see you didn't understood my last sentence, but I don't wonder...
More about all cloners soon at the Arena page.

http://www.playwitharena.com

[Zach Wegner]

Did you look at the sourcefile ? Did you understand the code ? Did you comapre it with Toga /Fruit code ?

Did you? Protector, while it has many Fruit-like components, shares no code with it as far as I can tell from looking through a lot of it.