Jazz 640 released

[Evert]

I have uploaded a new version of Jazz (revision 640), available from http://www.eglebbk.dds.nl/program/chess-download.html (source and binaries for Windows, Linux and intel Macs)

This is mainly a maintenance release, there are a few bug fixes and Jazz can now optionally use a Polyglot book (you have to tell it what book to use through the engine options dialogue though) and I've refactored large chunks of the code, but I don't expect this version to be much stronger than the previous one, if at all. That will hopefully change for the next release, when I've actually started tuning the evaluation a bit better.

Please let me know about any bugs and problems you may encounter.

[jshriver]

Congrats, grabbing now

Edit: gave it a try but it auto resigns at the start of every game. Using the 32bit Linux version with icsdrone.

[Evert]

Edit: gave it a try but it auto resigns at the start of every game. Using the 32bit Linux version with icsdrone.

I'm not sure what that means. Jazz doesn't have the ability to resign. What's icsdrone and how does it work?

[jshriver]

I'm not sure what that means. Jazz doesn't have the ability to resign. What's icsdrone and how does it work?

It's a client program to run an engine on a chess server.

Thinking that is the problem instead of Jazz itself. Tried playing Typhoon as well and getting similar issues. So disregard my previous message

[geots]

I have uploaded a new version of Jazz (revision 640), available from http://www.eglebbk.dds.nl/program/chess-download.html (source and binaries for Windows, Linux and intel Macs)

This is mainly a maintenance release, there are a few bug fixes and Jazz can now optionally use a Polyglot book (you have to tell it what book to use through the engine options dialogue though) and I've refactored large chunks of the code, but I don't expect this version to be much stronger than the previous one, if at all. That will hopefully change for the next release, when I've actually started tuning the evaluation a bit better.

Please let me know about any bugs and problems you may encounter.

Well, I am not sure you know I have been running a huge freeware tourney with over 220 engines. Your version before this one I could not get to work in Fritz 11 or Fritz 13 gui . That is why it was not in the tournament. It says in the list WB/UCI- which I assume means either. Tho I don't know that for sure. I just know it would not load as WB or UCI in Windows 7, Fritz 11, using either of my 2 new Intel i5 4-core systems. And the same in my XP Pro quad. It just will not work at all- as I spent 6 hours working with your engine. So I have to assume this will be the same. And a pity- I really wanted to run it.

I have to get some sleep- so I will not be around until tonight.



george

[Graham Banks]

I have uploaded a new version of Jazz (revision 640), available from http://www.eglebbk.dds.nl/program/chess-download.html (source and binaries for Windows, Linux and intel Macs)

Thanks Evert.

[Evert]

Well, I am not sure you know I have been running a huge freeware tourney with over 220 engines. Your version before this one I could not get to work in Fritz 11 or Fritz 13 gui . That is why it was not in the tournament. It says in the list WB/UCI- which I assume means either. Tho I don't know that for sure. I just know it would not load as WB or UCI in Windows 7, Fritz 11, using either of my 2 new Intel i5 4-core systems. And the same in my XP Pro quad. It just will not work at all- as I spent 6 hours working with your engine. So I have to assume this will be the same. And a pity- I really wanted to run it.

Well, I didn't know about the tournament, which is a shame.

I obviously cannot fix problems that I don't know about, but even knowing that the program fails to run by itself makes it hard to figure out what the problem may be. All I do know for sure is that it runs properly in my own development environment, which consists of OS X and Linux (64 bit, Core 2 and i7), XBoard and cutechess-cli. The Windows builds I can only create with a cross compiler and test in Wine, which I'm sure adds to the list of potential issues. I'm quite happy to spend some time figuring out what the problem is (when I have the time, which I do just right now); perhaps I'll start with providing binaries with different compiler/architecture options; I didn't touch those and they may be pre-set to something that works on my machine but not anything else. I should check what I did with Sjaak, there may have been some similar issues there. To be continued.

Jazz can work as a UCI or as an XBoard engine, but you need distinct executables for each: xbjazz is the XBoard version, ucijazz is the UCI version (which come to think of it I didn't include in the archive here). Most of my development goes through the XBoard version (the rest goes through a variety of other executables that do things like run test suits or analyse EPD files) and I haven't touched the UCI code for almost two years except to make sure that it still compiles. That said, it should still work.

[Evert]

It's a client program to run an engine on a chess server.

Thinking that is the problem instead of Jazz itself. Tried playing Typhoon as well and getting similar issues. So disregard my previous message

Maybe, but it's still very odd if other engines do work. Clearly there's "something" that makes it not work, and perhaps it can be fixed.
What do you get if you run the program from the command line? If it starts correctly you should get a prompt "#[-]>". Does anything happen if you type "new" followed by "board"?

[Evert]

Ok, I have updated the archives (Windows and Linux binaries) with different versions of the binaries, for SSE2, SSE3 or SSE4.2 architectures. SSE2 is pretty old, so I expect almost everyone will be able to run the SSE3 version. Please give it a shot if the previous version did not work for you.

I've also explicitly static-linked the Linux binaries, which will hopefully mean they'e more portable.

[Evert]

I've replaced the Linux binaries with static linked versions, they might be more portable than the previous compile I had up (which was dynamically linked).

Please let me know if one of these works.