New Shokidoki release

[hgm]

I just released the version of Shokidoki that played in the ICGA Computer Olympiad, with some additional fixes to analyze mode. Apart from regular Shogi (9x9) it plays Euro-Shogi (8x8), Tori Shogi (7x7), Judkins Shogi (6x6) and mini-Shogi (5x5). Changes include:

* 'mate at a glance' detection by drop moves in QS
* improved King-safety evaluation, making it play more aggressively
* full implementation of multi-PV mode
* bugfix in the Tori-Shogi move generator (Falcon moves to squares in the opponent promotion zone)
* fix of the stored depth in the hash table (which was too low)
* fix of the undo command (which corrupted the piece-square tables in mini-Shogi)

In particular the first two changes caused a significant increase in playing strength in all of the supported variants.

The new Shokidoki binary is included in the WinBoard Shogi Variants package, downloadable from

http://hgm.nubati.net/ShogiVars.html

[Ferdy]

Thanks, I will try the mini. Yokohama is still very strong for me .

[Ferdy]

In the package in WB-alien.ini file for mini I added,

Code: Select all

-pieceToCharTable "P.BR.S...G.+.++.+Kp.br.s...g.+.++.+k"

So it is now,

Code: Select all

"mini-Shogi         " -fcp Shokidoki /variant=shogi -boardWidth 5 -boardHeight 5 -holdingsSize 5 -blackPieceColor #202020 -size middling -fSAN -pieceToCharTable "P.BR.S...G.+.++.+Kp.br.s...g.+.++.+k"

because when silver was captured it became a pawn in on-hand, when it was dropped back, winboard sent,

Code: Select all

{Xboard: Forfeit due to invalid move: S@b3 (_1_1) res=24} 0-1

[hgm]

Oh my goodness, I completely messed up. Thanks for discovering this.

The configuration was relying on Shokidoki to provide the pieceToCharTable in its setup command, which in this WinBoard version for Shogi with non-standard board width works even with legality testing on. The problem, however, was that Shokidoki for mini-Shogi and Junkins Shogi was sending an invalid pieceToChar string in the setup command: it had an extra . between the white and black pieces. WinBoard ignores tables of odd length, so the standard Shogi table remained in force, reserving space for L and N in the holdings, pushing out S and G.

I now corrected Shokidoki's setup command, and uploaded corrected packages.

[JoshPettus]

Hi Harm, if you have my email still, I'd be happy to make an OSX binary.