Question to Aart Bik

[PeterO]

Hello,

Great that your app supports the Millenium Chessgenius exclusive!
I love to play chess ob a wooden chessboard. Of course I need weak engines to enjoy the games - because I dont have 3000 elo points 😀

1. Can you make/compile interesting UCI engines that are not to strong and have an interesting playing style? Brendan Norman has an interesting homepage: chessncognac.com. He has created GREAT engines (Johnny Hector ...). Can you integrate this UCI engines in your app?

2. I would love to play online game with real people on: chess.com, FICS, LICHESS ...) with the Chessgenius exclusive. Can you realise this in your app?

Peter

[Ras]

1. Can you make/compile interesting UCI engines that are not to strong and have an interesting playing style?

The CT800 is available for Android and works with CFA. At CCRL, it is rated around 2220 in the PC version. If it is too strong for casual play, you can throttle it via its engine specific UCI options (CPU percentage or kNPS).

Installation in CFA works via "install from SD card" as per the CFA manual, and pre-compiled binaries for Android are already included in the release ZIP.

https://www.ct800.net/sw_release_v120.htm

[abik]

1. Can you make/compile interesting UCI engines that are not to strong and have an interesting playing style? Brendan Norman has an interesting homepage: chessncognac.com. He has created GREAT engines (Johnny Hector ...). Can you integrate this UCI engines in your app?

2. I would love to play online game with real people on: chess.com, FICS, LICHESS ...) with the Chessgenius exclusive. Can you realise this in your app?

Thanks for your question Peter. I actually started to work on integrating a FICS client in Chess for Android, so expect more on that soon!

As for your first question, please allow a bit of history in my answer.

When I pioneered integrating UCI and XBoard engines in Chess for Android back in 2010, Jim Ablett and myself compiled most of the engines for Android, since at that time no chess engine author would provide binaries for that platform. In fact during two Android tournaments I ran on talkchess in 2011 and 2013 (see 2011 tournament and 2013 tournament; or combined at all tournaments), I joked that I was playing the role of tournament manager, GUI author, engine author (bikjump), engine compiler, and, given the amount of initial response, probably even the role of audience. Below you can see the list of engines I gathered around that time.

The idea was always to keep the engine completely separate from the GUI. This is good software engineering practice, allows for independent releases, avoids copyright issues, etc. At first, importing the engine was somewhat awkward, and required "adb pushing" the binary to the right place. Soon this became easier using the "install from SD" feature. Then, with the introduction of the "Chessbase compatible format" and the "open exchange format" this became easiest since after installing an engine package, such as chess engine package, or a single engine, such as Komodo, any GUI that supports these formats automatically finds all engines installed on the device.

After a while, as I had hoped, chess engine authors started to compile for the Android platform themselves, and others started to run tournaments for Android as well. For example, Chesstroid is nowadays an excellent resource for anything related to chess on Android. This is why I started to be less active in compiling engines myself and focus more on GUI work (and my desire to get back to bikjump at some point), although I have always been willing to assist other engine authors that needed some help. In fact, around Android 5.0, some engines stopped working and required a new way of compiling, as I discussed in this posting.

So hopefully you can find interesting engines for Android somewhere on the web, or in the list below (we may have to revisit if they are still working). In fact, since my engine package has become somewhat stale, I would love to provide an update with more and new engines. Any chess engine author that is interested in packaging an engine in this Android app, please contact me.


List from the good old days:

Code: Select all

UCI:
adroitchess-03-ja   cyrano-061-b17-ja  egbbso.so                   greko-90-ja            redqueen095       stockfish2.1
apilchess-106-ja    daydreamer-075-ja  egbbso.so.orig              greko98-ab             redqueen098       stockfish-211-android-ja
arasan-174-ja       diablo-051b-ja     egbbso.so.static            iota                   redqueen-098-ja   stockfish-21-android-ja
arasanx             diablo-501-ja      fruit-reloaded-armeabi      iota-ab                redqueen110       stockfish231-ab
arasanx141          discocheck3.5.1    garbochess3                 IvanHoe-999947c        redqueen111       stockfish_crab1
armtester.cc        discocheck3.6      garbochess3-ab              IvanHoe-999947c-robbo  redqueen112-ab    suff-03a-ja
bikjump1.8          discocheck371-ab   garbochess-3-ja             jazz-444-ja            robbolito0085e4l  sungorus
bikjump1.8_old      discocheck401-ab   gaviota0.80                 jazz-uci-501-ja        robbolito0085g3l  TJchessARM_UCI_101
bikjump1.8_pie      discocheck-401-ja  gaviota0.82beta             komodo-13-ja           rocinante-101-ja  toga2
bikjump1.8_static   doublecheck1.1     gaviota0.83.0.3             komodo201-ab           rotor-04-ja       toga2.orig
bikjump2.1          doublecheck1.2     gaviota-android-v0.83       komodo203-ab           rotor0.6a         Umko_1.2_arm
bikjump2.1_old      doublecheck1.3.1   gaviota-android-v0.84       komodo-203-ja          rotor0.7a         virutorChess_6_12_2011
bikjump2.1_pie      doublecheck2.0     gnuchess-5.07.153.3b        komodo2-ab             simplex-097-ja    virutor_chess_android_1_0
bikjump2.1_static   doublecheck2.3     gnuchess-5.07.170b.5b       komodo3-ab             simplex-098-ja    x
cassandre-026-ja    doublecheck2.5     gnuchess-5.07.173b-android  Makefile               sissa-20-ja       xandroid
cheng-107-ja        doublecheck-26-ja  gnuchess-6.0.2-uci-android  pawny-031-ja           stockfish1.8      zct032500
client-android-cli  doublecheck2.7     greko8.0                    pawny_1.2ab            stockfish1.9      zct032500-ab
critter-12-arm      doublecheck3.4     greko8.2                    pepito-159-ja          stockfish2.0


XBOARD:
amundsen             danasah-488-ja       gfc-08-rev5-ja           mizar-30-ja       phalanx           sjeng-112-ja              tscp181-ab
bruja                danasah.ini          gk-090-ja                mskcp-145-ja      phalanx-xxii-ja   sloppy                    tucano104
buzz-os-11-27-08-ja  dirty-android        gullydeckel-215-pl10-ja  myrddin0.85j      prophet           sloppy-023-ja             tucano104-ab
chess-one-201-ja     exchess-054-beta-ja  kiwi-06d                 natwarlal-014-ja  scidlet-261b2-ja  surprise-43-b13-ja        umax48w
crafty               fairymax48l-ab       kmtchess-121-ja          olithink-530-ja   scorpio           TJchessARM_XB_101         x
crafty-234-ja        fairymax48q          knightcap-36-ja          olithink-531-ja   scorpio-27-ja     toledo-nanochess-2010-ja  zeta-dva-0202-ja
danasah-466-ja       fmax.ini             Makefile                 p2p               scorpio.ini       tscp181                   zzzzzz-351-ja

[hagtorp]

Hello,

Great that your app supports the Millenium Chessgenius exclusive!
I love to play chess ob a wooden chessboard. Of course I need weak engines to enjoy the games - because I dont have 3000 elo points 😀

1. Can you make/compile interesting UCI engines that are not to strong and have an interesting playing style? Brendan Norman has an interesting homepage: chessncognac.com. He has created GREAT engines (Johnny Hector ...). Can you integrate this UCI engines in your app?

2. I would love to play online game with real people on: chess.com, FICS, LICHESS ...) with the Chessgenius exclusive. Can you realise this in your app?

Peter

Hi Peter.There my compilation stronge engine Cfish-240318(arm7,arm64v8 ~3400 elo),support Cerebellum book:
https://app.box.com/s/a490bv3mv2ar6a0kgidceokrc47ds745

[PeterO]

Hello Aart,

thanks for your answer. Chesstroid is a great place to find good old engines to play with.
Great to hear, that you already work on the FICS client!!!!!!! I will love the possibility to play with real human people on a wooden board. Thank you so much for your hard work!!! Thank you Aart!!!😀

You have so much to do - problems to solve. But perhaps ther are other persons that have the know how - and interest to compile the interesting engines on chessncognac.com.

Anoher question: When I play an engine I prefer the engines that I can set the strengh in elo points (because I have 1800 elo and its not fun to be DESTROID by a 3200 elo monster 😱). Sometimes there is the option to select an opening book - or no opening book. For a player like me its not optimal to play a weak engine that plays the opening like a grandmaster! 😰
I would prefer an opening book „clubplayer“ that plays an opening suboptimal like a 2000 elo player. Perfect would be clubplayer-standard, clubplayer-passiv, clubplayer-activ, clubplayer-aggressive! I am just a fanatic chessplayer with a long wish list. I am not a software expert I dont know what is possible, how much work is it ...

Peter

[PeterO]

Thanks for your answer. Your engine is of course very interesting. I will definitivly install it and play against it. In Aarts app I can set the elo strengh in some engines. Can you add this feature in your engine?

Peter

[PeterO]

Hello Alexei,

In Aarts app I can set the elo strengh in some engines. Can you add this feature in your engine?

Peter

[Ras]

In Aarts app I can set the elo strengh in some engines. Can you add this feature in your engine?

In principle yes - I would just translate that into an apprioriate node rate. However, I would have to find some kind of formula for that one, which a good item for the next version.

As for the opening book, the engine has an internal book that is not made for maximum strength, but for variety. It also plays moves that are not really optimum, but that are somewhat playable - just what you might see at club level.

[PeterO]

Hi Rasmus,

The informatins about your opening book are very interesting!!
Now I am waiting for your next engine update!!! The elo option would be great!!

Peter

[hagtorp]

Hello Alexei,

In Aarts app I can set the elo strengh in some engines. Can you add this feature in your engine?

Peter

I collected it from original sources ,which in Github posted Ronald de Man.There is no such option.