New open source engine in C# - NoraGrace

[eric.oldre]

Hello everyone,

It's been long time since I've made any posts on a chess forum. Back around 2004 I released an engine name Latista, which I later need to rename to Sinobyl due to trademark issues. Sinobyl was written in C++ and had an ELO just north of 2100.

I've just pushed to GitHub a new winboard engine of mine written in C#. I think it compares pretty favorably to other engines written in managed languages, but I guess we shall see. I estimate it's ELO to be around 2300.

I'm dedicating development of my engine to my daughter Nora Grace Oldre who was taken from us unexpectedly a few days before she was due to be born. About 90% of the work on it was done while my wife was pregnant with her, and I declared it functionally 'good-enough' the day before she left us, June 9th, in anticipation of not having very much free time in the future.

The source can be downloaded at:
https://github.com/ericoldre/NoraGrace-Chess

Binaries are available at:
https://github.com/ericoldre/NoraGrace- ... s/tag/v1.0

I know there are a few of you out there (or someone) who likes to make logo images for engines. Please contact me if you would like to because I would like to contribute some ideas on that.

[zullil]

Hi Eric,

Thank you for sharing your engine---and condolences to your wife and you for your loss.

[cdani]

Thanks!
I'm sorry all that happened.

[Dayffd]

And my condolences, too.

[Graham Banks]

So sorry about your loss.
A nice idea to name your engine in her memory.

Regards,
Graham.

[Graham Banks]

Hi Eric,

I've sent you a logo to take a look at.

Is there any way to set hash size settings for NoraGrace?

Graham.

[SzG]

Eric, does NoraGrace require any command line parameters? Or a special environment? From the command line it seems to accept the go command and start to calculate, however, when I want to play a game agains it under WB it exits immediately.

[Norbert Raimund Leisner]

Windows XP SP3 error message after a double-click on the executable file:

no valid win32 application

Norbert

[reflectionofpower]

So sorry about your loss.
A nice idea to name your engine in her memory.

Regards,
Graham.

It was good idea to name it after her. I am sorry for your loss Eric

[eric.oldre]

To answer your questions.

1) I unfortunately did not add a way to adjust the hash table sizes. I'll get to that eventually.

2) I BELIEVE that NoraGrace should run on any windows PC that has the latest version of the Microsoft .NET framework installed (version 4.5.1) actually it may only need version 4.0 of the framework but I haven't tested it under those conditions.

3) I did not do any testing with Winboard. However in response to Gabor's comment I've installed winboard 4.7.3 and it seems to be working fine.

I disabled logging in the config file in the binaries download. However we can turn in back on with the following contents. (IE put this in your NoraGrace.exe.config file in the same directory.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
<configSections>
<section name="log4net" type="log4net.Config.Log4NetConfigurationSectionHandler, log4net" />
</configSections>
<appSettings>
<add key="log4net.Internal.Debug" value="false" />
</appSettings>
<log4net>
<root>
<level value="WARN" />
<appender-ref ref="logFileAppender" />
</root>
<logger name="NoraGrace.CommandLine">
<level value="INFO" />
</logger>
<appender name="logFileAppender" type="log4net.Appender.FileAppender">
<file type="log4net.Util.PatternString">
<conversionPattern value="NoraGrace%date{ yyyyMMddHHmmss }-[%processid].log" />
</file>
<appendToFile value="true" />
<layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
<conversionPattern value="%logger - %message%newline" />
</layout>
</appender>
</log4net>
<startup>
<supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.5.1" />
</startup>
</configuration>

If you have that in the config file it will create a log file. The contents of which you could sent to me and I'd most likely be able to fix the issue. (also I'd like to be aware of what is going on)

Thanks a lot everyone

Eric