Rodent II 0.9.64 released

[PK]

available at http://www.pkoziol.cal24.pl/rodent/download.htm

There are two packages to download: normal with a lot of opening books and 30+ different personalities and lite with just the engine and its main opening book.

32-bit compile will be added in a couple of days, I need the access to my old laptop to make it Windows-XP compatibile.

Engine should be about 30 Elo stronger than 0.9.33 (and so might be already approaching to 2900 Elo on the CCRL scale), but the main point of this release is improving personality system. Personalities can now have their own books and a couple of new options were exposed, including three different pst tables, bishop pair, exchange imbalance value and forwardness.

With that many parameters tuning has become a bit more complicated. To facilitate that, Rodent now has a totally new feature - online personality creator, accessible http://www.pkoziol.cal24.pl/rodent/tuner.htm
It is a shameless JavaScript hack which I am going to improve soon, but even now it allows creating personality files and downloading them to your machine.

If You create something interesting, please send it to me!

Changes since version 0.9.33:

- UCI Elo option implemented (not sure if it is well implemented, but it works)
- a set of 30+ new exciting personalities
- importing a couple of opening books by Pavel Hase (http://www.chesspraga.cz/spikebook.htm)
- opening book can be set in the personality file now
- UCI options react to loercase version as well
- three alternate piece/square table sets. Default (PstStyle 0) has been taken from Hakapeliitta, made symmetric and tweaked. PstStyle 1 is the previous set of tables, modified version of Fruit/Toga tables. PstStyle 2 comes from Joe Velasco (http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... t&start=60) and is a simplified version of tables from the Ippolit and company.
- two alternate mobility table sets. Default (0) is from good old Fruit (via Toga Log User Manual), the second one comes from Fruit Reloaded. Both changes increase the number of possible playing styles.
- tweaking mobility values and conditions (in short, no bonus for defending own pawns)
- bugfix of check threat eval (no threats from squares occupied by own pieces)
- internal iterative deepening in cut nodes
- escapes from a capture refuting null move are sorted higher
- evaluation of castling rights in the opening
- discovered checks by knight are generated in QuiesceChecks()
- bugfix of static draw detection routine
- razoring tweaks
- mobility tweaks
- conservative LMR of bad captures (one ply)

Have fun!

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Pawel,

but what I should test?

Download 1 file:
Rodent2-0963-win64.exe (from Sep 09th, 2016) ...

Download 2 file (bigger download):
RodetII_x64.exe (from Sep 22th, 2016) ...

Different size and data for the two executables.

And if I should test the file from download 2 ... which setting you prefer?

I will start the test directly after the "Fght For Place 1" before Laser 1.2. But at the moment I am not sure witch of the two available different files with different size and date I should config for the test-run.

...

A lot what you do ...
Must see it!



Best
Frank

[carldaman]

available at http://www.pkoziol.cal24.pl/rodent/download.htm

There are two packages to download: normal with a lot of opening books and 30+ different personalities and lite with just the engine and its main opening book.

32-bit compile will be added in a couple of days, I need the access to my old laptop to make it Windows-XP compatibile.

Engine should be about 30 Elo stronger than 0.9.33 (and so might be already approaching to 2900 Elo on the CCRL scale), but the main point of this release is improving personality system. Personalities can now have their own books and a couple of new options were exposed, including three different pst tables, bishop pair, exchange imbalance value and forwardness.

With that many parameters tuning has become a bit more complicated. To facilitate that, Rodent now has a totally new feature - online personality creator, accessible http://www.pkoziol.cal24.pl/rodent/tuner.htm
It is a shameless JavaScript hack which I am going to improve soon, but even now it allows creating personality files and downloading them to your machine.

If You create something interesting, please send it to me!

Changes since version 0.9.33:

- UCI Elo option implemented (not sure if it is well implemented, but it works)
- a set of 30+ new exciting personalities
- importing a couple of opening books by Pavel Hase (http://www.chesspraga.cz/spikebook.htm)
- opening book can be set in the personality file now
- UCI options react to loercase version as well
- three alternate piece/square table sets. Default (PstStyle 0) has been taken from Hakapeliitta, made symmetric and tweaked. PstStyle 1 is the previous set of tables, modified version of Fruit/Toga tables. PstStyle 2 comes from Joe Velasco (http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... t&start=60) and is a simplified version of tables from the Ippolit and company.
- two alternate mobility table sets. Default (0) is from good old Fruit (via Toga Log User Manual), the second one comes from Fruit Reloaded. Both changes increase the number of possible playing styles.
- tweaking mobility values and conditions (in short, no bonus for defending own pawns)
- bugfix of check threat eval (no threats from squares occupied by own pieces)
- internal iterative deepening in cut nodes
- escapes from a capture refuting null move are sorted higher
- evaluation of castling rights in the opening
- discovered checks by knight are generated in QuiesceChecks()
- bugfix of static draw detection routine
- razoring tweaks
- mobility tweaks
- conservative LMR of bad captures (one ply)

Have fun!

Thanks a lot, Pawel. Impressive work!

Cheers,
CL

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Pawel,

sorry for my fast message.
Version 0.9.64 and 0.9.63.

All is clear!
Also with the configuration!

Sorry and thanks again for your new version!

Best
Frank

[Jimbo I]

Hi Pawel,

I have a question I hope you can help me with. If I set up a Rodent engine using "ELO_SLIDER" in the basic.ini file and select an Elo setting, is there any way I can determine the EVAL_BLUR setting used for that engine? My GUI can report the NPS value in the engine debug log, but I couldn't fine the EVAL_BLUR value anywhere.

Thanks for your work on the new Rodent!

[PK]

ELO_SLIDER modifies both nps and blur (blur is used only below 1800 Elo)

[Pilchard]

"32-bit compile will be added in a couple of days, I need the access to my old laptop to make it Windows-XP compatibile. "

Looking forward to trying it on my 32 bit system, any idea when it will become available please?

[Jamal Bubker]

Thank you Pawel

[jdart]

FYI Visual C++ 2015 community edition can build an XP-compatible executable on a modern machine. See https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj851139.aspx. And it has 32-bit and 64-bit compilers.

--Jon

[Colin-G]

FYI Visual C++ 2015 community edition can build an XP-compatible executable on a modern machine. See https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj851139.aspx. And it has 32-bit and 64-bit compilers.

--Jon

When I click on your link I get this message

Server Error in '/' Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An exception occurred while processing your request. Additionally, another exception occurred while executing the custom error page for the first exception. The request has been terminated.

Perhaps it is because I am using firefox in linux and am blocked by Microsoft.