Final Announcement On-Line Blitz Tourney

[krazyken]

Everthing works well, except timestamp under linux. Is this version of FICS working with it? I got the message "Timestamp failed in step 1" and xboard aborted (both, 4.2.27 and 4.3.14).

My own kibitz does not work because tellics is not recognized, but it seems that -autokibitz should be enough.

Miguel

He's using timeseal rather than timestamp.

[hgm]

You have to use timeseal, like on FICS, not timestamp, (which is an ICC thing), on this server. You can also login without ICS helper, but then any lags would come from your own clock.

Is Quadrox UCI? Polyglot does not understand any variants except FRC (which is not really a variant), so that means you won't be able to play it under WinBoard for things like Capablanca, Xiangqi or Knightmate...

tellics is not recognized by WinBoard?

Are you sure about that? I saw other engines use their own kibitz (Dirty was actually whispering in stead of kibitzing). So how could they have done that if tellics would not work? With the -autoKibitz option your own kibitz is suppressed from the ICS window, could it be that you were merely not seeing it, while your opponents and observers did?

[hgm]

1. The ICS client looks for "login" and "password" (all lower case), but your server sends "Login" and "Password". I modified the code to ignore the character cases.

2. The server messages start with "trics%". I had to add this to the list which currently includes "aics%", "fics%" and "chess%".

A few more comments regarding your server:
1. It does not support the 'resume' command
2. I aborted at move 1, and it did not abort the game
3. On FICS and ICC, "follow" with no parameter cancels the current 'follow. On your server, you need to enter the name of the player you are following to cancel it.
4. "seek 3 1 f" does not work. Its the "f" (formula) that is not being recognized, even though it prints out a 'usage' message indicating that 'f' is a valid option for 'seek'

The prompt was something that I set in the server config vars as default, as it seemed wrong to use "fics%". I guess the user should be able to alter this anyway; not all accounts I made have the same prompt. They are each using the prompt I had configured as default at the time the account was created.

I think that to resume a game, you simply have to match the opponent with which you had an adjourned game. The adjourned game than takes precedence over any new game you were trying to start.

Abort requires both players to abort the game, and WinBoard does not automatically reciprocate an abort proposal. So when playing against a bot, abort does not work.

The "seek f" thing sounds as a genuine Lasker-2.2.3 bug. I am not sure if I will be able to fix such bugs; I have only looked at about 10% of the code, only the part involving the actual game (parsing moves and checking their legality).

[krazyken]

tellics is not recognized by WinBoard?

it might be polyglot that is not recognizing the tellics command

[Greg Strong]

Is Quadrox UCI? Polyglot does not understand any variants except FRC (which is not really a variant), so that means you won't be able to play it under WinBoard for things like Capablanca, Xiangqi or Knightmate...

It does not speak WinBoard yet, but it will. Right now it's UCI because the I/O and time management code is borrowed from Glaurung. Eventually that will all be replaced by original code, but I borrowed a couple of small things to help get the ball moving. ChessV never had console I/O or game clock management.

[hgm]

OK, great! I am currently converting Fairy-Max to do Xiangqi, which is quite a bit different from all the other variants, due to the zonal board. So it makes little sense to combine it with all the other variants, and I am making a specialized version for it. Unfortunately Fairy-Max is not yet capable to use boards with other than 8 ranks, as the pawn-promotion code is deeply interwoven with rank numbers. This makes the 9x10 board a major problem, but of course XQ does not really have Pawn promotions, so it will be much easier to adapt this for XQ then it would be for a more Chess-like game.

I am curious how the adapted version (MaxQi) will do versus HoiXiangqi.

[TonyJH]

I am curious how the adapted version (MaxQi) will do versus HoiXiangqi.

You can also try TJxiangqi.

[hgm]

Sure I will, but I am a less curious, as I am almost certain that TJxangqi will give it a beating. TJchess10x8 is a lot stronger than Fairy-Max at Capblanca Chess, while Fairy-Max has the upper hand over HoiChess in normal Chess. And since I am writing an engine now for a game that I never played at all, my own insights for evaluation will probably not add much strength either...

For an engine without piece list, like Fairy-Max, the King-facing rule could easily become expensive to implement. Fortuntely, I have found trick for it now to make its cost bearable: During move generation I scan the board for own pieces by file (i.e. in practice I rotated the board 90 degrees), and remember the last encountered piece. If I encounter a King when the last-encountered piece was also a King, I can take beta cutoff with a King-capture score.

[cyberfish]

My engine is doing its own kibitz using "tellall" ("tellothers" when playing against a human). xboard translates them to "kibitz" and "whisper" respectively.

Abort requires both players to abort the game, and WinBoard does not automatically reciprocate an abort proposal. So when playing against a bot, abort does not work.

On FICS at least, an abort issued on move 1 is automatic (does not require opponent's agreement. It's useful when, for example, someone puts out a seek and goes AFK, and you answer the seek...)

A few other things I found "missing" (compared to FICS) -
1. timezone setting (the tzone variable)
2. rematch command
3. a lot of help files, but I guess you already know this

[hgm]

Well, I really know very little about Internet Chess Servers. I have never played on FICS, and my experience with ICC is pretty much limited to CCT. So I have no idea what is usual, and how it is different on this server. From what I could find, this seemed the most advanced version of the development branch that was stiill open source. I am sure that FICS and ICC developed their servers much further, but they are proprietry software.

As soon as it has the minimum of commands to provide a workable system, I am satisfied with it. Things like "rematch" could also be implemented in the client.