CCT 15 - 72 hours left to register

[Albert Silver]

Well, that doesn't do not much good, does it? What matters is if we can do it. And if we can do it within 48 hours...

If you have a PGN that is updated with the moves as they are played, then it can be done in 48 seconds.

[Graham Banks]

Good news for CCT spectators

I just released WinBoard 4.7.0 (download), and added a few extras to make life easier for CCT spectators:

After installing there will be a special "CCT spectator" entry in the Windows Start menu. Clicking it will immediately connect you to the CCT server, with the necessary windows all opened, and the relevant communication channels switched on. All you have to do yourself is:

* Type your name and hit <Enter> two times (if you login as guest)
* Remember to right-click the text window to summon up the ICS menu
* Click the "Games" entry in it to see a list of games
* Right-click on the game in this list and select "Observe (name)" to start observing the game
* Right-click on the engine's PV to play it out on the board

You can't get it any easier than that!

Thanks for your efforts to make things easier for the technical simpletons.

[mhull]

Good news for CCT spectators

I just released WinBoard 4.7.0 (download), and added a few extras to make life easier for CCT spectators:

After installing there will be a special "CCT spectator" entry in the Windows Start menu. Clicking it will immediately connect you to the CCT server, with the necessary windows all opened, and the relevant communication channels switched on. All you have to do yourself is:

* Type your name and hit <Enter> two times (if you login as guest)
* Remember to right-click the text window to summon up the ICS menu
* Click the "Games" entry in it to see a list of games
* Right-click on the game in this list and select "Observe (name)" to start observing the game
* Right-click on the engine's PV to play it out on the board

You can't get it any easier than that!

Excellent!

[CRoberson]

Well, that doesn't do not much good, does it? What matters is if we can do it. And if we can do it within 48 hours...

Here is what I got on another forum from Harvey.

Hi Charles,

I have replied on the forum:

'You need the games to be written to a pgn database that is available on the web. On Playchess you use the url to begin the broadcast. The games should then auto-update on Playchess.'

I have not been active on Playchess for a while but this I am sure will not have changed. I think any member with I think minimum rank of Bishop can do it. Best to check with Holger.
Best Wishes,
Harvey

[hgm]

Well, that doesn't do not much good, does it? What matters is if we can do it. And if we can do it within 48 hours...

If you have a PGN that is updated with the moves as they are played, then it can be done in 48 seconds.

Well, that was exactly my point. If it is easy, it is better to do it yourself then go on a wild goose chase for some unknown person who once might have invented the same simlpe wheel before you.

The question of course is WHO should be made responsible for producing that PGN.

[CRoberson]

I think we shouldn't maybe touch critical areas such as the server, but we can work in parallel, like I spoke with Joshua Shriver today and we are looking into the possibility that his GameBot, which will be collecting all CCT games anyway, can produce such a PGN.

As I understand the original design of GameBot was exactly like that, though the new gamebot just collects movelist as the game ends, we can modify that into spitting out realtime PGN for each game and put it on ftp or something.

Its very easy to write a ftp script that will poll these pgns every n seconds, and setup playchess to broadcast these downloaded PGNs

Look at the message that I posted from Harvey. It explains it a bit more. Just put the realtime pgn on the web and start the broadcast with the url.

[hgm]

Well, submitting the PGN is only 10% of the problem. The other 90% is obtaining it. This is where the GameBot that was mentioned comes in.

[Raptor]

Joshua volunteered to modify his GameBot for this purpose.

The Only doubt I still have is, is it enough to create one single PGN which has all the games or we need separate pgn for each game, I know for certain the latter will work, the former needs clarification.

Either way, I expect to hear back from Joshua.

[jshriver]

The question of course is WHO should be made responsible for producing that PGN.

I'm trying my original gamebot for FICS worked via observation and parsing the style 12 lines directly.

Later I found it less bandwidth intensive and cleaner, to just listen for game ends, do a hist on the player, pop the last game in his history and do a smoves on it. Which is how gamebot on OICS (and on yours, though having some issues for some reason).

For the purposes of CCT, going to go back to my original FICS code, since that's the only way to generate a PGN in real time.

Can't guarantee anything, but 1.5 days to try and get something working. BTW I sent a request for a "Relay" account, I plan to keep GameBot running, and use "Relay" for the live-pgn builds and upload to my website so Steve Webber can collect them and work his magic for Playchess. At least that's the goal.

[jshriver]

Mr. Muller do you know if your ICS has a cap on how many games you can observe at any given time?

That was my main bottle neck with FICS, it only allowed 10 (15?) so you couldn't record all games which led me to the hist, smoves method.


I'm going to move some of my engines over to your server tonight for testing.

-Josh