Progress on Belofte

[Gabor Szots]

I have started a tournament. Very early days but it seems a real improvement. We'll see at next week's CCRL update (probably 15th August).

Thanks Gabor, I am curious to see how well it fares.
[/quote]

Tournament over. This is the best Belofte ever.

[Gabor Szots]

I have started a tournament. Very early days but it seems a real improvement. We'll see at next week's CCRL update (probably 15th August).

Thanks Gabor, I am curious to see how well it fares.

Tournament over. This is the best Belofte ever. Congrats on your progress.
[/quote]

[ydebilloez]

Tournament over. This is the best Belofte ever. Congrats on your progress.

Thanks Gabor.

I keep working on a next version. Meanwhile, a huge update on documentation in the belofte-next branch and already published on the http://macchess.internetcontact.be/dev-belofte.php.

[ydebilloez]

For the banksiagui users out there, I noticed that Belofte 2.1.3 made crash Banksia (0.44 till 0.49). The issue is wrong announcement of score at the end of uci search (at detph). I released a fix with version 2.1.3.1 that just fixes that. Non-banksiagui users can continue to use the previous version (2.1.3).

BTW: a lot of work in progress on version 2.1.4 is available in the source branch 'belofte-next' but not ready for release yet.

[ydebilloez]

Belofte 2.1.4 is nearing completion. It is more a replacement of 2.1.3 with a lot of enhancements towards GUI programs and addition of a lot of UI features while no real difference on playing strength. Addition of more EPD support. A number of bug-fixes is included.

What is available now:
Addition of EPD testsuites. They might be of interest for engine testers: https://sourceforge.net/p/belofte/gitre ... /test/epd/
Source code has been updated: https://sourceforge.net/p/belofte/gitre ... next/tree/
Documentation has been released already: http://macchess.internetcontact.be/beloftedoc/html/
A new wiki has been published: http://macchess.internetcontact.be/beloftedoc/wiki/

Binaries will be released after I complete extensive testing. I might be adding some enhancements on playing strength as well, but the changes are not conclusive yet.

[ydebilloez]

Candidate release belofte is almost there. Apart from one issue posted in this thread.

Not a big change in strength, but increase of speed in BruteForce search (300%), QS NPS (20%), windows builds by 40%.
More importantly, this release is feature complete on documentation, web-site, code style, warnings, .... with only a few edge cases left. It is a good basis for going forward.

[ydebilloez]

Belofte 2.1.5 has been released.

Mac version - 20% increase in speed
Windows version - 30% increase in speed
Linux version - a bit slower than 2.1.4 because of bug-fixes
Updates on (cross-)compilation documentation.

Bug fixes:

Compiles with fedora 34 and 35, (but compilation on Ubuntu xfce crashes runtime??)
Static build, should run on older linuxes.
Fixes issues with UCI setoption.
No longer makes BanksiaGui crash. (send info)
In epd test files, correcly adds #/+ symbols in all cases.
Many small other things.