Myracle GUI

[mar]

it was supposed to be a surprise (I didn't even mention it) but you guys found it quickly...

only png, gif and bmp (8, 24 and 32-bit uncompressed) logos supported (not jpeg because my framework cannot load these, at least not yet)
has to be set up manually (per engine) and enabled in appearance settings

[F.Huber]

it was supposed to be a surprise (I didn't even mention it) but you guys found it quickly...

Well, not the first surprise - that was already the navigation bar.
So maybe we'll see a few further surprises in the future (?) ...

There are a few features (for Human vs. Engine games) that are standard in any serious chess GUI and would make Myracle perfect even when playing myself against an engine, and not just in engine matches.

The most important functions would be the following:
1) a combined 'Start/Stop' button in the navigation bar:
a) shows 'Start' when it's the player's turn and tells the engine to make the next move (i.e. switches sides)
b) shows 'Stop' when the engine is thinking and forces it to move immediately (makes 'Edit > Move now' needless).
2) an extra 'Edit' button (or switch) in the navigation bar that temporarily switches to 'Human vs. Human' mode, so the player can enter any sequence of moves before leaving this mode again and continue playing against the engine.
3) the options 'Edit > Setup board / Paste FEN / Paste PGN' should definitely load the position or game into the current (active) tab and not always in the 'scratchpad' tab - so you could play against the currently loaded engine starting with the loaded position (or continue a loaded unfinished game).
4) and finally Myracle should definitely save the window size & position and restore it at the next start - almost all Windows (not only chess) programs do this!
Your argument against it sounds a bit strange to me - how often is a user switching the screen resolution!? And even then it's very unlikely that the window disappears after such a change.

With these 4 features, Myracle would be almost perfect in my opinion.

Regards,
Franz

[Wilhelm]

Hi Martin, I found one thing that should be changed if possible. When a engine find the correct move with less minimal ply and the time is over the solving time is the given time (in my set 157sec). Instead it should "always" get the time when the move is found (eg 85sec). Can this be done? Thank you.

William

[mar]

Hi Martin, I found one thing that should be changed if possible. When a engine find the correct move with less minimal ply and the time is over the solving time is the given time (in my set 157sec). Instead it should "always" get the time when the move is found (eg 85sec). Can this be done? Thank you.

William

ah yes, good point. yes I think the time should be the first time that move is found (after a move change). I'll try to fix that in the next build
EDIT: actually, this should work in general;
if a move is received that fails the solution, time to solution is reset, otherwise first time it's solved and move doesn't change should be kept as time to solution
also the depth reported should be the first depth the move was found (after a move change), not after min ply was reached

[mar]

1) a combined 'Start/Stop' button in the navigation bar:
a) shows 'Start' when it's the player's turn and tells the engine to make the next move (i.e. switches sides)
b) shows 'Stop' when the engine is thinking and forces it to move immediately (makes 'Edit > Move now' needless).
2) an extra 'Edit' button (or switch) in the navigation bar that temporarily switches to 'Human vs. Human' mode, so the player can enter any sequence of moves before leaving this mode again and continue playing against the engine.
3) the options 'Edit > Setup board / Paste FEN / Paste PGN' should definitely load the position or game into the current (active) tab and not always in the 'scratchpad' tab - so you could play against the currently loaded engine starting with the loaded position (or continue a loaded unfinished game).
4) and finally Myracle should definitely save the window size & position and restore it at the next start - almost all Windows (not only chess) programs do this!
Your argument against it sounds a bit strange to me - how often is a user switching the screen resolution!? And even then it's very unlikely that the window disappears after such a change.

ad 1) as I explained before, switching sides wouldn't be easy so not planned, after all the GUI is primarily focused on eng-eng tours, not human-eng games. next time people will ask for DGT support or tracking elo or whatever
ad 2/3) you can already start the game from a FEN if you paste the edited FEN there, but starting from an existing tab/pgn sounds interesting, I'll think about it
ad 4) this can also happen if a monitor is disconnected or fails to detect, either way I'm not going to implement this feature at the moment,
see nothing wrong about maximizing on default monitor (default = parent spawning process monitor, typically or primary system monitor)