Need work-around to get engine to custom settings

[Jesse Gersenson]

I am running a tournament in arena 3.5. Arena is changing engine settings by itself and this is a known issue. http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=49287

What are some work arounds?

The aim is to send each engine:
setoption name Threads value 8
setoption name Hash value 128

And for arena to treat the solution as a regular engine.

InBetween is not a usable solution -- have tried it but it was crashing on this particular machine.

[chessdev]

As a followup, this is for the CCC. (www.chess.com/ccc). I'd be happy to pay for someone's time who knows how to get this addressed. PM me!

[pferd]

Is using cutechess gui an option? It still has some limitations, e.g. no support for stopping and continuing tournaments, but otherwise it is awesome for running engine tournaments

[hgm]

Best work-around is to use a less-buggy GUI.

[fastgm]

Maybe you can write-protect the configuration file ArenaENG.cfg?

[Jesse Gersenson]

All good suggestions.

Writing protecting the file failed. Didn't try write protecting the entire folder.

My temporary fix is to monitor changes to the file, and revert them.

@pferd yes, cutechess-cli is an option. My thought is the 'tournament' should be run by SOMETHING, which uses a proper database, and the games should be run by something like cutechess or anything capable of pitting the engines against one another and capturing their output.

[Joerg Oster]

I am running a tournament in arena 3.5. Arena is changing engine settings by itself and this is a known issue. http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=49287

What are some work arounds?

The aim is to send each engine:
setoption name Threads value 8
setoption name Hash value 128

And for arena to treat the solution as a regular engine.

InBetween is not a usable solution -- have tried it but it was crashing on this particular machine.

What exactly is the problem?
I never ever had any problems in configuring any engine to my needs.
Of course, you have to uncheck all check boxes in the 'UCI' tab in the main engine management dialog.
The reason is there is no standard for the various settings.
For example, some engines call the option for setting the number of threads to use 'Threads', some 'Number of processors', 'cpus' or whatever.

Select your engine to load in the main engine management dialog and close the dialog.
Now right-click in the engine output box and choose the top entry, configure <engine name>.
Make your settings, close and let the engine analyze a few seconds to check whether it is working correctly.
You may want to test this on several test positions.
Repeat for each single engine you wish to configure.

When you create a new tournament, all engines should now play with your desired settings.

Note: I don't recommend Arena for playing ultrashort time controls. Just in case ...

[Guenther]

@pferd yes, cutechess-cli is an option. My thought is the 'tournament' should be run by SOMETHING, which uses a proper database, and the games should be run by something like cutechess or anything capable of pitting the engines against one another and capturing their output.

Note that he explicitely mentioned cutechess-gui not cutechess-cli for your needs...
Actually 'your needs' are not very well described at all so far. It is very vague what you want to do so far.

BTW what is the meaning of this: 'which uses a proper database'?

(Anyhow, I would never use Arena for some serious computerchess things - YMMV)

[Steve Brown]

I found a solution to this problem. The file ArenaENG.cfg displays settings but editing the file does not change the settings. Arena saves settings in an unknown location, apparently not in the Windows registry, and writes those settings back to ArenaENG.cfg when the engine is launched. There are two kinds of settings: settings that can be changed from Arena dialog box items, and settings in the UCI specification, such as UCI_LimitStrength, for which Arena does not have dialog box items. When Arena sends the "uci" command to the engine on startup, the engine responds with a list of supported options and their default, minimum, and maximum values. Arena saves that list the first time it runs the engine after installation. Arena saves changes made in its dialog boxes, but it does not save changes for options such as UCI_LimitStrength for which there is no dialog box item. It is possible to change the value of UCI_LimitStrength, for example from false to true, by entering that command in the proper UCI format into the text edit box at the bottom of the Log Window which can be launched from the Engines menu. However, that change will not be saved by Arena for use in the next session. Instead it will revert to the value for that option that was saved the first time the engine was run after installation. It even modifies the text file ArenaENG.cfg back to the original setting, so edits to ArenaENG.cfg have no effect, as Arena overwrites them.

The solution I found is to edit the source code of the engine, to hard-code the default settings I want, and compile a new exe file. In Stockfish, the default option settings are coded in ucioption.cpp. However, it is not enough just to replace the exe file in the Engines folder of Arena. The engine has to be deleted from Area and re-installed, in order for the new settings to be accepted by Arena as permanent. Probably not necessary, but after deleting the engine and before re-installing it, I delete that engine from ArenaENG.cfg too, to ensure that whatever Arena writes to ArenaENG.cfg for that engine is up to date.