My gift to the community – a much better cutechessGUI

[pohl4711]

Because Patrick Leonhardt, the young author of the great engine PlentyChess, was looking for a student job, I offered him, to make a better cutechess for the community, payed by me.
CutechessGUI is already great, but has some flaws and room for improvements.

As I expected, Patrick did a fantastic job – I could not be more satisfied - and improved cutechess as I wanted.

https://github.com/Yoshie2000/cutechess ... ag/qol-1.0

Whats new?

The biggest improvement is, that engine-tournaments in the cutechessGUI can now be aborted and resumed – a save file is written after each finished game. So, even after a crash, an engine-tournament always can be resumed.

A complete new feature is introduced: Decision Time. DT means the time, the engine needed to find (and hold) the move, which is finally played on the board. The DT is not only displayed in the engine-windows of cutechessGUI, but also stored by cutechess-cli in the pgn-comments. IMHO, DT is a very interesting information (how hard to find was the played move?), which is just thrown away by all other GUIs (stupid !).

CutechessGUI is now „standalone“: No installation required, it can now run from an USB-Stick, like Arena, because all files needed, are stored in the cutechess-folder (and its subfolders). Including the engine.json file.

Above the chessboard of cutechessGUI, there are 3 new outputs:
100 plies rule (50 moves draw rule) counter, the material balance (-1 means, for example, that black has 1 pawn more) and the overall number of pieces on the board (max. 32)

2 new board color sets: Green and Blue

A darkmode (can be switched on/off)

The yellow triangle to point out the last move on the board is back (from V1.2), it replaces the (in my eyes) ugly arrow of the newer versions.

A larger font for the PV-line output and the first ply of each PV-line now includes the movenumber.

[Graham Banks]

Will take a look. Thanks.

[pohl4711]

Bug reports of course welcome (save file was very tricky to make)! Right now, Windows Binaries, only.

[Jouni]

Thanks Stefan! You have invested a lot for computer chess. I have used 0€ for hardware or software in last 5 years .

[Gabor Szots]

The biggest improvement is, that engine-tournaments in the cutechessGUI can now be aborted and resumed – a save file is written after each finished game. So, even after a crash, an engine-tournament always can be resumed.

That alone makes this an invaluable improvement. The feature I have been requesting for years. I am eagerly looking forward to trying this new tool.

Thank you very much to both of you.

[Gabor Szots]

I can't find a way to install or delete engines.

[pohl4711]

Go to Tools - Settings, then on Engines, then click the small "+" symbol in left bottom

This has not changed in the new version.

[Gabor Szots]

Go to Tools - Settings, then on Engines, then click the small "+" symbol in left bottom

This has not changed in the new version.

No + or - buttons are visible on that page.

[pohl4711]

Perhaps the window does not fit on your screen.

Go into Windows Settings and change the scale. On my laptop, I have set it to 150%. Or try 125%

[Gabor Szots]

Perhaps the window does not fit on your screen.

Go into Windows Settings and change the scale. On my laptop, I have set it to 150%. Or try 125%

I have set it to 150 % (was 125) but it did not help. Maybe I need to change the screen resolution (now it is at 1920x1080).

EDIT: Resolution change did not help either.

At the 'Games' tab Tablebase adjudication is the last visible line.