My gift to the community – a much better cutechessGUI

[Damas Clásicas]

Many thanks for this great GUI, it’s really well done.

I’ve encountered a small issue that other users have also reported. I’m using a 1920×1080 monitor with Windows scaling set to 125%, and some options don’t appear on the screen because they seem to be outside the visible area. Would it be possible to adjust the interface so it scales correctly with different DPI settings?

Additionally, would it be possible to add an option that allows users to add or load custom piece sets for the board?

Thanks again for your excellent work.

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.

[Modern Times]

I’ve encountered a small issue that other users have also reported. I’m using a 1920×1080 monitor with Windows scaling set to 125%, and some options don’t appear on the screen because they seem to be outside the visible area. Would it be possible to adjust the interface so it scales correctly with different DPI settings?

Yes, Gabor has that exact issue, 1920x1080 at 125%

I don't think it is the 125% scaling per se, because may laptop at 1920 x 1200 and 125% doesn't have these issues.

[pohl4711]

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 !).

Can the storing of that in the pgn be disabled in the config file ? For blitz games I don't think it has much value, to me anyway.

No, that is not possible, but you can just take an older cutechess-cli.exe and replace the cutechess-cli.exe in the cutechessGUI folder.
That should work. Hopefully.
And I find DT very useful, even in Blitzgames, because in the modern days, most DTs are 0 or 0.01 or so (but in some rare cases, the DT ist higher and these are the interesting moves). So even in Bulletgames, DT is still very interesting.
I will use it from now for my UHO-Top15 Ratinglist testgames, too, which are 3min+1sec Blitz.

[pohl4711]

Many thanks for this great GUI, it’s really well done.

I’ve encountered a small issue that other users have also reported. I’m using a 1920×1080 monitor with Windows scaling set to 125%, and some options don’t appear on the screen because they seem to be outside the visible area. Would it be possible to adjust the interface so it scales correctly with different DPI settings?

I sent this to Patrick, we will see. I am not the progammer, I just payed the bill.

Additionally, would it be possible to add an option that allows users to add or load custom piece sets for the board?

Dont know. That was not part of my wishlist, Patrick made come to reality.

[pohl4711]

Right now, it seems, that some problems seems to happen only on old Windows 10 machines.
I use, of course, Windows 11.

So, for further discussions, it would be helpful, to mention, which Windows is running on the PCs.

[RubiChess]

I have doubts that "decision time" is that interesting. Imagine the engine running on multiple threads, you will never get the "real" decision time from the engine's output because usually only the first/main thread reports to GUI and thread voting is done at the very end. So it could be possible that other threads found "the move" much earlier and you just don't see it. So I wouldn't call it "stupid" with exclamation mark when you are not interested in "decision time".
But apart from that: Nice that someone started to improve cutechess GUI. Are there plans to push these changes upstream so that they don't get lost when maintainers of cutechess go forward?

Regards, Andreas

[peter]

Right now, it seems, that some problems seems to happen only on old Windows 10 machines.
I use, of course, Windows 11.

So, for further discussions, it would be helpful, to mention, which Windows is running on the PCs.

Thanks for the new cutechess!
I have the same problems Garbo and others have with scaling of screen and therefore would support the wish for reducing of font- size. It's annoying to opt out at Windows, what you have to do to make change of screen- scaling work (mine is W11), each time you want to add or edit one of the engines other than by .json. Btw. is there a way to import such settings from other version of cutechess? Don't find engines.json e.g. in 1.4.0, regards

[pohl4711]

Btw. is there a way to import such settings from other version of cutechess? Don't find engines.json e.g. in 1.4.0, regards

Somewhere in the Windows Nirvana, like always, when anything needs an installation:

Search here:
User - Appdata - Roaming - cutechess

[pohl4711]

I have doubts that "decision time" is that interesting. Imagine the engine running on multiple threads, you will never get the "real" decision time from the engine's output because usually only the first/main thread reports to GUI and thread voting is done at the very end. So it could be possible that other threads found "the move" much earlier and you just don't see it. So I wouldn't call it "stupid" with exclamation mark when you are not interested in "decision time".
But apart from that: Nice that someone started to improve cutechess GUI. Are there plans to push these changes upstream so that they don't get lost when maintainers of cutechess go forward?

Regards, Andreas

I dont call it stupid, if somebody is not interested in Decision Time. I call it stupid, that this is an information, which is just thrown into the trashcan by other GUIs. Without asking the user, if he wants to keep it.

Please ask Patrick, if the new cutechess can be re-forked into the original GitHub section. I am defintily not an expert on this, sorry.

[pohl4711]

I have doubts that "decision time" is that interesting. Imagine the engine running on multiple threads, you will never get the "real" decision time from the engine's output because usually only the first/main thread reports to GUI and thread voting is done at the very end.

For me, the point is not the "real DT" (what is this? Of course, you are right, multithreading delivers different DTs).
The point is: Is the DT bigger than 0 (or bigger than 0.02 or so) or not. Because in these days of superstrong engines, most DTs (90%+ ?) are 0 or 0.01.
If any DT is bigger than that, the move was hard to find for the engine.

That is the important information, which is just destroyed by all other GUIs.

It could be very interesting to see, which kind of engine have bigger DTs than others. = more DTs above 0.01 or so.
HCE engines should have bigger DTs than nnue-engines? MCTS engines should have bigger DTs than nnue-engines?
Not sure about that, because until now, we had no DT...

Perhaps in the future, a tool could be written, counting and building percent-values of the DT above 0.01 in a pgn-engine gamebase for each engine. And building a ranking-list out of this.

Am I really the only person, which find this very interesting?
If that is the case - no problem. My bill - my business. Nobody else needs to use the new cutechessGUI. There are a lot of GUIs out there, without DT.