Myracle GUI

[adnoh]

Interesting. Which of the three modes is this ?

- Efficiency Mode OFF
- CPU Affinities
- CPU Sets

I only selected Efficiency Mode Off. Honestly, I did not even understand what CPU sets means and certainly did not want to let Windows decide.

The websites says with this mode E cores can still be used if the thread count warrants and thus I chose the conservative concurrency of 6 and no ponder. Myracle also gets a P core so total of 7 P cores are actually used at one time while a tournament is running. Purposely left 1 P-core in case Windows itself wants to use it.

My screen shot above has Myracle started with no tournament running thus Enforcing on 1 but if a tournament was running it would say Enforcing on 13 as concurrency of 6 means 12 engine threads are started but since no ponder only 6 are running. I am not a fan of hyper-threading.

If you try this utility and start a test tournament, note the % CPU status graphs and the status bar where it reports the P-core and E-core usage. P-core usage would be very high and the E-core usage just a bit as Windows and CoreDirector itself is probably now using the E-cores.

You will see the same behaviour in Window's own Task Manager with CPU 0 through CPU 15 spiking and the E-core CPU 16 through CPU 19 not very busy. So independent confirmation CoreDirector is doing what it says it is.

[Elorejano]

Last question about this theme
Its impossible make that each engine can assign an opening book in the dialog box?
Seems that Myracle Assign all engines the same book or none.
Im , as bookmaker, are interested in openings books

well, anything is possible of course. typically the tricky part is how to make it work with the simple UI design to make it obvious what's going on.

I still don't understand what exactly you're asking for:
1) if you want to override opening book per engine in engine settings, then that is doable for sure. I already have ponder override per engine, so this would be equally dangerous (especially if someone forgets this is set)
2) if you mean overriding book per engine in new tournament dialog, then that is currently impossible (neither is multiple time controls etc - but it's possible to override time odds scale per engine) and would be tricky to do with respect to the UI (i.e. how to make it work and how to present it visually to the user)

if I mess with this then I could probably add per-book custom randomness factor (for polyglot books only) that tapio asked for...
still I prefer to focus on bugs and stability now

having given this a bit more thought: not trivial at all, so the only option would be to basically inject a virtual own book handler into the engine parser, which is hacky. another one of those ad hoc/niche features that I don't like.
since this would require substantial effort, I'm only willing to do this if you tell me if that would do, otherwise this would only waste my time (typical for those niche features).

the best thing would be to find an engine with own book + polyglot support and simply use that rather than hacking the GUI for a use case that's only useful for like 1 of 100 people

Hi. Thanks for the answer. Sorry im not an english speaker, maybe that’s why I have trouble making myself understood
Arena has the function I want: that each engine individually has the ability to assign an opening book, whether its own or an external one
If an engine does not have its own opening book, Arena assigns it one in abk format. I would like Myracle to do this but with polyglot format books
Why? Because the strongest motors are not designed with their own opening book (StockFish, Obsidian, Reckless, Caissa). So, if I want, in a tournament, to test a certain book of openings against those engines, I can't do it in Myracle. Opening books are of the utmost importance for a chess player, any player knows it. With the utmost respect, it is not a whim of 100 people.
Keep your marvelous job and thanks in advance

[mar]

Hi. Thanks for the answer. Sorry im not an english speaker, maybe that’s why I have trouble making myself understood
Arena has the function I want: that each engine individually has the ability to assign an opening book, whether its own or an external one
If an engine does not have its own opening book, Arena assigns it one in abk format. I would like Myracle to do this but with polyglot format books
Why? Because the strongest motors are not designed with their own opening book (StockFish, Obsidian, Reckless, Caissa). So, if I want, in a tournament, to test a certain book of openings against those engines, I can't do it in Myracle. Opening books are of the utmost importance for a chess player, any player knows it. With the utmost respect, it is not a whim of 100 people.
Keep your marvelous job and thanks in advance

ok no problem, me neither - so I'll tell you now what I could do:

allow per engine "own book override" in engine settings; it would be a book path (I could also simply reference book index,
but since this feature would be limited to polyglot books for performance reasons anyway, a path is probably cleaner)
internally this would also disable UCI OwnBook option if defined. note that disabling own book in engine overrides
in tour would disable this feature too

it would work by overriding engine replies from book initially, but the first time it's out of book, it'd transfer control to the engine
and never activate again until the game ends, even if a permutation would latter occur that would still be in book
(this is both for simplicity and performance reasons, consider aborting a pondering xboard engine for example - not something I want to do)

I guess this is what you want probably and this way seems it might work reasonably well.

by the way what I meant was that most people use a single book and run eng-eng tournaments; not everybody is a book maker,
but you sure have a point

[bastiball]

build 76 is up:
- fix: when closing engine details dialog, when setting up a new engine, if engine with same name already exists a messagebox is shown as it should be
- fix: book combo disabled in new game dialog in eng-eng matches if start from actual position is checked
- if engine fails to load in engine details dialog/debug a detailed info is logged in the console

I'll try it again. I'm setting it up for the tournament. I'll update you after if there is any issue.

[Elorejano]

Hi. Thanks for the answer. Sorry im not an english speaker, maybe that’s why I have trouble making myself understood
Arena has the function I want: that each engine individually has the ability to assign an opening book, whether its own or an external one
If an engine does not have its own opening book, Arena assigns it one in abk format. I would like Myracle to do this but with polyglot format books
Why? Because the strongest motors are not designed with their own opening book (StockFish, Obsidian, Reckless, Caissa). So, if I want, in a tournament, to test a certain book of openings against those engines, I can't do it in Myracle. Opening books are of the utmost importance for a chess player, any player knows it. With the utmost respect, it is not a whim of 100 people.
Keep your marvelous job and thanks in advance

ok no problem, me neither - so I'll tell you now what I could do:

allow per engine "own book override" in engine settings; it would be a book path (I could also simply reference book index,
but since this feature would be limited to polyglot books for performance reasons anyway, a path is probably cleaner)
internally this would also disable UCI OwnBook option if defined. note that disabling own book in engine overrides
in tour would disable this feature too

it would work by overriding engine replies from book initially, but the first time it's out of book, it'd transfer control to the engine
and never activate again until the game ends, even if a permutation would latter occur that would still be in book
(this is both for simplicity and performance reasons, consider aborting a pondering xboard engine for example - not something I want to do)

Many thanks, Martin! yes, That's what I think is best

I guess this is what you want probably and this way seems it might work reasonably well.

by the way what I meant was that most people use a single book and run eng-eng tournaments; not everybody is a book maker,
but you sure have a point

[tapio]

allow per engine "own book override" in engine settings; it would be a book path (I could also simply reference book index,
but since this feature would be limited to polyglot books for performance reasons anyway, a path is probably cleaner)
internally this would also disable UCI OwnBook option if defined. note that disabling own book in engine overrides
in tour would disable this feature too

I think that's great! If you add a file "browse" button please default it to myracle\books\ - I guess many of us have their books there (via Symlinks probably) - I'd like to mention that maybe the engine file picker should default to myracle\engines\.
I also create books, too many actually, via LucasChess.

Back to the books, per-engine books adds complexity which I can not overlook. What would that mean for the tournament option "repeat openings" - can Myracle still control this? Thank you!

[mar]

I think that's great! If you add a file "browse" button please default it to myracle\books\ - I guess many of us have their books there (via Symlinks probably) - I'd like to mention that maybe the engine file picker should default to myracle\engines\.
I also create books, too many actually, via LucasChess.

Back to the books, per-engine books adds complexity which I can not overlook. What would that mean for the tournament option "repeat openings" - can Myracle still control this? Thank you!

this will act as a virtual "own book" (polyglot only), injected into engine comm directly, so it will bypass the books the way the GUI sees them, so repeat openings won't work in this case

however for you especially I've added book randomization settings (per book), but this will only work for polyglot books (because with pgn books full lines are picked for eng-eng games instead of per move)

both features will be included in next build, but I need some more tests to make sure these features didn't break anything

[tapio]

however for you especially I've added book randomization settings (per book), but this will only work for polyglot books (because with pgn books full lines are picked for eng-eng games instead of per move)

Thx but don't say "for you especially" - the way I see it is it makes your engine presets pretty complete and ahead of the field. Because what you offer is great flexibility as for engine management. Because we have engine presets, with each preset having a distinct book and each book having a randomization factor (btw., should be - numbers debatable - [-100 ... 100]. 0 = Probability as defined in book, -100 = no randomness, use only highest prio move, 100 = totally random pick).
Also you overcome a limitation of Arena, which accepted abk in engine prefs only.

[mar]

however for you especially I've added book randomization settings (per book), but this will only work for polyglot books (because with pgn books full lines are picked for eng-eng games instead of per move)

Thx but don't say "for you especially" - the way I see it is it makes your engine presets pretty complete and ahead of the field. Because what you offer is great flexibility as for engine management. Because we have engine presets, with each preset having a distinct book and each book having a randomization factor (btw., should be - numbers debatable - [-100 ... 100]. 0 = Probability as defined in book, -100 = no randomness, use only highest prio move, 100 = totally random pick).
Also you overcome a limitation of Arena, which accepted abk in engine prefs only.

well I'm not quite sure what you mean now

the range in is %, 0 = no randomization (weights as specified in the book) to 100% = all nonzero-weight moves have the same weight
the own book emulation feature is completely orthogonal and you cannot set randomization for that one, only for book sets.
it might work this way only if I'd map to an existing book set instead of a path, but then that might be confusing since
book sets can contain pgn books and randomization is only supported for polyglot books. also own book emulation has to be fast
so out of question to use pgn for that

I hope it's clear now how it works

[chessica]

https://ibb.co/k64k8vFb