Author: Martin Zentner
Date: 00:51:31 12/09/97
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A protocol for communication between chess engines has been proposed several times ... There are 2 hacks working so far: a) The ugly (in sense of adopting it) xboard/winboard interface, which is able to run 2 engines on 2 computers using Unix's rcmd/rsh mechanism. A bonus for this interface is, that it also communicates with ICS/ICC and can run 2 engines on the same machine (only win95,winnt or Unix). b) The autoplayer thing (mainly) transmits moves between two comports. (Yes you can run 2 engines on the same machine using 2 comports.) Never heard of someone doing it remotely through modem. [ A 3rd solution is not working: Commercial guys like chessbase can run different engines in their environment, but they won't release a general specification for adopting this, as it is much easier for them to change a propietary non-standard and force their professional engine writers to follow that. ] Considering that DOS is dead and even win95 can do real multitasking my advise would be: Create a process that is listening to a definable TCP/IP port. That process should do all the neccessary stuff for handling a series of matches: Board representation, movelist, clocks for both engines, level setup, loading and saving of games, forcing games into the engines, player info, etc. Yes, this sounds like rewriting a chess server for head to head combat. This is not neccessary, as everyone can setup a chess server with PD sources. Why re-invent the wheel ? Even the winboard/xboard solution is easy to run: It took less than 30 minutes to have winboard running on a win95-laptop with an ethernet card and connect it to a Unix-station running a second engine. Running 2 engines on the same machine is even easier. (Still one has to start winboard/xboard with a dozen options, but it works, including autosave and multiple matches.) The only drawback is: DOS-programs like Rebel or CST cannot use it. Hiarcs might already have it, as he started out on Unix before becoming commercial. Fritz Nimzo, and Genius are already running under win95,winnt. They can easily implement a hack. Shredder has already done it, although I doubt that he has this feature in his new commercial version.) Having said this, all one would need is a tournament setup in the ICS/FICS code. Most games played there are either "fisher"- clock (like at the Aegon) or "All- moves-in-x-minutes"-clock. No repeated time controls (although xboard/winboard/ gnu-chess supports one repeated time control, which is still insufficient for real tournament playing with 2-4 time controls, including sudden-death-finish or fisher-finish after the last time control. That is something I'm looking for ! Greetings -Martin Zentner
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