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Subject: Re: Extension of the UCI protocol

Author: Stefan Meyer-Kahlen

Date: 00:55:15 04/16/04

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On April 15, 2004 at 20:07:02, John Merlino wrote:

>On April 15, 2004 at 19:04:01, Odd Gunnar Malin wrote:
>
>>On April 15, 2004 at 15:31:22, Stefan Meyer-Kahlen wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>Below you find an extension of the UCI protocol which was discussed with many
>>>engine authors at the IPCCC earlier this year in Paderborn and finally worked
>>>out with Rudolf Huber of SOS, Dieter Bürßner of YACE and myself. This new
>>>version is fully compatible with the old protocol (just one tiny exception, see
>>>below), so you can load and old engine in a new user interface and a new engine
>>>in an old user interface. This is the reason why we did not call it UCI2 or
>>>something.
>>>
>>>The main changes are:
>>>
>>>* a possibility to set the engine to any playing strength measured in Elo,
>>
>>I like this option very much, hope it encourage engine authors to create engines
>>that support it.
>
>It's a good idea, but I don't expect too many authors to put a lot of time into
>trying to make it remotely accurate. Think how long it would take Dieter (for
>example) to be able to program his engine to play something reasonably
>approximating 1000 ELO....then 1200 ELO...then 1400...or whatever different
>settings this new protocol is going to allow. A difficult task.


Yes, I agree. It is very difficult to make the engine play stupid smart.

I have made many tests with players of different strengths to adjust Shredder's
Elo levels.


>I suspect that most authors are simply going to artificially limit the search
>depth and/or NPS and say that they now "support" this feature.
>
>The King is the only engine I know of that does this well, and I would guess
>that Johan spent a great deal of time making sure that his engine could be
>"dumbed down" in a believable way. This is likely not what the typical (unpaid)
>engine programmer is going to want to spend his time on.


Yes, it is a completely different task compared to making the engine as strong
as possible. Still this is also very challenging.

Stefan



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