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Subject: Re: Extension of the UCI protocol

Author: John Merlino

Date: 08:01:44 04/16/04

Go up one level in this thread


On April 16, 2004 at 09:51:24, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>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.
>>
>>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.
>>
>>jm
>
>If you say that only The King has this feature you really live in commercial
>wishland. Of course there is many engines which can do this. You just never
>download nor took the effort of buying them, that's all.
>
>Saying that the most important commercial feature 'as far as you know' is only
>supported by chessmaster is utter crap trivially.

I suspected that I might get myself into trouble when I wrote that. However, I
was not lying, and I have seen many posts that back up what I said (no, don't
ask me to go and find them).

I did NOT say that The King was the only engine that supported this feature. I
said that The King was the only engine THAT I KNEW OF that supported it WELL.
And where did I say that this was the "most important commercial feature"?

I own Fritz and Ruffian, and they (to the best of my ability to judge) do not
handle this feature as well as The King. I did not know that Shredder did it
until Stefan mentioned it in this thread -- and he agreed that it is a very
difficult task to implement properly.

jm



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