Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Design Choices

Author: Dan Homan

Date: 07:09:43 12/17/98

Go up one level in this thread


On December 17, 1998 at 07:13:52, Ralph E. Carter wrote:

>Hey everybody. There's a juicy scandal brewing over on rgcc.
>See Robert Hyatt's replies to the latest post of Amir Ban.
>
>Subject: Re: Fritz 5.32: How disruptive to other engines?

Thanks for pointing this out.  I just read the relevant messages
in rgcc.  I wouldn't call this a scandal because I am sure that
no harm was intended here; there are just conflicting design
choices.  I did check to see if my engine was affected though...

I don't think EXchess is affected adversely by this, although it
very easily could have been.  When EXchess gets the "new" command,
it resets a bunch of data but old stuff from previous searches is
left alone.  I could have easily have decided to reset some of
this search stuff or even one simple parameter (which gives the
engine information about the last pondering session) which would
have made pondering impossible.

This clearly wasn't done deliberately to disrupt the processing of
other Fritz/Winboard engines.  In fact the design makes sense from
the point of view that the engines should work in analysis and in
play.  Certainly there are other choices that would work as well,
but this one allows a very simple scheme for communicating a position
to the chess engine that is the same in all situations.

The problem comes when engines which are *not* designed to work as
a chessbase engine are converted to the purpose.  The design choices
of a individual author may not (and in fact are quite likely to not)
be completely compatitable with chessbase's design choice for engine
interface.  How much this conflict affects play will depend on
the design of the engine and the type of match being played.

 - Dan



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.