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Subject: Re: Tryng to add UCI functionality to Crafty

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 11:43:14 05/26/04

Go up one level in this thread


On May 26, 2004 at 09:17:46, AndrewFan wrote:

>On May 25, 2004 at 20:47:11, Mike Byrne wrote:
>
>>The UCI specs say :
>>
>>* all command strings the engine receives will end with '\n',
>>
>>Yet,  Arena sends the double command "go movetime xxxx"  -> I'm just wondering
>>why Arena insists on sending the go and movetime on one line - also - shouldn't
>>the command "movetime" be sent before the "go" command" ?
>>
>>It also sends the command "position startpos moves e2e4 e7e5 g1f3 <etc>"
>>
>>So the startpos  == "setboard rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w
>>KQkq"  I am not sure the  best way to get Crafty to read the moves in within the
>>current Crafty commands.  Any suggestions
>
>I added UCI commands to my chess engine in 2 days.  Here's what I did:
>
>
>1. Added a UCI command parser.
>
>2. If in UCI mode, call the UCI command processor, else call the Winboard/XBoard
>processor for reading inputs.
>
>3. For each UCI command, map it to it's WB equivalent and use the winboard
>processor to execute this mapped command.
>
>Simple.  Of course some UCI commands are not so simple to translate.
>
>
>Andrew.


It isn't so easy for me.  Crafty ponders automatically unless it is turned off.
If it is turned off, it never ponders.  It decides which move to ponder by
itself, and has code to do that pretty well.  UCI wants to handle everything.
IE the engine is a small part of the whole "thing" while Crafty considers the
engine to be _the_ whole thing.  IE it handles its own book, book learning,
needs to know when/how a game ends, etc.  Crafty correctly claims draws, mates,
resigns, and all of that.

To disable all of that to work with UCI is simply not worth the effort, when the
winboard protocol works just fine and has for years.

IE at the root, I want to decide whether a position is a tablebase draw or not,
and use my "swindle mode" if it is.  I can't do that in UCI.  There are too many
things I can't do, or which I have to drastically change, to make it work.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is my motto here. :)



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