Author: Kolss
Date: 02:52:32 07/15/05
Go up one level in this thread
On July 15, 2005 at 02:58:23, Reinhard Scharnagl wrote:
Hi,
Here are my thoughts on the extended (for FRC) UCI protocol:
Quote from protocol:
"Castling is different in Chess960 and the white king move when castling short
is not alway e1g1. A king move could both be the castling king move or just a
normal king move. This is why castling moves are sent in the form king "takes"
his own rook.
Example: e1h1 for the white short castle move in the normal chess start
position."
That seems perfect to me. In fact, that is how we are doing it in Ikarus. It
seems most parsimonious: the move is unambiguously identified, there are only
four letters needed as for all other "normal" moves (except promotions). For
taking back this castle move, one has to store that it was a castle move or that
a piece (own rook) was "captured", but you have to do that for capture moves as
well. I don't know how Arena has done it before, but it did not seem to support
FRC properly anyway...
Quote from protocol:
"In EPD and FEN position strings specifying the castle rights with w and q is
not enough as there could be more than one rook on the right or left side of the
king. This is why the castle rights are specified with the letter of the castle
rook's line. Capital letters for white's and non capitial letters for black's
castling rights.
Example: The normal chess position would be:
rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w AHah -"
Again, IMHO the most simple and elegant solution. I think several people
suggested this (myself included? - I remember that I posted on some of these
issues before, but I don't remember where and when; I wasn't listened to
either...). In addition, for the standard position, "KkQq" might be allowed (?).
Yes, I do see that there may be incompatibility issues with the "anarchic" ways
tried before. IMHO, the real problem with the former "standard" (which it was
not, by the way, as it has never really been accepted by the majority of the
community) was that it had never been discussed nor apparently thought out
entirely. With a little bit of discussion and openness to suggestions of the
"society", one could have gotten rid of the more complicated and implausible
definitions ("X-FEN" etc.) in time.
Of course, with the new protocol, Stephan in a way has simply created facts. I
guess that it served to put an end to fruitless "discussions" and finally settle
the matter rather vigorously. IMO, he made the right choice (both with doing it
in the first place and with how it was done), and I expect that most programmers
are happy with it as well.
I for one support this new protocol, and I suggest that now the best we can do
is to follow it and live with the fact that a few games should have to be
recoded to fulfil it. (It should be rather easy to write a "converter" for that;
and maybe there will be GUIs which support both...)
Best regards - Munjong.
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