Re: [Gnushogi-devel] Comparing GNUShogi 1.2 and later versions

[h . g . muller]

Op Wo, 21 februari, 2018 1:53 am schreef Justin Vreeland:
>

>
> I was able to run this and watch the two engines play against
> each other, however I seem to be missing a setting.  After a game completes
> a new game immediatly begins and I can't seem to find a way to
> recover/save the pgn from the previous one.  In another email you showed a
> sequence of 40 games with every game in the png and I'd like to be able to
> reproduce that.  I was hoping to have crazywa play against 1.2 and see if
> the regression in ability could be narrowed to 1.2-1.4 instead of 1.2-1.5.
>

You have to switch on automatic saving of XBoard, either through the
Options -> Save Game menu, or for the command line used to start XBoard by
adding an extra option '-sgf FILENAME'. Sorry I did not mention that; it
is a persistent option, and for me it is always on, saving on some file. I
agree it is better to save the games, although if you play GNU-Shogi
versions against each other, they would lack score/depth annotation
completely. Note that the result of a match is reported in XBoard's title
bar in parentheses (WINS - LOSSES - DRAWS), and as a popup when the match
finishes. (Number of games can be set through the Options -> Tournament
menu.) You can control everything from the command line through

xboard -variant shogi -fcp "ENGINE1" -scp "ENGINE2" -mm -mg NROFGAMES -sgf
PGNFILE

which would make XBoard start playing immediately for the requested number
of games (and exit on completing the match). In the case of GNU Shogi the
ENGINE command within the quotes would include the adapter "./XS2WB
GNUSHOGI". (The 'debug' as first argument to XS2WB is optional, and serves
no purpose if you don't also run XBoard with the option -debug to save all
engine-GUI communication.)

My understanding of GNU Shogi is limited, so it is possible that in my own
tests I did not use it in a proper way. I just did a ./configure + make of
GNU Shogi 1.4.1, and moved the resulting 'gnushogi' binary to the
directory where I played the games, and was running it with that directory
as current directory. I don't know if at run time it needs external files
(e.g. for book and 'patterns', whatever that may mean), but I assumed it
would know how to find them and that they would indeed be there, as I
already had another version of GNU Shogi (1.4.2+) officially installed.
(But I don't know if book and such would have been automatically installed
on that install either.)

If we would ever want to debug the search, it would be very helpful if it
printed score and principal variation, but I was not able to figure out if
it could do that. The 'help' list of commands suggests there is a 'post'
command that would make it print the PV, and using it made it print some
extra output for each move. But I could not distill a score or PV from
that.