OpenChess

Don Dailey and his sidekick Larry just announced Komodo 6.
Is scheduled for today. But with Don and Larry, you never know.

Komodo 6 is now available. Best wishes to Don in his battle against serious illness.

Thanks Simon for information !!

The feeling after testing Komodo 6 is that it is just a patch of Komodo 5.1
Should not be sold but distributed as patch.

That is an interesting feeling that you have.
It is a complete rewrite, using a completely different code base and it is C++ and not C.

User923005 wrote:That is an interesting feeling that you have.
It is a complete rewrite, using a completely different code base and it is C++ and not C.

Rewrite or not (I tend to agree with Carlos that Komodo 6 seems like a further development of the Komodo CCT/5 code base [which uses some C++ features]), a 30 Elo bump (which seems to be the approximate gain in this version from tester chatter) is surely significant enough to justify a new release. I believe that Houdini demonstrated an equivalent bump from version 2 to 3, and charged more for the new versions. So there's precedent.

If the end-user got to decide which updates are free and which are paid, there would never be paid updates. If you don't feel that it's worth it, you are always free to remain with the fully-functional version you currently have.

jb

[DISCLAIMER: I contributed some code for the Komodo 5.1 release, and consider Don a friend, so I'm possibly the wrong messenger for the above, but I would probably defend most any engine author's (reasonable) decision to charge for a new release.]

User923005 wrote:That is an interesting feeling that you have.
It is a complete rewrite, using a completely different code base and it is C++ and not C.

Test Komodo 5.1 against Komodo 6 and see the difference game. Same lines, except for the bugs that were "rigged".

User923005 wrote:That is an interesting feeling that you have.
It is a complete rewrite, using a completely different code base and it is C++ and not C.

Test Komodo 5.1 against Komodo 6 and see the difference game. Same lines, except for the bugs that were "rigged".

Since it is 30 Elo stronger, it does not play identical moves.
Is it a surprise that it plays very similarly to its predecessor?

The SMP was completely redone.

The code was reorganized and rewritten and the new code base will be easier to advance more quickly.

But I would suggest that you vote with your pocketbook. If it is not interesting to you then do not buy it. If you do like it, then buy it.
I am sort of a collector, and have instances of {I suspect} every chess engine, so I am quite atypical.
I even like the weak ones.

I think Komodo boring.
A style of play mechanic.
I like engines with style. How Critter 0.90 or Hiarcs padderborn