gull chess

[Hagen]

Well something is wrong when I used Gull 12 - I was playing 5 minute games or 1 second time limits and Gull just sits there thinking after just a few moves. This in Shredder Classic 4. So I turned off permanent brain and still the issue is happening. So I stopped using Gull 12. I'm going back to Glass 1.6, Critter or the other recent releases.

[ThinkingALot]

Well something is wrong when I used Gull 12 - I was playing 5 minute games or 1 second time limits and Gull just sits there thinking after just a few moves. This in Shredder Classic 4.

That's OK. When "Permanent Brain" is on Shredder Classic sends "ponder" commands even if the currently loaded engine doesn't support pondering.

So I turned off permanent brain and still the issue is happening.

That's surprising. I've tested Gull in Shredder Classic with "Permanent Brain" off and it played quite fine.

[ThinkingALot]

Huge BUG causing time management failures found!

The problem was in check_node variable, which is used to determine whether to check time or not. I forgot to initialize it .

Many thx to all who pointed out Gull's losses on time!
Fixed version coming soon.

This bug may also be responsible for Gull hanging in Shredder Classic GUI (mentioned two posts above).

[ThinkingALot]

Two recent versions with fixed Time Management.
Gull 0.11a: https://sourceforge.net/projects/gullch ... p/download
Gull 0.12a: https://sourceforge.net/projects/gullch ... p/download

[Hagen]

You uploaded the wrong one. I'm not seeing the name change in the new version. It should read Gull 0.12a in the notes. It's not there. I'm getting the same behavior. Just to be sure I'll redownload and double check.

[Werner]

Hi ThinkingALot,
thanks for the engine and the update,
Would you mind to use your real name as the author of the engine instead of ThinkingAlot?
...at least with version 1.0

best wishes
Werner
CEGT Team

[Hagen]

Just redownloaded and double checked the install. Yep...the time trouble is still there. This one didn't fix it. Back to Daydreamer, Critter, etc.

For some reason your fix didn't address the issue. I'm wondering if you use any diff tools like Beyond Compare or UltraCompare to check the code side by side and see which lines need editing. I think this could be why you're not seeing the problem. By checking the code side by side using a diff tool like Beyond Compare lets you see which side's code is different and allows you to see at a glance where errors may be causing the problem. If you want an open source version of this you could download Winmerge. (Not as good though).

A really good tool to use for coding would be Vim. But that open source editor takes a big learning curve to use.

[ThinkingALot]

Would you mind to use your real name as the author of the engine instead of ThinkingAlot?
...at least with version 1.0

Of course that's possible, but why use the real name? I like my chess nick . There's a good old tradition of publishing books under pen names. Why not apply it to chess engines?

[Werner]

...I have some troubles with pen names since:
id author Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, Igor Igorovich Igoronov, Roberto Pescatore

So I like more to read the real name (+ pen name).
Werner

[ThinkingALot]

You uploaded the wrong one. I'm not seeing the name change in the new version. It should read Gull 0.12a in the notes. It's not there. I'm getting the same behavior. Just to be sure I'll redownload and double check.

This bug may also be responsible for Gull hanging in Shredder Classic GUI (mentioned two posts above).

That fix was for a different issue. I just hoped it would solve the Gull-Shredder problem as well.

Just now it's very hard to fix it since I can't reproduce the problem. I downloaded a trial version of Shredder Classic 4, installed Gull and played several games against it with Permanent Brain switched off. Everything works fine.