The WinBoard Gold Pack 4.4.0
-For the ultimate WinBoard experience!
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-The WinBoard Gold Pack 4.4.0-For the ultimate WinBoard experience!- |
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-UCI engines need the Polyglot adapter to communicate with WinBoard. -As far as WinBoard is concerned, Polyglot is the engine. -Polyglot has to be instructed to which real engine it should 'connect', -and it takes this information from file, known as a Polyglot .ini file. -Apart from telling polyglot which UCI engine to run, -Polyglot alo has to supply all paramter settings for this UCI engine -that WInBoard doesn't. -And UCI engines usually need a lot more support from their GUI than WinBoard engines. -Polyglot has to fill in the gaps, again from information stored in the Polyglot .ini file. -
-This leaves us with the problem to fill that Poglot .ini file with all the required info. -For the engine name, location and standard parameters this is not such a big problem: -we could copy the .ini file of another engine, and just change the name in it. -But every UCI engine defines its own engine-specific options, -and they all do it in different ways, needing different values for them. -Polyglot GUI is a program that figures out what options a UCI engine needs, -and what their defaut settings what should be. -It then can create a Polyglot .ini file for that engine that contins all this information. -
-Navigate to the Polyglot14w folder of the WinBoard Gold Pack. -This folder contains two application files, polyglot itself -(which is there ony for running by WinBoard), -and Polyglot GUI. -Double-click the latter to start Polyglot GUI. -A file-selector window will pop, though which you can browse to one of your UCI engines. -By double-clicking the engine application file in the corresponding engine folder, -you will make Polyglot GUI interrogate this engine in UCI protocol, -to learn which options it supports and requires. -In this example we have used Fruit 2.1 for this purpose. -
-After selecting the engine, a window that is divided in a right and left part will appear. -On the left you will see a set of controls for the engine-specific options, -on the right the options for Polyglot (which are thus always the same). -Both parts of the screen have a vertical slider, as the number of options is usually too large to fit the window. -Fortunately all options are already preset to their default value, -and unless you know very well what an option does, it is best to leave it there. -So we will now only discuss the options that require attention. -
-We start wit the Polyglot settings on the right. -From top to bottom we see: Engine name, installation folder and name of the application. -In fact this is what we just entered by clicking the engine application, so it is always correct. -Then we must select if Polyglot wil use a book on behalf of the engine, -and where to find this book file (which must be a book in Polyglot format). -Although WinBoard is also able to consult a book on behalf of the engines, -it currently always consults the same book for both engines. -So it does not make much sense to ut the same general book here as WinBoard is already using. -But some UCI engines are dependent on Polyglot for their opening book, -although it is a book that is made especially for them. -For such engines it would make sense to put the book dedicated to them here. -Then they can use their private book, while the opponent is using another one. -Fruit downloads usually comes with an opening book called "book_small.bin", -and we could type that in the book field, provided that we have put it in the Polyglot14w folder -with the other Polyglot books, including the general book "default.bin" that came with the WinBoard Gold Pack. -If we prefer to keep the book in the Fruit2_1 folder, -we must type "../Fruit2_1/book_small.bin" here (without the quotes). -This is not really needed, though, as Fruit is perfectly able to consult its own book. -(Polyglot and Fruit use the same book format, as they are by the same author!) -
-Next check box and text field only have to be completed if we want to make a log file -(recording all communication between Polyglot and WinBoard), which makes little sense for normal use. -(It is meant for debugging.) -Then we can control if Polyglot must be able to resign on behalf of the engine. -(UCI engines cannot resign by themselves.) -
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--The left part of the Polyglot GUI window will look different for every engine, -as it represents the engine-specific options. -Some options are standard, though. -These are shown at the top. -We startd there entering the size of the hash table. -(Future Polyglot versions might overrule this with the value specified in WinBoard, -but for now it is an important engine parameter.) -The check box that follows is not important, -as Polylot will translate and transmit the ponder command from WinBoard to the engine in real time, -and is not dependent on a static setting gven in the Polyglot .ini file. -If you want to run matches between 2 engines, select about 1/4 of your computer's memory size. -
-Next you would have to specify if the engine has an "own" book, -i.e. one that it can consult without the aid of Polyglot. -We already mentioned that for Fruit you can do both, because the format of ts own book -is the same as hat of a Polyglot book. -But in general, that will not be the case, and books downloaded with the engine might have -an unknown proprietry formt. -Then it is really essential to put the name of that book here, -and not in the right part as Polyglot book, as Polyglot wouldn't understand any of it. -In the Fruit example, the following options are already specialist options for tuning the engine, -and we leave them alone. -
-SMP engines might have another important parameter, the number of CPUs they must use. -The name for this option is not standardized, -but contains something like "threads", "cores", or "CPUs" in its description. -Better not use values larger than the number of cores your computer has if you plan to play without ponder, -and even half of tat when you want to play with ponder on. -
--The last, and most important step is to save the settings we just made in a Polyglot .ini file. -To this end we must first type the name of the file we want, -which is the name that we also use when installing the engine in the PSWBTM engine database. -This name must be unique, as all Polyglot .ini files sit in the same folder in the -configuration the WinBoard Gold Pack uses. -So never call it polyglot.ini, as Polyglot GUI proposes. -For Fruit we would call it fruit.ini. -If we have multiple versions of Fruit on our computer they all must have their own .ini file -with its own unique name. -After having typed this name, we click the "Save" button on the bottom right. -That terminates Polyglot GUI, -and leaves the .ini file in the Polyglot14w folder (which is where Polyglot expects it). -
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