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Modded distribution of version 4.5 !!

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Dear all

I inform that our software was heavily hacked/modded by one of you 😊 resulting into  a cool special modded distribution of version 4.5.

I’m sure many will appreciate the Elia’s modded version which you can find at this link https://www.certabo.com/wp-content/uploads/SOFTWARE/Certabo_4.5_64bit_Modded_by_EliaI.zip just unzip in a folder and run double click on main.exe

Some of modifications Elia did were

  • Add time limit per move
  • Add Elo level for the engine which accepst it and Elo limit
  • Add Time limit for analysis engine too
  • Move announcement via loudspeaker
  • Rational selection for Maia elo networks so now like Avatar if you select Maia as engine you will be then prompted to automatically select the Elo network preferred
  • Mess Emulation handling. Now the sw will grab info about all your ROms ans you can filter by Name by Company or by Year and also you can speed the response of old machine up to 10 times faster
  • You can also take back your move directly on the board without needs of complete Certabo move
  • Autosave of last game, the last game will be automatically saved so you always have possibilty to recover and not miss whatever you do
  • She also did fix some bugs he found here and there and added other features she can eventually tell directly

Many thanks to super skilled Elia and her contribution!! Please feel free to download and give feedback.

All the best

Pietro

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tobias and Arnold have reacted to this post.
tobiasArnold

additional screenshot....

 

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some more.....

 

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Thanks, Pietro!
Some extra points about this release:

  •  A bug not allowing playing from a position with flipped board (black pieces on bottom) now fixed.
  • Remote Control and hints now work correctly with flipped board.
  • If you try starting from a wrong position (e. g. blank board, a king missing, too many pawns), the program will explicitly tell that in the GUI.
  • The program now shows internal engine names in the engine selection window instead of their executable filenames. That causes a slight delay in case you add a lot of new engines at once, especially on DaVinci or a weak laptop.
  • Engines which have poor implementation of UCI protocol might crash the official distribution. I have implemented some fixes so more engines now can work with the program.
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Pietro, bryan.whitby and tobias have reacted to this post.
Pietrobryan.whitbytobias

Oh that´s really great. Thank you very much. This makes the Software so much better. I did a short test and it works so far. Just a few questions/wishes:

I added different engines with ELO support. All of them show the ELO limit in the "new game"-menu, except Komodo Dragon 2.6/2.61.

Dragon 2.6 shows following uci-options:

option name UCI Elo type spin default 3500 min 0 max 3500
option name UCI LimitStrength type check default false

 

Dragon 2.6.1 shows:

option name UCI_Elo type spin default 3500 min 0 max 3500
option name UCI_LimitStrength type check default false

 

any idea, why it doesn´t work ?

 

A great thing is, that the ELO-limit is shown in the "new game"-menu. Would it be possible, that there are also shown the limits of skill and strenght ? That would be great.

 

Last question: Elia, you talk in your last comment about the software running on a DaVinci. Could we expect also a version for the DaVinci/Raspberry ?

 

Best Regards

Tobias

Hi tobias!
Thank you for your prompt feedback. Since Dragon 2.61 is a paid engine and I don't see a demo anywhere, I can only guess what's wrong. Here I see that there is no underscore in "UCI_LimitStrength" parameter. If this is correct, then I'll have to make a hardcoded modification for this exact engine to work. Certabo software expects the exactly correct names of UCI_Elo and UCI_LimitStrength parameters.

option name UCI LimitStrength type check default false

If you have access to Python, I can send you a script which will list all UCI options available for an engine and you can send me the output and we can figure out what's wrong.

You can also remove the file %APPDATA%/Local/Certabo/GUI/engine_names.json, launch Certabo, let this json file be created again and look inside it. My version of Certabo caches ELO ranges for every engine available. Does Komodo have its ELO range listed in there?

Yes, it is possible to show Skill and Strength parameters, but it may require some GUI elements rearrangement. I'll definitely get to it. I understand how annoying is to try and solve a mate in 3 and then realize that something goes wrong because Stockfish is set to Skill level zero.

Yes, I do test my code on DaVinci too, but I or Pietro will release a DaVinci version when the Windows version is properly tested. For DaVinci, every revision is a 16-GB .img file, which is a hassle to create and upload, so this will happen when the code is more polished and all requested changes implemented if possible.

 

 

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tobias

Hi Elia,

that there will be a DaVinci version sounds great. Surely it makes sense to wait here.

The underscore in the UCI parameter was changed again in the version 2.6.1, so the 2.6.1 should work. I now started a game with low ELO and the Dragon played really crazy, so the ELO-limitation seems to work but is not shown on the GUI. Nevertheless it seems to work.

And for the 2.6.1 version the ELO limit from 0 - 3500 is listed correct in engines_names.json. If I see it correct you choosed the range of limitation from 800 to 3000 ELO. But other engines have also a range outside these parameters, and they show correct the ELO limit in the GUI: Texel 018a18 goes from -216 !, Houdini 6 pro or Hiarcs 15.1 go also over 3000 ELO and there the ELO limitation up to 3000 is correct shown in the GUI.

On the end I copy the UCI options from Dragon 2.6.1

 

Just another problem occured while testing: I can´t start a game using an opening book. If I choose an opening book, after my move the first engine move is called as invalid and in the terminal occurs:

2022-06-12 10:37:42,334:main: ----invalid chess_engine move! ---- b8c6
2022-06-12 10:37:42,335:main:Exception: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'bestmove'

 

Thanks again

Tobias

 

 

Here are the UCI-parameters from Dragon 2.6.1

id name Dragon 2.6.1 by Komodo Chess 64-bit
id author Don Dailey, Larry Kaufman, Mark Lefler, Dmitry Pervov, and Dietrich Kappe
option name NUMA Offset type spin default 0 min -1 max 32
option name Threads type spin default 1 min 1 max 256
option name Ponder type check default true
option name Hash type spin default 256 min 1 max 524288
option name Clear Hash type button
option name Table Memory type spin default 64 min 1 max 1024
option name MultiPV type spin default 1 min 1 max 218
option name OwnBook type check default true
option name Book File type string default komodo.bin
option name Book Moves type spin default 1000 min 0 max 1000
option name Best Book Line type check default false
option name Log File type string default <empty>
option name Hash File Name type string default <empty>
option name Save Hash to File type button
option name Load Hash from File type button
option name UCI_Chess960 type check default false
option name UCI_AnalyseMode type check default false
option name Use LMR type check default true
option name Null Move Pruning type check default true
option name Overhead ms type spin default 50 min 0 max 10000
option name Time Usage type spin default 0 min -90 max 90
option name Use Syzygy type check default true
option name SyzygyPath type string default <empty>
option name Syzygy Probe Depth type spin default 1 min 0 max 99
option name Syzygy Probe Limit type spin default 6 min 0 max 7
option name Syzygy 50 Move Rule type check default true
option name Smart Syzygy type check default false
option name King Safety type spin default 83 min 0 max 200
option name Selectivity type spin default 85 min 10 max 250
option name Reduction type spin default -20 min -500 max 50
option name Dynamism type spin default 100 min 0 max 400
option name Contempt type spin default 16 min -250 max 250
option name White Contempt type check default false
option name NNUE_Scale type spin default 70 min 10 max 500
option name Use Regular Eval type check default false
option name MCTS Hash type spin default 128 min 128 max 32768
option name Use MCTS type check default false
option name MCTS Explore type spin default 50 min 15 max 500
option name MCTS Explore Root type spin default 60 min 15 max 500
option name MCTS Optimism type spin default 10 min -50 max 50
option name WeightsFile type string default <empty>
option name Personality type combo default Default var Default var Aggressive var Defensive var Active var Positional var Endgame var Beginner var Human
option name Armageddon type combo default Off var Off var White Must Win var Black Must Win
option name Variety type spin default 0 min 0 max 100
option name UCI_Elo type spin default 3500 min 0 max 3500
option name UCI_LimitStrength type check default false
option name Auto Skill type check default false
option name UCI_Opponent type string default <empty>
uciok

 

 

 

Hello!

Thank you for the cooperation.

I have a question: is there any change playing in lichess.com? (I've not tested it yet)

In my opinion, there are 2 points to be improved:

  1. Possibility of playing chess960 in lichess.com
  2. Reduce the time that the computer needs to detect a piece moved (mainly in lichess.com). Or at least to be configurable. For example, playing with +5 seconds of increment is almost playing without increment becase you expend 1-2 seconds to move the rival piece and 2 seconds that the computer needs to detect the move and then upload to lichess.

@jaume-martinez-vanaclocha

No, I didn't make any changes to the online part of the Certabo software neither I plan to, because I didn't even launch it (well, I did once, but then it asked for an API key and I didn't go any further). Playing against people online is not my thing. I care only about playing with engines with the Certabo board.

About reducing time to detect when a piece is moved, I suppose it's a hardware limitation of Certabo boards.

OK, @lady Eklipse. Thank you for your quick answer.

I never play against engines, I prefer to face humans!! Maybe I could use the engines to train positions, but I didn't use it.

 

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