Welcome to Certabo forum

Both posts in italian and in english are accepted on the forum to help everybody to provide contribution irrespective to geographical location. Object of the forum is to provide technical information on various items and help developer and users to personalise software for Certabo chessboards. User explicitly accepts the conditions of use of this forum here reported.

A brief introduction of user is always appreciated in section Welcome to….

Benvenuti nel forum di Certabo

Sul forum possono essere postati articoli sia in lingua italiana che inglese per permettere a tutti di dare il proprio contributo da diversi luoghi geografici. Il forum ha come scopo fornire informazioni tecniche in generale e aiutare gli sviluppatori ed utenti a personalizzare software per le scacchiere Certabo. L’utente accetta esplicitamente le condizioni del presente forum consultabili qui.

Un breve saluto del nuovo utente è sempre gradito nella sezione Benvenuti a….

Please or Register to create posts and topics.

New ideas for DaVinci Extreme

Page 1 of 2Next

Hello,

I assume that the Certabo software running on the DaVinci Extreme is an ongoing project that's open to new ideas. So after a using it for a couple of weeks now here some things I would love to see in a future release:

  1. Engine evaluation output, the ability to turn this off and on. I would like to see this if DaVinci is playing another chess computer.
  2. New additional time controls like 10, 20, 30 seconds per move average instead of a set time that you lose on if time runs out. This would also help if you are watching the DaVinci play another chess computer because the clocks between the two are not in synch. It would also match the original settings used when playing with old chess computer ROMS since Fisher time controls didn't exist back then.
  3. If you win or lose a game on time, the ability to keep playing without having to save and then resume.
  4. Remember game settings like engine, time control and book used the last time the DaVinci was turned on.
  5. Engine vs Engine matches and tournaments with the engines currently loaded and with the option to just watch on the screen or relayed to the board.

I hope these ideas will be considered..thanks!

tobias and Matthias Richter have reacted to this post.
tobiasMatthias Richter

+1

espacially the points 2,3 and 4 would nice to be to seen in future

the option to set the average thinking time per move for the computer is a common feature in other software and computer

not only for the DaVinci but also for the PC version of course

 

 

Matthias Richter has reacted to this post.
Matthias Richter

additional I would like to see the option, to change the particular UCI-options of every engine, e.g. some engines allow to change the ELO etc.

I have the feeling, that in many engines its not really possible to change the strength with the actual options. It works fine e.g. with Texel, but different engines play very strong even if I set the strenght and/or the skill to the lowest value

at Picochess it works nearly perfect wit the uci-files

Matthias Richter has reacted to this post.
Matthias Richter

My problem is that when I save a game, I have difficulty reading the black letters on the blue keys. Would it be possible to have the letters on the keys white?

Hi Bryan

to change the color you can go in davinci/utils and edit the file media.py with a simple editor.

I show how it looks in the attached pics you have green red blue code just change the combination  to the color you want.

You can also change all colors from blue theme to any you may like to create the best possible combination .

All the best

Pietro

 

Uploaded files:
  • You need to login to have access to uploads.
bryan.whitby has reacted to this post.
bryan.whitby
Quote from tobias on June 22, 2021, 8:59 pm

additional I would like to see the option, to change the particular UCI-options of every engine, e.g. some engines allow to change the ELO etc.

I have the feeling, that in many engines its not really possible to change the strength with the actual options. It works fine e.g. with Texel, but different engines play very strong even if I set the strenght and/or the skill to the lowest value

at Picochess it works nearly perfect wit the uci-files

Hi Tobias

Good evening the strenght parameter actually works with houdini but maybe there are some more which can accept that parameter.

I would be interested in understand bit more what you meant that Picochess works nearly perfect with the uci-file. You mean the parameter strenght or the Elo?

Pietro

Hi Pietro,

Yes, I mean this parameters to config the playing level of Evers individual engine. I hope I can explain it correct in English:

In DaVinci I am not really able to find out, how I can adjust the level in the different engines. I have no idea, how a engine will react to the settings „skill level“, „strength“ or „depth“

Its „try and error“, means that I test for me different engines in playing against them in different adjustments in „strength“ or/and „skill“. But I don´t know before, how every engine will react on the different settings. And some engines seem to play with full strength with no change of the different settings.

In PicoChess I can make a „UCI-file“ with individual level settings for every engine, so far the engine allows such level settings. After starting the engine in the Terminal (Mac) with „./[engine_name] with the command „uci“ I can read out the possible settings from every engine and can so modify the levels options within the „UCI-file“.

I try to explain in some examples:

 

  1. Texel

In DaVinci I „played“ a while to learn, how the settings „skill level“, „strength“ and „depth“ will influence the playing strength of the engine.

In Picochess I read the UCI-Options and can see, Texel allows a setting of „Strength“ from 0 to 1000. I generate a UCI-file, in which I can choose different levels. It is a simple text-file using the official UCI-commands for every engine, looking for example:

[Level 0]
strength = 0

[Level 100]
strength = 100

[Level 500]
strength = 500

[Level 1000]
strength = 1000

 

 

  1. Galjoen

Galjoen allows to set the ELO-Level from 1500 to 2200

So the UCI-file looks like 

[Elo@1500]
UCI_LimitStrength = true
UCI_Elo = 1500

[Elo@1570]
UCI_LimitStrength = true
UCI_Elo = 1570

[Elo@1640]
UCI_LimitStrength = true
UCI_Elo = 1640

[Elo@2130]
UCI_LimitStrength = true
UCI_Elo = 2130

[Elo@2200]
UCI_LimitStrength = false
UCI_Elo = 2200

 

And so on:

Every engine can be configured with the official UCI-commands and so I can set the correct level for each engine. At long last it is the same function, how you can configure the engines in GUI´s like Lucas-Chess, Shredder and so on.

 

Tobias

 

 

P.S. good luck for the finals in Wembley 😉

Hello Tobias

The parameters you can set with Gui are the most used and common but you can anytime override them.

Just clone the same file i'm attaching here. So for example you want to pass automatically some parametere to Texel make a file called texel.parameters.json and place in the engines directory. It will be loaded automatically. If the specific engine you use commercial or free whatever  has other specific  parameter like Elo (no many actually) just add a row "Elo"........

As different engines can have not necessary the same parameters once you know you can just pass over to them.

Thank you for the wishes, it will be very pity to not have a very classical Italy-Germany in Wembley but we first need to make tonight 🙂

All the best

Pietro

Uploaded files:
  • You need to login to have access to uploads.
tobias has reacted to this post.
tobias

not allowing to upload here the .json will place on ftp.

here the link to download

https://www.certabo.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/stockfish.parameters.zip

Pietro

tobias has reacted to this post.
tobias

Hi Pietro,

thank you for this hint. Seems to work. But there are two "problems":

 

first, it is not really comfortable to change these settings, cause I have to change the file every time. I can solve this if I duplicate the engine and the json-file for most common settings

 

but unfortunately the json-files are shown in the menu, where I choose the engines, its not real a problem but its not very pretty 😉

perhaps there is an option to hide selected file types like "json" or "ini" (some engines allow an ini-file)

 

Tobias

 

 

Page 1 of 2Next