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It works, thanks!

I had computer trouble, so I had no opportunity to check it out yet.

Fairy-Max does ignore game names that start with a capital. I forgot what was the reason for that (but originally there was one). But when you change the T to t the variant will appear in WinBoard's New Variant menu, from where you can select it. (If you did not put the definition too far down in the fmax.ini file; WinBoard can only display a limited number of engine-defined variants.

You did not specify what piece should be used for K/k in the pieceToChar string. Change it to

PNBRQ.EA.........G......MKpnbrq.ea.........g......mk

@HG,

Haven't you seen my comments or was I unclear?

HG, I had tried again but have not managed to do it. I don't yet need to set up a machine match, this will come later. I only need to know if fmax can play the game.

HG,

I have added this game:

//Aurelian's test for NmH compared to bishop

Game: TestH1 # PNBRQ.EA.M.......G....pnbrq.ea.m.......g.... # fairy

10x10

12 8 5 9 10 7 3 5 8 11

12 8 6 9 10 7 4 6 8 11

p:100 -16,24 -16,6 -15,5 -17,5

p:100 16,24 16,6 15,5 17,5

k:-1 1,7 16,7 15,7 17,7 -1,7 -16,7 -15,7 -17,7

k:-1 1,7 16,7 15,7 17,7 -1,7 -16,7 -15,7 -17,7

n:259 14,7 31,7 33,7 18,7 -14,7 -31,7 -33,7 -18,7 48,6 -48,6 3,6 -3,6

b:296 15,3 17,3 -15,3 -17,3

Q:851 1,3 16,3 15,3 17,3 -1,3 -16,3 -15,3 -17,3

R:444 1,3 16,3 -1,3 -16,3

G:830 17,1003 15,1F003 -15,1003 -17,1F003 17,10003 -15,FFFF0003 -17,10003 15,FFFF0003

A:875 15,3 17,3 -15,3 -17,3 14,7 31,7 33,7 18,7 -14,7 -31,7 -33,7 -18,7

e:400 15,7 17,7 -15,7 -17,7 30,7 -30,7 34,7 -34,7 48,7 -48,7 3,7 -3,7

M:400 1,7 16,7 -1,7 -16,7 13,7 47,7 49,7 19,7 -13,7 -47,7 -49,7 -19,7

#
# G& FyafsF
# A& BN
# E& FAH
# M& CW

to fairymax.ini.

How do I make Xboard display it?

I remember doing this in 2016 with an early apothecary chess.

Not 'natively'. But it is possible to define a game with an arbitrary setup, and then ask WinBoard to start from another position (e.g. with a -fen option). As long as the number of pieces in the variant does not exceed what Fairy-Max can handle this should be possible.

Can Fairy-Max do games that have pieces starting in other places than the back rank. For example Expanded chess?

Ok! I got it!

Oh sorry, I completely overlooked those questions. The latest version of Fairy-Max and WinBoard now are bundled in the WinBoard-AA package.

The pieceToCharTable is how Fairy-Max instructs WinBoard to map piece IDs on images. Each position in the pieceToChar string corresponds to a certain image, starting with Pawn, Knight, Bishop, Rook, Queen, ... and ending with King. First half for the white images (upper-case IDs), second half for the black (lower-case IDs). For an overview of the available images, look here. Images not needed in the game are indicated by a dot. The others by the ID of the piece they represent (a single letter, or letter plus a single quote or exclamation point, the latter only recommended for use when you run out of letters).

Fairy-Max just sends that string to WinBoard, when the variant it describes gets selected. It doesn't do anything with it itself.

There are some special notations in the pieceToChar WinBoard attaches additional meaning to: ^L , with L some piece ID that was already assigned to some other image means the image is for the promoted version of an L (which, in move and position notations, would be indicated as +L). This is needed mainly in Shogi variants; normally WinBoard assumes that the piece that uses the Pawn image promotes to a piece of your choice on reaching the zone (the depth of which depends on the parent variant and board size)

Actually I have managed to download it from the winboard forums along with winboard. Still I don't remember what the piece to char table's use is!

@HG, I had asked two questions here, on this thread, earlier. Have you seen them?

Also, what is the pieceToChar part?

Where can the latest (I think it is 5.0) fairymax version be downloaded?

On my Linux system on an Intel PC I never had any such problems with XBoard + Fairy-Max. Which is the essential change that finally made it work for you? The fflush(stdin)?

I use fairymax all the time, since I'm not a great player, but it's challenging enough that it's still hard to beat.  Unfortunately, it seemed to block indefinitely while talking to X-board.  I was curious what was happening since I'm interested in chess engines.  There is a large section on stream blocking, etc on the X-board site. I managed to fix the problem, and happy to report it played gnu-chess in a game on an ARM chromebook computer running the latest linux OS.

I pasted the resulting code here:

https://pastebin.com/Fd4cNpRV

> Can anyone let me know what I'm doing wrong?

Ugh, I completely missed this question, and considering the date I suppose it is no longer relevant. Still, for people that might run into a similar problem: what is wrong is that you defined piece number 8, which is present in the initial setup, with ID 'H', but that there is no 'H' in the list of pieces given in the 'Game' line

Game: fun01 # PNBRQ.....AKpnbrq.....ak # fairy
 

This list of piece IDs is essential for the WinBoard GUI (to which Fairy-Max will send it) to know which piece image to associate with each piece. Each position correspond with a certain image, the first 5 being the standard image for P, N, B, R and Q, and the last for each color always representing a King. The list now defines the piece 'A' (which does not occur in your variant at all), but not 'H'. As a result WinBoard will choke on the initial position that Fairy-Max sends it, as this will contain 'H' pieces which WinBoard doesn't know what image to use for. Replacing the A and a by H and h would solve this, and display the H as a spiked helmet. By putting the H and h in a different position in the string, (e.g. by changing the number of dots, but keep the length for white and black equal!), you would get other images for H, h.

Note that the latest versions of Fairy-Max and WinBoard would allow you append the lines

#
# H& ADGH

to the definition, which communicate the moves of the H piece (in Betza notation) to WinBoard, so that it will properly highlight the possible destination squares of the piece when you grab it, and can test legality of engine moves. (Otherwise legality testing would have to be switched off, because WinBoard might have other ideas of how the piece with the chosen image can move than Fairy-Max.)

I'm trying to use fairy max to play a game with 4 new pieces at the corners (the new piece is a hawk and it jumps 2 or 3 squares in any direction). The game definition is below (in fmax.ini). When I run this game black's pieces are shown in wrong locations, and the game immedietly results in a stalemate. (I have legality checking turned off, but I get errors either way). Can anyone let me know what I'm doing wrong? thanks.

// variant - [new piece at corners]
Game: fun01 # PNBRQ.....AKpnbrq.....ak # fairy
8x8
8 4 5 7 3 5 4 8
8 4 5 7 3 5 4 8
p:74 -16,24 -16,6 -15,5 -17,5
p:74  16,24 16,6 15,5 17,5
k:-1  1,34 -1,34 1,7 16,7 15,7 17,7 -1,7 -16,7 -15,7 -17,7
n:259 14,7 31,7 33,7 18,7 -14,7 -31,7 -33,7 -18,7
b:296 15,3 17,3 -15,3 -17,3
R:444 1,3 16,3 -1,3 -16,3
Q:851 1,3 16,3 15,3 17,3 -1,3 -16,3 -15,3 -17,3
H:900 -16,7 -32,7 1,7 2,7 16,7 32,7 -1,7 -2,7 -15,7 -30,7 17,7 34,7 15,7 30,7 -17,7 -34,7
 

> Is there a ready made setup for chess with different armies ?

Do you mean in the jocly.com bot, or in the WinBoard+Fairy-Max download? In the latter you can select various CwDA battles in the Engine Settings dialog for the "Variant fairy selects" option, and then choosing variant 'fairy' from the WinBoard New Variant dialog should give you those armies.

For those interested, Fairy-Max is now being used as a remotely connected bot player on the Jocly platform. It offers regular orthodox Chess, Makruk, Capablanca, Cylinder Chess, Shatranj, and Courier. XiangQi is also available via the Max-Qi engine from the same author as Fairy-Max.

To play one of those variants, go to https://www.jocly.com/#/open-tables and click on an open table to start the game, or invite user HGMBot to play. Since the bot is connected to Jocly as a regular user, you'll need your own Jocly account (free) to play this AI.

Prefer Firefox, Chrome or Safari (with WebGL enabled) to get a 3D interface for playing. If 2D is good for you, any modern browser will work, including those from mobile devices.

Well, thanks! Unfortunately I don't keep separate web pages on piece values. What I learn about them I usually publish here. Not all comments here can be appropriately associated with an article, however. (The Piececlopedia is far from complete.) And unassociated commands are almost impossible to find back here, if they don't disappear at all.

I remeber having published something here about divergent pieces (mKcN, mNcK, mQcN, mNcQ), and on another occasion there was a topic in which both Mats Winther and I published about the value of bifurcator pieces.

Recently I did an investigation on sliders that skip the first square, either completely, or allowing captures or rifle captures to them. This in connection with the weird 'Heavenly Tetrarchs' piece of Tenjiku Shogi. But the results never got any further than the 'Talk page' of the Wikipedia article about Tenjiku.

A question for you, H. G.: is there a document somewhere describing your latest research into the value of chess pieces?

The Excellent is both for Fairy-Max itself, and for your work on Chess engines and piece value.

I made a nice addition to the capabilities of Fairy-Max. There were still two unused bits in the field specifying the mode rights of each move direction, and I use them now to specify a delay of the first toggle event. Normally non-hoppers indicate in their primary move rights what they can do (capture, non-capture and continuation in all combinations), and with their secondary move rights which of those have to change after every step. For simple sliders or leapers the latter are not used, as nothing has to change. (They either have continuation, and keep it on every step, so they are sliders with unlimited range, or they haven't, and then there is no second step, and thus also nothing to toggle.

But range-2 sliders would specify continuation in their primary move rights, and toggle it off after one step. (Lame leapers like the Xiangqi Elephant would do the same, but in addition sot specify any capture/non-capure rights with the first step, and toggle those on for the second step, as well as toggling continuation off.).

The new interpretation of the so far unused bits would postpone the first toggle 1, 2 or 3 steps. So applied to the old encoding for a range-2 slider, it would extend the range to 3, 4 or 5 before the continuation is toggled off and the last step is made.