🚀 go-pugleaf

mann@src.dec.com (Tim Mann) writes:
: In article <1992Jun11.144407.7543@ctr.columbia.edu>, joe@AVS.COM (Joe Peterson) writes:
: >There is another consideration when using 3.1 with xboard.  xboard uses
: >the 4.0 type of setup for searchLevel, etc.  In other words, if you set
: >searchLevel to 1 in 4.0, it will do what you expect, but in 3.1 you
: >will instead get a time-per-move of 1 second, since xboard puts a 1 on
: >the gnuchess command line (this is the level in 4.0, but in 3.1 you have
: >to use the "depth" command to set searchLevel).
: >
: 
: This is incorrect.  3.1 works the same as 4.0 if you give it only one argument
: containing no colons---it sets the max depth, not the number of seconds for one
: move.  I know the man page says otherwise, but the man page is wrong.  In 4.0
: the developers chose to fix this bug by keeping the program the same and
: changing the man page to match.  This allowed me to code xboard 2.0 so as to
: work with either gnuchess 3.1 or 4.0.  (Though 3.1 accepts times only in
: minutes.)
: 
That, I believe, is incorrect.  Try it yourself.  If you use one argument
on gnuchess 4.0 (say 2), and then type help, you will see that both depth
and response time are set to 2.  The machine will respond almost immediately,
suggesting that it is searching to 2 ply.

If, you try this with 3.1, you will see that depth is 29 and response time
is 2 sec.  You will also notice that it takes about 2 seconds per move (after
the first few).

Maybe it is a bug that 4.0 sets response time to the same as depth and turns
time control on (if you are limiting by depth, there should be no time limit),
But I believe the behavior is indeed different.

					Joe Peterson
					joe@avs.com