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        Arimaa >> Bot Development >> Offline development on Mac or Windows
        
(Message started by: ChessBox on Apr 7^th, 2012, 7:23am)

Title: Offline development on Mac or Windows
Post by ChessBox on Apr 7^th, 2012, 7:23am

Hi, I have been away from here for a long time. I hoped that after a while I would have been able to find some stand-alone GUIs and bots. Nevertheless I cannot find such things. Always there would be some Linux or Python ...

Even if there still is no such working GUI it would be fine to have at least an example of a working bug free stand-alone bot (its source code would be of less importance). Thus it would be possible for me to write such a GUI myself.

Best regards.

Title: Re: Offline development on Mac or Windows
Post by omar on Apr 7^th, 2012, 3:21pm

Have you checked the downloads page, there are some GUIs and bots there.

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/download/

Title: Re: Offline development on Mac or Windows
Post by ChessBox on Apr 8^th, 2012, 4:46am

Thank you very much for your reaction. But maybe there are very different views on what might be a stand-alone bot.

Opening that link (also to be found via "Downloads" from the Arimaa home page) and then investigating some referenced bots is leading me to some conglomerates of folders and files. But I am searching for merely ONE executable console application file (bot) best in combination with ONE executable desktop application file (GUI). I have no interest in first having to install some unwanted development environments like python, java or .NET. Additionally I do not have the intention to steal foreign ideas on how to write an Arimaa bot. Thus it is extremely misleading to have source files presented there at all, preparing a playing field for copy cats.

It would be sufficient initially to have a well tested console application (bot) which would reliably be obeying the AEI protocol. Then I would try to write first a GUI for have such bots playing locally each other. I would use RealBasic language for that, thus creating a multi-OS GUI covering Mac OS, Windows and Linux (as promised by the RealStudio IDE).

Maybe you know me having written an 8x8 and 10x8 multi variant chess engine SMIRF within an own GUI in Windows. Because of the current crisis in competitive programming of chess engines caused by the inflationary done patch working of legal and illegal parts of foreign chess engines I am currently not much interested in improving my chess engine there.

It would be very welcomed, if the scene of Arimaa engine writers in contrast could be a better alternative.

Title: Re: Offline development on Mac or Windows
Post by dree12 on Apr 8^th, 2012, 4:35pm

I believe that .NET and Java are both common to a default Windows installation, and Java and Python to a default Linux installation at the very least.

Title: Re: Offline development on Mac or Windows
Post by ChessBox on Apr 8^th, 2012, 5:00pm

@dree12: does that mean, that there is no stand-alone Windows bot exe, or such a Mac OS X bot app?

Then it will take some more time ...

Title: Re: Offline development on Mac or Windows
Post by browni3141 on Apr 8^th, 2012, 8:10pm

I haven't checked all of the downloads, but botFairy contains executables. The source code will also be downloaded, but if you don't want it just delete it. botFairy is written in C so you don't need an interpreter or the .Net framework or anything like that. You don't even need a C compiler because the executables are in the download.

I don't understand why it's misleading to provide the source code in downloads. It is offered so that people may build off of it instead of starting from scratch if they want to, or just to use it as some kind of reference or for ideas.

Title: Re: Offline development on Mac or Windows
Post by ChessBox on Apr 9^th, 2012, 3:13am

on 04/08/12 at 20:10:15, browni3141 wrote:

Starting fairy light.exe at the command line produces:

Code:

Program requires an argument (name of file containing position).
Hash-table turned off.
Entries in hashtable : 4194304
Hash mask : 0X3FFFFF
Memory reserved : 134217728
Couldn't read position from file.

Thus it seems not to obey the rules of the AEI protocol, thus not being a bot. Instead it probably is a program for analyzing a set of testing positions.

on 04/08/12 at 20:10:15, browni3141 wrote:

I don't understand why it's misleading to provide the source code in downloads. It is offered so that people may build off of it instead of starting from scratch if they want to, or just to use it as some kind of reference or for ideas.

Concerning the writing of competitive programming the "Open Source" idea is counter productive. Instead I vote for "Open Experiences" e.g. providing new own thoughts. So there is no need to discuss programming ideas by also attaching reusable packages of source code.

Title: Re: Offline development on Mac or Windows
Post by rbarreira on Apr 9^th, 2012, 4:44am

This page has a link to binaries for a AEI bot (search for the word "binaries") in the page:

http://arimaa.janzert.com/opfor/

Title: Re: Offline development on Mac or Windows
Post by ChessBox on Apr 9^th, 2012, 5:03am

on 04/09/12 at 04:44:28, rbarreira wrote:

This page has a link to binaries for a AEI bot (search for the word "binaries") in the page:

http://arimaa.janzert.com/opfor/

Thank you very much! This looks like establishing a good starting point for my intentions. In fact it is responding well to an "aei" input correctly corresponding to the AEI protocol.

Title: Re: Offline development on Mac or Windows
Post by rabbits on Apr 10^th, 2012, 5:38pm

Older bots like Fairy were written before AEI was around, but Fairy definitely is a bot! It uses an older protocol.

If you want to use AEI, you are going to need Python... I'm not sure why you're concerned about having things stand-alone or be executables.

Janzert is the person that invented AEI, and OpFor is his bot. It is very kind of him to share it with us :)

I shared a GUI at https://launchpad.net/arimaa-client Yes, it is written in Python, bleh. (I don't care for Python either.) And I use it in Linux, but I have also gotten it to work in OS X. I've never tried it in Windows or heard if anyone else has used it in Windows, but it theoretically should work in Windows too :)

Good luck with your bot!

Title: Re: Offline development on Mac or Windows
Post by ChessBox on Apr 11^th, 2012, 5:55am

@rabbits: well, I intend to write an own GUI, best Multi-OS aware using the RealBasic language, (despite of that I mostly do such work on a Mac OS X surface). Thus I need an AEI bot first for the purpose of testing the protocol interface of the to be developed Arimaa-GUI. Also I intend to write an own bot according to that protocol. Anyway I am proceding very slowly with both projects. Thus it will need a lot of time to finish them.

I have not intended to offend bot program authors aside of the AEI scene. But I have got the impression, that it might be recommended for newcomers to follow that AEI protocol. Am I wrong with that?

Regards, R. S.

Title: Re: Offline development on Mac or Windows
Post by rbarreira on Apr 11^th, 2012, 7:18am

AEI is indeed the best interface available to make a bot, and the recommended one.

Title: Re: Offline development on Mac or Windows
Post by Hippo on Apr 11^th, 2012, 10:16am

on 04/11/12 at 07:18:03, rbarreira wrote:

AEI is indeed the best interface available to make a bot, and the recommended one.

And I am that stupid that I do extensions to AEI ...
1) I have added the chat command
2) I am sending option "sid" to my bot ... to make separate log files depending on the table.

... seems I should do everything to make it standard ...

=============
rabbits@ I use your client under Win XP ... and it works well till I touch a keyboard. (The same in original client as in my clones). I want to know if this is only my problem or generally some Win incompability.