| icsDrone v1.5.0, (C) 1996-2001, Henrik Gram. All rights reserved. | | See the file 'COPYRIGHT' for more legal stuff. |
- Description
-
icsDrone acts as an interface between an ICS (Internet Chess Server) and a chess engine. It knows how to create games, ask people to continue any adjourned games, ask for games when bored and much more. The engine itself can be administrated or configured remotely.
It talks with the chess engine using pipes and the protocol specified in the protocol document. It's a subset of the 'Chess Engine Communication Protocol' available at http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard/engine-intf.html with a few changes here and there. There are plans to make icsDrone into a library that the engine can link against, but that's only on the sketchbook right now.
The program was created back in '96 as a simple way to have N engines up and running 24/7 without taking up a workstation or X terminal (like XBoard does) as it runs in the background. If you instead intend to have your engine running just for some hours on you local workstation while watching it play, you might just aswell use XBoard/WinBoard. Get it from Tim Mann's homepage at http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html
icsDrone's homepage is at http://icsdrone.sourceforge.net - please use the tools there to report bugs, request features, get support and getting the latest version. The latest version in CVS may not be stable as it's work in progress, but if you want the latest and greatest...
- Compilation
-
Usually, you would just type 'make' and it will compile just fine. If you get any errors, read the Makefile and try again.
Supported Platforms:
- Unix Note: Any system with POSIX signals should work just fine.
- Windown 9x/NT/2000
Note: You must have cygwin installed. Get it from:
http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin The engine(s) you wish to use with it must be compiled with the cygwin gcc port aswell.
- OS/2
Note: You need the EMX runtime for this. I'm not able to test this
myself, but someone contributed EMX specific code and was able to get it running on OS/2.
Supported Chess Servers:
- freechess.org - everything should work.
- USCL - everything should work.
- chess.net - offspring of old FICS source - some features may work, others surely does not.
- chessclub.com - some features may work, others surely does not.
Supported Engines: (those that are publicly available)
- GNUChess 4.0.pl74-80 Note: It's distributed under the GPL and the newest release can be found at http://www.tim-mann.org/gnuchess.html and probably other sites.
- Crafty 18.x Note: Created by Robert Hyatt <hyatt@cis.uab.edu>. It's probably the strongest freely available engine around and is distributed in both soruce and binary form for Unix, DOS and Windows. You cat get it from: ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt Be sure to enable 'craftymode' in icsDrone.
- SSEchess I and II Note: It's made by Samuel Slutzky <tayx@expert.cc.purdue.edu> and distributed for both Unix and Windows. The authors site at http://www.ssechess.com has been down for a while.
- OliPow Note: This program is outdated and no longer supported by the author. If you use it, you must apply the olipow-patch that comes with icsDrone. Be sure to enable 'craftymode' and 'longAlgMoves' in icsDrone.
- OliThink Note: The next generation of OliPow from Oliver Brausch. You should run it with the -haveCmdType option. OliThink specific options are added on the command line - see its documentaion. Get it at: http://www.phy.uni-bayreuth.de/~btp434/
Engines that for some reason don't work, but that I'd like to support:
- Chess 5.02 Note: This is a rewrite of gnuchess still under the GPL. This one doesn't seem to work correctly. I'm not sure why yet. I seems to misunderstand the time as it's constantly taking far to long to move. You get get it at: http://www.gnu.org/software/chess/chess.html
- Sjeng 10.0
Note: Similar problems as above. The source is available and can
be downloaded from http://sjeng.sourceforge.net
- Configuration
-
First of all, you need to supply icsDrone with the login and password needed to login to the particular server. This can be done in one of two ways:
- Setting environment variables FICSHANDLE and FICSPASSWD
- Putting them in the file ".icsdronerc" as the first two lines
Secondly, there are a number of commandline options you need to know. These are the "General Options". In addition, there are other options that are engine specific which you may or may not need to mess with. Currently the -autoConfigure option shown below is supported for GNUChess 4.x and Crafty, but I plan on adding more in future releases.
General Options:
-icsHost defaults to "freechess.org" -icsPort defaults to 5000
Note: The address of the ICS you want to use.
-owner defaults to ""
Note: Tells comming from the owner are accepted as 'remote commands'
and those without a specific action are sent directly back to
the server.
Special commands:
messages -> Shows you its messages
restart -> Restart (logout with exitcode 1) as soon as it's
done playing.
softquit -> Quits (logout with exitcode 2) as soon as it's
done playing.
hardquit -> Quits (logout with exitcode 3) at once.
=listname -> Shows you who is on its list (ie. "=notify" shows
you its notify list)
* -> Anything following that will be sent directly to
the engine. Can be used to dynamicly changed
parameters in the engine.
-console defaults to false/off
Primarily for debugging. It will let you type in commands in the console (stdin) and those that are prefixed with 'ics:' go to the server and those prefixed with 'computer:' to go the computer.
-program defaults to "gnuchessx"
The program to execute.
-sendGameEnd defaults to ""
You can use this to specify a list of commands to send to the server whenever a game ends. Example: "seek 5 0\nseek 4 0\nseek 3 0"
-limitRematches defaults to 0/off
If enabled, it will wait a minute to give other players a chance to challenge it when it has played one particular person N+1 times in a row.
-sendTimeoutCmds defaults to 0/off
If enabled, it will send the contents of ".icsdronerc-idlecmds" directly to the server when N minutes have past since previous game.
-logFile defaults to null/off
If set, it will write all output to the logfile instead of stderr. If the filename ends with .gz, it will use zlib to write compressed data to the log. Note: This requires zlib to be installed on the host system.
-autoConfigure defaults to false/off
If enabled, it will look at the filename specified in the program option above and determine if it knows it. If it does, it will set all options below to the correct values, and you need not fiddle with them.
Engine Specific Options:
-killEngine defaults to true/on
If true, it kills the engine after each game and starts a new one when a new game starts. You may turn this off, if you support the 'new' command. Crafty users should set this to false/off.
-haveCmdNew defaults to false/off
If true, icsDrone will send 'new' to the engine when a new game starts. The engine should initialize itself when receiving this command. Is usually combined with '-killEngine false'
-haveCmdResult defaults to false/off
If true, icsDrone will send a result string to the engine after a game has finished.
-haveCmdType defaults to false/off
If true, icsDrone will send the type of game to the engine. This was originally made for OliThink, and in the Zippy v2 protocol, they decided to use 'variant' for the same thing.
-haveCmdPing defaults to false/off
If true, icsDrone will send "ping #" to the engine upon startup. This allows you to complete slow initialization tasks before icsdrone starts accepting challenges.
-craftyMode defaults to false/off
If true, icsDrone will not do some things a bit different, including not sending SIGINT signals to the engine everytime it is on move. All new engines need this option turned on.
-longAlgMoves defaults to false/off
If true, icsDrone will send all moves in frfr form, but note that icsDrone does not translate moves itself, but relies on an undocumented feature of the FICS server to provide this.
-searchDepth defaults to 0/off
If set, it sends the 'set search depth' command to the engine. This is mostly for gnuchess 4.x.
-secPerMove defaults to 0/off (GNUChess 4.x only)
If set, it sends the 'seconds per move' command to the engine.
-easyMode defaults to false/off (GNUChess 4.x only)
When on, disables pondering (thinking in opponent's time).
-book defaults to true/on (GNUChess 4.x only)
If false, it will turn book usage off.
The last few options were engine specific and if you use another engine, you should use whatever methods it provide. Ie. crafty uses an ".craftyrc" that can be used for this.
- Installation
You probably want to run icsDrone from a script. This distribution contains a 'sample-script.sh' file, which demonstrates how to restart icsDrone when you lose connection to the server, how to use it with timeseal, how to interpret the exit values (needed for some of the remote commands discussed above) and how to use logging.
- Contact
-
You can usually reach me at hawk@freechess.org or by logging into the ICS at freechess.org and look for 'Hawk'.
Visit the icsDrone homepage at http://icsdrone.sourceforge.net where you can report bugs, ask for support and get the latest version.