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H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Jun 17, 2020 10:54 PM UTC:

Problem is that just saying it is not enough; it must know whether stalemate is a draw or a loss, so that it knows whether it should go for it or avoid it, depending on whether it is winning or losing. So the stalemate result must become a parameter for the diagram, and the applet must somehow provide a way for the user to control that parameter.

I will work on it. It was first posted hardly more than 24 hours ago, and I had more problems than I expected to get promotions working properly. (We don't want to allow the AI to promote to any piece in the table, so it had to keep track of which pieces participate, and which don't.) And so far I was concentrating on the interface, how to make this reasonably user-friendly.

Feedback is much appreciated, btw. E.g. besides stalemate, should we also be able to specify other game terminations? Such as baring, or whether multiple royals would mean extinction royalty or not. Also, there are still many pieces in the list that do not have a move. Which seems a pity; as they are there anyway for their pretty looks, they might as well be used to provide the user more choice of moves without having to mess with the move definitions himself. Can you suggest any moves for pieces like Ox, Ram, Crocodile...?

I fixed the stalemate; I added a parameter stalemate=draw to the diagram, and actually made that the default. It now also prints the message. I also changed the King position evaluation in the end-game, to draw to the center (extra strong for a bare King) and to draw to the action; as a result it can even force checkmate with a Queen now, at 2 ply.

This facility isn't really meant for playing end-games; at a depth of two ply and without any dedicated strategic knowledge that will really suck. To see if pieces can checkmate a bare King we have the checkmating applet, which is based on End-Game Tables rather than search. This is intended for seeing how the design works out in the middle-game.

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Play-test applet for chess variants. Applet you can play your own variant against.

💡📝H. G. Muller wrote at 08:18 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 04:32 AM:

If I understood Fergus correctly all that is needed to do it is compare the value of turn instead of mln. Like

if == 1 turn:
... // code for first prelude step
elseif == turn 2:
... // code for second prelude step
else:
  gosub HandleMove true;
  ... // code for performing the gating if needed
endif;

The only thing I am still in doubt about is whether the current betza.txt include file on which the PTA-generated code relies tests for a move being the final one in a safe and reliable way. Because it uses mln for the test rather than turn. But that would affect every preset automated through the PTA, and I have never encountered a case where it did not work.

Aurelian Florea wrote at 04:32 AM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from Fri May 3 06:05 PM:

@Fergus & @ H.G.

So basically it can't be done yet!

🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, May 3 06:05 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 05:45 PM:

if == 0 $mline[$mln]->movenum:

That is mixing GAME Code with PHP. GAME Code does not support classes with properties or write out array elements with brackets, and it doesn't provide read access to $mline. But you can use the value of turn with your knowledge of which side you're concerned with to determine where you are in a game.

💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, May 3 05:45 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 05:35 PM:

OK, so the betza.txt code, which thus aims to test for whether the move is the one that was just entered, would work fine even in the presence of comments?

And the code to test for whether we are in prelude should look like

🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, May 3 05:35 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 05:20 PM:

set all == mln $maxmln;          // indicates last move
Note there is no $ there, so we might be talking about different things, and this one might be a legacy variable.

This operator just outputs the value of $mln.

I cannot image how this would work if mln was not the current move number.

It works because you are comparing mln with its maximum value. When there are comments, $maxmln will be greater than any move number, but it will be no higher than mln will eventually reach.

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