I don't quite understand what are you offering the readers of this forum?
GnuBG is free. Your software is not. So, you are taking something for free
and incorporating it into your paid software as an added value for your
existing or prospective paying customers, trying to make an extra buck.
Good for you.
In advertising it here, you must be hoping that some GnuBG users who
are happy with its playing strength, which is superior to your bot's, but
who would like your UI better enough to pay money for it?
Good luck.
How about offering us something similar for free in return? Like a full
CLI interface to your AI so that we can write our own scripts to access
it for free or even incorporate it into our own software with better and
still free UI's than yours.
MK
PS: Just out of plain curiosity, I tried your beta bot to see if it allows
full access to GnuBG CLI functions, etc. but I couldn't get it to make
a move past the opening roll. It just sat there using 12 cores at 15%.
On 10/25/2024 3:40 PM, Frank Berger wrote:
Hi all,
FYI, i just published a beta of BGBlitz 3.2. One of the features is that I
support GnuBG as AI. This will surely raise questions.
Why did I include GnuBG? If you look at the situation at chess or Go you have a
flourishing scene of AIs. Why not the same for Backgammon? The smaller
community is surely one reason, but imagine you write a top backgammon AI ....
and now? You have to invest another 5-10 years to get a complete program.
Backgammon lacks a plugin mechanism. In chess you can plugin Stockfish in Fritz
or Shredder, but we don't have such a thing. BGBlitz was intended to support
plugins from the very start (that is the reason why the AI of BGBlitz has it's
own name TachiAI), but because no one wanted it (and the AIs I had access to
were either weak or I can't use them for legal reasons) I removed it some years
ago.
But recently I thought, come on try to include GnuBG
* first as a PoC and
* second BGBlitz then supports already 2 of the 3 current relevant AIs.
BTW GnuBG can be used in BGBlitz on Windows, Linux and MacOS (you have to
install it with macports on MacOS. I tried only the cli)
If someone applies I'll provide an API for general use.
BTW because I don't include GnuBG in any way but use only the cli version, I
don't see any license issues.
Your thoughts are highly appreciated.
enjoy
Frank
Windows:https://bgblitz.com/download/beta/BGBlitz_3_1_0_setup.exe
Mac Apple Silicon:https://bgblitz.com/download/beta/bgb_distr_3.1_ARM.dmg
Mac X86:https://bgblitz.com/download/beta/bgb_distr_3.1_x86.dmg
Linux:https://bgblitz.com/download/beta/bgblitz_installer_310.jar
